Corpus Christi
The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture

A paperback edition of Miri Rubin's highly successful study of the meaning of the eucharist, c. 1150–1500.

Miri Rubin (Author)

9780521438056, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 October 1992

452 pages, 19 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.4 x 3 cm, 0.702 kg

'The avowed aim of Dr Rubin's book is to decode the eucharistic language used by theologians and the rituals of eucharistic worship in the later middle ages … an erudite and lively study.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

This book studies later medieval culture [c. 1150–1500] through its central symbol: the eucharist. From the twelfth century onwards the eucharist was designed by the Church as the foremost sacrament. The claim that this ritual brought into presence Christ's own body, and offered it to believers, underpinned the sacramental system and the clerical mediation upon which it depended. The book explores the context in which the sacramental world was created and the cultural processes through which it was disseminated, interpreted and used. With attention to the variety of eucharistic meanings and practices - in procession on the feast of Corpus Christi, devotions, prayers, drama, in dissent, abuse and doubt - the author reveals and considers ways in which a religious culture is used as a language for the articulation of order and power, as well as for the most private explorations. The book moves from the 'design' of the eucharist in the twelfth century to its re-design in the sixteenth - a story of the emergence of a symbol, its use and interpretation and final transformation.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Designing the eucharist: new ideas and procedures in the mass from c. 1000
2. Beyond design: teaching and reception of the eucharist
3. A feast is born: Corpus Christi - the eucharistic feast
4. The living feast: sermons, fraternities, processions and drama
5. Symbols in motion: the many readings of the eucharist
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]