The Feast of Fools

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

Fools, The Feast of. The most popular of the annual festivals at which the Catholics of the Middle Ages burst the shell of the "simple piety" with which it is customary to credit them and indulged in incredible licence and profanation of their cathedrals and churches. So many historical writers now pretend to clear "the soul of the Middle Ages" from Rationalist and Protestant "libels" of the last century, and insist that the beautiful cathedrals and the persecution (at the demand of princes and peoples, Catholics say) of Jews and heretics prove the depth of their faith, that an entirely false version of such institutions as the Roman Church and the basis of its power is widely accepted. This is achieved by suppressing features of mediaeval life (general sexual licence, cruelty, barbaric law, etc.) which are essential to an understanding of the period and for a correct view of the social evolution of Europe. One of these features which is now so generally ignored that it seems incredible was the grant of the use of cathedrals and churches on certain days for vulgar, sacrilegious, and often indecent pageants and festivals in which the clergy usually and hilariously took part. Cardinal Baronius, the father of Catholic history, tells us in his Annales Ecclesiastici (1588, year 956) that these extraordinary orgies were introduced into Christian churches by the tenth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, Theophylactus, whose depravity of life he describes very candidly. It is material to remember that the Greek Church, from which the contagion spread, had developed in a world that had not been corrupted by the Teutonic barbarians who are blamed for so much in Europe. From the foundation of Constantinople the prelates had been all-powerful, yet the Byzantine Empire [see] had in moral respects fallen as low as Europe. Theophylactus, a prince-prelate of royal blood, "turned the cathedral into a theatre and the episcopal palace into a place of debauch." The sacred building, says the pious Baronius, was polluted by "Satanic dances" and "songs from brothels," and the practice spread over Christendom. As the festival was held at the beginning of the New Year, we see the influence of the old Roman Saturnalia; and Baronius quotes a successor of Theophylactus as witness that the revels still continued in the twelfth century in the Greek Church.
      By this time several such festivals were annually celebrated in Europe [Abbot of Unreason; Ass, Feast of the; etc.] from North Germany to Spain. The inventory of the treasures of York Minster, in 1530, included a bishop's mitre and ring for the Feast of Fools, which was commonly held some day in the week after Christmas. France, the land of stately cathedrals, was the chief centre; and it was held not only in the great cathedrals (Paris, Chartres, Sens, Rheims, etc.), but in ordinary churches and in the chapels attached to monasteries and nunneries (the nuns masquerading in male dress). It is fortunate that in the case of this festival a French (Catholic) archaeologist of the eighteenth century, M. du Tilliot, devoted many years to the collection of records of the celebration of it in French cities before the last traces of it were obliterated, and his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la Fete des Foux (1741), which describes also a number of extraordinarily licentious societies which grew out of the festival, is thoroughly documented and reliable. He quotes Dr. Beleth and other witnesses to the celebration in Paris in the twelfth century; Pope Innocent III denouncing the revels in the thirteenth century; a very grave letter of the University of Paris to the prelates of France, in 1444, protesting against the profanation of the cathedral and describing the sordid scenes; Dom Marlot, historian of the Church of Rheims, describing it as it was held in that and a dozen other famous cathedrals; and innumerable witnesses and documents down to the seventeenth century, when, we learn, nuns still maintained the festival in their chapels. In spite of the occasional protests of a few devout prelates, the cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris, which almost impresses a modern sceptic with a feeling of awe, was polluted every year for at least 250 years with the Feast of Fools and other mockeries of the ritual.
      From the letter of the doctors of the University and other sources Du Tilliot gives us a short account of the proceedings. A mock election of a bishop or archbishop took place in the cathedral, and this man presided over the burlesque of a Mass that followed. Deacons and priests, masked and in feminine clothes or fancy dress, took part. They "danced in the choir and sang obscene songs." They played dice and ate sausages before the altar while the caricature of the Mass proceeded, and when it was over there was a general dance and orgy in the church, during which "many stripped themselves." The behaviour of the people, who sang the indecent popular songs of the hour, is left to our imagination and lays no strain upon it. The priests were then put into filthy carts in the square before the cathedral and driven round the city. They were pelted with ordure while they played cards, "made obscene gestures," and bandied lewd jokes with the crowd. Men of notorious life dressed as priests or monks, and prostitutes clad as nuns mixed with the clergy. This kind of thing took place every year during centuries in, as precise testimony shows, the great cathedrals of France as well as in parochial and conventual churches, and in places as far apart as Cologne and Toledo. It was a general custom. Like so many other scandals of mediaeval Church-life it had, as far as the clergy were concerned, to come to an end when Protestantism spread, but the Catholic laity continued to enjoy the day of public licence. Du Tilliot includes a number of drawings - not imaginary, but taken from seals, banners, etc., of the time - in his work, and one of these, a copy of a banner used in the procession at Dijon, represents two men perpetrating an act of sexual perversity in the public street which equals anything that Martial describes occurring in private in ancient Rome, or that can be found in the weird catalogue of vice in Havelock Ellis or Krafft-Ebing. Louis XIII, who was no puritan, had to suppress the public orgies in Dijon and other French cities in 1630-nearly seven centuries after Archbishop Theophylactus - but Du Tilliot says that they were not entirely discontinued. Catholic apologists now plead that what they call the demoralization of our time is due to the destruction of the authority of their Church, and urge us to return to the Ages of Faith. If any reader be tempted to think that this was a very exceptional feature of mediaeval life, with some explanation which eludes us, let him read also the articles Baths; Chivalry; Monasteries; Prostitution; Renaissance; etc. A balanced view of the extraordinary age will be attempted under the heading Middle Ages.

 

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Scanning, HTML Rae West. First upload 2024-08-17