The Communion of St Denis and the Feast of Corpus Christi in the 15th-Century Stained Glass of All Saints North Street in York

A text scroll in a miraculous mass scene in the parish church of All Saints North Street in York contains a breviary text from the Communion of St Denis. English unfamiliarity with the Communion legend and the unusual iconography of this particular version have both contributed to earlier misidentifications of this scene as a St Gregory’s Mass. In fact, this window contains the only surviving example of the Communion of St Denis in English stained glass. The All Saints’ glass also contains evidence of a now-missing St Gregory’s Mass, arguably in the same window as the Communion scene. These mass scenes were occasionally used separately to signify the feast of Corpus Christi. Combining them in the same window would have created a potent set of images that showed different aspects of the Body of Christ. More complex cross-references between the texts and images in this glass suggest clerical involvement in a choice of iconographies that would have reflected the devotional interests of the probable lay donors, who were members of the York Corpus Christi Guild. Commissioning and funding the creation of this window may therefore have been a collaborative exercise

Art · Art history · Iconography · Legend · Literature · Stained glass · Window (computing) · Byzantine Studies and History · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Medieval Literature and History

• Corpus Christi

  Ann E Faulkner•Sixteenth Century Journal•1992

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• The English Devotion of St. Gregory's Trental

  Richard W Pfaff, Richard Pfaff•Speculum•1974

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• Fragments of an Indulgence Inscription in a Window at all Saints, North Street, York

  Open Access•R N Swanson, Robert Swanson•The Antiquaries Journal•2008

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• The Birth of an Ideology

  Constance H Berman, Colette Beaune et al.•The Journal of Interdisciplinary…•1993

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