A Multimedia Response to the Real Presence: The Jesuit Georg Scherer on Corpus Christi Processions in Early Modern Vienna

In a sermon given and published in Vienna in 1588, Georg Scherer, a distinguished Jesuit preacher and controversialist, aimed both to explain why the Catholic Church celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi with a solemn procession, as well as to counter the criticism levelled against that ceremony by protestants. For Scherer, the procession, with its various components, including song, dance, banners, flowers, and fragrant herbs, is an appropriate and embodied response to the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host: it is public worship, a collective profession of faith, a sort of multimedia sermon, a triumph against the ‘enemies of the sacrament’, and a foretaste of the eternal procession that will take place in heaven. Through a close reading of Scherer’s text alongside contemporary documents, this article explores the role of sonic elements in processions. The conclusions have implications for a broad range of multimedia events on which the Catholic Church increasingly relied in the post-Tridentine era.