Ms. Laon 263, copied at the end of the twelfth century, is a liturgical codex that belonged to the cathedral of that city. It contains supplementary materials--texts and music--for the embellishment of the rite over the whole liturgical year. It also contains four so-called liturgical dramas. Three of these compositions (Ordo Prophetarum, Ordo Stellae,and Quem Queritis) are classics of the genre, whose dates of performance in the liturgical year are well-known. On the other hand, until the publication of Lagueux’s study, the use of the fourth drama, the Ordo Joseph, remained a mystery. According to Lagueux, this incomplete composition--its last part is missing due to the loss of some folia--was performed during the feast of subdeacons, better known under the catchy name of “Feast of Fools” (its dates of celebration varied from church to church; while some observed it on January 1, others, such as Laon, celebrated it on January 6). The Ordo Joseph constitutes an important contribution to our knowledge of this feast because, before Lagueux’s study, the only composition known to have been staged on that day was the widely known Danielis Ludus from the cathedral of Beauvais.
During almost the entire twentieth century, scholars interested in the Feast of Fools had a distorted image of it. The main resource for its study was E. K. Chambers’s classic opus The Mediaeval Stage (1903). Because the author had taken at face value various medieval descriptions critical of that celebration, he presented the Feast of Fools as a time of uninhibited and scandalous revelry. Not only was the ecclesiastical hierarchy overturned, since the subdeacons oversaw the liturgy, but the latter was outrageously parodied. It was not until the publication in 1992 of an article by Margot Fassler that this traditional interpretation of the Feast of Fools began to be questioned. [1] In her work, Fassler showed that, despite its odd name, the feast was an authentic liturgical celebration which should not be confused with the popular festivities that took place at the same time. While the late December popular merriments, derived from the Roman Kalends, were carnival-like with masquerades and various excesses, the feast of subdeacons, centered on liturgy and the regular performance of the opus dei, departed from the other days of the liturgical year only in the temporary reversal of ecclesiastical hierarchy. At most, it could be noted that the liturgy on that day was longer and more sumptuous than usual and that liturgical dramas, e.g., Danielis Ludus, were sometimes staged. In other words, the word fool was a misnomer; it did not refer to ordinary foolish behavior but to folly “for Christ’s sake,” namely the choice of a Christian life which to worldly wisdom is folly. As far as the temporary reversal of ecclesiastical hierarchy was concerned, it was not the result of the irruption within the church of carnivalesque spirit but the embodiment of the words “he hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble” (Lk 1:52). Similarly, while the hierarchical reversal and the performance of plays were reminiscent of the lay festivities, these actions ceased to be peccaminous in the church, where they were sanctified. “The clerical Feast of Fools--unlike its secular counterparts--offered copious opportunities for spiritual reflection and edification” (28). Last but not least, far from being sympathetic to the lay festivities, the Feast of Fools was intended to counter them. Its splendor served to keep the clergy within the confines of the church, away from the popular festivities, and possibly even to attract the laity. [2]
Lagueux’s volume is divided in two parts. In the second, entitled Text, Music, and Commentary, Lagueux publishes the Latin text from Karl Young’s edition, [3] accompanied by a translation. Even though the Ordo Joseph was sung, it was transmitted without musical notation. Lagueux argues that the absence of the latter was not an oversight. Rather, it shows that the copyists wanted “to allow for different music to be used depending on the specific needs and desires of the community at the time of the performance” (125). The recurrence in the manuscript of the formula quale volueris, indicating that clerics were free to select the music to accompany certain texts, makes Lagueux’s explanation probable. In the absence of music, Lagueux reconstructs a hypothetical musical accompaniment to the Ordo. The text being composed in rhythmic metrical verse, i.e., lines with a set number of syllables and a specific position of the final stress, “each of these textual rhythms points to several different chants with the same accentual pattern whose music could then be chosen to declaim that text” (127). Lagueux remained conservative in his reconstruction and limited himself to music for sequences used for the Epiphany liturgy in Laon cathedral. Obviously, he could have used music accompanying similar rhythms in the liturgy of other seasons and even in other churches.
The first part of the book is a study of the Ordo that endeavors to explain why the Laon clerics chose the Old Testament Joseph as the hero of a play celebrated on the feast day of subdeacons. Lagueux offers several interrelated explanations. First, Joseph and the group of subdeacons had common traits. In both cases, they were young men separated from their families--subdeacons typically joined the chapter at a young age (70). Second, the Joseph story was an effective tool to counter the contemporaneous popular festivities. “It provided ample opportunity for the kinds of activities characteristic of the Feast of Fools: reversals of social status, strange behavior, and mysterious prophecies and divination” (81). In other words, the play incorporated “certain rough or rowdy aspects in attenuated emulation of the secular models they wished to supplant” (9). The fact that Laon was a high place for exegesis certainly contributed to the selection of Joseph as well. The glossing of the Bible began in twelfth century Laon under the leadership of Anselm and the Glossa ordinaria, the tool par excellence for the study of the Bible until the first quarter of the thirteenth century, was associated with Laon cathedral. Since the ability to interpret constituted “the identity of the Laon cathedral chapter throughout the twelfth century” (35), Joseph’s capacity to interpret dreams made him an embodiment of the perfect exegete. But the most important reason for choosing this character for the play was Joseph’s traditional interpretation as a figure of both his New Testament namesake and, more importantly, of Christ of the Passion. “[L]ike the New Testament Joseph, Joseph the patriarch was a man of divine dreams and went down to Egypt; like Christ, he was betrayed by Judah/Judas” (93). Thus, Lagueux devotes a large section of part one of his book to present how the clerical audience of the Ordo interpreted the many layers of understanding offered by the biblical narrative. “The canons’ identity as a community was intimately tied up with the understanding that scripture was inherently enigmatic, containing hidden messages and truths, and that any of its apparent contradictions could be reconciled and harmonized through assiduous study” (36).
Pleasantly written, this volume constitutes an important contribution to our knowledge of the clerical Feast of Fools. Overall, the book lends itself to few criticisms. Lagueux chose to refer to Fassler’s and Harris’s works rather than to offer information about the dates and the history of the Feast of Fools. However, readers little acquainted with the topic would have benefitted from a clearer presentation of the history of the celebration. [4] Equally surprising is the absence of the rationale that led the author to the belief that the Ordo was performed on the occasion of the Feast of Fools. While the analysis of its content supports Lagueux’s claim, the reader would reasonably expect an explanation of the author’s reasoning based on the contents of the codex, etc. before proceeding to an analysis of the composition. Despite the foregoing shortfalls, the volume is a valuable addition to the small corpus of studies devoted this clerical feast. This book will be of interest to musicologists and liturgists, but also to historians of medieval theater who should be acquainted with the dramatic performances of medieval clerics.
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Notes:
1. Margot Fassler, “The Feast of Fools and Danielis Ludus: Popular Tradition in a Medieval Cathedral Play,” in Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, ed. Thomas F. Kelly (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 65-99.
2. Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of the Fools (Cornell University Press, 2011) is now the reference work on the topic. Even more than Fassler, Harris insists on the orthodoxy of the feast.
3. Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Clarendon, 1933). The Ordo Joseph is published in vol. 2: 266-76.
4. I offered such a brief presentation in my chapter devoted to another clerical play, the Ordo Adae, better known as Jeu d’Adam. See section “December Celebrations of the Clergy” (27-30) in Christophe Chaguinian, “The Jeu d’Adam: A Monastic or a Secular Play,” in The Jeu d’Adam. MS Tours 927 and the Provenance of the Play, ed. Christophe Chaguinian (Western Michigan University, 2017), 1-40.