In the preceding two chapters we have seen how the York Cycle is influenced by the special festive liturgies of Christmas and of Holy Week in its presentation of the events which those feasts celebrate. Up until now, we have been concentrating on the liturgy, on worship, as a communal experience governed by a calendar. There are, however, liturgical forms and occasions for worship which also influenced the cycle and which are neither part of the regular annual cycle, nor communal. They are the sacraments of the Church, of which communion is only one of seven. They are also festal, being ‘special occasions’ for the participating individual. Many of them are once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Moreover, in the late Middle Ages, the laity was prepared for participation in the sacraments with catechetical material which received careful attention and was comparatively theologically complex.

The York Cycle does not have an Expositor figure whose function it is to offer an instructional gloss on the action, nor does it offer systematic treatment of the Seven Sacraments. The pageants were, however, written for performance at the Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar, and therefore centrally concerned with promoting sacramentalism. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that it attends carefully to its treatment of individual sacraments when the occasion arises in the narrative scheme. Most obviously the cycle unavoidably involves the enactment of the Baptism and the Last Supper, both accounts of the institution of a sacrament.