Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (review)

232Comparative Drama continuation of the Henry TVplays" (245). Hence, no series—or at least nothing on the scale ofthe first.We may therefore resist the circularity ofGrene'sconclusion that the"serialityofthehistoryplays reproducesthe linearity ofhistory" (249). David M. Bergeron University ofKansas Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken, eds. MovingSubjects: Processional Performance in the MiddleAges and the Renaissance. Ludus: Medieval andEarlyRenaissanceTheatre and Drama, 5. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001. Pp. 257. $55.00. Only recendy has scholarly attention been directed to processions 2&performance, and this is, I believe, a very healthy development. Theatrical expression surely requires to be viewed as a larger category than scripted stage plays and the involvement of actors who impersonate characters in an action which has a beginning , middle,and end.MovingSubjects:ProcessionalPerformancein theMiddle Ages andRenaissance presents discussions ofa number ofaspects ofprocessions and in some cases brings to bear "postmodern" methodologies with varying success. The essays in the book, however, are not intended to produce a taxonomy of processional performance since, with the exception ofthe survey article by the late and much missed C. Clifford Flanagan, each ofthe authors takes up a separate matter for treatment. As visual, aural, and kinetic experience, processions vary greatly. In our time those familiar to most Americas are civic parades with floats or tableaux vivants, all quite different from the medieval variety, though many will have regularly observed or even participated in liturgical processions at the beginning ofthe Mass. The latter do ofcourse bear a strong resemblance to medieval processions, and in Anglican churches even the order of the participants may follow the directions specified in the Sarum rite which was dominant in the late Middle Ages throughout a large segment of medieval England. Liturgical processions , as Flanagan notes, are either festal or penitential. Among the festal processions certain ones are ofconsiderable complexity—for example, the Palm Sunday procession. In German and Polish territories this procession utilized a Palmesel, a carved image of Jesus on an ass that was used to represent Christ's entry into Jerusalem in sacred time. Beginning in the fourteenth century, however , the most elaborate festal procession may well have been the one on the feast ofCorpus Christi, when the Host was taken out ofthe church or cathedral and paraded through the town with all the participants taking part in an estab- Reviews233 lished order that itself was regarded as sacred. At York the procession on this day was in conflict with the vernacular plays that had developed there, for the complaint is recorded that the pageants and the procession followed verynearly the same route through the city. Elsewhere, as at Bruges where the annual Holy Blood procession on 3 Maywas combined with pageantry, there appears to have been no such conflict. This Bruges procession receives attention by Thomas A. Boogaart II, who stresses the connection with the local sense of community, which in turn was linked to the idea of transcendental reality as it was perceived by the participants . It is important to understand the nonmaterial aspects ofthis procession, which was established around the relic of the Holy Blood. This relic had been brought back to the city by the crusaders in the thirteenth century and is still venerated in the Basilica of the Holy Blood on Fridays. Further, though much changed from medieval times, the procession continues to wind its waythrough Bruges each year on the appointed day, and hence its purpose and effects are perhaps more easily grasped than in the case of the processions bearing the relics and statue ofSt. Foy at Conques that is discussed by Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, who base their analysis on The Book ofSainte Foy's Miracles, a document which seems to have had at least in part a propaganda motive. When the monks of Conques processed in hierarchical order "according to the dates oftheir professions" beyond the confines oftheir monastery and into the countryside , something more was going on here than merely the display of "the monastery's power and authority" (54). While theywere in a sense proclaiming the power ofthe relics in their possession, they also were participating in an act thought to be transcendent and useful to the community beyond the cloister— that is, as...