thumb|19th-century depiction of a medieval [[boy bishop, attended by his canons]]

The Feast of Fools or Festival of Fools (Latin: festum fatuorum, festum stultorum) was a feast day on 1 January celebrated by the clergy in Europe during the Middle Ages, initially in Southern France, but later more widely. During the Feast, participants would elect either a false Bishop, false Archbishop, or false Pope. Ecclesiastical ritual would also be parodied, and higher and lower-level clergy would change places. Over the course of a week, the ceremonies would be led by different people in positions of power within the church. On 26 December, St. Stephen's Day, the deacons led the ceremonies. The sub-priests (or vicars) were in charge on 27 December, St. John's Day, the choirboys on 28 December, Holy Innocents’ Day, and the sub-deacons on the first of January, the Feast of the Circumcision. There is some disagreement on whether the term Feast of Fools was originally used to refer to the collection of days The word "fool" is used as a synonym for humble, as was common in the 11th century, rather than the modern use that treats it as another term for clown or jester.

Similar to modern day celebrations like Carnival and Mardi Gras, dancing in a provocative style, wearing masks, and the community being generally more allowing of obscene acts was common place.]]

The Feast of Fools and the subversive traditions associated with it were the object of condemnations of the medieval Church, starting as early as the twelfth century. On the other hand, some Catholic writers have thought it necessary to try to deny the existence of such abuses. One interpretation that reconciles this contradiction is that, while there can be no question that Church authorities of the calibre of Robert Grosseteste repeatedly condemned the license of the Feast of Fools in the strongest terms, such firmly rooted customs took centuries to eradicate. It is certain that the practice lent itself to serious abuses, whose nature and gravity varied at different epochs. It should be said that among the thousands of European liturgical manuscripts the occurrence of anything which has to do with the Feast of Fools is extraordinarily rare. It never occurs in the principal liturgical books, the missals and breviaries. There are traces occasionally in a prose or a trope found in a gradual or an antiphonary. It would therefore seem there was little official approval for such extravagances, which were rarely committed to writing.

In order to curb the extremeness of the festivities after the Feast of Fools, on New Year's Day at Notre-Dame de Paris in the twelfth century, the "Lord of Misrule" or "Precentor Stultorum" was restrained, so that he was to be allowed to intone the prose "Laetemur gaudiis", and to wield the precentor's staff, but this was before the first Vespers of the feast, not during it, though the festival was not entirely banned. During the second Vespers, it had been the custom that the precentor of the fools should be deprived of his staff when the verse in the Magnificat, Deposuit potentes de sede ("He has put down the mighty from their seat") was sung. Hence the feast was often known as the "Festum 'Deposuit'". Eudes de Sully allowed the staff to be taken at that point from the mock precentor but laid down that the verse "Deposuit" not be repeated more than five times. There was a similar case of a legitimized Feast of Fools at Sens about 1220, where the whole text of the office has survived. There are many proses, and interpolations (farsurae) added to the ordinary liturgy, but nothing much unseemly. This prose, or conductus, was not a part of the office, but only a preliminary to Vespers. In 1245 Cardinal Odo, the papal legate in France, wrote to the Chapter of Sens Cathedral demanding that the feast be celebrated with no un-clerical dress and no wreaths of flowers.

End of the Feast

The Feast of Fools was officially forbidden by the Council of Basel in 1431 and again in a document issued by the theological faculty of the University of Paris in 1444; numerous decrees of lower level provincial councils followed. The Feast of Fools was condemned by early Protestants, and among Catholics it seems that the abuse had largely disappeared by the time of the Council of Trent, though instances of festivals of this kind survived in France as late as 1721, in Amiens, France,

Connections to other holidays

  • Prior to the creation of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, most European nations celebrated New Year's Day on 25 March. Since the celebrations of the Feast of Fools generally took place over a week or so, this would cause them to end on 1 April. Those who refused to, or forgot to, change to the new calendar system would be ridiculed as April Fools.
  • Due to them all taking place in the post-Christmas season, this festival, the Feast of the Ass, and the Feast of the Circumcision all grew more entangled over the centuries. The second major work wouldn't come until 1903, written by E. K. Chambers and titled The Mediaeval Stage. Chambers focused heavily on the feast's potential pagan origins, almost writing off its liturgical origins.