At Sens the Feast of the Ass was associated with the Feast of Fools, celebrated at Vespers on the Feast of Circumcision. The clergy went in procession to the west door of the church, where two canons received the ass, amid joyous chants, and led it to the precentor’s table. Bizarre vespers followed, sung falsetto and consisting of a medley of extracts from all the vespers of the year. Between the lessons the ass was solemnly fed, and at the conclusion of the service was led by the precentor out into the square before the church (conductus ad ludos); water was poured on the precentor’s head, and the ass became the centre of burlesque ceremonies, dancing and buffoonery being carried on far into the night, while the clergy and the serious-minded retired to matins and bed.
Various efforts were made during the middle ages to abolish the Feast of Fools. Thus in 1198 the chapter of Paris suppressed its more obvious indecencies; in 1210 Pope Innocent III. forbade the feasts of priests, deacons and sub-deacons altogether; and in 1246 Innocent IV. threatened those who disobeyed this prohibition with excommunication. How little effect this had, however, is shown by the fact that in 1265 Odo, archbishop of Sens, could do no more than prohibit the obscene excesses of the feast, without abolishing the feast itself; that in 1444 the university of Paris, at the request of certain bishops, addressed a letter condemning it to all cathedral chapters; and that King Charles VII. found it necessary to order all masters in theology to forbid it in collegiate churches. The festival was, in fact, too popular to succumb to these efforts, and it survived throughout Europe till the Reformation, and even later in France; for in 1645 Mathurin de Neuré complains in a letter to Pierre Gassendi of the monstrous fooleries which yearly on Innocents’ Day took place in the monastery of the Cordeliers at Antibes. “Never did pagans,” he writes, “solemnize with such extravagance their superstitious festivals as do they.... The lay-brothers, the cabbage-cutters, those who work in the kitchen ... occupy the places of the clergy in the church. They don the sacerdotal garments, reverse side out. They hold in their hands books turned upside down, and pretend to read through spectacles in which for glass have been substituted bits of orange-peel.”
See B. Picart, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples (1723); du Tilliot, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la fête des Fous (Lausanne, 1741); Aimé Cherest, Nouvelles recherches sur la fête des Innocents et la fête des Fous dans plusieurs églises et notamment dans celle de Sens (Paris, 1853); Schneegans in Müller’s Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte (1858); H. Böhmer, art. “Narrenfest” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop. (ed. 1903); Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1884), s.v. “Festum Asinorum.”
FOOLSCAP, the cap, usually of conical shape, with a cockscomb running up the centre of the back, and with bells attached, worn by jesters and fools (see [Fool]); also a conical cap worn by dunces. The name is given to a size of writing or printing paper, varying in size from 12 × 15 in. to 17 × 13-1/2 in. (see [Paper]). The name is derived from the use of a “fool’s cap” as a watermark. A German example of the watermark dating from 1479 was exhibited in the Caxton Exhibition (1877). The New English Dictionary finds no trustworthy evidence for the introduction of the watermark by a German, Sir John Spielmann, at his paper-mill at Dartford in 1580, and states that there is no truth in the familiar story that the Rump Parliament substituted a fool’s cap for the royal arms as a watermark on the paper used for the journals of parliament.
FOOL’S PARSLEY, in botany, the popular name for Aethusa Cynapium, a member of the family Umbelliferae, and a common weed in cultivated ground. It is an annual herb, with a fusiform root and a smooth hollow branched stem 1 to 2 ft. high, with much divided (ternately pinnate) smooth leaves and small compound umbels of small irregular white flowers. The plant has a nauseous smell, and, like other members of the order (e.g. hemlock, water-drop wort), is poisonous.
FOOT, the lower part of the leg, in vertebrate animals consisting of tarsus, metatarsus and phalanges, on which the body rests when in an upright position, standing or moving (see [Anatomy]: Superficial and Artistic; and [Skeleton]: Appendicular). The word is also applied to such parts of invertebrate animals as serve as a foot, either for movement or attachment to a surface. “Foot” is a word common in various forms to Indo-European languages, Dutch, voet, Ger. Fuss, Dan. fod, &c. The Aryan root is pod-, which appears in Sans. pūd, Gr. ποῦς, ποδός and Lat. pes, pedis. From the resemblance to the foot, in regard to its position, as the base of anything, or as the lowest member of the body, or in regard to its function of movement, the word is applied to the lowest part of a hill or mountain, the plate of a sewing-machine which holds the material in position, to the part of an organ pipe below the mouth, and the like. In printing the bottom of a type is divided by a groove into two portions known as “feet.” Probably referring to the beating of the rhythm with the foot in dancing, the Gr. ποῦς and Lat. pes were applied in prosody to a grouping of syllables, one of which is stressed, forming the division of a verse. “Foot,” i.e. foot-soldier, was formerly, with an ordinal number prefixed, the name of the infantry regiments of the British army. It is now superseded by territorial designations, but it still is used in the four regiments of the infantry of the Household, the Foot Guards. As a lineal measure of length the “foot” is of great antiquity, estimated originally by the length of a man’s foot (see [Weights and Measures]). For the ceremonial washing of feet, see [Maundy Thursday].