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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: FLA-FRA |
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FOOLS, FEAST OF (Lat. festum stultorum, fatuorum, follorum, Fr. fete des fous) , the name for certain burlesque quasi-religious festivals which, during the middle ages, were the ecclesiastical counterpart of the secular revelries of the Lord of Misrule
pagan
Saxons
special
Circumcision , the Epiphany, or the 11th of January. The Feast of Holy Innocents became a regular festival of children, in which a boy, elected by his fellows of the choir school, functioned solemnly as bishop or archbishop, surrounded by the elder choir-boys as his clergy, while the canons and other clergy took the humbler seats. At first there is no evidence to prove that these celebrations were characterized by any specially indecorous behaviour; but in the 12th century such behaviour had become the rule. In 118o Jean Beleth, of the diocese of Amiens, calls the festival of the sub-deacons festum stultorum (Migne, Patrol. lat. 202, p. 79).The burlesque ritual which characterized the Feast of Fools throughout the middle ages was now at its height. A young sub-deacon was elected bishop, vested in the episcopal insignia (except the mitre) and conducted by his fellows to the sanctuary. A mock mass was begun, during which the lections were read cum farsia, obscene songs were sung and dances performed, cakes and sausages eaten at the altar, and cards and dice played upon it.This burlesquing of things universally held sacred, though condemned by serious-minded theologians, conveyed to the child-like popular mind of the middle ages no suggestion of contempt, though when belief in the doctrines and rites of the medieval Church was shaken it became a ready instrument in the hands of those who sought to destroy them. Of this kind of retribution Scott in The Abbot gives a vivid picture, the Protestants interrupting the mass celebrated by the trembling remnant of the monks in the ruined abbey church, and insisting on substituting the traditional Feast of Fools .This naive temper of the middle ages is nowhere more conspicuously displayid than in the Feast of the Ass, which under various forms was celebrated in a large number of churches throughout the West. The ass had been introduced into the ritual of the church in the 9th century, representing either Balaam's ass, that which stood with the ox beside the manger at Bethlehem, that which carried the Holy Family into Egypt, or that on which Christ rode in triumph into Jerusalem. Often the ass was a mere incident in the Feast of Fools; but sometimes he was the occasion of a special
chief
Far more singular was the celebration at Beauvais, which was held on the 14th of January, and represented the flight into Egypt. A richly caparisoned ass, on which was seated the prettiest girl in the town holding in her arms a baby or a large doll, was escorted with much pomp from the cathedral to the church of St Etienne. There the procession was received by the priests, who led the ass and its burden to the sanctuary. Mass was then sung; but instead of the ordinary responses to the Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, &c., the congregation chanted " Hinham " (Hee-haw) three times. The rubric of the mass for this feast actually runs: In fine Missae Sacerdos versus ad populunt rice, Ite missa est, Hinhannabit: populus vero vice, Dco Gratias, ter respondebit Hinham, Hinham, Hinham (At the close of the mass the priest turning to the people instead of saying, De snissa est, shall bray thrice: the people, instead of Deo gratias, shall thrice respond Hee-haw, Hee-haw, Hee-haw). 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 iolemnly fed, and at the conclusion of the service was led by the precentor out into the square before the church (conductus ad lidos); 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 suppressedits 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 through-out Europe till the Reformation, and even later in France; for in 1645 Mathurin de Neure 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, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de taus les peuples (1723) ; du Tilliot, Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de in fete des Fous (Lausanne, 1741) ; Aime Cherest, Nouvelles recherches sur la fete des Innocents et la fete des Fous clans plusieurs eglises et notamment clans cellede Sens (Paris, 1853); Schneegans in Muller's Zeitschrift fur deutsche Kulturgeschichte (1858) ; H. Bohmer, art. "Narrenfest in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop. (ed. 1903); Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 18$4), s.v. " Festum Asinorum." End of Article: FOOLS, FEAST OF (Lat. festum stultorum, fatuorum, follorum, Fr. fete des fous) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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