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The World Upside Down: The Festival of Fools and the Boy Bishop

Nico Carlucci

The cold winter also comes with the first snow falls. The days Christmas "come" and follow each other slowly. I do not speak or their symbolism or meanings of concrete that accompany them. Annie Lennox recreates, now, their music and celebrates them in the androgyny of a Beauty "divine."

Claude Levi-Strauss, however, long ago, wrote of a "Father Christmas executed" (Sellerio, 2002) on the eve of a globalization that was, first of all, painful end of cultures.

I see the crisis of the institutions and politics in Italy, the fall of the euro and the eye of Big Brother moving forward.

turn their lives is the music the passage of time. And on the screen appear the following day of the Christmas holidays of pagan origin in the Middle Ages come within the walls of churches. Among them I find the Feast of Fools and ceremonies of the "Boy Bishop" (EK Chambers' The Medieval Stage, Oxford, 1903).

The first belonged to religious poor and low-ranking: peasants and petty bourgeoisie. It was a 'chance to rest, but also to ridicule the sacred rites, long and tedious. Through it we see for a few days, the deterioration of the mighty and the exaltation of the poor.

The Feast of Fools seemed to have originated from the traditions of the Kalends of Roman and Celtic or Teutonic pagan festivals: "During the ceremonies, the priests and officials wear masks monster, dancing in the chorus wearing women's clothing or jesters. Shameless sing songs. They eat sausages on the side of the altar and playing dice during the mass. (A letter from the Faculty of Theology in Paris dating back to 1445).

That is the Feast of Fools, which speaks of "bishops" or "archbishops" unbalanced, with their hats and sticks pastoral, ultimately, is the equivalent of that fake king that James G. Frazer highlighted in many festivals and is also found in the Saturnalia.

And some days the world seems upside down: the exaltation of the lower ranks, animal masks and disguises in women's clothes.

And 'what happened in Europe in the fifteenth century, in the churches of Bourges, Sens and Beuvais where they sang a hymn semicomico curious, the "Prose of the donkey."

But it was France the country par excellence of this feast of Fools. The custom was widespread in Bohemia and Germany.

With the Reformation it was denounced and prohibited. Against the Feast of Fools also ruled the Council of Basel in 1435. But the people liked that it was difficult to remove it immediately.

the "Boy Bishop"

In the tenth century, a major party was also that of boys in the days of the Innocents, December 28. The protagonist is the "Boy Bishop", chosen by his fellow singer in the choir. He put the cope, he had the pastoral staff and gave the "blessings". Along with the "Boy Bishop", other guys wore the clothes of the deacons and archdeacons. It lacked, well, respect the high office of the institutions of the Church of the Middle Ages.

The figures from the "Boy Bishop" This is booklets in English, French and German.

What was done with the complicity of his companions was part of what we, today, in a different way, are the "school holidays" of the Christmas period, a "pause" that interrupted their holidays daily time. The celebrations were held outdoors.

On the day of the Innocents "Boy Bishop" riding a horse to give blessings to the inhabitants of his city.

His election took place on December 5 the eve of St. Nicholas, protector of children. He was then called "Bishop Nicola ", in fact, that" he would say Mass "in the days of Eve" and the "controlled".

With the Reformation his figure was abolished even though as the Feast of Fools survives for a long time in popular culture, in different parts of Europe until the advent of modern times.

And since the story is made up of "long duration", many schoolchildren still watch religiously West the Feast of St. Nicholas, their patron. A Curry-Yeovill, for example, in Sommersetshire every year the "boys of Nicola" bring a barrel of good beer in the church where is their school and burst into the room of the Master.

Here, I wanted to tell a story of "Christmas" when times were different when playing with a world turned upside down because what was life was changed. And today? The Emperor is naked ", but, still resist the fearful conformism of many contemporary Italian together with the institutions that represent them.