Dancing in the Streets (9 page)
Read Dancing in the Streets Online
Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich
In at least one placeâItalyâa public festivity seems to have been created as a way of institutionalizing and hence, to a degree, controlling dance manias. There, as Hecker reports, the mania associated with the tarantella “gradually became established as a regular festival of the populace, which was anticipated with impatient delight.”
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In other parts of Europe, the dance manias no doubt underscored to Church authorities that people, especially people hard-pressed by poverty and terrorized by plague, were going to seek relief in ecstatic rites, whether these rites were sanctioned by the Church or not. Having such rites take place inside churches was, as we have just seen, a decreasingly attractive option. Catholicism refused to embrace the kinds of ecstatic behavior that were the hallmark of so many ancient and indigenous religions; it could only tolerate them as a kind of sideshow.
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In other parts of Europe, the dance manias no doubt underscored to Church authorities that people, especially people hard-pressed by poverty and terrorized by plague, were going to seek relief in ecstatic rites, whether these rites were sanctioned by the Church or not. Having such rites take place inside churches was, as we have just seen, a decreasingly attractive option. Catholicism refused to embrace the kinds of ecstatic behavior that were the hallmark of so many ancient and indigenous religions; it could only tolerate them as a kind of sideshow.
Carnival, of course, involves much more than dancing. All sorts of things, ranging from the staid and pious to the thoroughly riotous, went on at a late medieval festival. The Church's direct contribution
to the entertainment included a special mass and often a procession through town, which might be a huge affair including the local secular authorities (nobles and town council members) as well as contingents from the different guilds (tanners, coopers, plasterers, hosiers, butchers, and so forth). In addition, the Church might encourage or at least approve performances of dramas on religious themes, starring local people, like the German passion plays that have survived, in a few cases, right up to the present.
to the entertainment included a special mass and often a procession through town, which might be a huge affair including the local secular authorities (nobles and town council members) as well as contingents from the different guilds (tanners, coopers, plasterers, hosiers, butchers, and so forth). In addition, the Church might encourage or at least approve performances of dramas on religious themes, starring local people, like the German passion plays that have survived, in a few cases, right up to the present.
But the spectacles offered or sanctioned by the Church were probably the least of the attractions; laypeople creatively enriched the holiday experience with their own, often less edifying, rituals. In addition to the obligatory feasting, drinking, and dancing, there would be games and sports (bowling, handball, archery contests, darts, wrestling) as well as ritual forms of cruelty to animals, possibly rooted in ancient traditions of animal sacrifice (bear baiting, for example). More striking, from a modern point of view, were the ritual activities aimed at dissolving the normal social boundaries of class and gender. There would very likely be ribald humor enacted by a man dressed up as a “king of fools” or “lord of misrule” and aimed at mocking real kings and other authorities. People costumed as nuns and priests might engage in obscene parodies. As in some ancient Dionysian rites, cross-dressing was routine. The historian Natalie Zemon Davis reports that
in sections of Germany and Austria, at carnival time, male runners, half of them dressed as women, jumped and leaped through the streets. In France it was on Saint Stephen's Day or New Year's Day that men dressed as wild beasts or as women and danced in public ⦠The saturnalian Feast of Fools involved young clerics and laymen, some of them disguised as women, who made wanton and loose gestures.
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Whatever social category you had been boxed intoâmale or female, rich or poorâcarnival was a chance to escape from it.
No aspect of carnival has attracted more scholarly attention than the tradition of mocking the powerful, since these customs were in some sense “political,” or at least suggestive of underlying discontent. The use of public festivities as an occasion to send up the local secular and ecclesiastical authorities was by no means confined to late medieval Europe. The ancient Israelis had celebrated Purim with masking, drunkenness, and rituals ridiculing their rabbis; the Romans had their Saturnalia. Rituals of mockery were also indigenous to many parts of Africa, with a Dutch traveler, for example, describing an early-eighteenth-century carnival celebrated along the coast of Guinea as
a Feast of eight days accompanied with all manner of Singing, Skipping, Dancing, Mirth, and Jollity; in which time a perfect lampooning liberty is allowed, and Scandal so highly exalted, that they may freely say of all Faults, Villainies, and Frauds of their Superiors, as well as Inferiours without punishment so much as the least interruption.
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In our own time, too, festivals miming classâor genderâstruggle persist in traditional societies. Ecuadorian agricultural laborers celebrate a festival in which they dress up as and engage in parodies of their bosses. At the Holi festival in the Indian village of Kishan Garhi, women attack men, untouchables harass Brahmins, and even the resident American ethnographer might be forced to “dance in the streets, fluting like Lord Krishna, with a garland of old shoes around his neck.”
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In chapter 8, we will come across similar festivitiesâamong African slaves in the Americas, for exampleâthat also contained the latent threat of rebellion. The widespread occurrence of mocking rituals would almost suggest some human, or at least plebeian, instinct to playfully overthrow the existing orderâwhether as a way of harmlessly letting off steam or, at some level of consciousness, rehearsing for the real thing.
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In chapter 8, we will come across similar festivitiesâamong African slaves in the Americas, for exampleâthat also contained the latent threat of rebellion. The widespread occurrence of mocking rituals would almost suggest some human, or at least plebeian, instinct to playfully overthrow the existing orderâwhether as a way of harmlessly letting off steam or, at some level of consciousness, rehearsing for the real thing.
Many of the mocking rituals associated with European carnival centered on a king of fools, a costumed character who probably first appeared in the Church-sanctioned Feast of Fools. If anything illustrates the ambivalence of the Church toward festive behavior, it was this event, which was initiated by the lower-level clergyâdeacons, subdeacons, and priestsâwho comprised the Church's internal lower class. This feast, described by Chambers as “largely an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cassock,” originally took place inside churches between Christmas and New Year's. The participating clergy dressed absurdlyâin women's clothes or their own clothes worn inside outâand performed a noisy burlesque of the mass, with sausages replacing the priest's censer, or with “stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes” instead of incense, and “wanton songs” and gibberish substituting for the usual Latin incantations.
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As one disapproving contemporary described the scene: “They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town ⦠and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste.”
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As one disapproving contemporary described the scene: “They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town ⦠and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste.”
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Ecclesiastical higher-ups were not amused and tried, in fits and starts, to stamp out the Feast of Fools. In 1207 Pope Innocent III ordered Polish churches to discontinue the rite, and in 1400 the rector of the University of Paris tried to ban it, complaining that the indecencies involved would “shame a kitchen or a tavern.”
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In 1436, the town council of Basle allowed the Feast of Fools, but only if it was conducted without irreverence. Apparently a reverent Feast of Fools was not possible, since Basle forbade the feast in 1439âonly to permit it again four years later, on the condition that it be celebrated
outside
the church. In Sens, in 1444, local Church authorities contented themselves with limiting the number of buckets of water that could be poured over the king of fools during the riteâto threeâand stipulating that the event be moved outside the church.
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In 1436, the town council of Basle allowed the Feast of Fools, but only if it was conducted without irreverence. Apparently a reverent Feast of Fools was not possible, since Basle forbade the feast in 1439âonly to permit it again four years later, on the condition that it be celebrated
outside
the church. In Sens, in 1444, local Church authorities contented themselves with limiting the number of buckets of water that could be poured over the king of fools during the riteâto threeâand stipulating that the event be moved outside the church.
Church authorities often tried to “divert the energies of the revellers” from the Feast of Fools to the more uplifting spectacle of the ecclesiastical plays.
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But these too had a tendency to get out of hand. As early as the twelfth century, Chambers reports there were complaints that the dramas were becoming too worldly and encouraging “license, buffoonery, and quarreling.” Productions of religious plays easily descended into “shameless revel[s],”
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no doubt abetted by the huge quantities of beer some towns budgeted for these occasions and even for the plays' rehearsals. Disorder was so common that the Church offered indulgences for attendance at plays, but only on condition that one did not engage in lewd or disorderly behavior at them, however that may have been defined. Even the Corpus Christi feasts honoring Christ's body had become, by the fourteenth century, an occasion for rioting.
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But these too had a tendency to get out of hand. As early as the twelfth century, Chambers reports there were complaints that the dramas were becoming too worldly and encouraging “license, buffoonery, and quarreling.” Productions of religious plays easily descended into “shameless revel[s],”
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no doubt abetted by the huge quantities of beer some towns budgeted for these occasions and even for the plays' rehearsals. Disorder was so common that the Church offered indulgences for attendance at plays, but only on condition that one did not engage in lewd or disorderly behavior at them, however that may have been defined. Even the Corpus Christi feasts honoring Christ's body had become, by the fourteenth century, an occasion for rioting.
Confronted with so much unruly behavior, sometimes at events once approved or initiated by clerics themselves, Church officials took the same approach they had taken with dancing: They sought again and again to expel the offending activities from their immediate property. The Feast of Fools, as we have just seen, was increasingly driven outdoors. Religious dramas followed it, many of them being abandoned by the Church and largely “secularized” in the thirteenth century. In England, the fund-raising festivities known as church ales were banned from Church property in the mid-thirteenth century. Corpus Christi processions came increasingly under secular control in the fifteenth century. The festivities that once added color and laughter to the Church usually proved to be more than it could handle.
The gradual expulsion of dancing, sports, drama, and comedy from the churches created a world of regularly scheduled festivity that is almost beyond our imagining today. The Church calendar featured dozens of holy daysâincluding Epiphany, Ascension, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi, as well as the more familiar Easter and Christmasâon which all work was forbidden, and on most
of which vigorous celebration was tolerated. In fifteenth-century France, for example, one out of every four days of the year was an official holiday of some sort, usually dedicated to a mix of religious ceremonies and more or less unsanctioned carryings-on. Weddings, wakes, and other gatherings furnished additional opportunities for conviviality and carousing. Then there were the various local ceremonial occasions, such as the day honoring a village's patron saint or the anniversary of a church's founding. In the north of France in the sixteenth century, the celebrations commemorating a local church's founding could last for a full eight days. So, despite the reputation of what are commonly called “the Middle Ages” as a time of misery and fear, the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century can be seenâat least in comparison to the puritanical times that followedâas one long outdoor party, punctuated by bouts of hard labor. As the British historian E. P. Thompson wrote:
of which vigorous celebration was tolerated. In fifteenth-century France, for example, one out of every four days of the year was an official holiday of some sort, usually dedicated to a mix of religious ceremonies and more or less unsanctioned carryings-on. Weddings, wakes, and other gatherings furnished additional opportunities for conviviality and carousing. Then there were the various local ceremonial occasions, such as the day honoring a village's patron saint or the anniversary of a church's founding. In the north of France in the sixteenth century, the celebrations commemorating a local church's founding could last for a full eight days. So, despite the reputation of what are commonly called “the Middle Ages” as a time of misery and fear, the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century can be seenâat least in comparison to the puritanical times that followedâas one long outdoor party, punctuated by bouts of hard labor. As the British historian E. P. Thompson wrote:
Many weeks of heavy labour and scanty diet were compensated for by the expectation (or reminiscence) of these occasions, when food and drink were abundant, courtship and every kind of social intercourse flourished, and the hardship of life was forgotten ⦠These occasions were, in an important sense, what men and women lived for.
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The festivities that crowded the late medieval calendar can be understood as the fragments of what might have been a more joyous and participatory religion. People once danced, drank, feasted, and performed dramas and burlesques within their churches; now they did so outside those churches in the festivities that still clung to, and surrounded, each holy day. Scholars often mark the transition with a change in terminologyâusing the word
ritual
for events held
in the context of religious observance and the lighter-weight term
festivity
for those outside of it.
ritual
for events held
in the context of religious observance and the lighter-weight term
festivity
for those outside of it.
Inevitably, something was lost in the transition from ecstatic ritual to secularized festivitiesâsomething we might call meaning or transcendent insight. In ancient Dionysian forms of worship the moment of maximum “madness” and revelry was also the sacred climax of the rite, at which the individual achieved communion with the divinity and a glimpse of personal immortality. Medieval Christianity, in contrast, offered “communion” in the form of a morsel of bread and sip of wine soberly consumed at the altarâand usually saw only devilry in the festivities that followed. True, the entire late medieval calendar of festivities was to some degree sanctioned by the Church, but the uplifting religious experience, if any, was supposed to be found within the Church-controlled rites of mass and procession, not within the drinking and dancing. While ancient worshippers of Dionysus expected the god to manifest himself when the music reached an irresistible tempo and the wine was flowing freely, medieval Christians could only hope that God, or at least his earthly representatives, was looking the other way when the flutes and drums came out and the tankards were passed around.
The result of the Church's distancing itself from the festivities that marked its own holidays was a certain “secularization” of communal pleasure. After the festival's official religious ritesâthe mass, the procession, the various blessings and public prayersâwere completed, the rest of the day's (or week's) activities lay at least in part outside the Church's spiritual framework and moral jurisdiction. On the one hand, this relative secularization may help account for the uglier side of the European carnival tradition. Without a built-in religious climax to the celebrationsâthe achievement, for example, of a trancelike state of unity with the divinityâthey readily spilled over into brawling and insensate drunkenness. The Jews in particular, as Christian Europe's perennial scapegoats, knew better than to venture out when the gentiles were having fun. Shakespeare's Shylock warned his daughter:
What, are there masques? Hear you me Jessica:
Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces.
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Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces.
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But if secularization drained festivities of moral content and ecstatic insight, it also gave people ownership of and control over them. Great passion and energy went into the planning of festivities, with special organizations, like the French confraternities of young men, dedicated entirely to preparations year-round. There were constant minor conflicts to resolveâbetween secular and religious authorities, peasant leagues and urban guildsâover the form and nature of festivities. And sometimes the revelers singled out for ridicule the very authorities who declaimed against the festivities and threatened to stamp them out. In 1558, for exampleâadmittedly, well past the Middle Agesâthe bishop of Fréjus's attempt to suppress the local Feast of Fools led to a riot and storming of his palace. Festivityâlike bread or freedomâcan be a social good worth fighting for.
Finally, with secularization, there had to be a realization that festivity, even when it occurred on religious holidays, was ultimately a product of human agency. Ancient Dionysian revelers and Christian glossolaliacs believed that their moments of ecstasy were the gifts of a deity. But when the church doors closed shut on festivity in the late Middle Ages, the revelers must have understood that whatever joys they found were of their own, entirely human, creation. Huge amounts of effort and expense went into a successful celebration: Costumes had to be sewed, dance steps and dramas rehearsed, sets built, special pastries and meats prepared. Pleasures crafted with so much creativity and forethoughtâpleasures that, moreover, were often barely tolerated by the ecclesiastical establishmentâcan hardly be said to come from God. In the
secularized festivities of the late Middle Ages, people could discover the truth of Mikhail Bakhtin's great insight: that carnival is something people create and generate
for
themselves
. Or, as Goethe wrote, carnival “is a festival that really is not given to the people, but one the people give themselves.”
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secularized festivities of the late Middle Ages, people could discover the truth of Mikhail Bakhtin's great insight: that carnival is something people create and generate
for
themselves
. Or, as Goethe wrote, carnival “is a festival that really is not given to the people, but one the people give themselves.”
30
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