CORPUS CHRIST I FEAST OF. A

Roman festival, instituted by Pope Urban IV., A. D. 1264, and observed on the Thursday of the week after Pentecost. The institution was the natural result of the acceptance of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Hildebert of Tours was the first who made use of the high-sounding term transubstantiatio . Most of the earlier scholastics, and the disciples of Lanfranc in particular, had, however, previously defended both the doctrine of the change of the bread into the body of Christ , and that of the accident i a sine subjecto ; but it was not made an article of faith till the time of Innocent III. By the institution of the Corpus Christ day, by Urban, this doctrine was expre ed in a liturgical form, and its popularity was secured. The festival was established in honour of the consecrated host, and with a view to its adoration. Its origin is connected with some of those “lying wonders,” in which we read one of the marks of the scriptural condemnation of the Church of Rome. The Romish legend states that, in 1230, Julian a, a nun of Liege, while looking at the full moon, saw a gap in its orb; and, by a peculiar revelation from heaven, learned that the moon represented the Christian Church, and the gap the want of a certain festival—that of the adoration of the body of Christ in the consecrated host—which she was to begin to celebrate, and announce to the world. In 1264, while a priest at Bolsena, who did not believe in the change of the bread into the body of Christ , was going through the ceremony of benediction, drops of blood fell on his surplice, and when he endeavoured to conceal them in the folds of his garment, formed bloody images of the host. The bloody surplice is still shown as a relic at Civita Vecchia. It was in this year that Pope Urban published his bull, and it is with such authority that the Church of Rome is contented!