Note 996 — Chapter XIII · THE FEAST OF FOOLS

Dreves, 575, thinks the MS. was ‘für eine Geckenbruderschaft,’ as the chants are not in the contemporary Missals, Breviaries, Graduais, and Antiphonals of the church. But if they were, a separate Officium book would be superfluous. Such special festorum libri were in use elsewhere, e.g. at Amiens. Nisard, op. cit., thinks the Officium was an imitation one written by ‘notaires’ to amuse the choir-boys, and cites a paper of M. Carlier, canon of Sens, before the Historic Congress held at Sens in 1850 in support of this view. Doubtless the goliardi wrote such imitations (cf. the missa lusorum in Schmeller, Carmina Burana, 248; the missa de potatoribus in Wright-Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, ii. 208; and the missa potatorum in F. Novati, La Parodia sacra nelle Letterature moderne (Studi critici e letterari, 289)); but this is too long to be one, and is not a burlesque at all.