The history of the Feast of Fools has been so imperfectly written, that it is perhaps worth while to bring together the records of its occurrence, elsewhere than in Troyes and Sens, from the fourteenth century onwards. They could probably be somewhat increased by an exhaustive research amongst French local histories, archives, and the transactions of learned societies. Of the feast in Notre-Dame at Paris nothing is heard after the reformation carried out in 1198 by Eudes de Sully[1058]. The bourgeois of Tournai were, indeed, able to quote a Paris precedent for the feast of their own city in 1499; but this may have been merely the feast of some minor collegiate body, such as that founded in 1303 by cardinal Le Moine[1059]; or of the scholars of the University, or of the compagnie joyeuse of the Enfants-sans-Souci. At Beauvais, too, there are only the faintest traces of the feast outside the actual twelfth-and thirteenth-century service-books[1060]. But there are several other towns in the provinces immediately north and east of the capital, Île de France, Picardy, Champagne, where it is recorded. The provision made for it in the Amiens Ordinarium of 1291 has been already quoted. Shortly after this, bishop William de Macon, who died in 1303, left his own pontificalia for the use of the ‘bishop of Fools[1061].’ When, however, the feast reappears in the fifteenth century the dominus festi is no longer a ‘bishop,’ but a ‘pope.’ In 1438 there was an endowment consisting of a share in the profits of some lead left by one John le Caron, who had himself been ‘pope[1062].’ In 1520 the feast was held, but no bells were to be jangled[1063]. It was repeated in 1538. Later in the year the customary election of the ‘pope’ on the anniversary of Easter was forbidden, but the canons afterwards repented of their severity[1064]. In 1540 the chapter paid a subsidy towards the amusements of the ‘pope’ and his ‘cardinals’ on the Sunday called brioris[1065]. In 1548 the feast was suppressed[1066]. At Noyon the vicars chose a ‘king of Fools’ on Epiphany eve. The custom is mentioned in 1366 as ‘le gieu des roys.’ By 1419 it was forbidden, and canon John de Gribauval was punished for an attempt to renew it by taking the sceptre off the high altar at Compline on Epiphany. In 1497, 1499, and 1505 it was permitted again, with certain restrictions. The cavalcade must be over before Nones; there must be no licentious or scurrilous chansons, no dance before the great doors; the ‘king’ must wear ecclesiastical dress in the choir. In 1520, however, he was allowed to wear his crown more antiquo. The feast finally perished in 1721, owing to la cherté des vivres[1067]. At Soissons, the feast was held on January 1, with masquing[1068]. At Senlis, the dominus festi was a ‘pope.’ In 1403 there was much division of opinion amongst the chapter as to the continuance of the feast, and it was finally decided that it must take place outside the church. In 1523 it came to an end. The vicars of the chapter of Saint-Rieul had in 1501 their separate feast on January 1, with a ‘prelate of Fools’ and jeux in the churchyard[1069]. From Laon fuller records are available[1070]. A ‘patriarch of Fools’ was chosen with his ‘consorts’ on Epiphany eve after Prime, by the vicars, chaplains and choir-clerks. There was a cavalcade through the city and a procession called the Rabardiaux, of which the nature is not stated[1071]. The chapter bore the expenses of the banquet and the masks. The first notice is about 1280. In 1307 one Pierre Caput was ‘patriarch.’ In 1454 the bishop upheld the feast against the dean, but it was decided that it should take place outside the church. A similar regulation was made in 1455, 1456, 1459. In 1462 the servitium was allowed, and the jeu was to be submitted to censorship. In 1464 and 1465 mysteries were acted before the Rabardiaux. In 1486 the jeu was given before the church of St.-Martin-au-Parvis. In 1490 the jeux and cavalcade were forbidden, and the banquet only allowed. In 1500 a chaplain, Jean Hubreland, was fined for not taking part in the ceremony. In 1518 the worse fate of imprisonment befell Albert Gosselin, another chaplain, who flung fire from above the porch upon the ‘patriarch’ and his ‘consorts.’ By 1521 the servitium seems to have been conducted by the curés of the Laon churches, and the vicars and chaplains merely assisted. The expense now fell on the curés, and the chapter subsidy was cut down. In 1522 and 1525 the perquisites of the ‘patriarch’ were still further reduced by the refusal of a donation from the chapter as well as of the fines formerly imposed on absentees. In 1527 a protest of Laurent Brayart, ‘patriarch,’ demanding either leave to celebrate the feast more antiquo or a dispensation from assisting at the election of his successor, was referred to the ex-‘patriarch.’ In this same year canons, vicars, chaplains and habitués of the cathedral were forbidden to appear at the farces of the fête des ânes[1072]. In 1531 the ‘patriarch’ Théobald Bucquet, recovered the right to play comedies and jeux and to take the absentee fines; but in 1541 Absalon Bourgeois was refused leave pour faire semblant de dire la messe à liesse. The feast was cut down to the bare election of the ‘patriarch’ in 1560, and seems to have passed into the hands of a confrérie; all that was retained in the cathedral being the Primes folles on Epiphany eve, in which the laity occupied the high stalls, and all present wore crowns of green leaves.

At Rheims, a Feast of Fools in 1490 was the occasion for a satirical attack by the vicars and choir-boys on the fashion of the hoods worn by the bourgeoises. This led to reprisals in the form of some anti-ecclesiastical farces played on the following dimanche des Brandons by the law clerks of the Rheims Basoche[1073]. At Châlons-sur-Marne a detailed and curious account is preserved of the way in which the Feast of Fools was celebrated in 1570[1074]. It took place on St. Stephen’s day. The chapter provided a banquet on a theatre in front of the great porch. To this the ‘bishop of Fools’ was conducted in procession from the maîtrise des fous, with bells and music upon a gaily trapped ass. He was then vested in cope, mitre, pectoral cross, gloves and crozier, and enjoyed a banquet with the canons who formed his ‘household.’ Meanwhile some of the inferior clergy entered the cathedral, sang gibberish, grimaced and made contortions. After the banquet, Vespers were precipitately sung, followed by a motet[1075]. Then came a musical cavalcade round the cathedral and through the streets. A game of la paume took place in the market; then dancing and further cavalcades. Finally a band gathered before the cathedral, howled and clanged kettles and saucepans, while the bells were rung and the clergy appeared in grotesque costumes.

Flanders also had its Feasts of Fools. That of St. Omer, which existed in the twelfth century, lasted to the sixteenth[1076]. An attempt was made to stop it in 1407, when the chapter forbade any one to take the name of ‘bishop’ or ‘abbot’ of Fools. But Seraphin Cotinet was ‘bishop’ of Fools in 1431, and led the gaude on St. Nicholas’ eve[1077]. The ‘bishop’ is again mentioned in 1490, but in 1515 the feast was suppressed by Francis de Melun, bishop of Arras and provost of St. Omer[1078]. Some payments made by the chapter of Béthune in 1445 and 1474 leave it doubtful how far the feast was really established in that cathedral[1079]. At Lille the feast was forbidden by the chapter statutes of 1323 and 1328[1080]. But at the end of the fourteenth century it was in full swing, lasting under its ‘bishop’ or ‘prelate’ from the vigil to the octave of Epiphany. Amongst the payments made by the chapter on account of it is one to replace a tin can (kanne stannee) lost at the banquet. The ‘bishop’ was chosen, as elsewhere, by the inferior clergy of the cathedral; but he also stood in some relation to the municipality of Lille, and superintended the miracle plays performed at the procession of the Holy Sacrament and upon other occasions. In 1393 he received a payment from the duke of Burgundy for the fête of the Trois Rois. Municipal subsidies were paid to him in the fifteenth century; he collected additional funds from private sources and offered prizes, by proclamation soubz nostre seel de fatuité, for pageants and histoires de la Sainte Escripture; was, in fact, a sort of Master of the Revels for Lille. He was active in 1468, but in 1469 the town itself gave the prizes, in place de l’evesque des folz, qui à présent est rué jus. The chapter accounts show that he was reappointed in 1485 hoc anno, de gratia speciali. In 1492 and 1493 the chapter payments were not to him but sociis domus clericorum, and from this year onwards he appears neither in the chapter accounts nor in those of the municipality[1081]. Nevertheless, he did not yet cease to exist, for a statute was passed by the chapter for his extinction, together with that of the ludus, quem Deposuit vocant, in 1531[1082]. Five years before this the canons and vicars were still wearing masks and playing comedies in public[1083]. The history of the feast at Tournai is only known to me through certain legal proceedings which took place before the Parlement of Paris in 1499. It appears that the young bourgeois of Tournai were accustomed to require the vicars of Notre-Dame to choose an évesque des sotz from amongst themselves on Innocents’ day. In 1489 they took one Matthieu de Porta and insulted him in the church itself. The chapter brought an action in the local court against the prévost et jurez of the town; and in the meantime obtained provisional letters inhibitory from Charles VIII, forbidding the vicars to hold the feast or the bourgeois to enforce it. All went well for some years, but in 1497 the bourgeois grumbled greatly, and in 1498, with the connivance of the municipal authorities themselves, they broke out. On the eve of the Holy Innocents, between nine and ten o’clock, Jacques de l’Arcq, mayor of the Edwardeurs, and others got into the house of Messire Pasquier le Pâme, a chaplain, and dragged him half naked, through snow and frost, to a cabaret. Seven or eight other vicars, one of whom was found saying his Hours in a churchyard, were similarly treated, and as none of them would be made évesque des sotz they were all kept prisoners. The chapter protested to the prévost et jurez, but in vain. On the following day the bourgeois chose one of the vicars évesque, baptized him by torchlight with three buckets of water at a fountain, led him about for three days in a surplice, and played scurrilous farces. They then dismissed the vicar, and elected as évesque a clerk from the diocese of Cambrai, who defied the chapter. They drove Jean Parisiz, the curé of La Madeleine, who had displeased them, from his church in the midst of Vespers, and on Epiphany day made him too a prisoner. In the following March the chapter and Messire Jean Parisiz brought a joint action before the High Court at Paris against the delinquents and the municipal authorities, who had backed them up. The case came on for hearing in November, when it was pleaded that the custom of electing an évesque des sotz upon Innocents’ day was an ancient one. The ceremony took place upon a scaffold near the church door; there were jeux in the streets for seven or eight days, and a final convici in which the canons and others of the town were satirized. The chapter and some of the citizens sent bread and wine. The same thing was done in many dioceses of Picardy, and even in Paris. It was all ad solacium populi, and divine service was not disturbed, for nobody entered the church. The vicar who had been chosen évesque thought it a great and unexpected honour. There would have been no trouble had not the évesque when distributing hoods with ears at the end of the jeux unfortunately included certain persons who would rather have been left out, and who consequently stirred up the chapter to take action. The court adjourned the case, and ultimately it appears to have been settled, for one of the documents preserved is endorsed with a note of a concordat between the chapter and the town, by which the feast was abolished in 1500[1084].

Of the Feast of Fools in central France I can say but little. At Chartres, the Papi-Fol and his cardinals committed many insolences during the first four days of the year, and exacted droits from passers-by. They were suppressed in 1479 and again in 1504[1085]. At Tours a Ritual of the fourteenth century contains elaborate directions for the festum novi anni, quod non debet remanere, nisi corpora sint humi. This is clearly a reformed feast, of which the chief features are the dramatic procession of the Prophetae, including doubtless Balaam on his ass, in church, and a miraculum in the cloister[1086]. The ‘Boy Bishop’ gives the benediction at Tierce, and before Vespers there are chori (carols, I suppose) also in the cloisters. At Vespers Deposuit is sung three times, and the baculus may be taken. If so, the thesaurarius is beaten with baculi by the clergy at Compline, and the new cantor is led home with beating of baculi on the walls[1087]. At Bourges, the use of the ‘Prose of the Ass’ in Notre-Dame de Sales seems to imply the existence of the feast, but I know no details[1088]. At Avallon the dominus festi seems to have been, as at Laon, a ‘patriarch,’ and to have officiated on Innocents’ day. A chapter statute regulated the proceedings in 1453, and another abolished them in 1510[1089]. At Auxerre, full accounts of a long chapter wrangle are preserved in the register[1090]. It began in 1395 with an order requiring the decent performance of the servitium, and imposing a fee upon newly admitted canons towards the feast. In 1396 the feast was not held, owing to the recent defeat of Sigismund of Hungary and the count of Nevers by Bajazet and his Ottomans at Nicopolis[1091]. In 1398 the dean entered a protest against a grant of wine made by the chapter to the thirsty revellers. In 1400 a further order was passed to check various abuses, the excessive ringing of bells, the licence of the sermones fatui, the impounding of copes in pledge for contributions, the beating of men and women through the streets, and all derisiones likely to bring discredit on the church[1092]. In the following January, the bishop of Auxerre, Michel de Crency, intervened, forbidding the fatui to form a ‘chapter,’ or to appoint ‘proctors,’ or clamare la fête aux fous after the singing of the Hours in the church. This led to a storm. The bishop brought an action in the secular court, and the chapter appealed to the ecclesiastical court of the Sens province. In June, however, it was agreed as part of a general concordat between the parties, that all these proceedings should be non avenu[1093]. It seems, however, to have been understood that the chapter would reform the feast. On December 2, the abbot of Pontigny preached a sermon before the chapter in favour of the abolition of the feast, and on the following day the dean came down and warned the canons that it was the intention of the University of Paris to take action, even if necessary, by calling in the secular arm[1094]. It was better to reform themselves than to be reformed. It was then agreed to suppress the abuses of the feast, the sermons and the wearing of unecclesiastical garb, and to hold nothing but a festum subdiaconorum on the day of the Circumcision. Outside the church, however, the clergy might dance and promenade (chorizare ... et ... spatiare) on the place of St. Stephen’s. These regulations were disregarded, on the plea that they were intended to apply only to the year in which they were made. In 1407 the chapter declared that they were to be permanent, but strong opposition was offered to this decision by three canons, Jean Piqueron, himself a sub-deacon, Jean Bonat, and Jean Berthome, who maintained that the concordat with the bishop was for reform, not for abolition. The matter was before the chapter for the last time, so far as the extant documents go, in 1411. On January 2, the dean reported that in spite of the prohibition certain canonici tortrarii[1095], chaplains and choir-clerks had held the feast. A committee of investigation was appointed, and in December the prohibition was renewed. Jean Piqueron was once more a protestant, and on this occasion obtained the support of five colleagues[1096]. It may be added that in the sixteenth century an abbas stultorum was still annually elected on July 18, beneath a great elm at the porch of Auxerre cathedral. He was charged with the maintenance of certain small points of choir discipline[1097].

In Franche Comté and Burgundy, the Feast of Fools is also found. At Besançon it was celebrated by all the four great churches. In the cathedrals of St. John and St. Stephen, ‘cardinals’ were chosen on St. Stephen’s day by the deacons and sub-deacons, on St. John’s day by the priests, on the Holy Innocents’ day by the choir-clerks and choir-boys. In the collegiate churches of St. Paul and St. Mary Magdalen, ‘bishops’ or ‘abbots’ were similarly chosen. All these domini festorum seem to have had the generic title of rois des fous, and on the choir-feast four cavalcades went about the streets and exchanged railleries (se chantaient pouille) when they met. In 1387 the Statutes of cardinal Thomas of Naples ordered that the feasts should be held jointly in each church in turn; and in 1518 the cavalcades were suppressed, owing to a conflict upon the bridge which had a fatal ending. Up to 1710, however, reges were still elected in St. Mary Magdalen’s; not, indeed, those for the three feasts of Christmas week, but a rex capellanorum and a rex canonicorum, who officiated respectively on the Circumcision and on Epiphany[1098]. At Autun the feast of the baculus in the thirteenth century has already been recorded. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some interesting notices are available in the chapter registers[1099]. In 1411 the feast required reforming. The canons were ordered to attend in decent clothes as on the Nativity; and the custom of leading an ass in procession and singing a cantilena thereon was suppressed[1100]. In 1412 the abolition of the feast was decreed[1101]. But in 1484 it was sanctioned again, and licence was given to punish those who failed to put in an appearance at the Hours by burning at the well[1102]. This custom, however, was forbidden in 1498[1103]. Nothing more is heard of the asinus, but it is possible that he figured in the play of Herod which was undoubtedly performed at the feast, and which gave a name to the dominus festi[1104]. Under the general name of festa fatuorum was included at Autun, besides the feast of the Circumcision, also that of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, and a missa fatuorum was sung ex ore infantium from the Innocents’ day to Epiphany[1105]. In 1499 Jean Rolin, abbot of St. Martin’s and dean of Autun, led a renewed attack upon the feast. He had armed himself with a letter from Louis XI, and induced the chapter, in virtue of the Basle decree, to suppress both Herod and the ‘bishop’ of Innocents[1106]. In 1514 and 1515 the play of Herod was performed; but in 1518, when application was made to the chapter to sanction the election of both a ‘Herod’ and the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents, they applied to the king’s official for leave, and failed to get it. Finally in 1535 the chapter recurred to the Basle decree, and again forbade the feast, particularly specifying under the name of Gaigizons the obnoxious ceremony of ‘ducking.[1107]’ The feast held in the ducal, afterwards royal chapel of Dijon yields documents which are unique, because they are in French verse. The first is a mandement of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1454, confirming, on the request of the haut-Bâtonnier, the privilege of the fête, against those who would abolish it. He declares

In 1477 Louis XI seized Burgundy, and in 1482 his representatives, Jean d’Amboise, bishop and duke of Langres, lieutenant of the duchy, and Baudricourt the governor, accorded to Guy Baroset

a fresh confirmation for the privilege of the feast held by

There was a second feast in Dijon at the church of St. Stephen. In 1494 it was the custom here, as at Sens, to shave the ‘precentor’ of Fools upon a stage before the church. In 1621 the vicars still paraded the streets with music and lanterns in honour of their ‘precentor[1109].’ In 1552, however, the Feasts of Fools throughout Burgundy had been prohibited by an arrêt of the Parlement of Dijon. This was immediately provoked by the desire of the chapter of St. Vincent’s at Châlons-sur-Saône to end the scandal of the feast under their jurisdiction. It was, however, general in its terms, and probably put an end to the Chapelle feast at Dijon, since to about this period may be traced the origin of the famous compagnie of the Mère-Folle in that city[1110].

In Dauphiné there was a rex et festum fatuorum at St. Apollinaire’s in Valence, but I cannot give the date[1111]. At Vienne the Statutes of St. Maurice, passed in 1385, forbid the abbas stultorum seu sociorum, but apparently allow rois on the Circumcision and Epiphany, as well as in the three post-Nativity feasts. They also forbid certain ludibria. No pasquinades are to be recited, and no one is to be carried in Rost or to have his property put in pawn[1112]. More can be said of the feast at Viviers. A Ceremonial of 1365 contains minute directions for its conduct[1113]. On December 17 the sclafardi et clericuli chose an abbas stultus to be responsible, as at Auxerre, for the decorum of the choir throughout the year. He was shouldered and borne to a place of honour at a drinking-bout. Here even the bishop, if present, must do him honour. After the drinking, the company divided into two parts, one composed of inferior clergy, the other of dignitaries, and sang a doggerel song, each endeavouring to sing its rival down. They shouted, hissed, howled, cackled, jeered and gesticulated; and the victors mocked and flouted the vanquished. Then the door-keeper made a proclamation on behalf of the ‘abbot,’ calling on all to follow him, on pain of having their breeches slit, and the whole crew rushed violently out of the church. A progress through the town followed, which was repeated daily until Christmas eve[1114]. On the three post-Nativity feasts, a distinct dominus festi, the episcopus stultus, apparently elected the previous year, took the place of the abbas. On each of these days he presided at Matins, Mass, and Vespers, sat in full pontificals on the bishop’s throne, attended by his ‘chaplain,’ and gave the Benedictions. Both on St. Stephen’s and St. John’s days these were followed by the recitation of a burlesque formula of indulgence[1115]. The whole festivity seems to have concluded on Innocents’ day with the election of a new episcopus, who, after the shouldering and the drinking-bout, took his stand at a window of the great hall of the bishop’s palace, and blessed the people of the city[1116]. The episcopus was bound to give a supper to his fellows. In 1406 one William Raynoard attempted to evade this obligation. An action was brought against him in the court of the bishop’s official, by the then abbas and his predecessor. It was referred to the arbitration of three canons, who decided that Raynoard must give the supper on St. Bartholomew’s next, August 24, at the accustomed place (a tavern, one fears) in the little village of Gras, near Viviers[1117].

Finally, there are examples of the Feast of Fools in Provence. At Arles it was held in the church of St. Trophime, and is said to have been presented, out of its due season, it may be supposed, for the amusement of the Emperor Charles IV at his coronation in 1365, to have scandalized him and so to have met its end[1118]. Nevertheless in the fifteenth century an ‘archbishop of Innocents,’ alias stultus, still sang the ‘O’ on St. Thomas’s day, officiated on the days of St. John and the Innocents, and on St. Trophime’s day (Dec. 29) paid a visit to the abadesse fole of the convent of Saint-Césaire. The real abbess of this convent was bound to provide chicken, bread and wine for his regaling[1119]. At Fréjus in 1558 an attempt to put down the feast led to a riot. The bishop, Léon des Ursins, was threatened with murder, and had to hide while his palace was stormed[1120]. At Aix the chapter of St. Saviour’s chose on St. Thomas’s day, an episcopus fatuus vel Innocentium from the choir-boys. He officiated on Innocents’ day, and boys and canons exchanged stalls. The custom lasted until at least 1585[1121]. Antibes, as late as 1645, affords a rare example of the feast held by a religious house. It was on Innocents’ day in the church of the Franciscans. The choir and office were left to the lay-brothers, the quêteurs, cooks and gardeners. These put on the vestments inside out, held the books upside down, and wore spectacles with rounds of orange peel instead of glasses. They blew the ashes from the censers upon each other’s faces and heads, and instead of the proper liturgy chanted confused and inarticulate gibberish. All this is recorded by the contemporary free-thinker Mathurin de Neuré in a letter to his leader and inspirer, Gassendi[1122].

It will be noticed that the range of the Feast of Fools in France, so far as I have come across it, seems markedly to exclude the west and south-west of the country. I have not been able to verify an alleged exception at Bordeaux[1123]. Possibly there is some ethnographical reason for this. But on the whole, I am inclined to think that it is an accident, and that a more complete investigation would disclose a sufficiency of examples in this area. Outside France, the Feast of Fools is of much less importance. The Spanish disciplinary councils appear to make no specific mention of it, although they know the cognate feast of the Boy Bishop, and more than once prohibit ludi, choreae, and so forth, in general terms[1124]. In Germany, again, I do not know of a case in which the term ‘Fools’ is used. But the feast itself occurs sporadically. As early as the twelfth century, Herrad von Landsberg, abbess of Hohenburg, complained that miracle-plays, such as that of the Magi, instituted on Epiphany and its octave by the Fathers of the Church, had given place to licence, buffoonery and quarrelling. The priests came into the churches dressed as knights, to drink and play in the company of courtesans[1125]. A Mosburg Gradual of 1360 contains a series of cantiones compiled and partly written by the dean John von Perchausen for use when the scholarium episcopus was chosen at the Nativity[1126]. Some of these, however, are shown by their headings or by internal evidence to belong rather to a New Year’s day feast, than to one on Innocents’ day[1127]. A festum baculi is mentioned and an episcopus or praesul who is chosen and enthroned. One carol has the following refrain[1128]:

Another is so interesting, for its classical turn, and for the names which it gives to the ‘bishop’ and his crew that I quote it in full[1129].

The reforms of the council of Basle were adopted for Germany by the Emperor Albrecht II in the Instrumentum Acceptationis of Mainz in 1439. In 1536 the council of Cologne, quoting the decretal of Innocent III, condemned theatrales ludi in churches. A Cologne Ritual preserves an account of the sub-deacons’ feast upon the octave of Epiphany[1130]. The sub-deacons were hederaceo serto coronati. Tapers were lit, and a rex chosen, who acted as hebdomarius from first to second Vespers. Carols were sung, as at Mosburg[1131].

John Huss, early in the fifteenth century, describes the Feast of Fools as it existed in far-off Bohemia[1132]. The revellers, of whom, to his remorse, Huss had himself been one as a lad, wore masks. A clerk, grotesquely vested, was dubbed ‘bishop,’ set on an ass with his face to the tail, and led to mass in the church. He was regaled on a platter of broth and a bowl of beer, and Huss recalls the unseemly revel which took place[1133]. Torches were borne instead of candles, and the clergy turned their garments inside out, and danced. These ludi had been forbidden by one archbishop John of holy memory.

It would be surprising, in view of the close political and ecclesiastical relations between mediaeval France and England, if the Feast of Fools had not found its way across the channel. It did; but apparently it never became so inveterate as successfully to resist the disciplinary zeal of reforming bishops, and the few notices of it are all previous to the end of the fourteenth century. It seems to have lasted longest at Lincoln, and at Beverley. Of Lincoln, it will be remembered, Pierre de Corbeil, the probable compiler of the Sens Officium, was at one time coadjutor bishop. Robert Grosseteste, whose attack upon the Inductio Maii and other village festivals served as a starting-point for this discussion, was no less intolerant of the Feast of Fools. In 1236 he forbade it to be held either in the cathedral or elsewhere in the diocese[1134]; and two years later he included the prohibition in his formal Constitutions[1135]. But after another century and a half, when William Courtney, archbishop of Canterbury, made a visitation of Lincoln in 1390, he found that the vicars were still in the habit of disturbing divine service on January 1, in the name of the feast[1136]. Probably his strict mandate put a stop to the custom[1137]. At almost precisely the same date the Feast of Fools was forbidden by the statutes of Beverley minster, although the sub-deacons and other inferior clergy were still to receive a special commons on the day of the Circumcision[1138]. Outside Lincoln and Beverley, the feast is only known in England by the mention of paraphernalia for it in thirteenth-century inventories of St. Paul’s[1139], and Salisbury[1140], and by a doubtful allusion in a sophisticated version of the St. George play[1141].

A brief summary of the data concerning the Feast of Fools presented in this and the preceding chapter is inevitable. It may be combined with some indication of the relation in which the feast stands with regard to the other feasts dealt with in the present volume. If we look back to Belethus in the twelfth century we find him speaking of the Feast of Fools as held on the Circumcision, on Epiphany or on the octave of Epiphany, and as being specifically a feast of sub-deacons. Later records bear out on the whole the first of these statements. As a rule the feast focussed on the Circumcision, although the rejoicings were often prolonged, and the election of the dominus festi in some instances gave rise to a minor celebration on an earlier day. Occasionally (Noyon, Laon) the Epiphany, once at least (Cologne) the octave of the Epiphany, takes the place of the Circumcision. But we also find the term Feast of Fools extended to cover one or more of three feasts, distinguished from it by Belethus, which immediately follow Christmas. Sometimes it includes them all three (Besançon, Viviers, Vienne), sometimes the feast of the Innocents alone (Autun, Avallon, Aix, Antibes, Arles), once the feast of St. Stephen (Châlons-sur-Marne)[1142]. On the other hand, the definition of the feast as a sub-deacons’ feast is not fully applicable to its later developments. Traces of a connexion with the sub-deacons appear more than once (Amiens, Sens, Auxerre, Beverley); but as a rule the feast is held by the inferior clergy known as vicars, chaplains, and choir-clerks, all of whom are grouped at Viviers and Romans under the general term of esclaffardi. At Laon a part is taken in it by the curés of the various parishes in the city. The explanation is, I think, fairly obvious. Originally, perhaps, the sub-deacons held the feast, just as the deacons, priests, and boys held theirs in Christmas week. But it had its vogue mainly in the great cathedrals served by secular canons[1143], and in these the distinction between the canons in different orders—for a sub-deacon might be a full canon[1144]—was of less importance than the difference between the canons as a whole and the minor clergy who made up the rest of the cathedral body, the hired choir-clerks, the vicars choral who, originally at least, supplied the place in the choir of absent canons, and the chaplains who served the chantries or small foundations attached to the cathedral[1145]. The status of spiritual dignity gave way to the status of material preferment. And so, as the vicars gradually coalesced into a corporation of their own, the Feast of Fools passed into their hands, and became a celebration of the annual election of the head of their body[1146]. The vicars and their associates were probably an ill-educated and an ill-paid class. Certainly they were difficult to discipline[1147]; and it is not surprising that their rare holiday, of which the expenses were met partly by the chapter, partly by dues levied upon themselves or upon the bystanders[1148], was an occasion for popular rather than refined merry-making[1149]. That it should perpetuate or absorb folk-customs was also, considering the peasant or small bourgeois extraction of such men, quite natural.

The simple psychology of the last two sentences really gives the key to the nature of the feast. It was largely an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock. The vicars hooted and sang improper ditties, and played dice upon the altar, in a reaction from the wonted restraints of choir discipline. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it was almost an obvious sport to burlesque the sacred and tedious ceremonies with which they were only too painfully familiar. Indeed, the reverend founders and reformers of the feast had given a lead to this apishness by the introduction of the symbolical transference of the baculus at the Deposuit in the Magnificat. The ruling idea of the feast is the inversion of status, and the performance, inevitably burlesque, by the inferior clergy of functions properly belonging to their betters. The fools jangle the bells (Paris, Amiens, Auxerre), they take the higher stalls (Paris), sing dissonantly (Sens), repeat meaningless words (Châlons, Antibes), say the messe liesse (Laon) or the missa fatuorum (Autun), preach the sermones fatui (Auxerre), cense praepostere (St. Omer) with pudding and sausage (Beauvais) or with old shoes (Paris theologians). They have their chapter and their proctors (Auxerre, Dijon). They install their dominus festi with a ceremony of sacre (Troyes), or shaving (Sens, Dijon). He is vested in full pontificals, goes in procession, as at the Rabardiaux of Laon, gives the benedictions, issues indulgences (Viviers), has his seal (Lille), perhaps his right of coining (Laon). Much in all these proceedings was doubtless the merest horseplay; such ingenuity and humour as they required may have been provided by the wicked wit of the goliardi[1150].

Now I would point out that this inversion of status so characteristic of the Feast of Fools is equally characteristic of folk-festivals. What is Dr. Frazer’s mock king but one of the meanest of the people chosen out to represent the real king as the priest victim of a divine sacrifice, and surrounded, for the period of the feast, in a naïve attempt to outwit heaven, with all the paraphernalia and luxury of kingship? Precisely such a mock king is the dominus festi with whom we have to do. His actual titles, indeed, are generally ecclesiastical. Most often he is a ‘bishop,’ or ‘prelate’ (Senlis); in metropolitan churches an ‘archbishop,’ in churches exempt from other authority than that of the Holy See, a ‘pope’ (Amiens, Senlis, Chartres). More rarely he is a ‘patriarch’ (Laon, Avallon), a ‘cardinal’ (Paris, Besançon), an ‘abbot’ (Vienne, Viviers, Romans, Auxerre)[1151], or is even content with the humbler dignity of ‘precentor,’ ‘bacularius’ or ‘bâtonnier’ (Sens, Dijon). At Autun he is, quite exceptionally, ‘Herod.’ Nevertheless the term ‘king’ is not unknown. It is found at Noyon, at Vienne, at Besançon, at Beverley, and the council of Basle testifies to its use, as well as that of ‘duke.’ Nor is it, after all, of much importance what the dominus festi is called. The point is that his existence and functions in the ecclesiastical festivals afford precise parallels to his existence and functions in folk-festivals all Europe over.

Besides the ‘king’ many other features of the folk-festivals may readily be traced at the Feast of Fools. Some here, some there, they jot up in the records. There are dance and chanson, tripudium and cantilena (Noyon, Châlons-sur-Marne, Paris theologians, council of Basle). There is eating and drinking, not merely in the refectory, but within or at the doors of the church itself (Paris theologians, Beauvais, Prague). There is ball-playing (Châlons-sur-Marne). There is the procession or cavalcade through the streets (Laon, Châlons-sur-Marne, &c.). There are torches and lanterns (Sens, Tournai). Men are led nudi (Sens); they are whipped (Tours); they are ceremonially ducked or roasted (Sens, Tournai, Vienne, les Gaigizons at Autun)[1152]. A comparison with earlier chapters of the present volume will establish the significance which these points, taken in bulk, possess. Equally characteristic of folk-festivals is the costume considered proper to the feasts. The riotous clergy wear their vestments inside out (Antibes), or exchange dress with the laity (Lincoln, Paris theologians). But they also wear leaves or flowers (Sens, Laon, Cologne) and women’s dress (Paris theologians); and above all they wear hideous and monstrous masks, larvae or personae (decretal of 1207, Paris theologians, council of Basle, Paris, Soissons, Laon, Lille). These masks, indeed, are perhaps the one feature of the feast which called down the most unqualified condemnation from the ecclesiastical authorities. We shall not be far wrong if we assume them to have been beast-masks, and to have taken the place of the actual skins and heads of sacrificial animals, here, as so often, worn at the feast by the worshippers.

An attempt has been made to find an oriental origin for the Feast of Fools[1153]. Gibbon relates the insults offered to the church at Constantinople by the Emperor Michael III, the ‘Drunkard’ (842-67)[1154]. A noisy crew of courtiers dressed themselves in the sacred vestments. One Theophilus or Grylus, captain of the guard, a mime and buffoon, was chosen as a mock ‘patriarch.’ The rest were his twelve ‘metropolitans,’ Michael himself being entitled ‘metropolitan of Cologne.’ The ‘divine mysteries’ were burlesqued with vinegar and mustard in a golden cup set with gems. Theophilus rode about the streets of the city on a white ass, and when he met the real patriarch Ignatius, exposed him to the mockery of the revellers. After the death of Michael, this profanity was solemnly anathematized by the council of Constantinople held under his successor Basil in 869[1155]. Theophilus, though he borrowed the vestments for his mummery, seems to have carried it on in the streets and the palace, not in the church. In the tenth century, however, the patriarch Theophylactus won an unenviable reputation by admitting dances and profane songs into the ecclesiastical festivals[1156]; while in the twelfth, the patriarch Balsamon describes his own unavailing struggle against proceedings at Christmas and Candlemas, which come uncommonly near the Feast of Fools. The clergy of St. Sophia’s, he says, claim as of ancient custom to wear masks, and to enter the church in the guise of soldiers, or of monks, or of four-footed animals. The superintendents snap their fingers like charioteers, or paint their faces and mimic women. The rustics are moved to laughter by the pouring of wine into pitchers, and are allowed to chant Kyrie eleison in ludicrous iteration at every verse[1157]. Balsamon, who died in 1193, was almost precisely a contemporary of Belethus, and the earlier Byzantine notices considerably ante-date any records that we possess of the Feast of Fools in the West. A slight corroboration of this theory of an eastern origin may be derived from the use of the term ‘patriarch’ for the dominus festi at Laon and Avallon. It would, I think, be far-fetched to find another in the fact that Theophilus, like the western ‘bishops’ of Fools, rode upon an ass, and that the Prose de l’Âne begins: