The festival of All Saints was instituted in Rome in the eighth century. At the end of the tenth century a new celebration was annexed to it. It was related that a French pilgrim, on returning from Jerusalem, had been cast on a little island in the Mediterranean, where he met a hermit, who told him that the souls of sinners were tormented in the volcanic fires of the island, and that he could often hear the devils howling with rage because their prey was rescued from time to time by the prayers and alms of pious men, and especially of the monks of Cluny. The hermit solemnly adjured the pilgrim to report this when he returned home, and accordingly the pilgrim mentioned it to the Abbot Odilo of Cluny, who in 998 appointed the morrow of All Saints to be solemnly observed there for the repose of all faithful souls, with psalmody, masses, and copious alms to all the poor people present. The celebration was soon extended to the whole Cluniac order; and eventually some Pope, whose name is not known, ordered its observance throughout Christendom. HOLIDAYS AND FEASTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. There were several holidays or celebrations of events very popular with young people and the lower clergy during the Middle Ages, and which had some connection with religious matters. These were the Feasts of the Ass, of the Deacons, of the Kings, of the Buffoons, and of the Innocents, all involving some horseplay and rude merriment, such as the Carnival still exhibits. About the twelfth century the Feast of the Kalends was conducted by actors having hideous beards over their faces. In the Feast of Buffoons of the same period the duties and rank of the clergy were caricatured and turned into fun and ribaldry. In the Feast of the Ass that animal was dressed like a priest, and all the people brayed as the incidents at the stable of Bethany and of Balaam's conversation were rehearsed. In the Feast of Buffoons there were mock cardinals and a mock Pope. In the procession of the Mère Folle there were a mock tribunal, mock judgments, and mock sentences. As a counterpart to these boisterous revels, there were famous legends or superstitions represented, such as the story of the "Wandering Jew," so called from a rebuke given to an insulting assault made on the Saviour at the Crucifixion, which was followed by a supposed sentence on the offender that he should await Christ's second coming; the superstition about Prester John, a sort of pontiff king, half Jew, half Christian, who was said to have governed a vast Indian empire, but no particulars of which were ever ascertained, and yet he was said to have invited the Pope to go and live in his dominions. FEAST OF THE ASS.