Medieval Clown Masses

[Era Might]

So in the course of reading something I found a reference to a group called the Goliards, who appear to be the forefathers of Clown and Star Wars Masses, if Wikipedia is to be believed

 

 

 

The Goliards were a group of clergy who wrote bibulous, satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were mainly clerical students at the universities of France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the Crusades and financial abuses, expressing themselves through song, poetry and performance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliard

 

 

...

The satires were meant to mock and lampoon the Church. For example, at St. Remy, the goliards went to mass in procession each trailing a herring on a string along the ground, the game being to step on the herring in front and keep your own herring from being trod on. In some districts, there was the celebration of the ass, in which a donkey dressed in a silly costume was led to the chancel rail where a cantor chanted a song of praise. When he paused, the audience would respond: "He Haw, Sire Ass, He haw!". The University of Paris complained:

"Priests and clerks.. dance in the choir dressed as women.. they sing wanton songs. They eat black pudding at the altar itself, while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play dice on the altar. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap throughout the church, without a blush of their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby carriages and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and with scurrilous and unchaste words."

 

Edited June 21, 2013 by Era Might

[arfink]

I think you may be referring to the feast of the ass, which was a real local feast day in France, so far as I can tell, and was not meant to be a satire at all, but was a relatively popular devotion about the flight into Egypt.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Ass

 

[CatherineM]

The herring thing sounds like a Monty Python sketch.

[Gabriela]

So, is this for real? Or did some anti-Catholics swarm Wiki?

[Lil Red]

do you want to know what i thought of when i read the topic title? people dressing up like medieval clowns at Masses today. rofl. :hehe: 

[Era Might]

So, is this for real? Or did some anti-Catholics swarm Wiki?

 

It was the middle ages, I wouldn't rule anything out.

[Socrates]

There was sacrilege, dissent, and stupidity in medieval times, as there is today.

 

Really, nothing new under the sun.

 

 

 

Edited June 21, 2013 by Socrates