There was elected in the cathedral churches a bishop or archbishop of
the Fools, which election was confirmed by all sorts of buffooneries,
played off by way of consecration. This bishop officiated pontifically
and gave his blessing to the people, before whom he appeared bearing the
mitre, the crosier, and even the archiepiscopal cross. In those
churches which held immediately from the Holy See, a pope of the Fools
was elected, who officiated in all the decorations of papacy. All the
clergy assisted in the mass, some dressed in women's apparel, others as
buffoons, or masked in a grotesque and ridiculous manner. Not content
with singing licentious songs in the choir, they sat and played at dice
on the altar, at the side of the officiator. When the mass was over they
ran, leaped, and danced about the church, uttering obscene words,
singing immodest songs, and putting themselves in a thousand indecent
postures, sometimes exposing themselves almost naked. They then had
themselves drawn about the streets in tumbrels full of filth, that they
might throw it at the mob which gathered round them. The looser part of
the seculars would mix among the clergy, that they might play some
fool's part in the ecclesiastical habit.
This feast was held in the same manner in the convents of monks and
nuns, as Naudé testifies in his complaint to Gassendi, in 1645, in which
he relates that at Antibes, in the Franciscan monastery, neither the
officiating monks nor the guardian went to the choir on the day of the
Innocents. The lay brethren occupied their places on that day, and,
clothed in sacerdotal decorations, torn and turned inside out, made a
sort of office. They held books turned upside down, which they seemed to
be reading through spectacles, the glasses of which were made of orange
peel; and muttered confused words, or uttered strange cries,
accompanied by extravagant contortions.
The second register of the church of Autun, by the secretary Rotarii,
which ends with 1416, says, without specifying the day, that at the
Feast of Fools an ass was led along with a clergyman's cape on his back,
the attendants singing: "He haw! Mr. Ass, he haw!"
Ducange relates a sentence of the officialty of Viviers, upon one
William, who, having been elected fool-bishop in 1400, had refused to
perform the solemnities and to defray the expenses customary on such
occasions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account