The primary function of the _sociétés joyeuses_ and their congeners was the celebration of the traditional Feast of Fools at or about the New Year. In Paris, Twelfth night was a day of festival for the _Basoche_ as well as for the minor association of exchequer clerks known as the _Empire de Galilée_. In mid-January came the _fête des Braies_ at Laon, and the _fête_ of the _Abbaye de Lescache-Profit_ at Cambrai. That of the _Prince des Sots_ at Amiens was on the first of January itself[1349]. On the same day three _sociétés joyeuses_ united in a _fête de l’âne_ at Douai[1350]. But January was no clement month for the elaborated revels of increasingly luxurious burghers; and it is not surprising to find that many of the _sociétés_ transferred their attention to other popular feasts which happened to fall at more genial seasons of the year. To the celebration of these, the spring feast of the carnival or Shrovetide, the summer feasts of May-day or Midsummer, they brought all the wantonness of the Feast of Fools. The _Infanterie Dijonnaise_, the _Cornards_ of Rouen and Evreux, the third Parisian law association, that of the _Châtelet_, especially cultivated the carnival. The three obligatory feasts of the _Basoche_ included, besides that of Twelfth night, one on May-day and one at the beginning of July[1351]. On May-day, too, a guild in the parish of St. Germain at Amiens held its _fête des fous_[1352]. It may be noted that these summer extensions of the reign of folly are not without parallels of a strictly ecclesiastical type. At Châlons-sur-Marne, as late as 1648, a chapter procession went to the woods on St. John’s eve to cut boughs for the decking of the church[1353]. At Evreux a similar custom grew into a very famous revel[1354]. This was the _procession noire_, otherwise known as the _cérémonie de la Saint-Vital_, because the proceedings began on the day of St. Vitalis (April 28) and lasted to the second Vespers on May 1. Originally the canons, afterwards the choir-clerks, chaplains, and vicars, went at day-break on May morning to gather branches in the bishop’s woods. Their return was the signal for riotous proceedings. The bells were violently rung. Masks were worn. Bran was thrown in the eyes of passers-by, and they were made to leap over broomsticks. The choir-clerks took the high stalls, and the choir-boys recited the office. In the intervals the canons played at skittles over the vaults; there were dancing and singing and the rest, ‘as at the time of the Nativity[1355].’ The abuses of this festival must have begun at an early date, for two canons of the cathedral, one of whom died in 1206, are recorded to have been hung out of the belfry windows in a vain attempt to stop the bell-ringing. Its extension to St. Vitalis’ day is ascribed to another canon, singularly named Bouteille, who is said to have founded about 1270 a very odd _obit_. He desired that a pall should lie on the pavement of the choir, and that