The New Year customs, all too briefly summed up in the last chapter, are essentially folk customs. They belong to the ritual of that village community whose primitive organization still, though obscurely, underlies the complex society of western Europe. The remaining chapters of the present volume will deal with certain modifications and developments introduced into those customs by new social classes which gradually differentiated themselves during the Middle Ages from the village folk. The churchman, the _bourgeois_, the courtier, celebrated the New Year, even as the peasant did. But they put their own temper into the observances; and it is worth while to accord a separate treatment to the shapes which these took in such hands, and to the resulting influence upon the dramatic conditions of the sixteenth century. The discussion must begin with the somewhat startling New Year revels held by the inferior clergy in mediaeval cathedrals and collegiate churches, which may be known generically as the ‘Feast of Fools.’ Actually, the feast has different names in different localities. Most commonly it is the _festum stultorum_, _fatuorum_ or _follorum_; but it is also called the _festum subdiaconorum_ from the highest of the _minores ordines_ who, originally at least, conducted it, and the _festum baculi_ from one of its most characteristic and symbolical ceremonies; while it shares with certain other rites the suggestive title of the ‘Feast of Asses,’ _asinaria festa_. The main area of the feast is in France, and it is in France that it must first of all be considered. I do not find a clear notice of it until the end of the twelfth century[980]. It is mentioned, however, in the _Rationale Divinorum Officium_ (†1182-90) of Joannes Belethus, rector of Theology at Paris, and afterwards a cathedral dignitary at Amiens. ‘There are four _tripudia_’ Belethus tells us, ‘after Christmas. They are those of the deacons, priests, and choir-children, and finally that of the sub-deacons, _quod vocamus stultorum_, which is held according to varying uses, on the Circumcision, or on Epiphany, or on the octave of Epiphany[981].’ Almost simultaneously the feast can be traced in the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Paris, through an epigram written by one Leonius, a canon of the cathedral, to a friend who was about to pay him a visit for the _festum baculi_ at the New Year[982]. The _baculus_ was the staff used by the precentor of a cathedral, or whoever might be conducting the choir in his place[983]. Its function in the Feast of Fools may be illustrated from an order for the reformation of the Notre-Dame ceremony issued in 1199. This order was made by Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris, together with the dean and other chapter officers[984]. It recites a mandate sent to them by cardinal Peter of Capua, then legate in France. The legate had been informed of the improprieties and disorders, even to shedding of blood,