Dancing is not often associated with Christian liturgy, at least in modern experience. Yet according to the Mitralis de Officio of Sicard, bishop of Cremona (1185–1215), composed about 1200, the circular dance (chorea) provides a key metaphor for understanding the liturgy of Easter.Footnote ² Sicard here draws together two earlier discussions of the subject, both from the twelfth century and of enormously wide influence, manifesting a more positive attitude toward dance than found in many early medieval commentators on the liturgy: the Gemma animae (Jewel of the soul) of Honorius Augustodunensis, composed for a monastic audience in the early twelfth century, probably in Germany, and the De ecclesiasticis officiis of John Beleth, a secular cleric writing probably in Paris circa 1150–1160.Footnote ³ While many scholars have observed the renewal of interest in the pagan authors within a literary context in the twelfth century, the witness of liturgical commentaries from the period has been little noticed. Sicard implies that the festivities of the pagan Saturnalia and its associated freedom of expression (the so-called “December freedom”) can legitimately be used to explain the festivities that take place at Easter:

That circular dances were practiced throughout the medieval period, indeed in a wide variety of cultures, is amply attested through the testimony collected by Curt Sachs in his influential history of dance, first published in 1937. His focus, like that of many subsequent dance scholars, was on dance as a manifestation of popular culture, rather than on what clerical commentators had to say on the subject.Footnote ⁵ Other scholars have provided further testimony relating to the practice of dance within a Christian and even clerical context.Footnote ⁶ Little attention, however, has been given to the contribution of liturgical commentators like Sicard of Cremona and his two major sources of inspiration, Honorius Augustudonensis and John Beleth. While there are subtle differences among these three writers, they share a common desire to appropriate the imagery of pagan culture for explaining Christian ritual and the festivities associated with it at major points in the year. This study focuses on how Beleth and Sicard, developing a precedent established by Honorius, shifted away from the more negative attitudes of patristic and early medieval writers, as well as on the way their comments were attenuated in the thirteenth century, when a more hostile official attitude to popular Christian culture re-asserted itself in official edicts of the Church.

I. The Game of the Pila and the Survival of Ritual Dance

The discussion by Sicard of Cremona of the game of ball (pila) that he says was played in certain churches at Easter provides a good illustration of the fine line between ritual dance and clerical entertainment. He reports that “in the cloisters of certain churches even bishops play with their clerics, so that they even descend to the game of the circular dance or the pila.” Sicard adds the term circular dance (chorea) to Beleth's statement that they descend “to the game of the pila.” Sicard also abbreviated Beleth's rather negative comment that “although great churches, like that of Reims, keep this custom of playing, yet it seems more praiseworthy not to play.”Footnote ⁷ In a separate passage, Beleth voices disfavor toward what he sees as a game (ludum) rather than a chorea, in ruling that if a cleric should die suddenly while playing a game such as the pila, he should be buried in the cemetery, but without the normal obsequies.Footnote ⁸ While Sicard repeats Beleth's comment that it would be better not to play this game, he gives a distinctly more positive explanation of what is going on, not found in Beleth, in clarifying that the game of the pila is in fact a chorea or circular dance. Sicard draws on Honorius's explanation that chorus derives from chorea or circular dance, and that the Christian choir is simply putting to good use a pagan dance that celebrates the cosmic dance (chorea, according to Calcidius's translation of Plato's Timaeus).

Sicard follows Beleth in explaining this apparent departure from convention as a “December freedom” celebrated at Easter, an allusion to Horace, Carmina 2.7 (age, libertate decembri, / quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere) in which the poet recalls the ancient Roman practice of a slave being permitted to speak his mind during the Saturnalia (December 17–19). Festivities that in the Roman period had been understood as recalling a mythical age of Saturn were thought to be legitimately applied to those that took place at Easter.Footnote ⁹ John of Salisbury had employed the phrase in the mid-twelfth century to assert the value of proclaiming one's opinion.Footnote ¹⁰ Here, however, Beleth quotes the phrase without any sense of awkwardness to justify the practice of a senior ecclesiastic engaging in entertainment with his fellow clergy.

These commentaries of Beleth and Sicard on the game of the pila provide further nuance to the analysis offered by Craig Wright of the role of the maze or labyrinth found in many great medieval cathedrals in the archdioceses of Reims and Sens. In Wright's perspective, the fusion of pagan and Christian liturgical practice is a phenomenon of medieval culture as a whole. He argues that the maze, called the Daedalum after the builder of the maze in Crete and remembered by Isidore of Seville (560–636) as the place into which no one could enter to fight the Minotaur without a ball of thread, may have provided the original location of a clerical dance celebrated at Easter.Footnote ¹¹ According to Plutarch, Theseus's rescuing of his companions from the Minotaur was still celebrated in his own day by the citizens of Delos. Marius Victorinus passed on this information, including detail about the dances supposedly established by Theseus, as well as the view that these dances imitated the movement of the universe—a notion that loosely echoes that of Honorius in the twelfth century.Footnote ¹² Isidore also transmitted the belief that Daedalus had invented walls and roofs in buildings, having been instructed in this by Minerva.Footnote ¹³ The maze may thus have been seen as the floor of the universe. The four-square maze, sometimes with an image of Theseus and the Minotaur at its center, was often found on the floors of wealthy ancient Roman houses and burial vaults, based on a design that went back to an image used in the pottery and seals of Minoan civilization.Footnote ¹⁴

The practice of integrating pagan imagery of the maze into Christian architecture may go back at least to the ninth century. Wright identifies the earliest known design of a circular maze in a manuscript from about 900, presumably by a scholar engaged in a conscious fascination with Roman mythology and architectural design. As Prudentius and Gregory the Great had used the image of Christ penetrating the labyrinth to conquer the devil, there may have been a continuity between late antique and Carolingian design that cannot easily be identified. Most surviving floor mazes at the base of French cathedrals are from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but seem to have been introduced in a smaller size into churches in northern Italy in the twelfth century. Antiquarian drawings reveal that there was often an image of Theseus and the Minotaur at the center of the maze, signifying Christ and the Devil (as for example at Chartres). Few of these images have survived, except when recorded in manuscript. While we know that there was an octagonal maze at the great Gothic cathedral at Reims, constructed between 1211 to about 1290, such a maze also could have existed in the earlier Romanesque building.Footnote ¹⁵

Although Wright implies that the fusion of pagan and Christian culture evident in the game of the pila and the dance around the maze was characteristic of the medieval period as a whole, the account of the game offered in the late thirteenth century by William Durand (1237–1296), canon of Narbonne and bishop of Mende, suggests that already there was unease about the practice being performed in the church. In his Rationale divinorum officiorum, written in the late thirteenth century, Durand significantly abbreviates the account of Sicard and modifies small details.Footnote ¹⁶ He describes the pila not as a dance, but as a game played by prelates and within their episcopal houses—repeating the observation made by Beleth and Sicard about their observing “the December freedom.” He repeats Beleth's observation that someone killed playing the game of pila could be buried in a cemetery, but without the normal obsequies.Footnote ¹⁷ Importantly, however, he omits Sicard's discussion of pagan and scriptural precedent for dancing, itself culled from the Gemma animae of Honorius Augustodunensis. Durand's unwillingness to identify pagan inspiration for ritual dance suggests a shift in official attitude away from the relative openness evident in Honorius, Beleth, and Sicard.

That the game of pila continued to be practiced in some places within the cathedral itself is evident from an account, preserved in Latin and probably from the sixteenth century, found by the abbé Lebeuf in the archives of Auxerre and published in 1726. It recalls the ritual described by Beleth in the mid-twelfth century as taking place in great churches, like that of Reims, at Easter.

This eye-witness account helps fill out the ritual described over three centuries earlier by Durand, Sicard, and Beleth. Wright interprets the passage as implying that the canons danced in a chain line through the maze, led by the dean, throwing the ball to one another as they created swirling circular patterns.Footnote ¹⁹ Yet if we take the report literally, it seems that the dean or his substitute (originally the bishop or archbishop, according to Beleth) himself danced to the center of the maze, carrying the ball in his left hand, but would then throw it in turn to each of the canons dancing around the maze, as they sang Victimae paschali laudes. By the later Middle Ages, the practice had become a serious burden on cathedral clergy. A statute of 1398 explains that new canons should use their first month's stipend for making the pila, resulting in efforts by a series of canons to reduce this financial burden. A statute of 1412 declared that it should be of a smaller size than usual, but able to be held or caught only with the left hand.Footnote ²⁰ Further complaints were apparently raised by a canon in 1471, resulting in a court case in 1531 that condemned the practice. This was upheld by four counselors of the French Parlement, four canons of Notre-Dame, and four doctors of the Sorbonne in 1535. Lebeuf recorded evidence for a similar ritual with the pila at Narbonne, although it took place not on the maze but on Easter Monday in the bishop's palace—precisely the detail added to Sicard's Mitralis by Durand, himself a canon at Narbonne. According to a thirteenth-century record at Narbonne cathedral, a feast took place, involving pigmentum and wine with many dishes, after which the archbishop had to throw the pilota, a task that would be undertaken by the prefect of the city, if the archbishop was not present.Footnote ²¹ Clearly, the ritual of the pila could easily degenerate into a game, accompanied by an extravagant feast, especially once it had been removed from the sacred context of the maze within the cathedral.

Wright argues that there was a serious side to what might look like a game. He suggests that it was a Christianized version of a ritual dance in which the leader of the assembly descended into the labyrinth to confront Satan, in the same way Theseus rescued his companions from the Minotaur (as reported by Marius Victorinus). He explains that the dance was a type of liturgical procession by which clerics, led by the bishop, would move from the east end or choir of the church, representing paradise, down through the maze toward the west, representing hell. The confrontation with Satan was marked by a great cacophony before the procession returned out of the maze, back to paradise.Footnote ²² At a profound level, the maze at the center of a cathedral floor visualized a path down to the underworld, where the bishop, representing Christ, overcame Satan at Easter. According to the Auxerre account, the chant Victimae paschali laudes was sung to a circular dance or chorea (carole, to use the medieval French word, from which the modern “carol” derives).

The bishop and his clerics were effectively reenacting at Easter the clause in the Apostles’ Creed about Christ's descent into hell by moving from the sanctuary through to the center of the labyrinth.Footnote ²³ The Auxerre account supports what Sicard has to say about the game of the pila (or pilota in the sixteenth-century record) as a sacred dance that symbolized the restoration of cosmic harmony at the most solemn moment of the liturgical year. It recalled Christ's descent to the underworld and his conquest over Satan, and then the resurrection and restoration of humanity. Wright suggests various interpretations of the pila: that it was a ball of pitch stuffed into the mouth of the Minotaur, that it was the rising sun or, his preferred solution, that it was a symbol of cosmic harmony in a dance, echoing the dance of the firmament.Footnote ²⁴ Another possibility is raised by Isidore of Seville's comment that no one could enter the labyrinth of Daedalus without a ball of thread, interpreted by Martianus Capella as a ball of string held by the creator in the left hand, from which the stars in their movements would be constructed.Footnote ²⁵ The dance could have originated as a symbolic reenactment of creation. It became a game involving the leader of the assembly entering the maze with a specially made ball, engaging in a confrontation with Satan, and then passing the ball in turn to each of the canons as they danced around the maze, re-creating as it were the rotation of the firmament.

Even if the ritual originally developed as a conscious attempt to fuse pagan and Christian tradition at Easter, Beleth's reserved attitude suggests that the dance was already degenerating into a game in the twelfth century. Durand implies that, by the thirteenth century, the dance was sometimes transferred away from the church to the adjoining cloister of the canons or even to the house of the bishop, reinforcing its secular character. During the fourteenth century, the vernacular drama of the harrowing of hell may have developed from a ritual originally enacted within the church.Footnote ²⁶ While it seems that the liturgical dance associated with the maze had stopped at most cathedrals by the sixteenth century, individuals were still privately walking the maze (the more pious shuffled on their knees, reciting the rosary).Footnote ²⁷ The octagonal maze at Reims was removed in 1778 by a canon of the cathedral, who was frustrated by the way children would play the game of skipping through the maze while the canons celebrated the divine office.Footnote ²⁸

Wright also comments on fascinating evidence for the survival of the ritual in southern France in the early nineteenth century. In “the Cretan dance of the Greeks,” which took place on feast days and Mardi Gras, a young man called Theseus, with fife and drum, held a ribbon in his left hand, the other end of which was held by a young woman. Theseus then led a dance in the form of a circular labyrinth. At a certain moment, the dancers would raise their arms, creating a labyrinth with the ribbon, through which the young man would weave until he had escaped the labyrinth into the arms of the person holding the chain.Footnote ²⁹ This account may record a secular equivalent to the dance of the pila, of comparable antiquity, but performed in a non-clerical milieu. Which of these two versions of the dance is older is difficult to say.

II. The Ambivalent Legacy of Scripture and Late Antiquity

Sicard's comments about how the gentiles invented circular dances (choreas) to honor the gods, adapted from a remark of Honorius that the word chorus derived from chorea or dance, were not without foundation. Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125–ca. 191) had defended dance against its critics by arguing that it was an essential feature of pagan worship.Footnote ³⁰ According to Livy, a solemn three-step tripudia was practiced by Salian priests in Rome—quite different from the more extravagant tripudia with yelling, practiced in Spain.Footnote ³¹ Honorius and Sicard of Cremona both referred back to the frequent allusions to dance in the Old Testament.Footnote ³² Although Jerome uses the word tripudium just once in his translation of the Bible, with reference to the rejoicing of the Jews (Esther 8.16), he uses it regularly in his scriptural commentaries to refer to those who dance (saltantes) with physical energy or to general exultation. His Vulgate translation of the Bible frequently employs in choro to refer to both dancing and singing, an ambiguity implicit within classical usage.Footnote ³³

The early Church Fathers were ambivalent, however, about ritual practices they considered too popular or physical in nature, and insufficiently focused on the spiritual.Footnote ³⁴ Christian development of antiphonal singing, reportedly instituted by Ignatius of Antioch after he had heard angels sing in this way, may have been a conscious attempt to counter the use of ecstatic dance in pagan practice.Footnote ³⁵ Beleth and Sicard recalled that certain Fathers (Flavianus and Diodorus, according to Honorius) were responsible for changing the choir from a circle (chorea) to two straight lines, as the original pattern was too confused.Footnote ³⁶ The willingness of Honorius and Sicard to argue that the circular dance (chorea) expresses the joy of Easter itself draws on a certain thread of patristic tradition that invoked imagery of dancing in a positive vein. Chrysostom condemned secular dance but held that worthy dance should imitate that of the angels.Footnote ³⁷ Ambrose similarly employs tripudium and the related verb tripudiare (from which derives the English verb, to trip in the sense of dance) in commentary on Luke 7:32: “There is indeed a certain proper clapping of good actions and deeds, whose sound goes out into the world and results in the glory of good deeds, there is honest leaping by which the spirit dances, and the body rises with good works, when we hang our instruments on the willows.”Footnote ³⁸ Ambrose regularly contrasts indecent dancing with the morally correct use of the body when approaching baptism.Footnote ³⁹

The discussions of Honorius and Sicard stand in sharp contrast, however, with the attitudes of Augustine, who was distinctly more cautious in his attitude toward dance.Footnote ⁴⁰ Augustine interpreted the Psalmist's injunction to celebrate in choro as about singing in choir, not as about dancing.Footnote ⁴¹ Augustine uses saltatio in a consistently pejorative sense as concerning worldly dancing, and tripudium only when referring to Julian of Eclanum “dancing over” a particular issue.Footnote ⁴² In two sermons, he refers to the practice of dancing at the tomb of St. Cyprian but explains that this is a practice that had ceased within his own lifetime.Footnote ⁴³ Augustine implies that such ritual dancing was tinged with a spirit of revolt.Footnote ⁴⁴ He alludes again to this custom in sermon 326, saying there should be praying rather than dancing at the tomb of the martyrs.Footnote ⁴⁵ His comments reflected a broader official trend in the early fifth century away from spurning death toward meditating on the terrors of the life to come. The custom of dancing to recall the death of the saint and his entry into paradise expressed an earlier Christian confidence in the victory of life over death.Footnote ⁴⁶

The willingness of Honorius and Sicard to invoke imagery of dance also stands in sharp contrast to the complaints of early medieval authors like Caesarius of Arles (ca. 469–542), who berated Christians for performing dances (ballationes et saltationes) outside the churches of the saints “in a diabolic manner,” a practice that he blames on lingering pagan observance.Footnote ⁴⁷ His remarks are reproduced in a decretal attributed to Pope Eugenius (but perhaps from Eugenius, archbishop of Toledo) within an eleventh-century collection, with fascinating additional comment, that it was particularly women who “led and held these dances,” and that in doing so they were imitating pagan custom.Footnote ⁴⁸ In this particular decretal collection, it is preceded by a canon from a Council of Toledo complaining about the same practice as taking place on saints’ feasts throughout Spain. Such condemnations of dancing outside the church on the occasion of feast days, as well as at weddings, were often repeated in the eighth and ninth centuries.Footnote ⁴⁹ There was also persistent condemnation of dancing at funerals, blamed on pagan practice inspired by the devil.Footnote ⁵⁰

Caesarius of Arles also was troubled by the practice of celebrating the New Year with drunkenness and feasting.Footnote ⁵¹ That this was indeed a legacy of pagan culture is attested by Isidore of Seville, who describes the dancing held on that occasion as bacchanalian in nature. Christians would dress up as wild animals and even adopt an effeminate appearance.Footnote ⁵² The Church never fully succeeded in establishing Easter as a more important feast than the New Year.Footnote ⁵³ In the eleventh century, New Year festivities were condemned by Peter Damian (1007–1072), who reports that a certain priest, guilty of sexual promiscuity with another man's wife, insisted on “leading dances” as boys sang, even on the kalends of January, when he was due to take vows as a monk.Footnote ⁵⁴ A prohibition by Pope Zachary I (741–752) on those who led singers and dancing at festivities celebrating the New Year was reiterated by Gratian in the mid-twelfth century.Footnote ⁵⁵ Such practices were impossible to eliminate.

By the early twelfth century, however, liturgical commentators were increasingly recognizing that pagan imagery could be used to explain Christian practice. Although Honorius Augustodunensis repeats traditional denunciations of pagan behavior in his Gemma animae, written in about 1106, he is more adept than Isidore in identifying rational reasons for ritual, as is evident in his account of how choir (chorus) derives from chorea, dancing that originally signified the dance of the heavens but was converted by the faithful Jews to the service of God.Footnote ⁵⁶ This notion of the celestial chorea could be derived from its use in the translation of Plato's Timaeus by Chalcidius.Footnote ⁵⁷ This was part of a broader project of Honorius, well described by Donnalee Dox, to draw on pagan learning to elucidate Christian liturgy as part of his pastoral concern.Footnote ⁵⁸ Yet Honorius never describes any tripudium or chorea as part of the liturgy of the Christian community. He makes the briefest allusion to the feast of St. John the Evangelist (December 27) being devoted particularly to priests, and their putting a certain “brigand” (latronem) over them.Footnote ⁵⁹ Honorius gives only the slightest recognition here to pagan festivities that had in practice already become part of the Christian calendar.

III. John Beleth and the Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis

John Beleth, writing in France some fifty years later, went much further than Honorius in explaining the liturgy through pagan as well as scriptural imagery.Footnote ⁶⁰ Beleth was one of a number of intellectuals active during the episcopacy of Maurice de Sully (1160–1196), a bishop who had risen to prominence from modest social origins and was widely remembered for his concern for the poor. Like Maurice, Beleth was committed to explaining Christian faith and ritual to a wider public.Footnote ⁶¹ His willingness to interpret the game of pila as an example of “the December freedom” shows how he was willing—within limits—to invoke the festivities of the pagan Saturnalia to justify the celebrations associated with Easter. Whereas preachers from Caesarius of Arles to Peter Damian had bemoaned the practice of Christians continuing to celebrate the New Year in riotous fashion, Beleth acknowledged that one could find both scriptural and pagan authority to support popular celebrations that in fact Christians had been engaged in for centuries. He was interested in showing how such rituals could become part of a Christian liturgy. While cautious about abuses, he did not condemn outright the festivities that took place either over the Christmas and New Year season or at Easter.

Beleth also was influenced by his own teacher, Gilbert of Poitiers (ca. 1075–1154), whose opinions on the reasoning behind liturgical practices he frequently cites.Footnote ⁶² Beleth was educated at the Benedictine abbey of Tiron in the diocese of Chartres, and thus may have been exposed to the broader climate of enthusiasm for pagan culture associated with its school in the first half of the twelfth century. Beleth could have studied under Gilbert either at Chartres or at Paris, where Gilbert taught in the 1130s, prior to becoming bishop of Poitiers in 1142.Footnote ⁶³ As Beleth sometimes uses the present tense to say “master Gilbert proves … ” rather than “master Gilbert used to say,” he may have composed the original version of his Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis before Gilbert's death in 1154.Footnote ⁶⁴ Because Beleth mentions in its third recension opinions of bishop Maurice de Sully, consecrated in 1160, and of Elisabeth of Schönau (d. June 18, 1164), “a most religious woman still alive in Saxony,” he must have completed this version between 1160 and 1164.Footnote ⁶⁵ Beleth was inspired by a generation of reform-minded teachers to explain Christian ritual in ways that were accessible to his audience.

From the outset of his treatise, Beleth's stated goal was to remedy what he considered to be widespread ignorance about the meaning of the liturgy:

Beleth was here defending his exposition of the liturgy by alluding to a famous phrase of Augustine, “for what use is the integrity of speech which the understanding of the listener does not follow,” quoted by Abelard in his Theologia and Sic et Non to defend rational inquiry into Christian doctrine.Footnote ⁶⁷ Better than not singing psalms or dancing at all was giving rational explanations so that people would know what they were hearing, reading, seeing, singing, and doing.

Beleth does not repeat Isidore's complaint about pagan drunken festivities at the New Year but explains that dances (tripudia) take place on four feasts between Christmas and Epiphany, performed on each occasion by a different grade of cleric. By tripudio, it seems that he is here referring to a specific dance, although the word can be used simply as a metaphor, to mean “with joy”:

1. a) What follows relates to feasts that follow the Nativity. At vespers of Christmas, there ought to be a celebration for everyone together, then the deacons assemble in tripudio and they sing the Magnificat with the antiphon of Saint Stephen, and the priest says the collect. The deacons themselves celebrate the night office, because Stephen was a deacon, and they will give blessings over the readings. The daily priest will celebrate the Mass.

2. b) One collect can suffice for matins and for the Mass and for vespers.

3. c) Thus let the priests do likewise on the feast of St. John [December 27], because John was a priest, and the boys on the feast of the Innocents [December 28].Footnote ⁶⁸

After describing the feast of the Circumcision (the octave after Christmas), he then comments on “the feast of subdeacons” or “On the feast of fools”:

1. a) The feast of subdeacons, which we call “of fools,” is celebrated by some at Circumcision, by some at Epiphany or in the octave of Epiphany.

2. b) There are four tripudia after the birth of the Lord in the Church: of levites, priests, boys, that is of lesser age and rank, and of subdeacons, a rank that is uncertain. So sometimes it is counted among holy orders, sometimes it is not counted, expressed by the fact that it does not have a fixed day and is celebrated with a confused office.Footnote ⁶⁹

Beleth does not criticize these festivities, other than to comment on the “confused office” of the tripudia celebrated by the subdeacons. A number of Parisian manuscripts of the Summa include the detail that the Feast of Fools was celebrated at the Circumcision (January 1) in Paris.Footnote ⁷⁰ These various days of the Christmas season provided an occasion for each of the four major grades of cleric to celebrate the season in their own way. This was the context for those various aspects of the “December freedom” introduced at the outset of this essay, such as the game of ball that bishops and archbishops could play in the cloister.Footnote ⁷¹ Just as he recognized that pagan practice could be appropriated to Christian worship at Easter, so he acknowledged that the festivities associated with pagan celebration of the New Year had become an acknowledged part of the liturgical cycle. While Beleth did not fully approve of all these practices, he recognized that they all had their place.

IV. Beleth and the Vigils of St. John the Baptist

Beleth's willingness to recognize the validity of pagan dance within a Christian framework is also evident in his account of the tripudia in relation to the feast of the birth of St. John the Baptist (June 24), a feast that he explains is still called a vigil, even though a fast had been instituted in its place. Unlike the tripudia of the Christmas season, those associated with the summer solstice seem to have been more popular in nature. Beleth reports that it used to be the custom that men would come to the church for the vigils of St. John with their wives and daughters carrying lighted candles, but as it frequently happened that girls who were virgins would be violated and that there was much opportunity for evildoing, the vigils were turned to fasts.Footnote ⁷² Although Beleth speaks about sexual promiscuity at the vigil of St. John the Baptist as happening in the past, continuing legislation against these practices shows that he was speaking about an ongoing situation.

Ever attentive to the reasons behind liturgical practice, Beleth devotes a lengthy discussion (ch. 136) to why the birth of John the Baptist should be celebrated rather than his death. Was there not an apparent contradiction between “being born in sin” and so filled with the Holy Spirit that he could preach the Savior? Beleth concludes that his birth was celebrated both historically and allegorically. Both pagans and Christians rejoice in his birth, which looks forward to the coming of grace. In the first two recensions of chapter 137 (De tripudiis), Beleth explains the lighting of torches during these tripudia as originally a practical response from philosophers to a health problem in mid-summer:

1. Aa) Now let us speak about the tripudia that customarily occur on this feast, of which there are three kinds. On the vigil of St. John the boys in certain regions collect bones and certain other impure things and burn them together, and thus smoke is produced in the air. They also make torches and go around the fields with torches. A third relates to a wheel that they make turn.

2. Ab) That they burn impure things, they have this from the heathen. For in antiquity dragons would be excited to lust in this season because of the heat and frequently, flying through the air, would emit sperm in wells and fountains, resulting in the waters being infected, and then there was a lethal year because whoever drank from them either died or suffered a serious illness. Considering this, the philosophers ordered a fire to be made frequently and impure things and whatever gave out impure smoke to be burned far and wide around the wells and fountains. For they knew dragons can be put to flight through such smoke, just as elephants are driven away through their grunting. Alexander knew this well. For when he wanted to fight against Porus king of the Indians, who had led many elephants and put towers and fortresses on them from where the soldiers might fight, Alexander brought forward a multitude of pigs so that he could bring down those devices. And then he seized one piglet and made him scream loudly; hearing this, the swine began to grunt and they put to flight the elephants, once they had heard the grunting of the swine, and they destroyed whatever had been placed on top of them. And thus Alexander obtained victory.

3. Ac) Or this can be referred to the New Testament. For the boys throw away and burn old things, so that through this it can be signified that the customs of the old Law ought to cease with the coming of the new Law. For it is said in the Law: “You shall eat the old things of the elders and you shall throw out the old for the new that is coming in” (Lev. 26.10).

4. Ad) The torches or flares signify John, who was the light and lamp and precursor of the true light, who illuminates every man coming into this world (John 1.8–9). As it is said: He was a burning and shining lantern before the Lord, etc. (Is. 5.36).

5. Ae) The wheel is turned to signify that the sun then climbs to the height of its circle and immediately returns. To suggest this, a wheel is turned.Footnote ⁷³

Although Beleth is not clear about this wheel, he does refer to a kind of tripudium, presumably performed by people dancing in a wheel. The two other kinds of tripudia involved the burning of bones by the pueri and a procession of torch bearers around fields.

In the third recension of the Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, written between 1160 and 1164, Beleth revises this long account of the pagan roots of these rituals. He does not mention the tripudium that involved torchlight processions around the fields. He is also more scriptural in his explanation of other customs. While retaining a shortened account of the dangers presented by dragons, he relates them to scripture and deletes his earlier comment that the instruction to light flares came from philosophers:

1. Ba) Bones of dead animals are burned in observances of ancient institution. For there are animals who are called dragons. As in the Psalm: “Praise the Lord from the earth, dragons” (Ps. 148.7), not tracones as certain liars say, namely earthquakes.

2. Bb) And these animals fly in the air, swim in water, walk on earth, and sometimes are incited to lust in the air. So they often would emit sperm in wells and fluvial waters, and then a lethal year would follow. A remedy was therefore found against this, so that a funeral pyre was made from bones and thus the smoke might drive away animals of this kind. And because this happened a lot in this season, it is also done now by people.

3. Bc) There is another reason why the bones of animals are burned, because the bones of St. John were burned in the city of Sebaste by the heathen.

4. Bd) Burning faggots are also carried because John was a burning lamp.

5. Be) And a wheel is turned because the sun then turns in a circle and because one finds: “It suits me to be less, but for him to grow” [John 3.30]. They say: “This is said about him because the days then begin to shorten and they grow with the nativity.” But we say that sometimes they shorten before the feast of St. John and they increase before the birth of the Lord. But it is to be understood about the nativity in the mother, when each is conceived, namely Christ and John. John is conceived in the shortening days as in September, and Jesus in the lengthening days, as in April.Footnote ⁷⁴

This issue of whether John the Baptist had been sanctified in the womb, like Jeremiah, was one Beleth had included in his third recension of the previous chapter. In this version, he modifies his explanation of the tripudium involving a turning wheel by developing a parallel between the conception of Christ and John the Baptist and the spring and autumn equinoxes. He observes that a few days do shorten before the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and lengthen before the birth of Christ. Consistent with the more scripturally based tone of this version, he also adds more detail about John the Baptist as mediating between the Old and New Testaments.

Beleth was here developing Honorius's idea that the conception of John and of Christ corresponded to the seasons of spring and autumn, and of their birth to summer and winter. Honorius had observed that it was appropriate to fast at all of these seasons, because spring was the time of sowing seed, summer of harvesting seed, and autumn of collecting wine and oil and sowing seed again, while winter was for concentrating on gardens and buildings.Footnote ⁷⁵ Unlike Honorius, however, Beleth explains the fire rituals associated with the tripudia of the feast of John the Baptist as solstice rituals, without any polemic against popular superstition. His explanation that the torches were originally a form of health control is consistent with his general desire to explain rationally existing rituals. He knows for example that the heathen and their philosophers gave different reasons for the names they applied to the days of the week. The heathen identified them after the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jove, Venus, and Saturn, thinking them to be gods, while philosophers understood them to be named after planets, from whose motion and nature all things obtained their growth. Beleth recognizes that people still use these pagan names in vernacular speech, even though scripture does not use these names, and while the liturgy identifies them as secunda feria, tertia feria, etc.Footnote ⁷⁶ He observes that pagan practice was often converted into Christian use: “And this is the changing of the right hand of the most High” (Ps. 76.11). He explains the division between laity and ecclesiastics in terms of a distinction already present in pagan antiquity:

Bishops, abbots, chancellors, archdeacons, deacons, and archpriests all took their ranks from heathen equivalents. Commenting on why the Feast of the Purification (February 2) is called candelaria, Beleth repeats the observation of Honorius that this practice was taken over from heathen custom. He mentions that it used to be the custom at Rome to walk around the city in procession with lighted candles, and that this practice was then taken over by Christians in honor of Mary.Footnote ⁷⁸ He is not alarmed by the pagan roots of such practices.

Beleth is relatively restrained in his comments about rituals that lead to disorder. He repeats in his own way the observation of Honorius that the people used to celebrate vigils of the saints by coming to the church to sing praises during the night but subsequently celebrated them “with foul songs and dancing, drinking, and fornication.”Footnote ⁷⁹

His comment that such great feasts and drunken orgies still take place in Poitiers is of particular interest given that his teacher was Gilbert of Poitiers, from whom the information may have come.

Beleth's treatise continued to be copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His relative openness to pagan tradition was very different from the effort of early medieval liturgists to distinguish Christian ritual from pagan practice. Subtle variations in the manuscript tradition provide rich insight into the way particular scribes sought to acknowledge local tradition. In using pagan practice to explain Christian civic ritual, Beleth was extending a technique developed earlier that century by Honorius Augustodunensis within a monastic context. He also prompted Sicard of Cremona to produce his own account of the meaning of ecclesiastical architecture, ceremony, and ritual. While Sicard gave less attention than Beleth to the phenomenon of dancing at the vigil of St. John the Baptist or other occasions, we cannot presume that such practices were not part of his experience, only that he did not seek to justify them, as he did for the feast of Easter.

V. The Feast of Fools in the Late Twelfth Century

Beleth's relative openness toward ancient ritual practice was already coming into question by the late twelfth century. Some insight into shifting attitudes toward ritual dance can be glimpsed in a letter from Pope Alexander III to Peter abbot of Saint-Rémy, Reims, and to Fulco, his dean, issued November 8, 1170–1172. It seems that students at Reims had been provoked to laughter by the priest leading a chorea, in turn making the priest so angry that he broke down the door and windows of the students’ house and tried to excommunicate them:

The pope acted against the priest not for leading the dance, but for using excessive force against the students, who were able to gain papal protection for their freedom from excommunication. The students in Reims were provoked to laughter by a ritual dance that apparently involved “putting clerical modesty aside,” but to which the students clearly felt no commitment. The papal reaction suggests that on this occasion, the authorities were more on the side of the students than of a priest, keen to conduct what had become a very traditional practice.

Within the diocese of Paris, attitudes were also changing. The death in 1196 of Maurice de Sully, and the election of Eudes de Sully (1165–1208; no relation of Maurice) as bishop of Paris signaled a pronounced shift in official policy. Eudes, related to the royal houses of both France and England, earned little respect from the historian Rigord.Footnote ⁸² According to Peter of Blois, Eudes shone more in piety than in erudition. After studying in Paris he lived with his brother, Henry, archbishop of Bourges, and traveled to Rome in 1187.Footnote ⁸³ In 1197, only a year after his installation as bishop, Eudes acted on complaints that had been made by the papal legate:

Eudes quoted this edict from the papal legate, ordering any cleric guilty of improper action to be suspended from the choir and chapter. The liturgy of the feast of the circumcision (January 1) had to be observed with decorum and dignity. These reforms were doubtless related to the imminent completion of the nave of Notre-Dame. In a separate document, Eudes explained that he would rectify similar disorder during the feast of Stephen, the protomartyr (December 26), but arranged to pay compensation to the clerics involved in singing the Allelulia in three or four parts.Footnote ⁸⁵

The process of reform may also have involved creation of new ritual. In a careful study of the Play of Daniel from Beauvais cathedral, preserved along with the Office of the Circumcision, Margot Fassler has suggested that its dramatic account of how Daniel stood firm against the rioting and feasting in the court of Balthasar was deliberately intended to provide edification at a time of role reversal during the Christmas season.Footnote ⁸⁶ The play was written for the Feast of Fools and presented the theological significance to the celebrations that were under way. This was the dramatic equivalent of what Beleth himself was seeking to achieve, explanation of the deeper significance of ritual practice.

That the papal legate had only limited success in eliminating perceived aberrations in local practice is evident from the Rationale divinorum officium produced in the late thirteenth century by William Durand. Quoting selectively from Beleth's treatise, Durand explains that, in certain churches, the deacons come together in tripudio while singing the antiphon in honor of St. Stephen, the first deacon, after Christmas Day vespers, and do the readings of the night office and blessings after the Gospel (which they would not normally do), while priests performed the tripudium similarly on the vespers of the feast itself, in honor of St. John, patron of priests; the choirboys (pueri) did so on the feast of blessed John, in honor of the holy Innocents. Durand repeats Beleth's comment about subdeacons celebrating the feast of fools, in some churches on the feast of the Circumcision, in others on the Epiphany or the octave of Epiphany, but comments on its confused character: “Because the authority of the practice is not certain, as in the ancient canons it is sometimes called sacred, sometimes not, therefore the subdeacons do not have a fixed day for their celebration, and their feast is celebrated in a confused way.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Durand's comment, derived from Beleth, reflects his disapproval of the practice.

The contrast in the way Beleth and Durand present the feast of John the Baptist is particularly pronounced. Durand leaves out altogether Beleth's detailed explanation of why torches were lit during outdoor processions on the eve of that feast. Instead he emphasizes that there should be a three-week fast prior to the feast of John the Baptist, in which there should be fasting and no weddings should be celebrated, indeed (quoting Isidore), “women, while they are being married, should be veiled, so that they may know they are always subject to men and because Rebecca, having seen Isaac, veiled herself.”Footnote ⁸⁸ His only reference to these festivities is a single comment, abbreviated from Beleth, about how the night office is celebrated in summer, “sometimes rather stormily, which they call Vigils from the old name, and specially on the feasts of John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, and the Assumption, which are the special feasts of the season, and they begin to do this at the twilight on the feast of blessed John, in that he was himself the end of the old Testament and the beginning of the New.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Durand omits Beleth's much fuller explanation of why the night office is now celebrated at dawn, namely that originally ministers and married people, men and women, used to rise to celebrate the night office, but they became carried away by nocturnal pleasures, so that only religious celebrate the night office. Durand also leaves out Beleth's eloquent lament that in many churches, “boys rise before ministers of the church, sparrows sing before priests,” and that many are too lazy to arise at dawn, and in fact spurn the daily office.

Durand describes what should happen at the vigils of John the Baptist rather than what actually took place, as we find in the treatise of Beleth. Durand repeats Beleth's remarks about the game of the pila celebrated during “the December freedom,” mentioning that prelates may even indulge in dancing or singing with clerics in episcopal houses.Footnote ⁹⁰ This is not his own comment, however, but derives from a much fuller account by Sicard of Cremona. He also expands on Beleth's comment about women and men being able to beat one another in the second and third days respectively after Easter, with an additional remark that women should not lead dances in this period.Footnote ⁹¹

VI. The Imposition of Discipline, 1200–1500

The Rationale of Durand implemented a reforming program that was suspicious of dance that can be traced back to the beginning of the thirteenth century but would continue to be re-asserted at various moments in the later Middle Ages. The more positive attitudes toward dance manifested by Honorius, Beleth, and Sicard would gradually be overshadowed by another approach. At the same time as Eudes de Sully set about constructing a new façade to the cathedral of Notre-Dame (not completed until 1245), the bishop of Paris endeavored to establish his authority in the diocese through a series of statutes, “prohibitions and precepts to be observed by all priests.”Footnote ⁹² These statutes, issued in 1203 in response to a request by Pope Innocent III for a general reform of the clergy of the archdiocese of Sens, differ from those issued in the twelfth century by provincial synods in issuing from the bishop himself, rather than from a collective assembly. The statutes relate to the behavior of priests and their liturgical duties, as essentially superior to those of any other cleric. No priest or chaplain was to keep in his house any woman other than his mother or sister.

Even if the dances (choreae) referred to here seem to be secular in nature, there is another ruling included among liturgical matters:

The prohibition seems to relate to circular dances taking place in liturgical contexts. While they are unlikely to be the tripudia referred to by John Beleth and Durand, these choreae may be more informal circular dances that involve mixing both clergy and people, as implied by the pope's letter to the abbot of Reims.

Other statutes relate to a perceived risk of challenge and pollution to the priestly rank. Priests are not allowed to let any unknown person, educated or not, preach, even outside the church or in the streets. The faithful are urged to contribute to the cathedral and to arm themselves against the Albigensians. Priests must only give blessed bread to women who come for purification after childbirth, and they must not be given the Eucharist unless they have expressly asked for it and they have confessed beforehand.Footnote ⁹⁵ Women in childbirth, Jews, and heretics are projected as representing that which is potentially polluting to the right order of society.

These edicts were of immense influence in diocesan legislation elsewhere in France as in England. The prohibitions against dances in churches, cemeteries, and processions are repeated in statutes issued at Angers in 1219–1220 and widely disseminated in the West of France, with more elaborate detail:

Augustine had uttered that grim warning against dancing, with reference not to feast days, but to commentary on Ps. 32.2, “Confess to the Lord on the harp,” in relation to the sabbath.Footnote ⁹⁷ The reference to farandoles (ballationes) was lifted verbatim from the polemic of Caesarius of Arles in the fifth century.

Another statute (c.31) repeated a prohibition of the IV Lateran Council (c.16) on clerics exercising business activities and watching mimes, actors, or jugglers, as well as avoiding taverns (unless obliged by necessity to stop there). They were not to gamble, and had to have a suitable haircut and tonsure. Clerics in holy orders had to have clothes that were neither too long nor too short. There was also more detailed instruction about the fasts that should be observed at Lent and at the vigils of Christmas, Assumption, eight other feasts (including St. John the Baptist), and the feast of St. Mark (April 25) and Rogation days.Footnote ⁹⁸ These rulings, including those against dances in cemeteries and churches, are repeated by Henry, bishop of Sisteron in 1249 and the bishop of Nîmes in 1252. In the latter statutes there is a prohibition against declaiming cantilenae as well as against performing choreae.Footnote ⁹⁹ Given that Beleth's Summa was still being widely copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it could well be that many local churches were still clinging to liturgical practices that had been sanctioned by Beleth in the twelfth but now were disapproved of by Durand in the thirteenth.

Statutes of the Faculty of Arts in 1252 (repeated in 1280) instruct that at the death of a student, a fellow student should be present with his nation (if it is a feast day, or otherwise if he has been summoned), but he is not to allow choreas to be held outside his house (college), and that he should read the Psalter when a regent master died.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In 1276, however, the papal legate complained that on the particular feast days celebrated by a student nation, which should be celebrated with due solemnity, prayer, and works of mercy, students were engaging in feasting, drinking, and other loose behavior, including dances (choreas) and other activities, including taking arms and disturbing the community at large.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Those held responsible for such behavior would incur excommunication. Whether these were simply dissolute versions of a ritual dance, or purely secular dances, is not fully clear.

Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that dancing continued to be performed in religious communities, even in the face of repeated attempts by episcopal authorities to crack down on excessively dissolute behavior. In the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales recorded a circular dance that took place in Wales on the feast of St. Aelivedha (Almedda) more with amazement than hostility. “Men or girls, now in the cemetery, now in a circular dance that is led round the cemetery with a song, suddenly fall on the ground as in a trance, initially as if led in ecstasy, then jumping up, as if seized by frenzy, they represent with their hands and feet, before the people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feast days.”Footnote ¹⁰² Gerald then describes how they reenacted various trades, concluding: “On being brought into the church and led up to the altar with their oblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly awakened and coming to themselves. Thus, by the divine mercy, which rejoices in the conversion, not in the death, of sinners, many persons from the conviction of their senses, are on these feast days corrected and mended.”Footnote ¹⁰³ The mimetic actions of the dance served to celebrate the redeeming power of a saint.

Such behavior was seen as a natural extension of liturgy. A passion play from St. Gall, recorded about 1300, reports that the person playing Mary Magdalene “should dance with one girl and two young men.” The association of dancing and music with Mary Magdalene would be a normative feature of music and art until the sixteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In the mid-thirteenth century, Eudes de Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, recorded with distaste the activity of both nuns and clerics in Normandy during major feasts, such as of St. Nicholas, the Holy Innocents or of Mary Magdalene, in dancing with laypeople or singing scurrilous songs.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Even in the late fifteenth century, such processions were still being practiced. The nuns of the Paraclete, for example, went in procession some distance from the abbey with the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages to a particular cross, called Croix du Maître, during Rogationtide and at Ascension. After certain Latin responses were sung before the Cross, believed to have been established by Abelard himself, the nuns began to dance and sing vernacular songs, according to an edict of bishop Jacques Raguier issued August 4, 1499. The nuns had apparently resisted ecclesiastical complaints, claiming ancient authority for the practice and maintaining that they would make a gift to each of the young girls presented there. The bishop was unmoved by their petition.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Not only were nuns seen by a local rural community to be particularly efficacious, but also they provided an opportunity for the status of young girls to be officially recognized by the community as a whole.

The practices still observed by the nuns of the Paraclete in the late fifteenth century had persisted despite three centuries of episcopal condemnations. At the Council of Vienne (1311–1312) the authorities complained that clerics and laypeople were still performing dissolute circular dances (choreas) and singing cantilenas in cemeteries when they should be in the church in prayer, and separately warned again nuns engaging in such dances.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ More detail is given in a similar ruling of the Council of Basel (1431–1436) about various festivities and entertainments that occur on certain fixed feast days. Choreae and tripudia are used here to refer to two distinct activities:

The attempts of authorities, from Eudes de Sully to the assembled prelates at the Council of Basel, to impose order on ecclesiastical festivities were never wholly successful. Ancient traditions of festivity, especially those that marked important saints’ days and both the winter and summer solstice, were always celebrated with dancing, as they seem to have been even in late antiquity.

The tripudia to which Beleth refers were ritual dances long integrated into the liturgy in certain churches. A statute of the cathedral of St. Stephen, Sens, laid down that “on these two feasts [of St. Stephen and St. Lupus], the precentor should engage in dance, wearing gloves and rings, with a rod, and not more often.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The meaning of these instructions is clarified by an early fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript from the cathedral of Sens (Sens, Bibl. Mun. 6) that contains an extended wordless neuma, to be sung at the end of antiphons on the feasts of St. Stephen and of St. Lupus. The markings on the music are argued by Jacques Chailley to refer specifically to the dance undertaken during the singing of the plainchant.Footnote ¹¹⁰ It is quite possible, as Yvonne Rokseth has suggested, that religious songs sometimes record circular dances (choreas) in relation to major feasts, like Easter or particular saints’ days.Footnote ¹¹¹ The term may also be rendered as “carol,” describing a particular kind of dance, performed to the ductia, “rapid in its ascent and descent” according to Johannes de Grocheio, writing in the late thirteenth century. Carols performed at Christmas and Easter are a residual legacy of these choreae.Footnote ¹¹²

By the sixteenth century, the ritual dances described by Honorius, Beleth, Sicard and, in more muted form, by William Durand, were viewed by the authorities as the unwanted legacy of pagan tradition. Only in isolated places did these traditions persist, as at Besançon (the bergerette) and at Limoges in the seventeenth century.Footnote ¹¹³ Liturgical dance still survives in Spain on the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception, despite attempts by the Church in the seventeenth century to condemn the practice.Footnote ¹¹⁴ An annual dance of pilgrims celebrated on the feast of St. Willibrord at Echternach in Luxemburg is first documented in 1603, when the abbot reprimanded clerics who wished to avoid engaging in the practice, and would survive attempts to have it stopped by the archbishop of Trier in 1777 and later.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Traditionally the dance or tripudium was restricted to men, and involved a row of dancers making three steps forward and one back (or sometimes five forward and two back), and then processing to behind the main altar, where a metal corona, carrying images of the apostles, was lowered over the dancers.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Such survivals attest to a much larger range of practices that—like the game of pila—were considered an acceptable part of Christian ritual by liturgists like Beleth and Sicard of Cremona in the twelfth century, but which subsequently incurred official opposition from the Church. While the twentieth century has witnessed occasional moves to revive the tradition of liturgical dance, such experiments are far removed from the dancing at the tombs of the saints against which Caesarius of Arles and Isidore of Seville fulminated so strongly in early Middle Ages.