Omnes canonici. An exploration of Utrecht urban liturgy

Abstract

The unity of the urban Christian community, dating back to early Christianity, as an idea lying at the root of the stational organization of the cathedral city, gave way to an urban liturgy of a distinctly clerical, in Utrecht even 'collegial' character during the high and late Middle Ages. For Utrecht liturgy distinguishes itself from urban liturgy as it proceeded in other medieval cathedral cities by a focus on five main churches.

The desire to celebrate the commemoration of the saint in his own sanctuary, combined with the need to visualize and confirm the mutual relations between the various chapters, resulted in the fact that, apart from the old foundations of Dom and Salvator, the younger chapters also received stations at the festivals of patron saints and the anniversary of the church consecration.

The old rights of the Dom and Salvator chapters with respect to the younger foundations of St John, St Mary and St Peter are made visible by means of various stations, notably around the traditional festivals in the temporale. In the time when the three ordinarii dealt with in this article were in force, the Chapel of the Holy Cross had been reduced to an annex of Salvator church. It only figures in the ordinarius of the latter, in a number of processions of the Salvator chapter.