Feast of Fools

I took a Medieval and Renaissance music history class this past quarter.  This is the kind of music that captures my heart, and had it not been for the worries about tests, the whole experience would’ve been sheer bliss.  Except for the stupid text book, that is. 

This book, plus volumes 1 and 2 of the CDs and anthologies come out to the wallet-busting price of $500+, so for that price, I’m expecting brilliance on the order of 24k gold.  Well, this particular book has this kind of gem sprinkled throughout, it would seem:

“But the spirit often moved Hildegard to write melismatic exclamations, such as we see on “O” and the thirty-one note melisma on “numquam” (“never”).  In fact, many of Hildegard’s chants begin with the exclamation “O”, a powerful emotional expression that suggests that feminine will and sexuality had been repressed and were now seeking release through music.”

Gag me.  Perhaps they're unfamiliar with the "O Antiphons". (Or perhaps they'd just have something dicey to say about them.)

How do they come up with this stuff?

So I learned really fast to disregard some of the editorial comments in this book.  Then a few chapters later, I came across a paragraph that referred to an event known as the “Feast of Fools”. 

“For the medieval clergy, most of the fun of Christmas came, not on Christmas day but during the following week, when the services of the church were handed over to the younger clergy to celebrate in place of their superiors.  The most raucous revels came on Circumcision (1 January), also known as the Feast of Fools, when the youngest of the adult clerics took charge of the church.  Standing in the choir and at the high altar, the youths engaged in a blasphemous mockery of the liturgical service.  Some dressed as women, others threw bones across the choir aisle, while the “celebrant” lit an old shoe and censed the altar with its smoke……”

When I read this description, I hoped it was another of these stupid assertions that the authors were making, so I looked it up in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

And now I more fully understand why Jesus asked St. Francis (who lived during this time) to “rebuild My church.”  Although the exact nature of this “Feast of Fools” activity is disputed, the fact that it existed (and was addressed by the Church) is unfortunately not.

Sort of puts the state of today’s Church in perspective.  And also drives home the point that there was NEVER a Golden Age of the Church.  We humans tend to be a miserable lot and have a singular talent for screwing everything up.  But He loves us anyway; amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?