Feast of Fools

FOOLS, FEAST OF, the name for certain burlesque, quasi religious festivals which, during the middle ages, were the ecclesi astical counterpart of the secular revelries of the Lord of Misrule. (Lat. festum stultorum, f ollorune; Fr. fête des fous.) The cele brations are directly traceable to the pagan Saturnalia of ancient Rome which, in spite of the denunciation of bishops and ecclesias tical councils. continued to be celebrated by the npnnlp with all their old licence. In the IIth century Bishop Burchard of Worms thought it necessary to fulminate against the excesses connected with it. The clergy set apart certain days as special festivals for different orders: the feast of St. Stephen (Dec. 26) for the deacons, St. John's day (Dec. 27) for the priests, Holy Innocents' Day for the boys, and for the sub-deacons Circumcision, the Epiphany, or Jan. II. The Feast of Holy Innocents became a festival of children, in which a boy, elected by his fellows of the choir school, functioned solemnly as bishop or archbishop, sur rounded by the elder choir-boys as his clergy. (See BOY-BisHOP.) At first there is no evidence to prove that these celebrations were characterized by any indecorous behaviour ; but in the I2th cen tury such behaviour had become the rule. In 118o Jean Beleth, of the diocese of Amiens, calls the festival of the sub-deacons festum stultorum. 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 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 mediaeval Church was shaken, it became a ready instrument in the hands of those who sought to destroy them. This naïve temper of the middle ages is nowhere more conspicuously displayed than in the Feast of the Ass, which under various forms was celebrated in a large number of churches throughout the West. Often the ass was a mere incident in the Feast of Fools; but sometimes he was the occasion of a special festival, ridiculous enough to modern notions but by no means intended in an irreverent spirit.

Celebration at Beauvais.

A singular celebration at Beauvais, which was held on Jan. 14, 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, etc., the congregation chanted "Hinham" (Hee-haw) three times. The rubric of the mass for this feast actually runs: In fine Missae Sacerdos versus ad populum vice, Ite missa est Hinhannabit: populus vero vice, Deo Gratias, ter respondebit Hinham, Hinham, Hinham. (At the close of the mass the priest, turning to the people, instead of saying, Ite missa est, shall bray ; the people, instead of Deo gratias, shall thrice respond Hee-haw, Hee-haw, Hee-haw.) Celebration at Sens.—At Sens the Feast of the Ass was asso ciated 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 fol lowed, 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.

Various efforts were made during the middle ages to abolish the Feast of Fools. How little effect these 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 ; the festival was, in fact, too popular to succumb to these efforts, and it survived throughout Europe till the Refor mation, 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.

See B. Picart, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tons les peoples (1723) : du Tilliot, Memoires pour .cervir a l'histoire de la fete des Fous (Lausanne, 1 741) ; Aime Cherest, Nouvelles recherches sur la fete des Innocents et la fête des Fous dans plusieurs eglises et notamment dans celle de Sens (1853) ; Schneegans in M iller's Zeitschri f t fur deutsche Kulturgeschichte (1858) ; H. Bohmer, art. "Narrenfest" in Herzog Hauck, Realencyklop. (ed. 1903) ; Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1884), s.v. "Festum Asinorum."