The Mediaeval Stage, Volume 1 (of 2)

by E. K. Chambers

Not at the Feast of Fools alone, or at the miracle-plays connected with this feast, did the ass make its appearance in Christian worship. It stood with the ox, on the morning of the Nativity, beside the Christmas crib. On Palm Sunday it again formed part of a procession, in the semblance of the beast on which Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem[1166]. A Cambrai Ordinarium quoted by Ducange directs that the asina picta shall remain behind the altar for four days[1167]. Kirchmeyer describes the custom as it existed during the sixteenth century in Germany[1168]; and the stray tourist who drops into the wonderful collection of domestic and ecclesiastical antiquities in the Barfüsserkirche at Basle will find there three specimens of the Palmesel, including a thirteenth-century one from Bayern and a seventeenth-century one from Elsass. The third is not labelled with its provenance, but it is on wheels and has a hole for the rope by which it was dragged round the church. All three are of painted wood, and upon each is a figure representing Christ[1169].

The affiliation of the ecclesiastical New Year revelries to the pagan Kalends does not explain why those who took part in them were called ‘Fools.’ The obvious thing to say is that they were called ‘Fools’ because they played the fool; and indeed their mediaeval critics were not slow to draw this inference. But it is noteworthy that pagan Rome already had its Feast of Fools, which, indeed, had nothing to do with the Kalends. The stultorum feriae on February 17 was the last day on which the Fornacalia or ritual sacrifice of the curiae was held. Upon it all the curiae sacrificed in common, and it therefore afforded an opportunity for any citizen who did not know which his curia was to partake in the ceremony[1170]. I am not prepared to say that the stultorum feriae gave its name to the Feast of Fools; but the identity of the two names certainly seems to explain some of the statements which mediaeval scholars make about that feast. It explains William of Auxerre’s derivation of it from the Parentalia, for the stultorum feriae fell in the midst of the Parentalia[1171]. And I think it explains the remark of Belethus, and, following him, of Durandus, about the ordo subdiaconorum being incertus. The sub-deacons were a regular ordo, the highest of the ordines minores from the third century[1172]. But Belethus seems to be struggling with the notion that the sub-deacons’ feast, closing the series of post-Nativity feasts held by deacons, priests and choir-boys, was in some way parallel to the feriae of the Roman stulti who were incerti as to their curia.

CHAPTER XV
THE BOY BISHOP

[Bibliographical Note.—Most of the authorities for chh. xiii, xiv, are still available, since many writers have not been careful to distinguish between the various feasts of the Twelve nights. The best modern account of the Boy Bishop is Mr. A. F. Leach’s paper on The Schoolboys’ Feast in The Fortnightly Review, N. S. lix (1896), 128. The contributions of F. A. Dürr, Commentatio Historica de Episcopo Puerorum, vulgo vom Schul-Bischoff (1755); F. A. Specht, Geschichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland, 222 sqq. (1885); A. Gasté, Les Drames liturgiques de la Cathédrale de Rouen, 35 sqq. (1893); E. F. Rimbault, The Festival of the Boy Bishop in England in The Camden Miscellany, vol. vii (Camden Soc. 1875), are also valuable. Dr. Rimbault speaks of ‘considerable collections for a history of the festival of the Boy Bishop throughout Europe,’ made by Mr. J. G. Nichols, but I do not know where these are to be found. Brand (ed. Ellis), i. 227 sqq., has some miscellaneous data, and a notice interesting by reason of its antiquity is that on the Episcopus Puerorum, in Die Innocentium, in the Posthuma, 95 sqq., of John Gregory (1649).]

Joannes Belethus, the learned theologian of Paris and Amiens, towards the end of the twelfth century, describes, as well as the Feast of Fools, no less than three other tripudia falling in Christmas week[1173]. Upon the days of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and the Holy Innocents, the deacons, the priests, the choir-boys, held their respective revels, each body in turn claiming that pre-eminence in the divine services which in the Feast of Fools was assigned to the sub-deacons. The distinction drawn by Belethus is not wholly observed in the ecclesiastical prohibitions either of the thirteenth or of the fifteenth century. In many of these the term ‘Feast of Fools’ has a wide meaning. The council of Nevers in 1246 includes under it the feasts of the Innocents and the New Year; that of Langres in 1404 the ‘festivals of the Nativity’; that of Nantes in 1431 the Nativity itself, St. Stephen’s, St. John’s, and the Innocents’. For the council of Basle it is apparently synonymous with the ‘Feast of Innocents or Boys’; the Paris theologians speak of its rites as practised on St. Stephen’s, the Innocents’, the Circumcision, and other dates. The same tendency to group all these tripudia together recurs in passages in which the ‘Feast of Fools’ is not in so many words mentioned. The famous decretal of Pope Innocent III is directed against the ludibria practised in turns by deacons, priests, and sub-deacons during the feasts immediately following upon Christmas. The irrisio servitii inveighed against in the Rememoratio of Gerson took place on Innocents’ day, on the Circumcision, on the Epiphany, or at Shrovetide.

Local usage, however, only partly bears out this loose language of the prohibitions. At Châlons-sur-Marne, in 1570, the ‘bishop’ of Fools sported on St. Stephen’s day. At Besançon, in 1387, a distinct dominus festi was chosen on each of the three days after Christmas, and all alike were called rois des fous. At Autun, during the fifteenth century, the regna of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents and of ‘Herod’ at the New Year were known together as the festa folorum. Further south, the identification is perhaps more common. At Avallon, Aix, Antibes, the Feast of Fools was on Innocents’ day; at Arles the episcopus stultorum officiated both on the Innocents’ and on St. John’s, at Viviers on all three of the post-Nativity feasts. But these are exceptions, and, at least outside Provence, the rule seems to have been to apply the name of ‘Feast of Fools’ to the tripudium, originally that of the sub-deacons, on New Year’s day or the Epiphany, and to distinguish from this, as does Belethus, the tripudia of the deacons, priests, and choir-boys in Christmas week.

We may go further and say, without much hesitation, that the three latter feasts are of older ecclesiastical standing than their riotous rival. Belethus is the first writer to mention the Feast of Fools, but he is by no means the first writer to mention the Christmas tripudia. They were known to Honorius of Autun[1174], early in the twelfth century, and to John of Avranches[1175], late in the eleventh. They can be traced at least from the beginning of the tenth, more than two hundred and fifty years before the Feast of Fools is heard of. The earliest notice I have come across is at the monastery of St. Gall, hard by Constance, in 911. In that year King Conrad I was spending Christmas with Bishop Solomon of Constance. He heard so much of the Vespers processions during the triduum at St. Gall that he insisted on visiting the monastery, and arrived there in the midst of the revels. It was all very amusing, and especially the procession of children, so grave and sedate that even when Conrad bade his train roll apples along the aisle they did not budge[1176]. That the other Vespers processions of the triduum were of deacons and priests may be taken for granted. I do not know whether the triduum originated at St. Gall, but the famous song-school of that monastery was all-important in the movement towards the greater elaboration of church ceremonial, and even more of chant, which marked the tenth century. This gave rise to the tropes, of which much will be said in the next volume; and it is in a tropary, an English tropary from Winchester, dating from before 980, that the feasts of the triduum next occur. The ceremonies of those feasts, as described by Belethus, belong mainly to the Office, and the tropes are mainly chanted elaborations of the text of the Mass: but the Winchester tropes for the days of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents clearly imply the respective connexion of the services, to which they belong, with deacons, priests, and choir-boys[1177]. Of the sub-deacons, on Circumcision or Epiphany, there is as yet nothing. John of Avranches, Honorius of Autun, and Belethus bridge a gap, and from the thirteenth century the triduum is normal in service-books, both continental and English, throughout the Middle Ages[1178]. It is provided for in the Nantes Ordinarium of 1263[1179], in the Amiens Ordinarium of 1291[1180], and in the Tours Rituale of the fourteenth century[1181]. It required reforming at Vienne in 1385, but continued to exist there up to 1670[1182]. In the last three cases it is clearly marked side by side with, but other than, the Feast of Fools. In Germany, it is contemplated in the Ritual of Mainz[1183]. In England I trace it at Salisbury[1184], at York[1185], at Lincoln[1186], at St. Albans[1187]. These instances could doubtless be multiplied, although there were certainly places where the special devotion of the three feasts to the three bodies dropped out at an early date. The Rheims Ordinarium of the fourteenth century, for instance, knows nothing of it[1188]. The extent of the ceremonies, again, would naturally be subject to local variation. The germ of them lay in the procession at first Vespers described by Ekkehard at St. Gall. But they often grew to a good deal more than this. The deacons, priests, or choir-boys, as the case might be, took the higher stalls, and the whole conduct of the services; the Deposuit was sung; epistolae farcitae were read[1189]; there was a dominus festi.

The main outlines of the feasts of the triduum are thus almost exactly parallel, so far as the divine servitium is concerned, to those of the Feast of Fools, for which indeed they probably served as a model. And like the Feast of Fools, they had their secular side, which often became riotousness. Occasionally they were absorbed in, or overshadowed by, the more popular and wilder merry-making of the inferior clergy. But elsewhere they have their own history of reformations or suppression, or are grouped with the Feast of Fools, as by the decretal of Innocent III, in a common condemnation. The diversity of local practice is well illustrated by the records of such acts of discipline. Sometimes, as at Paris[1190], or Soissons[1191], it is the deacons’ feast alone that has become an abuse; sometimes, as at Worms, that of the priests’[1192]; sometimes two of them[1193], sometimes all three[1194], require correction. I need only refer more particularly to two interesting English examples. One is at Wells, where a chapter statute of about 1331 condemns the tumult and ludibrium with which divine service was celebrated from the Nativity to the octave of the Innocents, and in particular the ludi theatrales and monstra larvarum introduced into the cathedral by the deacons, priests, sub-deacons, and even vicars during this period[1195]. Nor was the abuse easy to check, for about 1338 a second statute was required to reinforce and strengthen the prohibition[1196]. So, too, in the neighbouring diocese of Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson records the mandates against ludi inhonesti addressed by him in 1360 to the chapters of Exeter cathedral, and of the collegiate churches of Ottery, Crediton, and Glasney. These ludi were performed by men and boys at Vespers, Matins, and Mass on Christmas and the three following days. They amounted to a mockery of the divine worship, did much damage to the church vestments and ornaments, and brought the clergy into disrepute[1197]. These southern prohibitions are shortly before the final suppression of the Feast of Fools in the north at Beverley and Lincoln. The Wells customs, indeed, probably included a regular Feast of Fools, for the part taken by the sub-deacons and vicars is specifically mentioned, and the proceedings lasted over the New Year. But it is clear that even where the term ‘Feast of Fools’ is not known to have been in use, the temper of that revel found a ready vent in other of the winter rejoicings. Nor was it the triduum alone which afforded its opportunities. More rarely the performances of the Pastores on Christmas day itself[1198], or the suppers given by the great officers of cathedrals and monasteries, when they sang their ‘Oes,’ on the nights between December 16 and Christmas[1199], were the occasions for excesses which called for reprehension.

Already, when Conrad visited St. Gall in 911, the third feast of the triduum was the most interesting. In after years this reached an importance denied to the other two. The Vespers procession was the germ of an annual rejoicing, secular as well as ritual, which became for the pueri attached as choir-boys and servers to the cathedrals and great churches very much what the Feast of Fools became for the adult inferior clergy of the same bodies. Where the two feasts were not merged in one, this distinction of personnel was retained. A good example is afforded by Sens. Here, from the middle of the fourteenth century, the chapter accounts show an archiepiscopus puerorum side by side with the dominus of the Feast of Fools. Each feast got its own grant of wine from the chapter, and had its own prebend in the chapter woods. In the fifteenth century the two fell and rose together. In the sixteenth, the Feast of Boys was the more flourishing, and claimed certain dues from a market in Sens, which were commuted for a small money payment by the chapter. Finally, both feasts are suppressed together in 1547[1200]. It is to be observed that the original celebration of the Holy Innocents’ day in the western Church was not of an unmixed festal character. It commemorated a martyrdom which typified and might actually have been that of Christ himself, and it was therefore held cum tristitia. As in Lent or on Good Friday itself, the ‘joyful chants,’ such as the Te Deum or the Alleluia, were silenced. This characteristic of the day was known to Belethus, but even before his time it had begun to give way to the festal tendencies. Local practice differed widely, as the notices collected by Martene show, but even when John of Avranches wrote, at the end of the eleventh century, the ‘modern’ custom was to sing the chants[1201].

Many interesting details of the Feast of Boys, as it was celebrated in France, are contained in various ceremonial books. The Officium Infantum of Rouen may be taken as typical[1202]. After second Vespers on St. John’s day the boys marched out of the vestry, two by two, with their ‘bishop,’ singing Centum quadraginta. There was a procession to the altar of the Holy Innocents, and Hi empti sunt was sung[1203]. Then the ‘bishop’ gave the Benediction. The feast of the following day was ‘double,’ but the boys might make it ‘triple,’ if they would. There was a procession, with the Centum quadraginta, at Matins. At Mass, the boys led the choir. At Vespers the baculus was handed over, while the Deposuit potentes was being sung[1204]. At Bayeux the feast followed the same general lines, but the procession at first Vespers was to the altar, not of the Holy Innocents, but of St. Nicholas[1205]. Precise directions are given as to the functions of the ‘bishop.’ He is to wear a silk tunic and cope, and to have a mitre and pastoral staff, but not a ring. The boys are to do him the same reverence that is done to the real bishop. There are also to be a boy cantor and a boy ‘chaplain.’ The ‘bishop’ is to perform the duties of a priest, so long as the feast lasts, except in the Mass. He is to give the benediction after Benedicamus at first Vespers. Then the boys are to take the higher stalls, and to keep them throughout the following day, the ‘bishop’ sitting in the dean’s chair. The boys are to say Compline as they will. The ‘bishop’ is to be solemnly conducted home with the prose Sedentem, and on the following day he is to be similarly conducted both to and from service. At Mass he is to cense and be censed like the ‘great bishop’ on solemn occasions. He is also to give the benediction at Mass. There is a minute description of the ceremony of Deposuit, from which it is clear that, at Bayeux at least, the handing over of the baculus was from an incoming to an outgoing ‘bishop,’ to whom the former was in turn to act as ‘chaplain[1206].’ The rubrics of the Coutances feast are even more minute[1207]. The proceedings began after Matins on St. John’s day, when the boys drew up a tabula appointing their superiors to the minor offices of the coming feast. This, however, they were to do without impertinence[1208]. The vesting of the ‘bishop’ and the Vespers procession are exactly described. As at Bayeux the boys take the high stalls for Compline. The canon who holds a particular prebend is bound to carry the candle and the collectarium for the ‘bishop.’ After Compline the ‘bishop’ is led home with Laetabundus, but not in pontificals. Throughout the services of the following day the ‘bishop’ plays his part, and when Vespers comes gives way to a ‘bishop’-elect at the Deposuit[1209]. The ‘bishop’ of St. Martin of Tours was installed in the neighbouring convent of Beaumont, whither all the clericuli rode for the purpose after Prime on St. John’s day. He was vested in the church there, blessed the nuns, then returned to Tours, was installed in his own cathedral, and blessed the populace[1210]. The secular side of the feast comes out in the Toul Statutes of 1497[1211]. Here it may be said to have absorbed in its turn the Feast of Fools, for the ‘bishop’ was a choir-boy chosen by the choir-boys themselves and also by the sub-deacons, who shared with them the name of Innocentes[1212]. The election took place after Compline on the first Sunday in Advent, and the ‘bishop’ was enthroned with a Te Deum. He officiated in the usual way throughout the Innocents’ day services. In the morning he rode at the head of a cortège to the monasteries of St. Mansuetus and St. Aper, sang an anthem and said a prayer at the door of each church, and claimed a customary fee[1213]. After Vespers he again rode in state with mimes and trumpeters through the city[1214]. On the following day, all the ‘Innocents’ went masked into the city, where, if it was fine enough, farces and apparently also moralities and miracles were played[1215]. On the octave the ‘bishop’ and his cortège went to the church of St. Geneviève. After an anthem and collect they adjourned to the ‘church-house,’ where they were entertained by the hospital at a dessert of cake, apples and nuts, during which they chose disciplinary officers for the coming year[1216]. The expenses of the feast, with the exception of the dinner on the day after Innocents’ day which came out of the disciplinary fines, are assigned by the statutes to the canons in the order of their appointment. The responsible canon must give a supper on Innocents’ day, and a dessert out of what is over on the following day. He must also provide the ‘bishop’ with a horse, gloves, and a biretta when he rides abroad. At the supper a curious ceremony took place. The canon returned thanks to the ‘bishop,’ apologized for any short-comings in the preparations, and finally handed the ‘bishop’ a cap of rosemary or other flowers, which was then conferred upon the canon to whose lot it would fall to provide the feast for the next anniversary[1217]. Should the canon disregard his duties the boys and sub-deacons were entitled to hang up a black cope on a candlestick in the middle of the choir in illius vituperium for as long as they might choose[1218].