CARNIVAL AND ASHES
by Bernard Strasser, O.S.B.
The prayers and gospels of the pre-lenten season, and more
especially of Lent itself, attempt to awaken us to a profound
realization of the fact that only through penance and through
uncompromising rejection of sin, that is, through a thorough
change of heart, can we partake of the redemption of Christ.
Through His incarnation, His passion and death, Christ gained for
us the graces of salvation without any merit on our part. But He
respects the free will of the creature that He Himself has made:
He will not force His graces upon us, nor will He press them upon
us like alms upon an unwilling pauper.
He demands that we work seriously and tirelessly, and at every
hour of the day of our life, in the vineyard that He Himself has
planted (Septuagesima Sunday). Only a heart freed from sin and
evil inclinations can become the field producing fruit fifty and a
hundred-fold for the divine Sower (Sexagesima). Whoever refuses to
toil at purifying his sin-laden and sin-warped heart will of
necessity remain in fatal darkness, and the light of salvation and
grace will not reach him. Even the Savior Himself, the divine
Light-bearer, cannot cure the obdurate one of his blindness
(Quinquagesima).
Such unhappy persons, who stubbornly neglect to labor at the one
thing necessary, are branded by holy Scripture as "fools" (Luke
12:20). Our holy Mother Church too is constantly driving home the
same lesson: If you are not rich as regards God, but are content
to say to your soul: Take thy ease, eat, drink and be merry, you
are a fool of fools. Most urgently does she remind us of this fact
during Lent, on Ash Wednesday, and during the days that
immediately precede.
These carnival days in particular contain a remarkable lesson of
spirituality for us. According to their origin and the Church's
intention they are anything but days of thoughtless conviviality,
and certainly not of dissolute merrymaking. They are not a
carryover from pagan times, of which the Church was unable to
destroy the memory and observance. Rather are they an integral
part of the Church year, with the significant task of illustrating
graphically the first part of the Church's sermon text for this
season: "You are fools, all of you who seek your final end in
earthly things! I your Mother will during the coming weeks of Lent
show you where true happiness may be found, Who it is that brought
it, and how He merited it for us."
Proof that Shrovetide and the carnival days, despite their
rollicking good fun and general merriment, really had a deadly
serious objective, is furnished us by the medieval carnival.
It was an impressive moment, early on Shrove Monday morning at 8
o'clock, when the procession of "the princes of this world," in
all their tinsely splendor, followed by a long train of
personified human vices, sins and infirmities, solemnly entered
the city gate and took possession of the town. All the actors wore
highly conventionalized wooden masks, and curiously elaborate
costumes, handed down from generation to generation, which did not
even reveal the sex of the wearer. They were the characters and
scenes from <Everyman> that passed through the streets that
morning: Death, the Devil, Lady Earth, Vanity, Beauty, the
Courtesan, Sin, Wisdom, the Rich Man, the Poor Man, the Beggar,
the Drunkard, the various trades and professions, the different
ages of man, the personified capital sins and vices, the joys and
sorrows of human life, etc. How ridiculous now appeared the
conceit of "the Self-Complacent," who with a fat and smug smile
strode self-consciously along under his "regal canopy" in the form
of a tiny umbrella. How tragicomic were "the Snivelers," the
pessimists, with wooden tears on their masks so large that no
handkerchief of whatever size could wipe them away. These also
paraded under an umbrella-canopy, woebegone and lugubrious,
voicing their eternal grief and <weltschmerz>, and lamenting their
inability to paint life darkly enough.
Many other characters there were, bedecked with iron and copper
bells and chains, sometimes more than thirty pounds in weight,
swaying and shuffling about in ancient dance rhythms. What else
did they mean to say except: "Look at us fools! Just look at us!"
Then there were the capital sins, represented as wild men or
centaurs, bestriding wooden hobby horses which seemed to dash
madly this way and that, or which were led along on a rope by
other wild-looking men who lashed them on with whips. Up in front
were hundreds of children, the so-called "fools' offspring," who
shrilled and sang and danced about crazily.
Several of the masked paraders carried huge books, in which
appeared in large script certain standard, pointed witticisms,
with illustrations to match, about various types of people: the
quarrelsome wife, the lazy workman, the scapegrace husband, the
meddlesome mother-in-law, the skinflint employer, etc. As they
passed by some onlooker who was notoriously classifiable under one
or the other of these headings, they would in a disguised voice
call his attention to the respective picture and gleefully quote
him the corresponding chapter and verse. And to allay any ruffled
feelings, the victim was given a sweetmeat by his annoyer, much as
the executioner of those same medieval times begged pardon of his
victim for having to inflict hurt upon him.
Thus did the merriment of the passing hour imperfectly conceal a
stern seriousness. The general hilarity, which in early times
never degenerated into coarseness, was itself the means the Church
took to warn her children not to be spiritual fools. Piercing
through the noise and fun-making, and clearly heard by all, was
the. warning voice: "Don't imagine it will help you much to
attract attention to yourself with your smug boastfulness or your
whining self pity. Men have always been anxious to sound the gong
of their own little talents and abilities, or their knowledge
however small It is human weakness to play to the gallery, to feed
on flattery and to think one's own tiny concerns of the utmost
importance. But all that is 'vanity and vexation of mind' (Eccl.
2:11). Only one thing is necessary: Save your soul; give heed to
what the Church will command you during the coming season of
Lent."
Such is the meaning of the carnival days in the eyes of the
Church. And because she is in no way an enemy of good fun or a
kill-joy, she has never discouraged innocent merrymaking during
these days that precede the strict season of penance. In earlier
centuries, it was customary for those who had canonically observed
the lenten season and fast to celebrate its termination with a
festal meal of blessed foods on Easter day. (Compare our ritual
blessings of food on Easter Sunday!) And certainly the Church did
not hold it against them if on the last day <before> the long fast
they indulged their appetite for meat with more than the usual
relish and capacity. Hence the derivation of the word "carnival"
("<carn' aval,>" from "<avalare," "avaler,>" "to gulp down." More
commonly, however, the word is derived from "<carne vale,>" i.e.,
"goodbye, meat." For this is the day <ubi caro valet>, on which we
bid farewell to flesh meat for the duration). This same Church
calls out to us: Rejoice always, again I say rejoice. <But,
rejoice in the Lord> (Phil. 4:4). She knew what she was about when
she instituted the <Gaudete> and <Laetare> Sundays in the middle
of Advent and Lent. "All things have their season: . . . there is
a time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time
to dance" (Eccl. 3:4). But Christian joy is not the same as having
"a high time," nor are happiness and pleasure at all necessarily
coextensive.
It is really quite instructive to note how in the course of time
the meaning and purpose of the Christian carnivaltide became
obscured, and later vitiated.
To the same extent that the observance of the lenten fast declined
and "<carne gale>" was celebrated by those who had not the
slightest intention of abstaining from meat, and neither
understood nor cared about the religious-liturgical role of these
days, the festivities of the carnival days became progressively
more unbridled and licentious. The late middle ages already
witnessed a growing coarseness of the carnival plays, especially
of the judgment and wedding scenes. Hans Sachs (he of
<Meistersinger> fame), who himself composed more than eighty such
morality plays and was an expert at pricking human foibles, felt
obliged to protest sharply against the gross vulgarity that was
beginning to appear in plays of this type. At the time of the
Reformation, these plays often became vehicles of religious
propaganda in which the Church and her doctrine and practices were
travestied. Ever since the sixteenth century Renaissance,
moreover, with its love of display, the masquerades and allied
entertainments became ever more elaborate. They gradually came to
resemble more and more the ancient pagan feasts dedicated to
Saturn and Bacchus (god of wine), with all their revelry,
questionable dances, masquerades and debaucheries of various
kinds. The time of celebration, too, was extended. Whereas
formerly the festivities had begun, at the earliest, on the feast
of St. Blase (Feb. 3), they now started already with the Epiphany
feast.
The meaningful "<carne vale,>" "farewell to flesh meat," now was
metamorphosed into a jolly "Prince Carnival" (most likely an
adaptation from the earlier procession of "the princes of this
world"). And the former "Fools' Kermis," as Shrove Monday was
called in honor of all the worldly-minded fools who would soon be
brought to order by the lenten season, became a day of bedlam, on
which ancient pagan practices of noise-making, drubbings with
staves and pig-bladders (forerunners of our own toy balloons!),
etc. were resurrected. (The ancient Germanic peoples at their
spring festivals believed by these means to frighten and drive
away the unfriendly spirits of winter.) At the close of these
festivities, usually early on Ash Wednesday morning, carnivaltide,
represented as an old witch, was then ceremoniously buried,
drowned or burned.-Not much, evidently, was left of the original
Christian conception of these days.
The Church soon took measures to counteract this perversion of the
carnival days and especially the excesses committed. The new
devotion of the forty hours before the exposed Blessed Sacrament
was introduced in order to keep the faithful away from the
objectionable celebrations and to atone for the sins occasioned by
these days. This pious practice was sponsored in Italy in the
sixteenth century by St. Charles Borromeo, St. Philip Neri, and
Cardinal Paleotti. St. Ignatius Loyola and the Society were
likewise instrumental in propagating it widely. Sermons, rogation
processions and public prayers formed its usual program. Pope
Benedict XIV granted a plenary indulgence for its observance in
the papal states, which his successor, Clement XIII, then extended
to the universal Church. In our own day, a service of reparation
before the Blessed Sacrament, followed by Benediction, has become
customary on the eve before Ash Wednesday.
It may be of interest to add that in England a relic of the old
Catholic significance of carnivaltide has maintained itself to
some extent through the centuries. On Tuesday before Ash Wednesday
morning in many of the old parishes a church bell is rung. In
London it has the picturesque name of "pancake-bell", for this day
in every household is the traditional day for pancakes. In
Catholic times, this ringing of the bell was a reminder to the
people that today they must go to confession in preparation for
Lent; hence the name Shrove Tuesday, i. e., Confession Tuesday.
No one, and least of all the Church, condemns joy or gayety. Man
has need of relaxation, of sloughing off the cares of the day and
of enjoying himself with his friends. A good laugh is the best
kind of constitutional. Horace, who knew how to enjoy life, told
the Romans of his day: "<Dulce est desipere in loco-> Good-natured
horseplay is fine in its place." But Aristotle before him had
already condemned "most men, and men of the most vulgar type, who
identify the good, or happiness with pleasure" (<Nicom. Ethics>
I,5).
St. Augustine can serve us as a safe guide during this period of
preparation for Lent, and of course, during the season itself,
too. "The pagans," he says, "present each other with gifts of
friendship, but you should give alms during these days of
wickedness. They shout their songs of love and pleasure; you must
learn to find joy in the hearing of the word of God. They run
eagerly to the theatre; you must flock to the churches. They
guzzle their drinks; you must be temperate and fast."
(Taken from the February 21, 1943 issue of "Orate Fratres".)
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