May 21.] CORPUS CHRISTI DAY.
May 21.]
CORPUS CHRISTI DAY.
Corpus Christi Day is held on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, to celebrate, as the name indicates, the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and was instituted in the year 1264 by Pope Urban IV.
In olden times the Skinners’ fraternity of Corpus Christi made their procession on this day, having “borne before them more than two hundred torches of wax, costly garnished, burning bright” (or painted and gilded with various devices); and “above two hundred clerks and priests, in surplices and copes, singing,” after which came the officers; “the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, and then the skinners in their best liveries.” A temporary revival of these imposing shows took place in Mary’s days previously to their discontinuance.—Timbs’ Something for Everybody, 1861, p. 84.