Note 318 — Chapter IV · THE MINSTREL REPERTORY
Reading edition
Thomas de Cabham mentions the horribiles larvae of some minstrels. A. Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire française (ed. 2, 1886), 444, quotes a sermon of Étienne de Bourbon in MS. B. N. Lat. 15970, f. 352 ‘ad similitudinem illorum ioculatorum qui ferunt facies depictas quae dicuntur artificia gallicè, cum quibus ludunt et homines deludunt.’ Cf. Liudprand, iii. 15 (Pertz, iii. 310) ‘histrionum mimorumve more incedere, qui, ut ad risum facile turbas illiciant, variis sese depingunt coloribus.’ The monstra larvarum, however, of various ecclesiastical prohibitions I take to refer specifically to the Feast of Fools (cf. ch. xiii).