Note 8 — III. THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN EUROPE.

“However horrible was this profanation, I could quote a passage where in part of a curious penance actions most indecent were to be publicly performed upon the altar-table; and therefore our ancestors had plainly not the same ludicrous ideas of these mummeries as ourselves. They were the mere coarse festivities of the age which delighted in low humor.”—(Fosbroke, “British Monachism,” 2d edition, London, 1817, quoted principally from Ducange.)