F. Marion Crawford in Salve Venetia!
The Feast of Fools
BELETUS, who lived in 1182, mentions the Feast of Fools, as celebrated in some places on New Year's day, in others on Twelfth Night and in still others the week following. It seems at any rate to have been one of the recognized revels of the Christmas season. In France, at different cathedral churches there was a Bishop or an Archbishop of Fools elected, and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a Pope of Fools.
These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suite of ecclesiastics, and one of their ridiculous ceremonies was to shave the Precentor of Fools upon a stage erected before the church in the presence of the jeering "vulgar populace."
They were mostly attired in the ridiculous dresses of pantomime players and buffoons, and so habited entered the church, and performed the ceremony accompanied by crowds of followers representing monsters or so disguised as to excite fear or laughter. During this mockery of a divine service they sang indecent songs in the choir, ate rich puddings on the corner of the altar, played at dice upon it during the celebration of a mass, incensed it with smoke from old burnt shoes, and ran leaping all over the church. The Bishop or Pope of Fools performed the service and gave benediction, dressed in pontifical robes. When it was concluded he was seated in an open carriage and drawn about the town followed by his train, who in place of carnival confetti threw filth from a cart upon the people who crowded to see the procession.
These "December liberties," as they were called, were always held at Christmas time or near it, but were not confined to one particular day, and seem to have lasted through the chief part of January. When the ceremony took place upon St. Stephen's Day, they said as part of the mass a burlesque composition, called the Fool's Prose, and upon the festival of St. John the Evangelist, they had another arrangement of ludicrous songs, called the Prose of the Ox.
William Hone in Ancient Mysteries
The Feast of the Ass
