4/14/2023 0 Comments Lord of misrule saturnalia![]() In the Tudor period, the Lord of Misrule (sometimes called the Abbot of Misrule or the King of Misrule) is mentioned a number of times by contemporary documents referring to revels both at court and among the ordinary people. On the Continent it was suppressed by the Council of Basel in 1431, but was revived in some places from time to time, even as late as the eighteenth century. ![]() This custom was abolished by Henry VIII in 1541, restored by the Catholic Mary I and again abolished by Protestant Elizabeth I, though here and there it lingered on for some time longer. ![]() The Church in England held a similar festival involving a boy bishop. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying. In England, the Lord of Misrule – known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason and in France as the Prince des Sots – was an officer appointed by lot during Christmastide to preside over the Feast of Fools. Image: A miniature illumination from a French fourteenth century book depicting a Fête de Fous (Feast of Fools) scene.In the spirit of misrule, identified by the grinning masks in the corners, medieval floor tiles from the Derby Black Friary show a triumphant hunting hare mounted on a dog. The Romans understood this, our medieval ancestors understood this. Out of that chaos is born the new year, and order returns along with the return to ordinary time after Christmas. The old year is dying, disintegrating into chaos. So from whence comes all this chaos? One of the most beautiful things about the Twelve Days of Christmas is a mathematical thing: Half of those twelve days fall in the old year, half in the new. It was often the person who found a coin in his pudding who was elected lord of the revels. The practice of baking a coin in a pudding or a charm in a cake also harkens back to these ancient celebrations. The mummers and morris dancers, guised in ribbons and bells and strange costumes, are direct descendants of the Lord of Misrule. The mummer’s plays and morris dancers are mostly an English phenomenon, but mummer’s plays are also popular in Philadelphia at the new year. Some remnants you might find from the Feast of Fools, however, are the mummer’s plays and morris dancers that make their rounds in villages at this time of year. We are not a people given to chaos, when you get right down to it. Not much of this aspect of Christmas survives today. The Lord of Misrule reigns until Twelfth Night, as Christmas comes to a close. His charge, actually, was to act as foolishly as possible. ![]() He might be a servant in ordinary time, but now, during Christmastide, he was lord of the revelry and he reigned without fear of retribution. Much like the election of the Boy Bishop that we discussed in yesterday’s chapter of the Book of Days, the Lord of Misrule was usually someone who would not typically be in a position of power. It was the Lord of Misrule who was elected to reign over the Christmas revelry. The chaos of Saturnalia became the Feast of Fools, and it continued on with great conviviality through the medieval period, which was, perhaps, its heyday. As Rome became Christianized, celebrations that proved difficult for the Church to subvert just became Christianized and so the birth of Christ was assigned to the winter solstice and Saturnalia, with all of its festivity and gift-giving, became Christmas. It was a time for disguises and games and in that ceremonial reversal of the normal order, slaves were waited upon by their masters, mock kings were crowned, and general chaos ruled the land. A big part of Saturnalia was the abandonment of the rules that the Romans loved so dearly. It goes back to the feast that is probably at the heart of most of our Christmas customs: the Roman Saturnalia, a winter solstice celebration that predates Christmas by many centuries and that spread throughout Europe with the Roman empire. Here we have a Christmas custom that is rarely practiced today (though perhaps should be) and one that is definitely pagan in nature, this is a custom that goes back much further than the birth of Christ. Tradition calls for the ceremonial reversal today of the normal order of things.
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