THE “SZOMBATIAKS” OF TRANSYLVANIA.
In further explanation of the tenacity with which older cults survive long after the newer religions seem to have gained predominance in countries and nations, it is extremely appropriate to introduce a passage from an article in the “St. James’ Gazette,” entitled “Crypto-Jews,” reprinted in the Sunday edition of the “Sun,” New York, sometime in October, 1888.
The writer, in speaking of the Szombatiaks of Transylvania, remarks: “The crypto-Judaism of the Szombatiaks was suspected for centuries, but not until twenty years ago was it positively known. Then, on the occasion of a Jewish emancipation act for Hungary, the sturdy old peasants, indistinguishable in dress, manners, and language from the native Szeklers, sent a deputation to Pesth to ask that their names might be erased from the church rolls. They explained that they were Jews whose forefathers had settled in Hungary at the time of the expedition of Titus to Dacia. Though baptized, married, and buried as Christians, maintaining Christian pastors, and attending Christian churches, they had always in secret observed their ancient religion.”
It is a matter of surprise to find so little on the subject of the Feast of Fools in Forlong’s comprehensive work on Religion. All that he says is that “the Yule-tide fêtes were noted for men disguising themselves as women, and vice versa, showing their connection with the old Sigillaria of the Saturnalia, which, formerly observed on the 14th of January, were afterwards continued to three, four, five, and some say seven days, and by the common people even until Candlemas Day. Both were prohibited when their gross immoralities became apparent to better educated communities. ‘In Paris,’ says Trusler in his ‘Chronology,’ ‘the First of January was observed as Mask Day for two hundred and forty years, when all sorts of indecencies and obscene rites occurred.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 434.)
In addition to the above, there is evidence of its survival among the rustic population of Germany. Brand enumerates many curious practices of the carnival just before Ash Wednesday, and even on that day, after the distribution of the ashes. Young maidens in Germany were carried “in a cart or tumbrel” by the youths of the village to the nearest brook or pond, and there thoroughly ducked, the drawers of the cart throwing dust and ashes on all near them. In Oxfordshire it was the custom for bands of boys to stroll from house to house singing and demanding largess of eggs and bacon, not receiving which, “they commonly cut the latch of the door or stop the key-hole with dirt” (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. pp. 94 et seq., article “Ash Wednesday”), “or leave some more nasty token of displeasure” (idem). This may have been a survival from the Feast of Fools. Brand refers to Hospinian, “De Origine Festorum Christianorum,” “for several curious customs and ceremonies observed abroad during the three first days of the Quinquagesima week” (p. 99).
Turning from the Teutonic race to the Slav, we find that the Feast of Fools seems still to linger among the Russian peasantry. “At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend’s house to another masked, and committing every conceivable prank. Then the people feasted on blinnies,—a pancake similar to the English crumpet” (“A Hoosier in Russia,” Perry S. Heath, New York, 1888, p. 109); all this at Christmas-tide.
Something very much like it, without any obscene features, was noted by Blunt in the early years of the present century. See his “Vestiges,” p. 119.
Hone (“Ancient Mysteries Described,” London, 1823, pp. 148 et seq.) thinks that a Jewish imitation of the Greek drama of the close of the second century, whose plot, characters, etc., were taken from the Exodus, was the first miracle play. The author was one Ezekiel, who was believed to have written it with a patriotic purpose after the destruction of Jerusalem. The early Fathers—Cyril, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Augustine—inveighed against sacred dramas; but the outside pressure was too great, and the Church was forced to yield to popular demand.
As late as the fifteenth century Pius II. said that the Italian priests had probably never read the New Testament; and Robert Stephens made the same charge against the doctors of the Sorbonne in the same age.
The necessity of dramatic representation would therefore soon outweigh objections made on the score of historical anachronism or doctrinal inaccuracy in these miracle plays.
Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople in the tenth century, is credited by the Byzantine historian Cedranus with the introduction of the Feast of Fools and Feast of the Ass, “thereby scandalizing God and the memory of his saints, by admitting into the sacred service diabolical dances, exclamations of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the streets and brothels.”—(Hone, quoting Wharton, “Miscellaneous Writings upon the Drama and Fiction,” vol. ii. p. 369.)
In 1590, at Paris, the mendicant orders, led by the Bishop of Senlis, paraded the streets with tucked up robes, representing the Church Militant. These processions were believed to be the legitimate offspring of heathen pageants,—that is, that of Saint Peter in Vinculis was believed to be the transformed spectacle in honor of Augustus’s victory at Actium, etc.
Beletus describes the Feast of Fools as he saw it in the twelfth century. His account, given by Hone (p. 159), agrees word for word with that of Dulaure, excepting that, through an error of translation perhaps, he is made to say that the participants “ate rich puddings on the corners of the altar;” but as the word “pudding” meant even in the English language a meat pudding or sausage, the error is an immaterial one.
Victor Hugo describes in brief the Feast of Fools as seen at Paris in 1482, on the 6th of January. He says that the “Fête des Rois and the Fête des Fous were united in a double holiday since time immemorial.” His description is very meagre, but from it may be extracted the information that in these feasts of fools female actresses appeared masked; that the noblest and greatest personages in the kingdom of France were among the prominent spectators; but there is not much else. (See the opening chapters of “Notre Dame.”)
The Festival of Moharren in Persia is a kind of miracle play, or Passion play, commemorating the rise and progress of Islamism. “Among these occurrences are the deaths of Hassein and Hossein, the birth of the prophet, the martyrdom of the Imam Rezah, and the death of Fatimeh, daughter of Mahomet.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887.)
This reference to the use of pudding or sausage on the altar itself is the most persistent feature in the descriptions of the whole ceremony. But little difficulty will be experienced in showing that it was originally an excrement sausage, prepared and offered up, perhaps eaten, for a definite purpose. This phase of the subject will be considered further on; for the present only one citation need be introduced to show that in carnival time human excrement itself, and not the symbol, made its appearance:—
“The following extract from Barnaby Googe’s translation of ‘Naogeorgus’ will show the extent of these festivities (that is, those of the carnival at Shrove Tuesday). After describing the wanton behavior of men dressed as women and of women arrayed in the garb of men, of clowns dressed as devils, as animals, or running about perfectly naked, the account goes on to say:—
“‘But others bear a torde, that on a cushion soft they lay;
And one there is that with a flap doth keep the flies away:
I would there might another be, an officer of those,
Whose room might serve to take away the scent from every nose.’”—
(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 66, article “Shrove Tuesday.”)
The Puritan’s horror of heathenish rites and superstitious vestiges had for its basis something far above unreasoning fanaticism; he realized, if not through learned study, by an intuition which had all the force of genius, that every unmeaning practice, every rustic observance, which could not prove its title clear to a noble genealogy was a pagan survival, which conscience required him to tear up and destroy, root and branch.
The Puritan may have made himself very much of a burden and a nuisance to his neighbors before his self-imposed task was completed, yet it is worthy of remark and of praise that his mission was a most effectual one in wiping from the face of the earth innumerable vestiges of pre-Christian idolatry.
This being understood, some importance attaches to the following otherwise vague couplet from “Hudibras.”
“Butler mentions the black pudding in his ‘Hudibras,’ speaking of the religious scruples of some of the fanatics of his time:—
“‘Some for abolishing black pudding,
And eating nothing with the blood in.’”—
(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 400, article “Martinmas.”)
These sausages, made in links, certainly suggest the boudins of the Feast of Fools. They were made from the flesh, blood, and entrails of pork killed by several families in common on the 17th day of December, known as “Sow Day.”
In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, in the May games, the Pope was “portrayed in his pontificalibus riding on a great sow, and holding before her taster a dirty pudding.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)
The most sensible explanation of the Feast of Fools that has as yet appeared is to be found in Frazer’s “Golden Bough” (London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 218 et seq., article “Temporary Kings”). He shows that the regal power was not in ancient times a life tenure, but was either revoked under the direction of the priestly body when the incumbent began to show signs of increasing age and diminishing mental powers, or at the expiration of a fixed period,—generally about twelve years. In the lapse of time the king’s abdication became an empty form, and his renunciation of powers purely farcical, his temporary successor a clown who amused the fickle populace during his ephemeral assumption of honors. Examples are drawn from Babylonia, Cambodia, Siam, Egypt, India, etc., the odd feature being that these festivals occur at dates ranging from our February to April. During the festival in Siam, in the month of April, “the dancing Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring good luck.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Fraser, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 230.)
In the preceding paragraph we have a distinct survival. The buffalo horns may represent phalli, and the water may be a substitute for a liquid which to the present generation might be more objectionable.
But upon another matter stress should be laid; in both the Feast of Fools and in the Urine Dance of the Zuñis, it has been shown that some of the actors were naked or disguised as women.
No attempt is made to prove anything in regard to the European orgy, because research has thrown no light upon the reasons for which the participants assumed the raiment of the opposite sex.
In the case of the Zuñis, the author has had, from the first, a suspicion, which he took occasion to communicate to Professor F. W. Putnam three years since, that these individuals were of the class called by Father Lafitau “hommes habillés en femme,” and referred to with such frequency by the earliest French and Spanish authorities. This suspicion has been strengthened by correspondence lately received from Professor Bandelier which is, however, suppressed at the request of the latter.
In this connection, the student should not fail to read the remarkable contribution of A. B. Holder, M. D., of Memphis, Tennessee, in the New York Medical Journal of Dec. 7, 1889, entitled “The Boté: description of a peculiar sexual perversion found among the North American Indians.”
An explanation of the “hommes habillés en femme,” may be suggested in the following from Boas, descriptive of certain religious dances of the Eskimo: “Those who were born in abnormal presentations, wear women’s dresses at this feast, and must make their round in a direction opposite to the movement of the sun.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 611.)
IV.
THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS.
The opinion expressed above concerning the commemorative character of religious festivals echoes that which Godfrey Higgins enunciated several generations ago. The learned author of “Anacalypsis” says that festivals “accompanied with dancing and music” ... “were established to keep in recollection victories or other important events.” (Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” London, 1810, vol. ii. p. 424.) He argues the subject at some length on pages 424-426, but the above is sufficient for the present purpose.
“In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest of their habits and customs.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 15.)
Applying the above remark to the Zuñi dance, it may be interpreted as a dramatic pictograph of some half-forgotten episode in tribal history. To strengthen this view by example, let us recall the fact that the army of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit was so closely beleaguered by the Moslems in Nicomedia in Bithynia that they were compelled to drink their own urine. We read the narrative set out in cold type. The Zuñis would have transmitted a record of the event by a dramatic representation which time would incrust with all the veneration that religion could impart.
The authority for the above statement in regard to the Crusaders is to be found in Purchas, “Pilgrims,” lib. 8, cap. 1, p. 1191. Neither Gibbon nor Michaud expresses this fact so clearly, but each speaks of the terrible sufferings which decimated the undisciplined hordes of Walter the Penniless and Peter, and reduced the survivors to cannibalism.
The urine of horses was drunk by the people of Crotta while besieged by Metellus.—(See, in Montaigne’s Essays, “On Horses,” cap. xlviii.; see also, in Harington, “Ajax”—“Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 42.)
Shipwrecked English seamen drank human urine for want of water. (See in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1188.) In the year 1877 Captain Nicholas Nolan, Tenth Cavalry, while scouting with his troop after hostile Indians on the Staked Plains of Texas, was lost; and as supplies became exhausted, the command was reduced to living for several days on the blood of their horses and their own urine, water not being discovered in that vicinity.—(See Hammersley’s Record of Living Officers of the United States Army.)
History is replete with examples of the same general character; witness the sieges of Jerusalem, Numantia, Ghent, the famine in France under Louis XIV., and many others.