The Feast of Fools.
So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs practised chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn to certain festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which, though pagan in origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found their way in the Middle Ages within the walls of the church.
Shortly after Christmas a group of tripudia or revels was held by the various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and other churches. These festivals, of which the best known are the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so fully described by other writers, and my space here is so limited, that I need but treat them in outline, and for detail refer the reader to such admirable accounts as are to be found in Chapters XIII., XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's “The Mediaeval Stage.”[{18}]
Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the end of the twelfth century, speaks of four tripudia held after Christmas:—those of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests on St. John's, the choir-boys on Holy Innocents’, and the subdeacons on the Circumcision, the Epiphany, or the Octave of the Epiphany. The feast of subdeacons, says Belethus, “we call that of fools.” It is this feast which, though not apparently the earliest in origin of the four, was the most riotous and disorderly, and shows most clearly its pagan character. Belethus’ mention of it is the first clear notice, though disorderly revels of the same kind seem to have existed at Constantinople as early as the ninth century. At first confined to the subdeacons, the Feast of Fools became in its later developments a festival not only of that order but of the [303]inferior clergy in general, of the vicars choral, the chaplains, and the choir-clerks, as distinguished from the canons. For this rabble of poor and low-class clergy it was no doubt a welcome relaxation, and one can hardly wonder that they let themselves go in burlesquing the sacred but often wearisome rites at which it was their business to be present through many long hours, or that they delighted to usurp for once in a way the functions ordinarily performed by their superiors. The putting down of the mighty from their seat and the exalting of them of low degree was the keynote of the festival. While “Deposuit potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles” was being sung at the “Magnificat,” it would appear that the precentor's baculus or staff was handed over to the clerk who was to be “lord of the feast” for the year, and throughout the services of the day the inferior clergy predominated, under the leadership of this chosen “lord.” He was usually given some title of ecclesiastical dignity, “bishop,” “prelate,” “archbishop,” “cardinal,” or even “pope,” was vested in full pontificals, and in some cases sat on the real bishop's throne, gave benedictions, and issued indulgences.
These lower clergy, it must be remembered, belonged to the peasant or small bourgeois class and were probably for the most part but ill-educated. They were likely to bring with them into the Church the superstitions floating about among the people, and the Feast of Fools may be regarded as a recoil of paganism upon Christianity in its very sanctuary. “An ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock” it has been called by Mr. Chambers, and many of its usages may be explained by the reaction of coarse natures freed for once from restraint. It brought to light, however, not merely personal vulgarity, but a whole range of traditional customs, derived probably from a fusion of the Roman feast of the Kalends of January with Teutonic or Celtic heathen festivities.
A general account of its usages is given in a letter addressed in 1445 by the Paris Faculty of Theology to the bishops and chapters of France:—
“Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as [304]women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste.”[{19}]
The letter also speaks of “bishops” or “archbishops” of Fools, who wore mitres and held pastoral staffs. We here see clearly, besides mere irreverence, an outcrop of pagan practices. Topsy-turvydom, the temporary exaltation of inferiors, was itself a characteristic of the Kalends celebrations, and a still more remarkable feature of them was, as we have seen, the wearing of beast-masks and the dressing up of men in women's clothes. And what is the “bishop” or “archbishop” but a parallel to, and, we may well believe, an example of, the mock king whom Dr. Frazer has traced in so many a folk-festival, and who is found at the Saturnalia?
One more feature of the Feast of Fools must be considered, the Ass who gave to it the not uncommon title of asinaria festa. At Bourges, Sens, and Beauvais, a curious half-comic hymn was sung in church, the so-called “Prose of the Ass.” It begins as follows:—
“Orientis partibus
Adventavit Asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
Hez, Sir Asnes, car chantez,
Belle bouche rechignez,
Vous aurez du foin assez
Et de l'avoine a plantez.”
And after eight verses in praise of the beast, with some mention of his connection with Bethlehem and the Wise Men, it closes thus:—
“Amen dicas, Asine,
Iam satur de gramine,[305]
Amen, Amen, itera,
Aspernare vetera.
Hez va, hez va! hez va, hez!
Bialx Sire Asnes, car allez:
Belle bouche, car chantez.”[{20}]
An ass, it would seem, was actually brought into church, at Beauvais at all events, during the singing of this song on the feast of the Circumcision. On January 14 an extraordinary ceremony took place there. A girl with a child in her arms rode upon an ass into St. Stephen's church, to represent the Flight into Egypt. The Introit, “Kyrie,” “Gloria,” and “Credo” at Mass ended in a bray, and at the close of the service the priest instead of saying “Ite, missa est,” had to bray three times, and the people to respond in like manner. Mr. Chambers's theory is that the ass was a descendant of the cervulus or hobby-buck who figures so largely in ecclesiastical condemnations of Kalends customs.
The country par excellence of the Feast of the Fools was France. It can also be traced in Germany and Bohemia, while in England too there are notices of it, though far fewer than in France. Its abuses were the subject of frequent denunciations by Church reformers from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The feast was prohibited at various times, and notably by the Council of Basle in 1435, but it was too popular to be quickly suppressed, and it took a century and a half to die out after this condemnation by a general council of the Church. In one cathedral, Amiens, it even lingered until 1721.
When in the fifteenth century and later the Feast of Fools was expelled from the churches of France, associations of laymen sprang up to carry on its traditions outside. It was indeed a form of entertainment which the townsfolk as well as the lower clergy thoroughly appreciated, and they were by no means willing to let it die. A Prince des Sots took the place of the “bishop,” and was chosen by sociétés joyeuses organized by the youth of the cities for New Year merrymaking. Gradually their activities grew, and their celebrations came to take place at other festive times beside the Christmas season. The sots had a distinctive dress, its [306]most characteristic feature being a hood with asses’ ears, probably a relic of the primitive days when the heads of sacrificed animals were worn by festal worshippers.[{21}]