FOOLS, Feast of. Festivals under this name were regularly celebrated, from the 5th to the 16th century, in several countries of Europe, by the clergy and laity, with the most absurd ceremonies, and form one of the strangest phenomena in the history of man kind. Among the heathen festivals which the Christians could not easily abolish were the Saturnalia, which, in the confusion of all dis tinctions of ranks, and in extravagance of merriment, exceeded the gayest carnivals. The feast of fools, among Christians, was an imi tation of the Saturnalia, and, like this, was cele brated in December. The chief celebration fell upon the day of the Innocents, or upon New Year's Day; but the feast continued from Christmas to the last Sunday of Epiphany. At first only the boys of the choir and young sacristans played the principal part in them; but afterward all the inferior servants of the Church, and even laymen, engaged in them, while the bishop, or the highest clergyman of the place, with the canons, formed the audience. The young people, who played the chief parts, chose from among their own number a bishop or archbishop of fools, or of unreason, as he was called, and consecrated him, with many ridiculous ceremonies, in the chief church of the place. This officer then took the usual seat of the bishop, and caused high mass to be said, unless he preferred to read it himself, and to give his blessing to the people, which was done with the most ridiculous ceremonies. During this time the rest of the performers, dressed in different kinds of masks and disguises, engaged in indecent songs and dances, and practised all possible follies in the church. Except from
their association with the Saturnalia nothing is known of the origin of these extravagancies, which appear to have been very ancient. The most celebrated, and probably one of the most ancient, of these festivals was held in the city of Sens, in France. By an ordinance in 1245, intended to abolish it, it is alluded to as a very ancient celebration. So general was the custom of these celebrations in France. that it is said there were few towns at the end of the 17th or even as late as the middle of the 18th cen tury in which associations did not exist. Sim ilar antics seem to have been played in other countries, as Germany, England and Scotland. but it is to be hoped that the height of pro fanity reached in some of the extant liturgies and rubrics was not commonly attained in these fooleries. The fete des foes at Sens was suppressed in 1547. These fetes were fre quently prohibited, but until the Reformation period, when they were considered dangerous by the ecclesiastical authorities, they were com monly tolerated. To account for these cele brations, so opposed to all our ideas of re ligion, decency and common sense, we must transfer ourselves to times when men com bined, with childish simplicity, the most ridicu lous with the noblest subjects, and often with leis injury than we should suppose to the latter.