For lesser offenses against the Church there are lesser but effective penalties. In Pontdebois there was once a religious procession in Lent. A certain woman marched therein with pretended devoutness, but then went home and in defiance of the fast-time dined upon some mutton and ham. The odor escaped into the street. The woman was seized, and the bishop condemned her to walk through the town with her quarter of mutton on the spit over her shoulder, the ham slung round her neck, and with a ribald crowd, of course, trailing behind. After that penance the fasts were well kept in Pontdebois.
[Sidenote: Festive Side of Popular Religion]
Yet one must not think of the religion of this Feudal Age as in general sad. On the contrary (by one of those abrupt contrasts now grown familiar) clergy and people get vast joy, not to say amusement, even out of the sacred ordinances. "Men go gayly along the road to salvation." For example, the great pilgrimages (pardons) are often festive reunions with merchants chaffering and jongleurs playing or doing their tricks while the whole company proceeds to some shrine.
Even in the church building solemnity is not always maintained. The choir, indeed, belongs pretty strictly to worship, but in the nave all sorts of secular proceedings can go on, even the meetings of malcontent factions and of rioters. The church bells ring for markets, for musters, or for peaceful gatherings almost as often as they ring for the holy services. As for the sacred festivals, good bishops complain that they are so numerous that the secular element intrudes utterly, and disfigures them with idleness and carousing. The peasants may go to early mass; after that they will drink, chatter, sing, dance (in a very riotous fashion), and join in wrestlings, races, and archery contests until nightfall.
Besides these ordinary abuses of holy things, every parish seems to have its own special Reign of Folly, although the name of the celebration varies from place to place. Even the younger clergy participate in such mock ceremonies. In Pontdebois the subdeacons elect a Pope of Buffoons, give him a silver tiara, and enthrone him with much dignity, electing at the same time several "cardinals" to help direct his revels. There are noisy processions, cavalcades, and even scandalous parodies of some of the most sacred services of the Church. The mock pope issues "bulls" enjoining all kinds of horseplay, and actually strikes a kind of lead money with such legends as "Live merrily and rejoice," or, "Fools are sometimes wise." It seems next to impossible to confine such proceedings to the streets, the market place and the church porch, although decent bishops fight against intrusions into the holy building. The canons of the cathedral have finally induced the junior clergy and the lay rabble to refrain from the more extreme parodies and from such pranks as stealing the church bells by giving the "Pope" and all his noisy rout a grand dinner. Pious churchmen groan on such days, but they comfort themselves by saying that these proceedings make religion popular and give an outlet for "the flesh," which if restrained too much, will succumb before even worse temptations of the devil.