A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity Between the Clerical and the Secular

A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular MA Thesis History: Europe 1000-1800 Thesis Supervisor: Dr. p.c.m. Peter Hoppenbrouwers Due Date: 31/08/2019 Number of Credits: 20 Number of Words: 18.513 Name: Sokratis Vekris Student Number: 2254379 Address: Vasileiou 8, 15237, Athens, Greece Telephone number: +30 6948078458 E-mail address: [email protected] 1 A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular Table of Contents 1. Introduction p. 3 - 11 2. What Counts as Feast of Fools? p. 12 - 28 2.1. Tracing the Origins p. 12 - 14 2.2. Essential Features p. 14 - 19 2.3. Regional Variations p. 19 - 23 2.4. Contemporary Perception of the “Feast of Fools” p. 24 – 28 3. Lay and Clerical Interaction p. 29 - 48 3.1. Inviting the Laity p. 29 - 37 3.2. Clerical Participation in the Parallel Lay Festivities p. 38 - 48 4. Conclusion p. 49 5. Bibliography p. 50 - 53 2 A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular Introduction At the end of the eleventh century various regions of Northern France witnessed the emergence of what is arguably the most controversial ecclesiastical liturgy in the history of Catholic Christianity: The Feast of Fools. The first surviving notice of the feast comes from a learned theologian of Paris named Joannes Belethus (1135-1182), written in the period between 1160 and 1164. Belethus remarks that the Feast of Fools was the last of four consecutive festivities held on the days following Christmas. These festivities were special days of celebration, which honored and exalted the lower ranks of the clergy and took place inside the medieval cathedrals and collegiate churches. St. Stephens’s Day, December 26th, was the day claimed by the deacons; St. John the Evangelist’s Day, December 27th, by the priests; Holy Innocents, December 28th, by the choristers; and the day of the Circumcision, January 1st, by the subdeacons.1 Belethus and various other theologians of his era appropriate the day of Circumcision as being the equivalent of what we now know as the Feast of Fools. The evidence indicates that the rationale behind these celebrations was initially a purely religious one; in other words, the Feast of Fools ‘took its name not from fools who rebel against God but from fools who, like Christ, are loved by God for their lowly status’.2 The same sources suggest that since the Feast of Fools was conceived within a ecclesiastical framework, it was similarly conducted under the most pious and solemn terms. It must be noted, however, that the overwhelming majority of evidence discussing the Feast of Fools during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, direct us to an utterly different interpretation: it reveals the Feast of Fools as a pagan-like ritual and as a celebration in which all kind of profanities were uncontrollably ubiquitous. The storyline of the latter interpretation has typically described the feast along the following lines: priests and clerks delivered gibberish sermons, they wore masks and costumes, they ate sausages and drank excessively, they played games, and they staged improper performances outside of the church. It is the aim of this thesis, therefore, to bridge the gap between the contrasting descriptions that historians currently have at their disposal. The main argument of this paper is that the ambiguity surrounding the Feast of Fools cannot be understood without paying close attention to 1 Mackenzie Neil, “Boy into Bishop: A Festive Role Reversal”, In History Today, Vol. 37, No.12 (Dec., 1987), ProQuest, p. 11 2 Harris Max, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (New York: 2009), Cornell University Press, p.68 3 A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular the integral embeddedness of the clerical and the secular worlds. To be sure, this is not to necessarily say that the Feast of Fools was everywhere rowdy and riotous or that it maintains a continuity with Roman idolatry. Rather, I propose that if we read the sources on their own light, it becomes clear that the contemporary authorities were aware and worried of the reciprocal influence that the clerical and the secular cultures had upon each other. The Feast of Fools has for obvious reasons attracted the attention of a number of scholars coming from a diversity of academic disciplines. Nonetheless, few attempts have been made to deal with the festivity in its exclusive, concrete, and historical details. In 1903, the distinguished Shakespearean scholar, E.K. Chambers (1866-1954), put forward the introductory markers of the history of Feast of Fools. In his book, The Mediaeval Stage, Chambers places his discussion of the Feast of Fools under the rubric “folk drama” and thereby argues that the festivity must be viewed as ‘an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock’.3 The author, consequently, suggests that the Feast of Fools must be conceived as a remnant of pagan traditions that had interpenetrated the Christian domain. The British literary critic based all of his arguments on the most widespread condemnations that the feast met and finally proposed that ‘the ruling idea of the feast is the inversion of status, and the performance, inevitably burlesque, by the inferior clergy of functions properly belonging to their betters’.4 For a long time to follow Chamber’s interpretation was destined to dominate the historiography of our topic. Assuming that Chamber’s factual analysis was valid, numerous scholars incorporated the Feast of Fools to their anthropological, sociological, and cultural analyses. This development gave birth to some fruitful and insightful results; the most notable being the seminal exegeses given by the literary critic and cultural theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895- 1975). In his book Rabelais and his World Bakhtin discussed what he called “the culture of folk humor” as a means to get closer to the meanings of Rabelais’ (1494-1553) novels. In doing so, he regarded Carnival as the supreme expression of lay culture, holding the ability to emphasize ‘the obscenity of the “images of the material bodily lower stratum” and the subversive function of the festival, its emphasis on “degradation” or “uncrowning”’.5 Needless to say that Bakhtin, adhering to the widespread depictions of the Feast of Fools, traced the origins of the “culture of folk humor” back to this particular festivity. The Russian scholar, therefore, suggested that the Feast of Fools 3 Chambers E.K., The Mediaeval Stage (London: 1903), vol. I., Oxford University Press, p. 325 4 Ibid, p. 325 5 Burke Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Surrey: 2009), Ashgate Publishing Limited, p. 260 4 A Reappraisal of the Feast of Fools: Interaction and Reciprocity between the Clerical and the Secular originally held a ‘fully legitimate character, it later became only semi legal, until it was banned and it continued to exist in the streets and in taverns, where it was absorbed into carnival merriment and amusements’.6 Bakhtin’s inquiry has undoubtedly opened new directions concerning the significance of carnivalesque symbols and imagery, but his book lacks historical accuracy and has also too easily overstressed a division between the serious, hierarchical world of the Church and the comic, disorderly world of the laity. Various other anthropologists and historians have similarly followed this strain of thought and have thereby offered their own interpretations as to why these practices were held and preserved in a Christian world that has otherwise displayed great caution in suppressing radical and profane behaviors. None of these scholars have directly confronted the conventional storyline of the Feast of Fools but all of them have been inclined to comment on its symbolic meaning and social implications. The eminent cultural historian, Peter Burke (1937), for example, states that ‘one could hardly wish for a more literal enactment of the world turned upside down’, suggesting that the Feast of Fools is the perfect example of popular carnivalesque customs infiltrating its ways into the Christian world.7 Anthropologists like Victor Turner (1920-1983) and Max Gluckman (1911-1975) have coined terms such as “safety-valve” and “rituals of rebellion” as a means to uncover and explicate the reasons behind the emergence and sustenance of phenomena like the Feast of Fools.8 In other words, they have proposed that similar festivities, visible in other cultures and civilizations as well, allow the population to temporarily decompress the inherent tensions of a hierarchical society.9 In brief, the interpretations related to the Feast of Fools tradition can be broadly classified in the following three groups: historical, anthropological, and structural/phenomenological.10 Chamber’s approach falls under the first category, Turner’s and Gluckman’s in the second, whereas Bakhtin’s falls under the third one. For the purposes of this thesis, however, there is no need to elaborate on all of them. Since E.K. Chamber’s Mediaeval Stage ‘tales of clerical excess have grown more outrageous almost with each retelling’.11 More recent studies, however, have begun to doubt the 6 Bakhtin Mikhail, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: 1968) The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, p. 74 7 Burke Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Surrey: 2009), Ashgate Publishing Limited, p. 272-273 8 Turner Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (London: 1969), Routledge & Kegan Paul / Gluckman Max, Custom and Conflict in Africa (Oxford:1956), Basil Backwell 9 Although both Turner and Gluckman studied cases coming from the African region, their theories have been applied to explain the sustenance of Carnival-related phenomena in Europe as well.

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