In the religious festivals and dramatic representations there also appeared conspicuous indications of the prevalent irreverence and mockery of the age. The most solemn and awful events of sacred history were absurdly burlesqued amidst the jeers of a scoffing and delighted mob. The grotesque features of these ceremonies were a survival of the Roman Saturnalia not yet extinct among the less enlightened peasantry of Europe. The most holy mysteries of the Church were parodied in obscene and sacrilegious scenic exhibitions. The actors in these profane representations were selected from the lower orders of the priesthood. They assumed the characters of popes, cardinals, bishops. Sometimes they were dressed in the vestments and equipped with the insignia of their rank,--the tiara, the mitre, the crosier, the crucifix; but often they donned the parti-colored attire of the professional fool and jester and carried his truncheon. The mass was celebrated in due form, but accompanied with a thousand extravagant and often indecent gestures by these privileged buffoons. Men entirely nude were conducted into the churches and deluged with pailfuls of holy water. Old shoes burned in the censers filled the atmosphere with a sickening stench. A repast was spread upon the altar, and all who desired regaled themselves while the representative of the celebrant recited the impressive service of the Church. In the mean time, the aisles were swarming with maskers, whose coarse jests and lascivious contortions evoked the applause and laughter of the audience. Men gambled within the rail of the chancel. Every excess was indulged in without check or remonstrance during the continuance of these festivals. Debauchery ran riot even in the most holy places. Priests, stripped of their clerical vestments, danced half-naked in the streets. The bells were removed from the church-towers and concealed. During the Feast of Asses, a donkey with his rider was conducted into the choir, and the responses of the congregation were made in imitation of the unmelodious voice of that useful but proverbially stupid animal. In this instance, sausages seasoned with garlic supplied the place of frankincense. In the celebration of another festival, a fox, dressed in the habiliments of the Papacy, was carried in state by an escort of mock cardinals. A quantity of poultry was distributed at intervals in the streets through which this singular procession was to pass, and when the fox, dropping his tiara and trailing his purple robes in the dust, occasionally attempted to seize a hen, the delighted multitude fairly rent the air with acclamations.