Church-sect dynamics and the Feast of Corpus Christi

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2004 by Barbara R. Walters

Eve was from a higher social stratum than Juliana, more influential, and had greater financial resources. The basic structural differential in power is manifest by differences in personal access. Juliana always walked from outside Liege and through the center of the ville to visit Eve; Eve never made the complementary trip. Eve also functioned in the social networks as the liaison between Juliana and the higher clergy in Liege, as illustrated in Table 2. It was Eve who introduced Juliana to Canon John, the Dominicans, and the other religious dignitaries who visited Liege. Thus when Urban IV, the erstwhile Jacques de Panteleon, embraced the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264, he wrote a congratulatory letter to Eve, who survived Juliana by eight years. The following excerpt from the vita provides an example of the compensatory balancing in the interpersonal interaction that enabled preservation of the relationship through a definition of the situation constituting temporary and provisional equality through mutual face-saving strategies. These reaffirmed projected identities, self-presentations, and confirmed Juliana's vision without sharing it. Eve makes reparation by requesting Juliana's help in receiving the same sign. The episode reports on a visit in which Juliana first reveals her vision of the new feast day. Eve initially offers to share the burden of what might be troubling a preoccupied Juliana. Juliana replies by telling Eve about her vision.

    When she had finished telling her story, the recluse was nothing
    less than astonished, and beseeched her saying: 'Please pray to the
    Lord that he will deign to grant me the same feelings that you have
    for the sacrament.' To which Juliana responded: 'I will not do this,
    recluse; it would not be good for you. Your humanity could not bear
    this without breaking down. For this is what has entirely weakened
    my body and destroyed my humanity. Nevertheless God will grant to
    you and all of his other friends such feelings as will be useful for
    you, measuring out the portion that you are capable of
    comprehending (Delville 1999:174-77; cf. Newman 1988:103-104).

High-ranking Abbess Imene also provided lodging and financial support; she received Juliana into the venerable Cistercian Abbey at Salzinnes, arranged for the construction of a hospice and a pension through the Archdeacon of Liege, and later arranged for her to be taken in at Fosses, when the nuns at Salzinnes were disbanded. The Abbess was the half-sister of Conrad of Hochstaden, the Archbishop of Cologne, who participated in the dismissal of Frederick II in 1245 at the Council of Lyon (Delville 1999). Imene was also closely connected to the fragmented dynasty of Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, whose second daughter and successor in Flanders, Countess Margaret, received the relics of the holy virgins of Cologne, through the efforts of Abbess Imene and her sister, the Abbess of Saint Walburgis (Delville 1999:220). Juliana's gift of prophecy was most often used to foretell death or healing, perhaps a highly developed skill for one placed in work in a leprosarium at age five. In this case, for the Abbess, Juliana's prophecy demonstrates a remarkable foreknowledge that may have been facilitated by her own recent visit to Cologne.