quo gaudet precentor, sed tamen omnis honor
sit Christo circumciso nunc semper et almo’:
and the following couplet:
‘Tartara Bacchorum non pocula sunt fatuorum,
tartara vincentes sic fiunt ut sapientes.’
Millin, loc. cit. 344, cites a MS. dissertation of one Père Laire, which ascribes these lines to one Lubin, an official at Chartres. The last eight pages of the MS. contain epistles for the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and the Innocents.
[995] Chérest, 14; Millin, op. cit. ii. 336 (plates), and Voyage dans le Midi, i. 60 (plates); Clément, 122, 162; Bourquelot, op. cit. vi. 79 (plates); A. de Montaiglon, in Gazette des Beaux-arts (1880), i. 24 (plates); E. Molinier, Hist. générale des Arts appliqués, i; Les Ivoires (1896), 47 (plate); A. M. Cust, Ivory Workers of the Middle Ages (1902), 34. This last writer says that the diptych is now in the Bibl. Nationale. The leaves of the diptych represent a Triumph of Bacchus, and a Triumph of Artemis or Aphrodite. It has nothing to do with the Feast of Fools, and is of sixth-century workmanship.
[996] Dreves, 575, thinks the MS. was ‘für eine Geckenbruderschaft,’ as the chants are not in the contemporary Missals, Breviaries, Graduais, and Antiphonals of the church. But if they were, a separate Officium book would be superfluous. Such special festorum libri were in use elsewhere, e.g. at Amiens. Nisard, op. cit., thinks the Officium was an imitation one written by ‘notaires’ to amuse the choir-boys, and cites a paper of M. Carlier, canon of Sens, before the Historic Congress held at Sens in 1850 in support of this view. Doubtless the goliardi wrote such imitations (cf. the missa lusorum in Schmeller, Carmina Burana, 248; the missa de potatoribus in Wright-Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, ii. 208; and the missa potatorum in F. Novati, La Parodia sacra nelle Letterature moderne (Studi critici e letterari, 289)); but this is too long to be one, and is not a burlesque at all.
[997] Cf. the chapter decree of 1524 ‘festum Circumcisionis a defuncto Corbolio institutum,’ which is doubtless the authority for the statements of Taveau, Hist. archiep. Senonen. (1608), 94; Saint-Marthe, Gallia Christiana (1770), xii. 60; Baluze, note in B. N. Cod. Parisin. 1351 C. (quoted Nisard, op. cit.).
[998] Dreves, 575; Chérest, 15, who quotes an elaborate opinion of M. Quantin, ‘archiviste de l’Yonne.’ M. Quantin believes that the hand is that of a charter of Pierre de Corbeil, dated 1201, in the Yonne archives. On the other hand Nisard, op. cit., and Danjou, Revue de musique religieuse (1847), 287, think that the MS. is of the fourteenth century.