The gate of the year

Oil painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, realized in 1559, entitled “The Fight between Carnival and Lent”, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

The new year and spring festivals which, in the course of time, have been merged in that complex set of folk customs called Carnival, have always been regarded with suspect and hostility by the Church, because of their patent connection with pre-Christian beliefs. For this reason, the Church has committed itself, perhaps even in the choice of the feast name, to disempower and control the symbolic extension of this feast. Indeed Carnival (in Spanish Carnestollendas) makes reference to the period which immediately precedes the imposition of the ban on the consumption of meat and the beginning of fasting (in German Fastnacht), established by Lent. This period was thus seen as a sort of introduction (Spanish Antruejo, from Latin introitus, “entrance, entry”) to Lent. Folk culture has established thus a symbolic contrast between the period of revelry, of the “fat” food, of exuberance and licence (Carnival) and the period of penitence, of fasting, of submission to rigid moral rules (Lent).
The period of Lent, however, maintains also the character of a preparation for the spring festival of Easter, and of a purification phase, resuming the idea, developed in the Roman world, of the month of February as a period devoted to purifications, understood as a regeneration of nature (Latin februo, “to purify”). Lent corresponds also to a critical period in the cycle of agricultural production: the cold season is not still over and spring is not still begun. “If it is true that “one cannot” eat fat food, it is also true that however – since the winter supplies were exhausted – this could not be done in any case. The dry, light diet, assumed with spirit of penitence thinking to the forty days spent by Jesus in the desert, has in reality also its functional good reason” (Cardini 1995, p. 167).
The Carnival festivals have inherited in part the tradition of the Feast of the Fools or of the Innocents, executed by the young clerics and students, during the initial period of the year, the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, as well as the feasts of the associations which acted out mocking plays, forms of reversal of social roles and of satire of authorities and hierarchies. But they resume also much more ancient customs, ceremonies for the renewal of the seasons, of propitiation of fertility for the fields and of the forces of nature (Heers 1983, p. 223). Carnival masquerades represented, in continuity with pre-Christian religious beliefs permeating the mentality of medieval humanity, also a personification of the dead, returning in the moment of the yearly cycle which anticipates the resurgence of the vital and generative force corresponding to the spring season. From the earth emerged those beings that possessed human, animal and plant attributes, figures which are amenable to that of the Wild Man. An indication of this connection between life and death can be found in the typical foods of the Carnival period: pork and the broad bean (fava bean). Behind the banquet of pork there is a death ritual: the slaughtering of the pig as a sacrificial action and the animal’s testament (the latter appearing in popular literature and constituting a variant of the Carnival’s testament, who is condemned to death). The broad bean, in its turn, is a vegetable which belonged to the realm of the dead (according to the representation of it that was diffused by ancient Pythagoreans). The two foods together are remained as the traditional dish of the New Year evening, the “zampone” (“pig’s foot”) with lentils, which continues to be regarded as auspicious for the next year’s prosperity (Cardini 1995, p. 191-192).

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Der_Kampf_zwischen_Karneval _und_Fasten_%281559%29.jpg]




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Oil painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, realized in 1559, entitled “The Fight between Carnival and Lent”, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The new year and spring festivals which, in the course of time, have been merged in that complex set of folk customs called Carnival, have always been regarded with suspect and hostility by the Church, because of their patent connection with pre-Christian beliefs. For this reason, the Church has committed itself, perhaps even in the choice of the feast name, to disempower and control the symbolic extension of this feast. Indeed Carnival (in Spanish Carnestollendas) makes reference to the period which immediately precedes the imposition of the ban on the consumption of meat and the beginning of fasting (in German Fastnacht), established by Lent. This period was thus seen as a sort of introduction (Spanish Antruejo, from Latin introitus, “entrance, entry”) to Lent. Folk culture has established thus a symbolic contrast between the period of revelry, of the “fat” food, of exuberance and licence (Carnival) and the period of penitence, of fasting, of submission to rigid moral rules (Lent). The period of Lent, however, maintains also the character of a preparation for the spring festival of Easter, and of a purification phase, resuming the idea, developed in the Roman world, of the month of February as a period devoted to purifications, understood as a regeneration of nature (Latin februo, “to purify”). Lent corresponds also to a critical period in the cycle of agricultural production: the cold season is not still over and spring is not still begun. “If it is true that “one cannot” eat fat food, it is also true that however – since the winter supplies were exhausted – this could not be done in any case. The dry, light diet, assumed with spirit of penitence thinking to the forty days spent by Jesus in the desert, has in reality also its functional good reason” (Cardini 1995, p. 167). The Carnival festivals have inherited in part the tradition of the Feast of the Fools or of the Innocents, executed by the young clerics and students, during the initial period of the year, the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, as well as the feasts of the associations which acted out mocking plays, forms of reversal of social roles and of satire of authorities and hierarchies. But they resume also much more ancient customs, ceremonies for the renewal of the seasons, of propitiation of fertility for the fields and of the forces of nature (Heers 1983, p. 223). Carnival masquerades represented, in continuity with pre-Christian religious beliefs permeating the mentality of medieval humanity, also a personification of the dead, returning in the moment of the yearly cycle which anticipates the resurgence of the vital and generative force corresponding to the spring season. From the earth emerged those beings that possessed human, animal and plant attributes, figures which are amenable to that of the Wild Man. An indication of this connection between life and death can be found in the typical foods of the Carnival period: pork and the broad bean (fava bean). Behind the banquet of pork there is a death ritual: the slaughtering of the pig as a sacrificial action and the animal’s testament (the latter appearing in popular literature and constituting a variant of the Carnival’s testament, who is condemned to death). The broad bean, in its turn, is a vegetable which belonged to the realm of the dead (according to the representation of it that was diffused by ancient Pythagoreans). The two foods together are remained as the traditional dish of the New Year evening, the “zampone” (“pig’s foot”) with lentils, which continues to be regarded as auspicious for the next year’s prosperity (Cardini 1995, p. 191-192). [Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Der_Kampf_zwischen_Karneval _und_Fasten_%281559%29.jpg]