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Beastly Yet Lofty Burdens: the Donkey and the Subdeacon in the Middle Ages

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Beastly Yet Lofty Burdens: the Donkey and the Subdeacon in the Middle Ages Beastly yet Lofty Burdens: the Donkey and the Subdeacon in the Middle Ages Dongmyung Ahn CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRADUATE CENTER British Library, Egerton 2615, un manuscrit de Beauvais, datant du XIIIe siècle, contient l’Office de la Circoncision, aussi appelé asinaria festa ou Fête des Fous, et le drame liturgique Le Jeu de Daniel. Cette fête, dédiée au sous-diacre, commence par le chant processionnel Orientis partibus, le chant de l’âne. Ce chant est repris lors de la procession des sous-diacres avant la lecture de l’Evangile. Dans le Jeu de Daniel, les personnages babyloniens, identifiables comme des “sous-diacres déguisés”, chantent un air extrait de l’Orientis partibus. Ce rapprochement du sous-diacre et de l’âne fait ressortir certains paradoxes propres à la doctrine chrétienne. La confrontation du rôle de l’âne (dans la Bible et dans les commen- taires bibliques), et de la place du sous-diacre (dans les commentaires litur- giques et le rituel de l’ordination), met en scène le contact du sacré et du pro- fane. L’âne est le seul animal qui dans la Bible accède à la Rédemption. C’est le seul animal à se voir doter de la parole après la Chute, et c’est aussi à dos d’âne que le Christ entreprend ses voyages les plus significatifs. De même, le statut du sous-diacre dans l’Église médiévale est double. Il est à la fois infé- rieur et supérieur dans la hiérarchie ecclésiastique par son rôle liturgique et ses attributions cléricales. L’âne est le proto-sous-diacre, le sous-diacre, l’âne “clérical” et la Fête des Fous met en scène la relation métaphorique entre ce personnage et cette bête. Laisser incarner la vérité fondamentale du christianisme par le sous-diacre et l’âne, ce couple si invraisemblable, est à la fois radical et sub- versif. On New Year’s Eve in thirteenth-century Beauvais, the Feast of Fools commenced outside the cathedral doors with the procession of a donkey to the chanting of the conductus Orientis partibus, the prose of the Ass (British 146 Dongmyung Ahn Library, MS Egerton 2615). This feast, part of the Christmas Octave, was dedicated to the subdeacons or “fools,” the lower clerics responsible for the Eucharistic vessels.1 Donkeys were no strangers to liturgical events in the medieval church (as witnessed by crèche scenes and Palm Sunday processionals), but the hon- oring of the donkey with the asinaria festa (Feast of the Ass), as this donkey processional was known, was curious. This was not a humble, burden- bearing donkey but rather a donkey on a lofty mission to Bethlehem. The opening stanzas praise the ass for its strength, beauty, and speed.2 The fourth and part of the fifth stanzas briefly return the ass to its beastly level, bearing heavy burdens and chewing on thistle. In the fifth stanza, the ass remarkably engages in a Christ-like activity, the separating of the chaff from the wheat. This task was precisely what John the Baptist declared was Christ’s mission on earth.3 To close, the ass assumes a priestly role, saying “Amen” albeit with a mouth stuffed with grass, and overlooking past sins. Crossing the boundary between the human and the animal was not something looked upon favorably by medieval church leaders.4 Peter Chrys- ologos (5th century) pointedly spoke against those “who have made them- selves equal to beasts” and “put themselves on a level with asses” during the Kalends, the secular New Year’s festivities that featured, among other things, masquerading with animal masks.5 Isidore of Seville (7th century) protested that “even the faithful assume monstrous appearances and are changed into the character of wild animals” during the Kalends.6 The Feast of Fools, cele- brated on the Circumcision (January 1) in Beauvais, was intended as the 1 During the Christmas octave, the week following Christmas, the liturgical calendar featured feasts devoted to various groups in the church—December 26 for the dea- cons, December 27 for the priests, December 28 for the acolytes and choirboys, and January 1 for the subdeacons. 2 Full text and translation appear in Appendix 1. 3 See Luke 3:17 and Matthew 3:12. 4 Pacian of Barcelona (ca. 310-390) condemns the practice of “‘cervulum facere’ (doing the stag)” in his treatise Cervus (Stag). PL, 13:1081-1090. Trans. Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 17. Ambrose of Milan, Bishop of Ravenna, (ca. 339-97) connects this ritual to the Kalends of January. PL, 14:896-850. Trans. Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter in Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 29. 5 Harris, “A Reassessment of the Feast of Fools: A Rough and Holy Liturgy” in Socie- té Internationale pour l’étude du Théatre Médiéval (2007): 18. 6 Harris, 21-22. See also Twycross and Carpenter, 24-39. .
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