Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/311

 THE COW-MASS.

HE scenic processions, half religious, half secular, which were so common in the Middle Ages, have been abolished, or if in a few cases they still exist, are now but a faint shadow of what they once were. They almost all perished during the storms of the sixteenth century in those countries which accepted the teaching of the Reformers; for a time they survived in Catholic lands, but during the latter years of the seventeenth, and the greater part of the eighteenth century, they had to encounter an adversary, in the then prevalent Jansenistic opinions, which were as inimical to these traditional festivals as the Reformers themselves had been. The persistent dislike of those things which gave pleasure to the populace was exhibited in many forms. In proof of what we say we may refer to the warfare which, in the last century, a large and powerful section of the French clergy waged on the representations of Saint Christopher. As one example of this, out of the many that might be quoted, we will mention the fate of the sculptured figure of this saint, which once ornamented the Cathedral Church of St. Etienne of Auxerre. It was destroyed in 1768 by the Chapter, because "it was found that it only served as an object of entertainment to the common people".

That many of the popular processions had been abolished before the great changes which took place in consequence of the wars following on the French Revolution does not admit of doubt. The few that had vigorous life in them up to that time seem for the most part to have been swept away by those fierce storms. When, after the