which had given to the feast of the Circumcision in the cathedral the appropriate name of the _festum fatuorum_. It was not a time for mirth, for the fourth crusade had failed, and Pope Innocent III was preaching the fifth. Nor could such _spurcitia_ be allowed in the sanctuary of God. The bishop and his fellows must at once take order for the pruning of the feast. In obedience to the legate they decree as follows. The bells for first Vespers on the eve of the Circumcision are to be rung in the usual way. There are to be no _chansons_, no masks, and no hearse lights, except on the iron wheels or on the _penna_ at the will of the functionary who is to surrender the cope[985]. The lord of the feast is not to be led in procession or with singing to the cathedral or back to his house. He is to put on his cope in the choir, and with the precentor’s _baculus_ in his hand to start the singing of the prose _Laetemur gaudiis_[986]. Vespers, Compline, Matins and Mass are to be sung in the usual festal manner. Certain small functions are reserved for the sub-deacons, and the Epistle at Mass is to be ‘farced[987].’ At second Vespers _Laetemur gaudiis_ is to be again sung, and also _Laetabundus_[988]. Then comes an interesting direction. _Deposuit_ is to be sung where it occurs five times at most, and ‘if the _baculus_ has been taken,’ Vespers are to be closed by the ordinary officiant after a _Te Deum_. Throughout the feast canons and clerks are to remain properly in their stalls[989]. The abuses which it was intended to eliminate from the feast are implied rather than stated; but the general character of the ceremony is clear. It consisted in the predominance throughout the services, for this one day in the year, of the despised sub-deacons. Probably they had been accustomed to take the canons’ stalls. This Eudes de Sully forbids, but even, in the feast as he left it the importance of the _dominus festi_, the sub-deacons’ representative, is marked by the transfer to him of the _baculus_, and with it the precentor’s control. _Deposuit potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles_ occurs in the _Magnificat_, which is sung at Vespers; and the symbolical phrase, during which probably the _baculus_ was handed over from the _dominus_ of one year to the _dominus_ of the next, became the keynote of the feast, and was hailed with inordinate repetition by the delighted throng of inferior clergy[990].