Rome: Kalends of January

 

According to Max Harris in Sacred Folly : A New History of the Feast of Fools, "the history of the Feast of Fools begins with the Kalends of January" (5).
The first day of each month in the Roman year was called the Kalends, and the 1st of January was the Roman New Year.



The Twelve Months: Ianuarius c.1580 Woodcut | British Museum
"On the left, servants carrying dishes for the feast taking place in the middle, and on the right, an old man and two men dressed as fools; in the background, winter landscape, with people skating on a frozen river."



Named after Janus, the god of beginnings, and derived from ianua, "door," January began with the first crescent moon after the winter solstice, marking the natural beginning of the year. It was a time of relative ease for the farmer, with the respite from the labors of the field that began in December and continued into January. Varro, in his Res Rusticae (37 BC) divided the agricultural year into eight parts. During the last part, December 21 (the winter solstice) to February 7 (the beginning of the west wind), no hard work was to be done outdoors.  -James Grout, Encyclopaedia Romana: Incedental Essays on the History and Culture of Rome.
 

In the Kalends of January, we see ancient roots of inversion festivals in the winter season. Celebration included:

• Exchanging Gifts
• Visiting Family
• Door-to-Door Visits

Every revel has it's naysayers. Asterius of Amasea preached against house-to-house New Year visits. “The common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house,” (Harris, 16).

Perhaps this tradition of entertaining door-to-door for money in the winter holiday season was the birth of similar practices by ENGLISH MUMMERS, MORRIS DANCERS, CAROLLERS & CARNIVAL REVELERS...

'In comes I' with the end of year folly!
Laughter and beer and plenty of holly!

-Woodchurch Morris Men, traditional.

 

Satirical Comedy  was also employed by the wandering groups of festive revelers:

Auserius wrote of Roman Soldiers: "They make sport of the laws and the government of which they have been appointed guardians. For they ridicule and insult the august government. They mount a chariot as though upon a stage...and publicly act like buffoons" (Harris 16).

Greek writer Libanius (314– ca. 393) wrote of the celebrations in his day, describing banquets on the last day of the old year, with gifts piling on every table. Families reconciled, people went through the streets knocking on doors in the middle of the night to keep everyone awake, money was thrown to the crowds, temples were visited for blessings on the coming year and hardly anyone slept. The next day, "Rules are relaxed. Masters and slaves play dice together. If a slave proves lazy or tipsy, the festival excuses him, and he is not reproached. Even the poor do their best to eat well." (Harris, 12).

Of Gamblers | Woodcut attributed to Haintz-Nar-Meister.
Illustration from the book Stultifera navis (Ship of Fools) by Sebastian Brant, published 1498.
University of Houston Digital Libraries

A Medieval woodcut depicting gamblers as fools. Games of chance were traditionally associated with the Carnivalesque, perhaps because they make the player into Fortune's Fool...

Gaming Token 1969- Ceaser's Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada
American Numismatic Society
Traditions Carried Forward...

In the festive atmosphere of the Kalends, everyone participated. Everyone performed. The public streets, private homes, and temples became performance spaces.

Within this atmosphere of general performativity, shortly before the year 400, the Kalends masquerades developed. "...the first evidence of seasonal folk play involving masks anywhere in Europe" (Harris, 13). This included the use of animal masks and especially the stag (Harris, 17). 

Medieval Mummers - are their roots in the Kalends Masquerades?
 from www.mummersfarce.org 

DON'T BLAME IT ON THE PAGANS...

The roots of the Carnivalesque are traditionally blamed on ancient pagan festivities. But the festival of the Kalends of January not only survived the rise of Christianity, it grew. Harris quotes Michel Meslin: “a gigantic popular kermess, . . . a fiesta spilling over the whole Christian empire... the largest popular festival in all the empire.” (12). Church authorities would blame ancient pagans for hundreds of years to come for the poisoning the roots of christian festivals with Bacchanalian behavior. But the evidence points to more than 80 years of Christian dominance in the Empire before masquerades even occurred.

John Chrysostom...Preaching in Antioch sometime between 386 and 398...denounced the “demons marching in procession . . . the all-night devilish celebrations . . . , the tauntings, the invectives, the nightlong dances, this ridiculous comedy,” and the drunkenness of the revelers. (Harris, 14).
 

Harris writes, "As far as one can tell from similar accounts elsewhere, the masqueraders were engaged in carnivalesque mockery of the gods rather than in pagan devotion" (14). It is likely, he writes, that these "processing deities" were all men - dressed as gods and, in women's clothes, as goddesses (15).

Even the gods, then, were victims of satire in this special time, the liminal space between the years. 

A contemporary sermon ...attacked the Kalends as a time when “a man weakens himself into a woman,” presumably by cross-dressing, or when men “transform themselves into farm animals, or into wild animals, or into monsters,” (Harris, 17.)

In the festival of the Kalends of January, we see ancient evidence of BUFFOONERY, TRANSFORMATION, SATIRE, CROSS-DRESSING, RELAXED RULES, GAMBLING, DISTRIBUTION OF MONEY AMONG THE CLASSES and MASKS! Some common themes of TOPSY-TURVYDOM in festivals across time.

"... in the middle of the twelfth century, Kalends masqueraders (or something very like them) were in the habit of invading the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople during the Christmas season. In the first half of the same century, Roman choirboys conducted masked house-to-house visits on the Kalends of January in the vicinity of the papal residence... Even later, probable evidence of Kalends games is found in Paris in the second half of the twelfth century, at about the same time and place as the first recorded reference to the Feast of Fools," (Harris, 22).

Read on for more Roman and Medieval Performance of Topsy-Turvydom!

HEE-HAW
Bottom Mask by Diane Trapp | gallimauphry.blogspot.com
based on illustration of Medieval Mummers

 

 

Making Links Across Performance:

 



For totally different forms of performance with religious/spiritual roots, see James Horban's work on the origins of shadow puppetry or  Paul Adolphson's tapestry of Yaruba performance!!