Illustration from a manuscript datable to the XV or XVI century, from the Nürnberger Stadtbibliothek, Nuremberg, Germany. The masks shown were part of the parade during the Carnival (Schembartlauf), which took place in Nuremberg and was, according to tradition, organized by the guild of the butchers. These characters show elements of therianthropy, which recall the mythic figure of the Wild Man, and have many characteristics and attributes which are frequently present in the Carnival masquerades in the Alps: animal horns, clothing in sheep or goat skin, cowbells around the waist.
Several popular feasts assumed the aspect of an establishment of a tempus terribile, a terrible time, involving the irruption of chaos, but which foreshadowed a new foundation of order, at the cosmic level as well as at the social level. The return of a primordial time is expressed through the irruption of the forces of disorder into society, those forces that had been kept strictly harnessed during everyday time, because deemed as disruptive and dangerous. From this, the Carnival period acquires its aspects of food and sex orgy, reversal of social roles, abolition of the hierarchies and establishment of fictive authorities (Cardini 1995).

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schembartlaeufer_13.jpg]