High Middle Ages (13th century)
Feast: April 5
The nun who spent twenty years convincing the Church to create the feast of Corpus Christi — and never lived to see it celebrated universally.
Starting at about sixteen, Juliana kept seeing the same vision: a full moon with a dark stripe across it. She did not understand it for years. Eventually she came to believe the moon represented the Church's liturgical calendar and the dark stripe was a missing feast — a day devoted entirely to the Eucharist. She told almost no one for two decades. When she finally shared the vision with her bishop, he was sympathetic but cautious. The local clergy were not. Some actively opposed her, and she was driven from her priory at Mont Cornillon twice. She spent years homeless, moving from convent to convent around Liege. But she kept pushing. In 1246, the Bishop of Liege authorized the first Corpus Christi celebration in his diocese. Juliana was not invited. She watched from outside. She died in 1258, still an exile, still largely ignored by the Church establishment. Six years later, Pope Urban IV — who had been archdeacon of Liege and knew Juliana's story — extended Corpus Christi to the universal Church and asked Thomas Aquinas to write the liturgy for it. The hymns Aquinas composed for that feast are still sung every year.