Description
Book SynopsisThe real history and meaning of the Feast of Fools—usually misunderstood as a sacrilegious festival.
Trade ReviewMax Harris has responded to the challenge laid down by Aimé Chérest more than 150 years ago, to produce fresh ideas on the Feast of Fools... . Sacred Folly is a splendid response to Chérest's challenge, clear headed, well structured, based on very wide reading and sensitively handled material. It deserves to be widely read.
-- Jean Dunbabin * Medium Aevum *
The Feast of Fools has provided modern imaginations with a suggestive picture of medieval clerical dissolution. Popular fiction has found the picture irresistible.... What Max Harris's stunning new book, Sacred Folly, reveals is that the phenomenon has been grossly misrepresented in scholarly literature, too. Harris dismantles prevailing accounts of the Feast of Fools piece by piece, disentangling the historical evidence from the imaginative projections of generations of scholars.... Sacred Folly puts the historical discussion of the Feast of Fools on an entirely new footing.
-- William Robins * The Journal of Medieval Latin *
Table of ContentsPrologue: A Letter from ParisPart I. Before the Feast of Fools
1. The Kalends of January
2. The Holy City of Byzantium
3. Roman Games
4. Herod in Germany
5. Tossing a Ball in a French CathedralPart II. Shaping the Feast of Fools
6. The Feast of the Subdeacons
7. The Feast of the Ass
8. The Complaints of Innocent III
9. The Office of the Circumcision
10. The Plays of Daniel and JosephPart III. Supporting the Feast of Fools
11. Chapter Support
12. Rumors of Disorder
13. A Spirited Defense
14. Youth Groups, Coal Dust, and Cow Dung
15. Outside FrancePart IV. Suppressing the Feast of Fools
16. Jean Gerson and the Auxerre Affair
17. Trouble in St.-Omer and Noyon
18. Troyes, Sens, and the Council of Basel
19. Rereading the Letter from Paris
20. A Durable FeastPart V. Beyond the Feast of Fools
21. Festive Societies
22. Innocents and Fools
23. King of the Breeches
24. Our Lady of the Trellis
25. Mother FoolEpilogue: Orange Peel in AntibesBibliography
Index
