the role of festivals and rituals

• The role of the church

  • Mandatory attendance at church on Sundays and participation in saint’s days
  • Purpose: Reinforcing local social hierarchy
• The role of pageants and festivals:

  • Festivals provided a break from work
  • Celebration of events provided secular and religious authorities with a means of regulating society
  • During festivities, the social order was inverted and abandoned
  • A chance to release frustration without directly attacking the established hierarchy
  • Authorities were concerned as festivals led to unrest and riots
  • Symbolic unrest of the pageants turned into violence against the Jews
• The celebration of misrule:  Conducted over the Christmas period

  • Encouraged drinking, dancing, and singing of songs usually prohibited
  • Participants openly mocked clergy by:
  • Putting vestments on the wrong way
  • Drinking in churches
  • Mocking the Bible and sermons
  • Authorities instituted ritual and humiliating punishments to reinforce the social hierarchy and punish transgressors
  • Time period represented a crisis of order due to:
  • Population growth
  • Vagrancy
  • War
  • Plague
  • Punishments carried out in public places to persuade others to conform