E-Books Home

{17} Readers of Tolstoy's "War
and Peace" may remember a description of some such maskings in the year
1810.

THE FEAST OF FOOLS.
So far, in this Second Part, we have been considering customs practised
chiefly in houses, streets, and fields. We must now turn to certain
festivities following hard upon Christmas Day, which, though pagan in
origin and sometimes even blasphemous, found their way in the Middle Ages
within the walls of the church.
Shortly after Christmas a group of _tripudia_ or revels was held by the
various inferior clergy and ministrants of cathedrals and other churches.
These festivals, of which the best known are the Feast of Fools and the
Boy Bishop ceremonies, have been so fully described by other writers, and
my space here is so limited, that I need but treat them in outline, and
for detail refer the reader to such admirable accounts as are to be found
in Chapters XIII., XIV., and XV. of Mr. Chamber's "The Mediaeval
Stage."{18}
Johannes Belethus, Rector of Theology at Paris towards the end of the
twelfth century, speaks of four _tripudia_ held after Christmas:--those
of the deacons on St. Stephen's Day, the priests on St. John's, the
choir-boys on Holy Innocents', and the subdeacons on the Circumcision,
the Epiphany, or the Octave of the Epiphany.


Pages:
374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398