ut sic Deum colere
possit et placare.’
The Bacularius is then, one may assume, led out of the church, with the Conductus ad Poculum, which begins,
‘Kalendas Ianuarias
solemnes, Christe, facias,
et nos ad tuas nuptias
vocatus rex suscipias.’
The manuscript ends, so far as the Feast of the Circumcision is concerned, with some Versus ad Prandium, to be sung in the refectory, taken from a hymn of Prudentius[1007].
The Sens Missel des Fous has been described again and again. Less well known, however, is the very similar Officium of Beauvais, and for the simple reason that although recent writers on the Feast of Fools have been aware of its existence, they have not been aware of its habitat. I have been fortunate enough to find it in the British Museum, and only regret that I am not sufficiently acquainted with textual and musical palaeography to print it in extenso as an appendix to this chapter[1008]. The date of the manuscript is probably 1227-34[1009]. Like that of Sens it contains the Propria for the Feast of the Circumcision from Vespers to Vespers. Unluckily, there is a lacuna of several pages in the middle[1010]. The office resembles that of Sens in general character, but is much longer. There are two lines of opening rubric, of which all that remains legible is ... medio stantes incipit cantor. Then comes the quatrain Lux hodie similarly used at Sens, but with the notable variant of praesentia festa for asinaria festa. Then, under the rubric, also barely legible, Conductus, quando asinus adducitur[1011], comes the ‘Prose of the Ass.’ At the end of Lauds is the following rubric: Postea omnes eant ante ianuas ecclesiae clausas. Et quatuor stent foris tenentes singli urnas vino plenas cum cyfis vitreis. Quorum unus canonicus incipiat Kalendas Ianuarias. Tunc aperiantur ianuae. Here comes the lacuna in the manuscript, which begins again in the Mass. Shortly before the prayer for the pope is a rubric Quod dicitur, ubi apponatur baculus, which appears to be a direction for a ceremony not fully described in the Officium. The ‘Prose of the Ass’ occurs a second time as the Conductus Subdiaconi ad Epistolam, and on this occasion the musical accompaniment is harmonized in three parts[1012]. I can find nothing about a Bacularius at second Vespers, but the office ends with a series of conductus and hymns, some of which are also harmonized in parts. The Officium is followed in the manuscript by a Latin cloister play of Daniel[1013].
An earlier manuscript than that just described was formerly preserved in the Beauvais cathedral library. It dated from 1160-80[1014]. It was known to Pierre Louvet, the seventeenth-century historian of Beauvais[1015], and apparently to Dom Grenier, who died in 1789[1016]. According to Grenier’s account it must have closely resembled that in the British Museum.