The manifesto of the Theological Faculty helped in at least one town to bring matters to a crisis. At Troyes the Feast of Fools appears to have been celebrated on the Circumcision in the three great collegiate churches of St. Peter, St. Stephen, and St. Urban, and on Epiphany in the abbey of St. Loup. The earliest records are from St. Peter’s. In 1372 the chapter forbade the vicars to celebrate the feast without leave. In 1380 and 1381 there are significant entries of payments for damage done: in the former year Marie-la-Folle broke a candelabrum; in the latter a cross had to be repaired and gilded. In 1436, the year after the council of Basle, leave was given to hold the feast without irreverence. In 1439, the year after the Pragmatic Sanction, it was forbidden. In 1443, it was again permitted. But it must be outside the church. The ‘archbishop’ might wear a rochet, but the supper must take place in the house of one of the canons, and not at a tavern. The experiment was not altogether a success, for a canon had to be fined twenty sous pour les grandes sottises et les gestes extravagants qu’il s’était permis à la fête des fols[1044]. Towards the end of 1444, when it was proposed to renew the feast, the bishop of Troyes, Jean Leguisé, intervened. The clergy of St. Peter’s were apparently willing to submit, but those of St. Stephen’s stood out. They told the bishop that they were exempt from his jurisdiction, and subject only to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Sens; and they held an elaborate revel with even more than the usual insolence and riot. On the Sunday before Christmas they publicly consecrated their ‘archbishop’ in the most public place of the town with a jeu de personnages called le jeu du sacre de leur arcevesque, which was a burlesque of the saint mistère de consécration pontificale. The feast itself took place in St. Stephen’s Church. The vicar who was chosen ‘archbishop’ performed the service on the eve and day of the Circumcision in pontificalibus, gave the Benediction to the people, and went in procession through the town. Finally, on Sunday, January 3, the clergy of all three churches joined in another jeu de personnages, in which, under the names of Hypocrisie, Faintise and Faux-semblant, the bishop and two canons who had been most active in opposing the feast, were held up to ridicule. Jean Leguisé was not a man to be defied with impunity. On January 23 he wrote a letter to the archbishop of Sens, Louis de Melun, calling his attention to the fact that the rebellious clerks had claimed his authority for their action. He also lodged a complaint with the king himself, and probably incited the Faculty of Theology at Paris to back him up with the protest already described. The upshot of it all was a sharp letter from Charles VII to the bailly and prévost of Troyes, setting forth what had taken place, and requiring them to see that no repetition of the scandalous jeux was allowed[1045]. Shortly afterwards the chapter of St. Peter’s sent for their Ordinarium, and solemnly erased all that was derogatory to religion and the good name of the clergy in the directions for the feast. What the chapter of St. Stephen’s did, we do not know. The canons mainly to blame had already apologized to the bishop. Probably it was thought best to say nothing, and let it blow over. At any rate, it is interesting to note that in 1595, a century and a half later, St. Stephen’s was still electing its archevesque des saulx, and that droits were paid on account of the vicars’ feast until all droits tumbled in 1789[1046].
The proceedings at Troyes seem to have reacted upon the feast at Sens. In December, 1444, the chapter had issued an elaborate order for the regulation of the ceremony, in which they somewhat pointedly avoided any reference to the council of Basle or the Pragmatic Sanction, and cited only the legatine statute of Odo of Tusculum in 1245. The order requires that divine service shall be devoutly and decently performed, prout iacet in libro ipsius servitii. By this is doubtless meant the Officium already described. There must be no mockery or impropriety, no unclerical costume, no dissonant singing. Then comes what, considering that this is a reform, appears a sufficiently remarkable direction. Not more than three buckets of water at most must be poured over the precentor stultorum at Vespers. The custom of ducking on St. John’s eve, apparently the occasion when the precentor was elected, is also pruned, and a final clause provides that if nobody’s rights are infringed the stulti may do what they like outside the church[1047]. Under these straitened conditions the feast was probably held in 1445. There was, however, the archbishop as well as the chapter to be reckoned with. It was difficult for Louis de Melun, after the direct appeal made to him by his suffragan at Troyes, to avoid taking some action, and in certain statutes promulgated in November, 1445, he required the suppression of the whole consuetudo and ordered the directions for it to be erased from the chant-books[1048]. There is now no mention of the feast until 1486, from which date an occasional payment for la feste du premier jour de l’an begins to appear again in the chapter account-books[1049]. In 1511, the servitium divinum after the old custom is back in the church. But the chapter draws a distinction between the servitium and the festum stultorum, which is forbidden. The performance of jeux de personnages and the public shaving of the precentor’s beard on a stage are especially reprobated[1050]. The servitium was again allowed in 1514, 1516, 1517, and in 1520 with a provision that the lucerna precentoris fatuorum must not be brought into the church[1051]. In 1522, both servitium and festum were forbidden on account of the war with Spain; the shaving of the precentor and the ceremony of his election on the feast of St. John the Evangelist again coming in for express prohibition[1052]. In 1523 the servitium was allowed upon a protest by the vicars, but only with the strict exclusion of the popular elements[1053]. In 1524 even the servitium was withheld, and though sanctioned again in 1535, 1539 and 1543, it was finally suppressed in 1547[1054]. Some feast, however, would still seem to have been held, probably outside the church, until 1614[1055], and even as late as 1634 there was a trace of it in the annual procession of the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, already referred to.
This later history of the feast at Sens is fairly typical, as the following chapter will show, of what took place all over France. The chapters by no means showed themselves universally willing to submit to the decree promulgated in the Pragmatic Sanction. In many of them the struggle between the conservative and the reforming parties was spread over a number of years. Councils, national, provincial and diocesan, continued to find it necessary to condemn the feast, mentioning it either by name or in a common category with other ludi, spectacula, choreae, tripudia and larvationes[1056]. In one or two instances the authority of the Parlements was invoked. But in the majority of cases the feast either gradually disappeared, or else passed, first from the churches into the streets, and then from the clerks to the bourgeois, often to receive a new life under quite altered circumstances at the hands of some witty and popular compagnie des fous[1057].
CHAPTER XIV
THE FEAST OF FOOLS (continued)
The history of the Feast of Fools has been so imperfectly written, that it is perhaps worth while to bring together the records of its occurrence, elsewhere than in Troyes and Sens, from the fourteenth century onwards. They could probably be somewhat increased by an exhaustive research amongst French local histories, archives, and the transactions of learned societies. Of the feast in Notre-Dame at Paris nothing is heard after the reformation carried out in 1198 by Eudes de Sully[1058]. The bourgeois of Tournai were, indeed, able to quote a Paris precedent for the feast of their own city in 1499; but this may have been merely the feast of some minor collegiate body, such as that founded in 1303 by cardinal Le Moine[1059]; or of the scholars of the University, or of the compagnie joyeuse of the Enfants-sans-Souci. At Beauvais, too, there are only the faintest traces of the feast outside the actual twelfth-and thirteenth-century service-books[1060]. But there are several other towns in the provinces immediately north and east of the capital, Île de France, Picardy, Champagne, where it is recorded. The provision made for it in the Amiens Ordinarium of 1291 has been already quoted. Shortly after this, bishop William de Macon, who died in 1303, left his own pontificalia for the use of the ‘bishop of Fools[1061].’ When, however, the feast reappears in the fifteenth century the dominus festi is no longer a ‘bishop,’ but a ‘pope.’ In 1438 there was an endowment consisting of a share in the profits of some lead left by one John le Caron, who had himself been ‘pope[1062].’ In 1520 the feast was held, but no bells were to be jangled[1063]. It was repeated in 1538. Later in the year the customary election of the ‘pope’ on the anniversary of Easter was forbidden, but the canons afterwards repented of their severity[1064]. In 1540 the chapter paid a subsidy towards the amusements of the ‘pope’ and his ‘cardinals’ on the Sunday called brioris[1065]. In 1548 the feast was suppressed[1066]. At Noyon the vicars chose a ‘king of Fools’ on Epiphany eve. The custom is mentioned in 1366 as ‘le gieu des roys.’ By 1419 it was forbidden, and canon John de Gribauval was punished for an attempt to renew it by taking the sceptre off the high altar at Compline on Epiphany. In 1497, 1499, and 1505 it was permitted again, with certain restrictions. The cavalcade must be over before Nones; there must be no licentious or scurrilous chansons, no dance before the great doors; the ‘king’ must wear ecclesiastical dress in the choir. In 1520, however, he was allowed to wear his crown more antiquo. The feast finally perished in 1721, owing to la cherté des vivres[1067]. At Soissons, the feast was held on January 1, with masquing[1068]. At Senlis, the dominus festi was a ‘pope.’ In 1403 there was much division of opinion amongst the chapter as to the continuance of the feast, and it was finally decided that it must take place outside the church. In 1523 it came to an end. The vicars of the chapter of Saint-Rieul had in 1501 their separate feast on January 1, with a ‘prelate of Fools’ and jeux in the churchyard[1069]. From Laon fuller records are available[1070]. A ‘patriarch of Fools’ was chosen with his ‘consorts’ on Epiphany eve after Prime, by the vicars, chaplains and choir-clerks. There was a cavalcade through the city and a procession called the Rabardiaux, of which the nature is not stated[1071]. The chapter bore the expenses of the banquet and the masks. The first notice is about 1280. In 1307 one Pierre Caput was ‘patriarch.’ In 1454 the bishop upheld the feast against the dean, but it was decided that it should take place outside the church. A similar regulation was made in 1455, 1456, 1459. In 1462 the servitium was allowed, and the jeu was to be submitted to censorship. In 1464 and 1465 mysteries were acted before the Rabardiaux. In 1486 the jeu was given before the church of St.-Martin-au-Parvis. In 1490 the jeux and cavalcade were forbidden, and the banquet only allowed. In 1500 a chaplain, Jean Hubreland, was fined for not taking part in the ceremony. In 1518 the worse fate of imprisonment befell Albert Gosselin, another chaplain, who flung fire from above the porch upon the ‘patriarch’ and his ‘consorts.’ By 1521 the servitium seems to have been conducted by the curés of the Laon churches, and the vicars and chaplains merely assisted. The expense now fell on the curés, and the chapter subsidy was cut down. In 1522 and 1525 the perquisites of the ‘patriarch’ were still further reduced by the refusal of a donation from the chapter as well as of the fines formerly imposed on absentees. In 1527 a protest of Laurent Brayart, ‘patriarch,’ demanding either leave to celebrate the feast more antiquo or a dispensation from assisting at the election of his successor, was referred to the ex-‘patriarch.’ In this same year canons, vicars, chaplains and habitués of the cathedral were forbidden to appear at the farces of the fête des ânes[1072]. In 1531 the ‘patriarch’ Théobald Bucquet, recovered the right to play comedies and jeux and to take the absentee fines; but in 1541 Absalon Bourgeois was refused leave pour faire semblant de dire la messe à liesse. The feast was cut down to the bare election of the ‘patriarch’ in 1560, and seems to have passed into the hands of a confrérie; all that was retained in the cathedral being the Primes folles on Epiphany eve, in which the laity occupied the high stalls, and all present wore crowns of green leaves.
At Rheims, a Feast of Fools in 1490 was the occasion for a satirical attack by the vicars and choir-boys on the fashion of the hoods worn by the bourgeoises. This led to reprisals in the form of some anti-ecclesiastical farces played on the following dimanche des Brandons by the law clerks of the Rheims Basoche[1073]. At Châlons-sur-Marne a detailed and curious account is preserved of the way in which the Feast of Fools was celebrated in 1570[1074]. It took place on St. Stephen’s day. The chapter provided a banquet on a theatre in front of the great porch. To this the ‘bishop of Fools’ was conducted in procession from the maîtrise des fous, with bells and music upon a gaily trapped ass. He was then vested in cope, mitre, pectoral cross, gloves and crozier, and enjoyed a banquet with the canons who formed his ‘household.’ Meanwhile some of the inferior clergy entered the cathedral, sang gibberish, grimaced and made contortions. After the banquet, Vespers were precipitately sung, followed by a motet[1075]. Then came a musical cavalcade round the cathedral and through the streets. A game of la paume took place in the market; then dancing and further cavalcades. Finally a band gathered before the cathedral, howled and clanged kettles and saucepans, while the bells were rung and the clergy appeared in grotesque costumes.
Flanders also had its Feasts of Fools. That of St. Omer, which existed in the twelfth century, lasted to the sixteenth[1076]. An attempt was made to stop it in 1407, when the chapter forbade any one to take the name of ‘bishop’ or ‘abbot’ of Fools. But Seraphin Cotinet was ‘bishop’ of Fools in 1431, and led the gaude on St. Nicholas’ eve[1077]. The ‘bishop’ is again mentioned in 1490, but in 1515 the feast was suppressed by Francis de Melun, bishop of Arras and provost of St. Omer[1078]. Some payments made by the chapter of Béthune in 1445 and 1474 leave it doubtful how far the feast was really established in that cathedral[1079]. At Lille the feast was forbidden by the chapter statutes of 1323 and 1328[1080]. But at the end of the fourteenth century it was in full swing, lasting under its ‘bishop’ or ‘prelate’ from the vigil to the octave of Epiphany. Amongst the payments made by the chapter on account of it is one to replace a tin can (kanne stannee) lost at the banquet. The ‘bishop’ was chosen, as elsewhere, by the inferior clergy of the cathedral; but he also stood in some relation to the municipality of Lille, and superintended the miracle plays performed at the procession of the Holy Sacrament and upon other occasions. In 1393 he received a payment from the duke of Burgundy for the fête of the Trois Rois. Municipal subsidies were paid to him in the fifteenth century; he collected additional funds from private sources and offered prizes, by proclamation soubz nostre seel de fatuité, for pageants and histoires de la Sainte Escripture; was, in fact, a sort of Master of the Revels for Lille. He was active in 1468, but in 1469 the town itself gave the prizes, in place de l’evesque des folz, qui à présent est rué jus. The chapter accounts show that he was reappointed in 1485 hoc anno, de gratia speciali. In 1492 and 1493 the chapter payments were not to him but sociis domus clericorum, and from this year onwards he appears neither in the chapter accounts nor in those of the municipality[1081]. Nevertheless, he did not yet cease to exist, for a statute was passed by the chapter for his extinction, together with that of the ludus, quem Deposuit vocant, in 1531[1082]. Five years before this the canons and vicars were still wearing masks and playing comedies in public[1083]. The history of the feast at Tournai is only known to me through certain legal proceedings which took place before the Parlement of Paris in 1499. It appears that the young bourgeois of Tournai were accustomed to require the vicars of Notre-Dame to choose an évesque des sotz from amongst themselves on Innocents’ day. In 1489 they took one Matthieu de Porta and insulted him in the church itself. The chapter brought an action in the local court against the prévost et jurez of the town; and in the meantime obtained provisional letters inhibitory from Charles VIII, forbidding the vicars to hold the feast or the bourgeois to enforce it. All went well for some years, but in 1497 the bourgeois grumbled greatly, and in 1498, with the connivance of the municipal authorities themselves, they broke out. On the eve of the Holy Innocents, between nine and ten o’clock, Jacques de l’Arcq, mayor of the Edwardeurs, and others got into the house of Messire Pasquier le Pâme, a chaplain, and dragged him half naked, through snow and frost, to a cabaret. Seven or eight other vicars, one of whom was found saying his Hours in a churchyard, were similarly treated, and as none of them would be made évesque des sotz they were all kept prisoners. The chapter protested to the prévost et jurez, but in vain. On the following day the bourgeois chose one of the vicars évesque, baptized him by torchlight with three buckets of water at a fountain, led him about for three days in a surplice, and played scurrilous farces. They then dismissed the vicar, and elected as évesque a clerk from the diocese of Cambrai, who defied the chapter. They drove Jean Parisiz, the curé of La Madeleine, who had displeased them, from his church in the midst of Vespers, and on Epiphany day made him too a prisoner. In the following March the chapter and Messire Jean Parisiz brought a joint action before the High Court at Paris against the delinquents and the municipal authorities, who had backed them up. The case came on for hearing in November, when it was pleaded that the custom of electing an évesque des sotz upon Innocents’ day was an ancient one. The ceremony took place upon a scaffold near the church door; there were jeux in the streets for seven or eight days, and a final convici in which the canons and others of the town were satirized. The chapter and some of the citizens sent bread and wine. The same thing was done in many dioceses of Picardy, and even in Paris. It was all ad solacium populi, and divine service was not disturbed, for nobody entered the church. The vicar who had been chosen évesque thought it a great and unexpected honour. There would have been no trouble had not the évesque when distributing hoods with ears at the end of the jeux unfortunately included certain persons who would rather have been left out, and who consequently stirred up the chapter to take action. The court adjourned the case, and ultimately it appears to have been settled, for one of the documents preserved is endorsed with a note of a concordat between the chapter and the town, by which the feast was abolished in 1500[1084].
Of the Feast of Fools in central France I can say but little. At Chartres, the Papi-Fol and his cardinals committed many insolences during the first four days of the year, and exacted droits from passers-by. They were suppressed in 1479 and again in 1504[1085]. At Tours a Ritual of the fourteenth century contains elaborate directions for the festum novi anni, quod non debet remanere, nisi corpora sint humi. This is clearly a reformed feast, of which the chief features are the dramatic procession of the Prophetae, including doubtless Balaam on his ass, in church, and a miraculum in the cloister[1086]. The ‘Boy Bishop’ gives the benediction at Tierce, and before Vespers there are chori (carols, I suppose) also in the cloisters. At Vespers Deposuit is sung three times, and the baculus may be taken. If so, the thesaurarius is beaten with baculi by the clergy at Compline, and the new cantor is led home with beating of baculi on the walls[1087]. At Bourges, the use of the ‘Prose of the Ass’ in Notre-Dame de Sales seems to imply the existence of the feast, but I know no details[1088]. At Avallon the dominus festi seems to have been, as at Laon, a ‘patriarch,’ and to have officiated on Innocents’ day. A chapter statute regulated the proceedings in 1453, and another abolished them in 1510[1089]. At Auxerre, full accounts of a long chapter wrangle are preserved in the register[1090]. It began in 1395 with an order requiring the decent performance of the servitium, and imposing a fee upon newly admitted canons towards the feast. In 1396 the feast was not held, owing to the recent defeat of Sigismund of Hungary and the count of Nevers by Bajazet and his Ottomans at Nicopolis[1091]. In 1398 the dean entered a protest against a grant of wine made by the chapter to the thirsty revellers. In 1400 a further order was passed to check various abuses, the excessive ringing of bells, the licence of the sermones fatui, the impounding of copes in pledge for contributions, the beating of men and women through the streets, and all derisiones likely to bring discredit on the church[1092]. In the following January, the bishop of Auxerre, Michel de Crency, intervened, forbidding the fatui to form a ‘chapter,’ or to appoint ‘proctors,’ or clamare la fête aux fous after the singing of the Hours in the church. This led to a storm. The bishop brought an action in the secular court, and the chapter appealed to the ecclesiastical court of the Sens province. In June, however, it was agreed as part of a general concordat between the parties, that all these proceedings should be non avenu[1093]. It seems, however, to have been understood that the chapter would reform the feast. On December 2, the abbot of Pontigny preached a sermon before the chapter in favour of the abolition of the feast, and on the following day the dean came down and warned the canons that it was the intention of the University of Paris to take action, even if necessary, by calling in the secular arm[1094]. It was better to reform themselves than to be reformed. It was then agreed to suppress the abuses of the feast, the sermons and the wearing of unecclesiastical garb, and to hold nothing but a festum subdiaconorum on the day of the Circumcision. Outside the church, however, the clergy might dance and promenade (chorizare ... et ... spatiare) on the place of St. Stephen’s. These regulations were disregarded, on the plea that they were intended to apply only to the year in which they were made. In 1407 the chapter declared that they were to be permanent, but strong opposition was offered to this decision by three canons, Jean Piqueron, himself a sub-deacon, Jean Bonat, and Jean Berthome, who maintained that the concordat with the bishop was for reform, not for abolition. The matter was before the chapter for the last time, so far as the extant documents go, in 1411. On January 2, the dean reported that in spite of the prohibition certain canonici tortrarii[1095], chaplains and choir-clerks had held the feast. A committee of investigation was appointed, and in December the prohibition was renewed. Jean Piqueron was once more a protestant, and on this occasion obtained the support of five colleagues[1096]. It may be added that in the sixteenth century an abbas stultorum was still annually elected on July 18, beneath a great elm at the porch of Auxerre cathedral. He was charged with the maintenance of certain small points of choir discipline[1097].
In Franche Comté and Burgundy, the Feast of Fools is also found. At Besançon it was celebrated by all the four great churches. In the cathedrals of St. John and St. Stephen, ‘cardinals’ were chosen on St. Stephen’s day by the deacons and sub-deacons, on St. John’s day by the priests, on the Holy Innocents’ day by the choir-clerks and choir-boys. In the collegiate churches of St. Paul and St. Mary Magdalen, ‘bishops’ or ‘abbots’ were similarly chosen. All these domini festorum seem to have had the generic title of rois des fous, and on the choir-feast four cavalcades went about the streets and exchanged railleries (se chantaient pouille) when they met. In 1387 the Statutes of cardinal Thomas of Naples ordered that the feasts should be held jointly in each church in turn; and in 1518 the cavalcades were suppressed, owing to a conflict upon the bridge which had a fatal ending. Up to 1710, however, reges were still elected in St. Mary Magdalen’s; not, indeed, those for the three feasts of Christmas week, but a rex capellanorum and a rex canonicorum, who officiated respectively on the Circumcision and on Epiphany[1098]. At Autun the feast of the baculus in the thirteenth century has already been recorded. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some interesting notices are available in the chapter registers[1099]. In 1411 the feast required reforming. The canons were ordered to attend in decent clothes as on the Nativity; and the custom of leading an ass in procession and singing a cantilena thereon was suppressed[1100]. In 1412 the abolition of the feast was decreed[1101]. But in 1484 it was sanctioned again, and licence was given to punish those who failed to put in an appearance at the Hours by burning at the well[1102]. This custom, however, was forbidden in 1498[1103]. Nothing more is heard of the asinus, but it is possible that he figured in the play of Herod which was undoubtedly performed at the feast, and which gave a name to the dominus festi[1104]. Under the general name of festa fatuorum was included at Autun, besides the feast of the Circumcision, also that of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, and a missa fatuorum was sung ex ore infantium from the Innocents’ day to Epiphany[1105]. In 1499 Jean Rolin, abbot of St. Martin’s and dean of Autun, led a renewed attack upon the feast. He had armed himself with a letter from Louis XI, and induced the chapter, in virtue of the Basle decree, to suppress both Herod and the ‘bishop’ of Innocents[1106]. In 1514 and 1515 the play of Herod was performed; but in 1518, when application was made to the chapter to sanction the election of both a ‘Herod’ and the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, they applied to the king’s official for leave, and failed to get it. Finally in 1535 the chapter recurred to the Basle decree, and again forbade the feast, particularly specifying under the name of Gaigizons the obnoxious ceremony of ‘ducking.[1107]’ The feast held in the ducal, afterwards royal chapel of Dijon yields documents which are unique, because they are in French verse. The first is a mandement of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1454, confirming, on the request of the haut-Bâtonnier, the privilege of the fête, against those who would abolish it. He declares
‘Que cette Fête célébrée