[1165] Clément, 182; Didron, Annales archéologiques, xv. 384.
[1166] Dulaure, Hist. des Environs de Paris, iii. 509, quotes a legend to the effect that the very ass ridden by Christ came ultimately to Verona, died there, was buried in a wooden effigy at Sta-Maria in Organo, and honoured by a yearly procession. He guesses at this as the origin of the Beauvais and other fêtes. Didron, Annales arch. xv. 377, xvi. 33, found that nothing was known of this legend at Verona, though such a statue group as is described above apparently existed in the church named. Dulaure gives as his authorities F. M. Misson, Nouveau Voyage d’ Italie (1731), i. 164; Dict. de l’ Italie, i. 56. Misson’s visit to Verona was in 1687, although the passage was not printed in the first edition (1691) of his book. It is in the English translation of 1714 (i. 198). His authority was a French merchant (M. Montel) living in Verona, who had often seen the procession. In Cenni intorno all’ origine e descrizione della Festa che annualmente si celebra in Verona l’ ultimo Venerdì del Carnovale, comunamente denominata Gnoccolare (1818), 75, is a mention of the ‘asinello del vecchio padre Sileno’ which served as a mount for the ‘Capo de’ Maccheroni.’ This is probably Misson’s procession, but there is no mention of the legend in any of the eighteenth-century accounts quoted in the pamphlet. Rienzi was likened to an ‘Abbate Asinino’ (Gibbon, vii. 269).
[1167] Ducange, s. v. Festum Asinorum; cf. Leber, ix. 270; Molanus, de Hist. SS. Imaginum et Picturarum (1594), iv. 18.
[1168] T. Naogeorgus (Kirchmeyer), The Popish Kingdom, iv. 443 (1553, transl. Barnabe Googe, 1570, in New Shakspere Society edition of Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, i. 332); cf. Beehive of the Roman Church, 199. The earliest notice is in Gerardus, Leben St. Ulrichs von Augsburg (ob. 973), c. 4. E. Bishop, in Dublin Review, cxxiii. 405, traces the custom in a Prague fourteenth-century Missal and sixteenth-century Breviary; also in the modern Greek Church at Moscow where until recently the Czar held the bridle. But there is no ass, as he says, in the Palm Sunday ceremony described in the Peregrinatio Silviae (Duchesne, 486).
[1169] A peeress of the realm lately stated that this custom had been introduced in recent years into the Anglican church. Denials were to hand, and an amazing conflict of evidence resulted. Is there any proof that the Palmesel was ever an English ceremony at all? The Hereford riding of 1706 (cf. Representations) was not in the church. Brand, i. 73, quotes A Dialogue: the Pilgremage of Pure Devotyon (1551?), ‘Upon Palme Sondaye they play the foles sadely, drawynge after them an Asse in a rope, when they be not moche distante from the Woden Asse that they drawe.’ Clearly this, like Googe’s translation of Naogeorgus, is a description of contemporary continental Papistry. W. Fulke, The Text of the New Testament (ed. 1633), 76 (ad Marc. xi. 8) quotes a note of the Rheims translation to the effect that in memory of the entry into Jerusalem is a procession on Palm Sunday ‘with the blessed Sacrament reverently carried as it were Christ upon the Asse,’ and comments, ‘But it is pretty sport, that you make the Priest that carrieth the idoll, to supply the roome of the Asse on which Christ did ride.... Thus you turn the holy mysterie of Christ’s riding to Jerusalem to a May-game and Pageant-play.’ Fulke, who lived 1538-89, is evidently unaware that there was an ass, as well as the priest, in the procession, from which I infer that the custom was not known in England. Not that this consideration would weigh with the mediaevally-minded curate, who is as a rule only too ready to make up by the ceremonial inaccuracy of his mummeries for the offence which they cause to his congregation.
[1170] Marquardt-Mommsen, vi. 191; Jevons, Plutarch’s Romane Questions, 134; Fowler, 304, 322; Ovid, Fasti, ii. 531:
‘stultaque pars populi, quae sit sua curia, nescit;
sed facit extrema sacra relata die.’
[1171] Fowler, 306.
[1172] Schaff, iii. 131.