Note 1029 — Chapter XIII · THE FEAST OF FOOLS

Summa Gulielmi Autissiodorensis de Off. Eccles. (quoted by Chérest, 44, from Bibl. Nat. MS. 1411) ‘Quaeritur quare in hac die fit festum stultorum.... Ante adventum Domini celebrabant festa quae vocabant Parentalia; et in illa die spem ponebant credentes quod si in illa die bene eis accideret, quod similiter in toto anno. Hoc festum voluit removere Ecclesia quod contra fidem est. Et quia extirpare omnino non potuit, festum illud permittit et celebrat illud festum celeberrimum ut aliud demittatur: et ideo in matutinali officio leguntur lectiones quae dehortantur ab huiusmodi quae sunt contra fidem (cf. p. 245). Et si ista die ab ecclesia quaedam fiunt praeter fidem, nulla tamen contra fidem. Et ideo ludos qui sunt contra fidem permutavit in ludos qui non sunt contra fidem.’ There is clearly a confusion here between the Roman Parentalia (Feb. 13-22) and Kalendae (Jan. 1). On William of Auxerre, whose work remains in MS., cf. Lebeuf, in P. Desmolets, Mémoires, iii. 339; Nouvelle Biographie universelle, s. n. He was bishop of Auxerre, translated to Paris in 1220, ob. 1223. He must be distinguished from another William of Auxerre, who was archdeacon of Beauvais (†1230), and wrote a comment on Petrus Lombardus, printed at Paris in 1500 (Gröber, Grundriss der röm. Philologie, ii. 1. 239).