Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools (review)

Abstract

Max Harris. Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 322. $49.95. In Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools Max Harris sweeps away the generally held view of the Feast of Fools as one of misrule, burlesque, and excess. This misunderstanding based on faulty nineteenth-century French scholarship has held sway in large part because of the influence of E. K. Chambers. While granting that The Medieval Stage as a collection of data has yet to be replaced, Harris rejects Chambers's stereotype of the Feast of Fools, rightly critical of linguistic howlers (ullulando translated as howling instead of wailing) and of his penchant for generalizing from inadequate evidence. For misrule Harris substitutes order. He does so by focusing on the liturgy of the Circumcision, introducing readers to the scripted additions (23) to the canonical hours in cathedrals and collegiate chapels for New Year's Day. Harris begins by defining the word fool scripturally, explicating the deposuit clause of the Magnificat sung daily at Vespers: Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles (He has put down the powerful from their seat and raised up the lowly). A literal interpretation of this clause underlay the liturgical innovations for the Circumcision, the special feast of the subdeacons, as it did for the choirboys on their feast of the Holy Innocents. At First Vespers subdeacons assumed roles normally filled by the cantor or a deacon in the recitation of the Hours, relinquishing these at Second Vespers, followed by a festive New Year's Day collation in their honor. Such role reversal was sacred folly, not misrule. Point by point Harris deconstructs the old history by meticulously analyzing the documentary evidence. The sources fall into three categories: liturgical texts for the Office of the Circumcision; denunciations, ranging from those of Innocent the III and his legates to the Council of Basel, and the theological faculty of the University of Paris, as well as rebuttals from cathedral and collegiate chapters stoutly defending their feast; and inventories citing paraphernalia for the feast, the rod of office and copes for the subdeacons, which were already in poor condition when cited in the 1225 inventory at St. Patti's London. Documentary evidence for the Feast of Fools begins in northern France in the second half of the twelfth century, the phrase festum stultorum first used by the Parisian liturgist John Beleth (1160-64). The earliest recorded innovations are preserved in an ordinal from Chalons-en-Champagne (1151) and in the decree from the bishop of Paris (1198), but they pale in comparison with the elaborate office composed for Sens by Peter of Corbeil (1200-1222). Harris summarizes these rites in detail. His conclusions cannot be gainsaid: these were well-ordered liturgical rites enriched with complex musical compositions. (Presumably, Harris selected the image from the Tres riches heures for the dust jacket because the expressions on the faces of the choir members illustrate how challenging the music was.) As for denunciations, Harris demonstrates that the Feast of Fools was used as a whipping boy for a number of clerical infractions. Early official complaints relied on generalization rather than specific accusation, but in the first half of the fifteenth century attacks intensified, beginning with Jean Gerson and culminating in rabid denunciations in 1445 emanating from the theological faculty at the University of Paris. In a chapter devoted to the Paris letter, Harris concludes that the letter was a rant based on error and secondhand complaints about riotous behavior in the city streets on New Year's Day rumored to have taken place in church. Harris sounds very much like a well-briefed debater demolishing the arguments of the opposition. Like the best historians, however, he is also a very good storyteller with an eye for fascinating facts and a knack for fleshing out character in the acrimonious disputes between bishops and their cathedral and collegiate chapters defending their long-accustomed rites for New Year's Day. …