[1092] ‘Ordinavit quod de caetero omnes, qui de festo fatuorum fuerint, non pulsent campanam capituli sui post prandium, dempta prima die in qua suum episcopum eligent, et etiam quod in suis sermonibus fatuis non ponant seu dicant aliqua opprobria in vituperium alicuius personae.’
[1093] Lebeuf, Hist. d’Auxerre, ii. 30.
[1094] I suppose the intended action took shape in the Quinque Conclusiones of Gerson (p. 292), in which he quotes the dictum of an Auxerre preacher that the feast of Fools was as approbatum as that of the Conception. To this there seems to be a reference in the account of the Abbot of Pontigny’s sermon in the Acta Capit. ‘praedicavit ... quod dictum festum non erat, nec unquam fuerat a Deo nec Ecclesia approbandum seu approbatum.’ Lebeuf, in Leber, ix. 385, points out that Gerson was intimate with one member of the Auxerre chapter. This was Nicolas de Clamengis, whose Opera, 151 (ed. Lydius, 1613), include a treatise De novis celebritatibus non instituendis, in which the suppression of feasts in his diocese by Michael of Auxerre is alluded to.
[1095] These were canons of inferior rank at Auxerre (Ducange, s. v. tortarius).
[1096] Canons J. Boileaue, Devisco, Pavionis, Viandi and H. Desnoes. Was Viandi the canon John Vivien who, according to Lebeuf, Hist. d’Auxerre, iv. 234, noted on his Breviary (now Bibl. Nat. Cod. Colbert. 4227) that at first Vespers on the Circumcision, Hodie Christus was sung after each Psalm, ‘quia Festum Circumcisionis vocatur in diversis ecclesiis festum Fatuorum’?
[1097] Chérest, 76; Julleville, Les Com. 234; Lebeuf, in Leber, ix. 358, 373, quoting a Cry pour l’abbé de l’église d’Ausserre et ses supposts, from the Œuvres of Roger de Collerye (1536). This resembles the productions of the confréries des fous (cf. ch. xvi) and begins,
‘Sortez, saillez, venez de toutes parts,
Sottes et sots plus prompts que liépars.’
[1098] Dunot de Charnage, Hist. de Besançon, i. 227; Rigollot, 47; Leber, ix. 434; x. 40.
[1099] The anonymous author of the Histoire de l’Église d’Autun (1774), 462, 628, gives probata from the Acta Capitularia for some, but not all of his statements. Du Tilliot, 24 and possibly Ducange, s. v. Festum Asinorum appear also to have seen at least one register kept by the rotarius which covered the period 1411 to 1416.