clergy, nor the
guardians, indeed, go to the choir on this day, but all is given up to
the lay brethren, the cabbage-cutters, the errand-boys, the cooks and
scullions, the gardeners; in a word, all the menials fill their places
in the church, and insist that they perform the offices proper for the
day. They dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn
to rags, or wear them inside out; they hold in their hands the books
reversed or sideways, which they pretend to read with large spectacles
without glasses, and to which they fix the shells of scooped oranges,
which renders them so hideous, that one must have seen these madmen to
form a notion of their appearance; particularly while dangling the
censers, they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly
about their heads and faces one against the other. In this equipage they
neither sing hymns, nor psalms, nor masses; but mumble a certain
gibberish, as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to
market. The nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:--

Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
Haec est festa dies, festarum festa dierum.[131]

These are scenes which equal any which the humour of the Italian
burlesque poets have invented, and which might have entered with effect
into the "Malmantile racquistato" of Lippi; but that they should have
been endured amidst the solemn offices of religion, and have been
performed in cathedrals, while it excites our astonishment, can only be
accounted for by perceiving that they were, in truth, the Saturnalia of
the Romans. Mr. Turner observes, without perhaps having a precise notion
that they were copied from the Saturnalia, that "It could be only by
rivalling the pagan revelries, that the Christian ceremonies could gain
the ascendancy." Our historian further observes, that these "licentious
festivities were called the _December liberties_, and seem to have begun
at one of the most solemn seasons of the Christian year, and to have
lasted through the chief part of January." This very term, as well as
the time, agrees with that of the ancient Saturnalia:--

Age, _libertate Decembri_,
Quando ita majores voluerunt, utere: narra.
HOR. lib. ii. sat. 7.

The Roman Saturnalia, thus transplanted into Christian churches, had
for its singular principle, that of inferiors, whimsically and in
mockery, personifying their superiors, with