Summary
More on the Feast of Fools and the Kalends, with some digressions about Roman Emperor Claudius and labyrinths.
Annotations
For most of the Feast of Fools and Herod info from this episode, see Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495
1/ The Kalends (or calends, hence calendar :)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calends
2/ Episode 18, note 1 on syncretism.
3/ For medieval mummers or ‘guisers’ (possibly depicting a Kalends celebration) see Bodleian manuscript 264, p. 21v: click here. The actual text is from The Romance of Alexander and dates from around 1340.
4/ Meg Twycross and Sarah Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England https://www.amazon.com/Masking-Medieval-England-Studies-Performance-dp-1138257850/dp/1138257850/
5/ Episode 18, note 10 includes the Bodleian MS linked above in note 3. It’s a great image, and we’ve talked about it a lot!
6/ Do we need to note that slates are like tiny blackboards? And that blackboards are things teachers traditionally present their lessons on using chalk?
7/ I’m (Em) definitely taking a mulligan this year and starting my new year at Tết (this year it’s Feb 1st).
8/ Sandy Koufax, famous Jewish baseball player. For more on Jewish baseball players, see https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/Jewish_baseball_players.shtml (Also, this is a reference to this scene from the greatest film ever made, The Big Lebowski. Warning, contains swearing.)
9/ Twelfth Night (the holiday not the play!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday)
Epiphany (when the magi–aka the three wise men–visit Jesus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday)
King Cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake
10/ For more on the Jewish hat (judenhut) and its connection to the magi (and possibly witches and wizards), see episode 10, notes 31 and 39; episode 25, note 14; and episode 41, note 7. This info and theory is from Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography, Metropolitan, 2014. Link.
11/ Slaughter (or Massacre) of the Innocents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents
About Robert Graves’s amazing novel I, Claudius. It’s historical fiction covering the time period from Julius Cesar’s assassination to Claudius’s assention to the throne (about 44 BCE to 41 CE). There’s apparently also a substantial biography of Herod in the sequel, Claudius the God.
12/ Hamlet III.ii https://myshakespeare.com/hamlet/act-3-scene-2-popup-note-index-item-termagant-and-herod
Hamlet:
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as
many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier had
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent,
tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you acquire and beget a temperance that may give
it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a
robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,
who for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I could have such a
fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods
Herod. Pray you avoid it.
13/ Max Harris, Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Folly-History-Feast-Fools/dp/0801479495
14/ Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Princes_in_Amber It is a men-with-swords-and-magic fantasy novel with a somewhat noirish twist? You should definitely not expect any female characters. But it’s fun.
If you are interested in what the heck Em was talking about when she tried to explain the labyrinth dance, here is the place to look, although they suggest the ball is actually made of leather, not wool. Labyrinths were a big feature in medieval cathedrals.
15/ For more on Palmesel donkeys (used to recreate Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem on what becomes Palm Sunday), see episode 3, note 10.
16/ For more on Balaam and his donkey, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaam
For the actual story, see Numbers 22:21–39 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022%3A21-39&version=NIV
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