Published: 2013-01-01

Boże Ciało. Święto, ceremonia i performance

Renata Hołda

Abstract

In 2011 in Łódź, a man dressed in a butterfly costume disturbed the peace of the procession celebrating a Catholic feast: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), in Poland known as “Boże Ciało”. This incident, which was of an interventional street performance character, provides an excellent opportunity for considerations on ritual, ceremony and their place in the present-day reality. The starting point is Victor Turner’s universalising idea of “social drama”, which enables us to join together cultural phenomena as different as a theophoric procession and performance art. The article presents changes in the solemnizing and understanding of feasts, and within this area, of rituals and religious ceremonies. Similarly to other manifestations of collective life, the Corpus Christi procession with its medieval genesis was included in religious and socio-political system. Later, the procession was added into the private sphere owing to the fact that a secularisation and disestablishment policy was first signalled, and then implemented in Europe, and time was separated into periods of labour and leisure. Nowadays, this procession is still solemnized in Poland and gathers large numbers of parishioners, giving them an occasion to celebrate; to some, however, it is now a conventionalised, unfounded and thus worthless form of ritual

Keywords:

ritual, ceremony, Corpus Christi, Catholic feast

Download files

Citation rules

Hołda, R. (2013). Boże Ciało. Święto, ceremonia i performance. Journal of Urban Ethnology, 11, 61–74. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/jue/article/view/652

Cited by / Share


This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.