Duffy 2005

Seasons and Signs

seasons: Advent, Christmastide, Lent, Easter, and Whit; attached to the Whitsun season, the feasts of the Trinitty and Corpus Christi

laity's calendar linked to liturgical calendar, lunar calendar

The Mass

"sight of the Host ... linked instinctively with the solitary communion of the deathbed, and the lonely journey into the other world for which it was preparation" (120)

• communal experience; community paid to decorate altar, was one moment in Mass when everyone came together
• yet individualistic -- reflection on one's own lonely journey

"Communal and individual experience could be held together without tension as the rhythm of the Mass, from procession to prayer to rapt gaze and outwards once again to the bustle of offertory or pax. As we shall see, the solitary character of the medieval experience of the deathbed may itself be questioned. The hour of death was one not of isolation, but itself an experience of community." (120-1)