Fronleichnam (literally 'socage-body') is what we in England call, er, 'Corpus Christi'. In Germany though it's still quite a big thing. In the Catholic states it's a public holiday, which even the Nazis didn't dare abolish.* And in the procession you don't just get priests and monks and boys and things, you also get people wearing all sorts of funny uniforms, including (where they exist) members of Catholic student fraternities. (In one of the pictures above, they're the ones with the swords.)
Heiligenkreuz Abbey is of course the monastery when one Adolf Josef Lanz once "tried his vocation", but of course it didn't work out. According to him it was because he had a nervous indisposition, according to others it was because he fancied blokes too much.
And of course he then went on to call himself Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and founded the Guido von List Society. But to such things I shall no doubt return later.
*The English bishops in their recent decision to scrap it (effectively, that is, by moving it to the following Sunday) showed no such qualms.
No comments:
Post a Comment