The Birth of Corpus Christi: From Vision to Veneration

There was a young girl in Liège, Belgium who had been orphaned since she was 5 years old. Her name was Julianna. Being an orphan, she was taken in as a student by the Augustinian nuns of Cornillon where there was a convent near the border of her home town. At the age of 16, she became an Augustinian novice. Even from her youth, Juliana had a deep devotion to the Eucharist, which only increased upon entering the Augustinians and participating in their life of prayer and service.

The pope at the time was Pope Innocent III. And he convened the Fourth Lateran Council to establish reforms and one of the rules that came out of that council was that all Catholics had to go to communion once a year. Frequent communion was allowed, even once a week. So, there was a movement in the church toward greater devotion to the Eucharist. At the same time, Juliana became and nun and began to have an unexplainable vision during prayer. The vision was of a full moon with a dark area within it. After two years, the explanation came by means of an interior message. The moon symbolized the Church and the darkened area preventing it from showing its full brightness was a feast lacking in the Church in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. In her vision, Jesus asked Juliana to see to it that a feast of the Blessed Sacrament was established.

Juliana related her vision and its meaning to her good friend Jacques Pantaleon who was the Archdeacon of Liège in Belgium and head of Catholic charities in Belgium. Around this same time, there had been a terrible desecration of the Eucharist. A man had gone into a church and stole a ciborium and poured the consecrated hosts into the street. Of course, streets at that time were rivers of mud and dung. At first, the Bishop, Robert de Torote, established the feast locally in Liège in 1246. This is where the story takes a dramatic turn.

Juliana would never live to see the feast established universally. She tried to reform her convent and for her efforts, she was thrown out. A few years after her death, her friend the Archdeacon was summoned to Rome and made the Archbishop of Jerusalem by Pope Alexander IV. The pope told him to come back in six years and to let him know how things are going. Upon his return to Rome six years later, he disembarks from the boat and is met with the news that the Pope was just buried. And Jacques Pantaleon, who was not a cardinal, was elected Pope and became Pope Urban IV. He was the first and only Belgian Pope.

The first thing he did was go up to a village called Bolsena in Italy. In Bolsena there exists The Corporal of Bolsena, which came about when a priest who was saying Mass doubted the Eucharist and when he broke the Eucharist it bled onto the corporal. And he took the corporal and in solemn procession carried it to the beautiful Cathedral of Orvieto. The next thing the pope did was to ask a great theologian at the time, Thomas Aquinas, to write a liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi, meaning to write the music and text for the Mass and the Office.

St. Thomas wrote the musical masterpiece for the liturgy. The hymns are the familiar hymns we sing today including Pangia Lingua Gloriosi, Corpus Mysterium, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, Panis Angelicus. Pope Urban IV would die less than two months after establishing the worldwide feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. His mission was accomplished. While the feast was established by Pope Urban, it was slow to catch on. Eventually, it became necessary for Pope Clement V to promulgate a new decree in 1314, mandating that the Feast of Corpus Christi be observed universally. Once the feast of Corpus Christi was established and mandated, the Franciscans and Dominicans championed it and when the Benedictines took it up, it spread through Europe. In many countries today, the Feast of Corpus Christi is a civil holiday. In France, it became known as Le Fête Dieu, the Feast of God.

Let us then take to heart the word of Pope Urban IV who inaugurated this feast with these words from the papal bull Transiturus de Hoc Mundo which established the feast of Corpus Christi as an annual celebration for the whole church.

“Therefore, to strengthen and exalt the Catholic Faith, we decree that, besides the daily memory that the Church makes of this Sacrament, there be celebrated a more solemn and special annual memorial. Then let the hearts and mouths of all break forth in hymns of saving joy; then let faith sing, hope dance, charity exult, devotion applaud, the choir be jubilant, and purity delight. Then let each one with willing spirit and prompt will come together, laudably fulfilling his duties, celebrating the Solemnity of so great a Feast.”