Feast of Fools

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For other uses, see Feast of Fools (disambiguation).

The Feast of Fools or Festival of Fools (

Holy Innocents’ Day, and the sub-deacons on the first of January, the Feast of the Circumcision.[5] There is some disagreement on whether the term Feast of Fools was originally used to refer to the collection of days[5] or specifically the celebrations taking place on the first of January.[6] The word "fool" is used as a synonym for humble, as was common in the 11th century, rather than the modern use that treats it as another term for clown or jester.[4]

Origins

Narrenkonvent um 1500. Pieter Breugel, südniederländischer Maler, Zeichner und Druckgrafiker. Antwerpen (1551–1563), Italien (1553), Brüssel (1563–1569)

Due to the lack of formal research on the feast, its exact origin is hard to pin down. The most prominent historians place its emergence in Central Europe, somewhere in what is now southeast France, but the margin of error is such that it could have been with France, Italy, or the Holy Roman Empire. Some historians believe a possible start of the feast came between 1119 and 1124 from Herod Games that were led by Geronimo of Reichersberg. These games focused around the alleged absurdity of King Herod, a Jewish-Roman ruler of Judea, and was practiced by storming a cathedral, throwing wooden spears at the choir, and beating by-standers with inflated animal bladders. This is thought to be the start of Feast of Fools since King Herod was coming into vogue in the 11th and 12th centuries, with a notable uptick in the number of plays and pieces being performed about him. Another story that lends strength to the theory of the feast coming from events and plays based on King Herod is his story from the Office of the Star. The story claims that Herod, who was king of what is now south-Israel/Palestine, including Bethlehem, around the nativity of Jesus, learned of Christ's birth and, concerned that a new born king would challenge his own rule of the area, ordered the murder of every new-born boy in his kingdom. The story claims that the murder of Jesus was prevented by King Herod's own page-boys, who then gained God's favor. This is pointed to as the explanation for the reversal of positions with clerical rank during the Feast of Fools, with a God holding page-boys in high regard and not caring for a king. This focus on King Herod is a potential explanation of why the feast did not spread nor survive as long as other festivals, as it was essentially born out of a trend in contemporary medieval theatre.[4]

The first recorded mention of the feast from the Church comes from between 1160 and 1164 in Paris and was written by John Beleth. He explained how sub-deacons, who it had recently been decided to be the lowest of the highest clerical orders rather than the highest of the lower clerical order, were meant to preside over the Feast of the Circumcision, but that the exact details of the feast hadn't been formalized yet. It is theorized that this, in combination of the page-boy and King Herod story, is where the tradition of swapping positions within the church came from, showing how God favors the socially low.[4]

Context and customs

The festival seems to have acted as a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity, and impunity was briefly granted to those in a subordinate position. In the views of some historians, this makes the medieval festival a successor to the Roman

Kalends of January, although there is no continuity between the two celebrations.[4] Lower-level clergy would also participate in the festival and hold masses on different day which would mock usually church traditions.[3]

On each day of festivities, the participants would elect a single one of them, often referred to as the Archbishop of Fools, and they would carry and wear the items associated with that rank,[5] in addition to gaining the powers normally associated with that position.[6] The meaning of the festival, beyond serving as a chance for joy like any other holiday, was to show that those with power and wealth would eventually fall from grace.[7]

Similar to modern day celebrations like

King Cake or Gallette de Rois, which contains a small token. In earlier times, the person getting the token was crowned as king, and was expected to host the next gathering. Usually celebrated around Epiphany, it is considered a continuation of the ancient Roman Saturnalia
where masters would host for their slaves.

Official condemnation

East Yorkshire[8]

The Feast of Fools and the subversive traditions associated with it were the object of condemnations of the medieval Church, starting as early as the twelfth century.[9] On the other hand, some Catholic writers have thought it necessary to try to deny the existence of such abuses. One interpretation that reconciles this contradiction is that, while there can be no question that Church authorities of the calibre of Robert Grosseteste repeatedly condemned the license of the Feast of Fools in the strongest terms, such firmly rooted customs took centuries to eradicate. It is certain that the practice lent itself to serious abuses, whose nature and gravity varied at different epochs. It should be said that among the thousands of European liturgical manuscripts the occurrence of anything which has to do with the Feast of Fools is extraordinarily rare. It never occurs in the principal liturgical books, the missals and breviaries. There are traces occasionally in a prose or a trope found in a gradual or an antiphonary. It would therefore seem there was little official approval for such extravagances, which were rarely committed to writing.

In order to curb the extremeness of the festivities after the Feast of Fools, on New Year's Day at

Cardinal Odo
, the papal legate in France, wrote to the Chapter of Sens Cathedral demanding that the feast be celebrated with no un-clerical dress and no wreaths of flowers.

End of the Feast

The Feast of Fools was officially forbidden by the

Council of Basel in 1431 and again in a document issued by the theological faculty of the University of Paris in 1444; numerous decrees of lower level provincial councils followed. The Feast of Fools was condemned by early Protestants, and among Catholics it seems that the abuse had largely disappeared by the time of the Council of Trent, though instances of festivals of this kind survived in France as late as 1721, in Amiens, France,[5] and Brussels, Belgium in 1719.[10]

Connections to other holidays

  • Prior to the creation of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, most European nations celebrated New Year's Day on March 25. Since the celebrations of the Feast of Fools generally took place over a week or so, this would cause them to end on April 1. Those who refused to, or forgot to, change to the new calendar system would be ridiculed as April Fools.[11]
  • Due to them all taking place in the post-Christmas season, this festival, the Feast of the Ass, and the Feast of the Circumcision all grew more entangled over the centuries.[6] As a result of fusing with the Feast of the Ass, when the church forbade the festivities from taking place within churches instead of dressing up as high-ranking members of the Church, they instead wore hats to resemble donkey ears.[6]
  • Much of the customs in the Feast of Fools have been incorporated into modern-day Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Halloween.

In popular culture

Victor Hugo recreated an account of a Feast of Fools in his 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. In the novel, it is celebrated on January 6, 1482 (Twelfth Night) and Quasimodo serves as the Pope of Fools. The 1939 film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame opens with the Feast of Fools: Quasimodo is crowned King of Fools. Disney's 1996 animated film version of the novel shows the same incident with the song "Topsy Turvy".

The Feast of Fools and the Church of Rome's efforts to ban it play important roles in Alan Gordon's series of historical novels about the (fictional) Fools' Guild at the turn of the 12th to the 13th centuries. (Not to be confused with the modern Fools Guild.)

Historiography

Possibly as a result of it dying out in the 1700 and possibly as a result of it never spreading as much as other celebrations, there is a lack of research works based specifically upon the Feast of Fools. The first major work was done by Jean Bénigne Lucotte du Tilliot in 1741, titled "Memoires pour servir à l’histoire de la fête des foux: Qui se faisoit autrefois dans plusieurs eglises." [12] The first half of the work was effectively a collection of primary sources related to the feast while the second part of the work focused on Infanterie Dijonnaise, a confraternity that he was trying to prove had its beginnings in the feast.[12] The second major work wouldn't come until 1903, written by E.K Chambers and titled "The Mediaeval Stage."[13] Chambers focused heavily on the feasts potential pagan origins, almost writing off its litigurical origins completely.[12] The last major work was "Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools" done by Max Harris in 2011 and is now considered to be the default resource for information on the feast.[4][12] Harris's work argues against nearly everything Chambers stated, instead claiming that the feast has pagan, Christian, and secular roots, its secular roots still being tied back to religious plays.[4]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-674-28500-2
    .
  2. ^ a b "Feast of Fools | medieval festival | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  3. ^
    OCLC 781613685
    .
  4. ^
    OCLC 732957185
    .
  5. ^ a b c d Gulevich, Tanya (2000-06-01). Encyclopedia of Christmas: nearly 200 alphabetically arranged entries covering all aspects of Christmas ... Michigan: Omnigraphics.
  6. ^ a b c d Thompson, Sue Ellen (1998). Holiday Symbols (1st ed.). Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphics. pp. 125–128.
  7. ^
    JSTOR 770541
    .
  8. S2CID 162977253
    .
  9. ISSN 0038-7134
    .
  10. ISBN 978-90-5356-767-8
    , retrieved 2023-11-08
  11. OCLC 1340160783
    .
  12. ^ a b c d "Feast of Fools". obo. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
  13. ^ Chambers, E.K (1903). The Mediaeval Stage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 274–335.

Sources

  • Arlt, Wulf. Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung. 2 Vols. (Cologne: Arno Volk Verlag, 1970).
  • Arlt, Wulf. 'The Office for the Feast of the Circumcision from Le Puy'. Trans. Lori Kruckenberg, Kelly Landerkin, and Margot E. Fassler. In The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, ed. Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer, 324–43. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
  • Hughes, David G. 1985. 'Another Source for the Beauvais Feast of Fools'. In Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward, ed. Anne Dhu Shapiro and Phyllis Benjamin, 14–31. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Sandon, Nick, ed. The Octave of the Nativity: Essays and Notes on Ten Liturgical Reconstructions for Christmas. (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984).

Further reading

  • Arlt, Wulf. Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung. 2 Vols. (Cologne: Arno Volk Verlag, 1970).
  • Arlt, Wulf. 'The Office for the Feast of the Circumcision from Le Puy'. Trans. Lori Kruckenberg, Kelly Landerkin, and Margot E. Fassler. In The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages, ed. Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer, 324–43. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Fools, Feast of" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 615–616.
  • Hughes, David G. 1985. 'Another Source for the Beauvais Feast of Fools'. In Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward, ed. Anne Dhu Shapiro and Phyllis Benjamin, 14–31. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Sandon, Nick, ed. The Octave of the Nativity: Essays and Notes on Ten Liturgical Reconstructions for Christmas. (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984).

External links

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