The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

But although the laity attended Mass frequently, they received communion rarely, perhaps only
once a year, at Easter, after confession in Holy Week. Christ has commanded His followers to
love one another, to love even their enemies. The institutions of the Church as well as the teachings
of Christ demanded that Christians be 'in charity'. The priest warned all communicants not to come
to 'God's board, but if ye be in perfect love and charity, and be clean shriven, and in full purpose to
leave your sin'. Loving one's enemies was always a counsel of perfection, but there were powerful
imperatives to Christian unity. Within the Mass there was a ceremony of peace (although sometimes
distinctly uncharitable disputes arose over who should kiss the pax board first). There were sanctions
against asking for divine forgiveness without giving or deserving human forgiveness. Enmity was
an obstacle to the reception of the Mass. Some did have scruples about receiving the Easter sacrament
while out of charity with neighbours and refusing to be reconciled. The Mass was the symbol of
peace, and as a symbol of awesome power, could bring peace. In April 1459 there was a great riot
in Fleet Street in London during which, it was said, many might have died had not bishops processed
with crosses and 'Our Lord's body' to restore peace.
At Corpus Christi the blessed sacrament which the feast honoured was consecrated at a special Mass,
then carried by priests in a precious vessel, under a canopy, along a processional route strewn with
grass and flowers. Unity was the theme of Corpus Christi; a social ideal of holy togetherness, worked
out in the Mass of the feast, its hymns, its great procession. Here, in this feast, so intensely popular,
so universally observed, embellished so spontaneously with plays and pageants, lay, if anywhere,
a demonstration of a Christian community. Yet community in Christ's saving sacrifice never meant
social equality. In practice, this festival of unity also celebrated power and privilege; the precedence
of the powerful, who walked closest to the Host, over the powerless.
The poor, women, children, servants - most people - watched from a distance. Yet although the
celebrations sometimes became discordant, disordered, they were held in the name of the sacrament,
which bound the Christian community as nothing else could. 
What was the Christian community? Christians thought of themselves as one society, sharing in
baptism with their 'even Christen' throughout the world: Christendom. Though torn by war, faction,
doctrinal dispute and family quarrels, Christendom was one. Or, Latin Christendom was one.
The Church in Rome had long been divided from the Orthodox Church of Byzantium by deep
questions of doctrine and authority, but hopes of reconciliation had never been abandoned. The fall
of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was a profound blow to the West. Moscow had
become the 'third Rome', and Eastern Orthodoxy seemed indefinitely distant. Founded in Christ,
the Church in Rome which revealed His message, claimed to be 'one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic',
universal and unity, timeless. Catholic means universal, and for the West there was as yet no question
about which Church should claim universality. The Christian community was defined by its
membership of the Catholic Church. Since this was a militant, missionary faith, people everywhere,
including Turks and Saracens, infidels, and the pagans in the New World might eventually be
incorporated. Christendom, by its nature, could have no conceivable frontiers. Though the worlds
of most people were bounded by the hills and fields of their horizons, still they knew that Jerusalem
was the cradle of the faith and Rome its capital. Many must have dreamed of travelling there, and
some did.
Greater than the community of the whole Christian world on earth was the community of the dead.
The Christian community extended from this world to the next and included all those who had ever
lived, the faithful departed. The souls of the dead family and friends seemed to the living scarcely
less real and needy than their own bodies. Between the living and dead an intricate passage existed
of love and fear. The Mass was not only a service for the living, visible congregation, but for
a ghostly company of the dead, still in search of eternal peace, for whose souls the living prayed.
The saints were with God already, enjoying the everlasting peace of heaven. Some of this 'blessed
company' were sanctified because, like the Apostles, they had been chosen by Christ Himself during
His life; others because they wore a martyr's crown; others because in their own lives they had
transcended the frailties of the human condition. They were friends of God, and friends, in turn, to
the human race.