Elevation of the host

When these debates were ended with the doctrine of transubstantiation, the elevation of the host became the centerpiece of medieval liturgies--and a template for today's eucharistic adoration.

Just like commentators who tell us when to sit, stand or kneel, there is the ringing of hand-held bells during the elevation of the host that signals the kneeling congregation to look up, then down.

At the Elevation of the Host, they gave it all they had in celebration.

The book then turns to the cope, firstly in William Durand's explication of ecclesiastical vestments (and here one should note that it was not the cope [as stated on page 91] but the chasuble that changed shape in response to the introduction of the elevation of the Host); thence to the satirical Song upon Tailors, which demonstrates the transformation of a cope through alterations until it is finally donated to a servant.

The prevalence of both Latin and English prayers that could be recited at the elevation of the host or in private meditation on the Passion implies that the scribe or commissioner of Takamiya MS 56 envisioned a roll that "doubled" as a spiritual guide while also providing protection during childbirth.

Finally, part 3 of the book ("The Cradle of the Polyphonic Mass") tackles within its two chapters the changing perception of the mass in the later Middle Ages, whereby the doctrine of transubstantiation (officially accepted as a dogma during the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215), coupled with a growing fear of Purgatory, caused a tremendous emotional and conceptual shift of focus on the elevation of the Host, because the mere sight of it was supposed to be morally and even physically cleansing.

In this connection, Cothren also notes that the ritual of the Elevation of the Host, begun in the twelfth century, became especially important during the first half of the thirteenth as the sign of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

First, since we are one with Christ, so we, in our spiritual and bodily existence, at the elevation of the Host and the chalice, are raised up with Christ.

But there are fascinating |Eucharistic vignettes' from throughout western Europe presented: a pyx in the form of the Virgin, a depiction of the Virgin vested as a priest at the altar (the exact vestment is not specified), the high value placed on white flour and white bread/hosts in medieval Europe, the giving of the viaticum to women in childbirth, dances in Eucharistic processions in Spain, the giving of undiluted, unconsecrated wine to the laity to provide symmetry to the giving of the consecrated host alone, and the construction of a machine on pulleys in a church to allow angelic figures to descend at the elevation of the host during the Canon of the Mass and ascend after the paternoster.

Luther's Real Presence did not call for a rejection of the Mass per se, as a liturgical celebration in which, for instance, the medieval ordo and the elevation of the host and vestments could be retained.

According to Targoff, it was actually Catholics, not protestants (or established-church English protestants), who were given more leeway to absorb themselves in devotional introspection and private prayer, when the priest, for example, was silently reciting the Secreta and going about his business, with back turned to the congregants, of the mass; only when the sacring bell rang out were worshippers called to leave their inner devotions behind and return their attention to the consecration and elevation of the host, and the realm of common devotion (22-23).