Feast of the Ass

The Feast of the Ass (Latin: Festum Asinorum or asinaria festa, French: Fête de l'âne) was a medieval, Christian feast observed on January 14, celebrating the Flight into Egypt. It was celebrated primarily in France, as a by-product of the Feast of Fools celebrating the donkey-related stories in the Bible, in particular the donkey bearing the Holy Family into Egypt after Jesus's birth.

This feast may represent a Christian adaptation of the pagan feast, Cervulus, integrating it with the donkey in the nativity story. In connection with the Biblical stories, the celebration was first celebrated in the 11th century, inspired by the pseudo-Augustinian "Sermo contra Judaeos" c. 6th century.

In the second half of the 15th century, the feast disappeared gradually, along with the Feast of Fools, which was stamped out around the same time. It was not considered as objectionable as the Feast of Fools.

A girl and a child on a donkey would be led through town to the church, where the donkey would stand beside the altar during the sermon, and the congregation would "hee-haw" their responses to the priest.

The preacher impersonates the Hebrew prophets whose Messianic utterances he works into an argument establishing the Divinity of Christ. Having confuted the Jews out of the mouths of their own teachers, the orator addresses himself to the unbelieving Gentiles— "Ecce, convertimur ad gentes." The testimony of Virgil, Nabuchodonosor, and the Erythraean Sibyl is eloquently set forth and interpreted in favour of the general thesis. As early as the eleventh century this sermon had taken the form of a metrical dramatic dialogue, the stage-arrangement adhering closely to the original. Additions and adaptations were gradually introduced.

A Rouen manuscript of the 13th century exhibits twenty-eight prophets as taking part in the play. After Terce, the rubric directs, "let the procession move to the church, in the centre of which let there be a furnace and an idol for the brethren to refuse to worship." The procession filed into the choir. On the one side were seated Moses, Amos, Isaias, Aaron, Balaam and his Ass, Zachary and Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Simeon. The three Gentile prophets sat opposite. The proceedings were conducted under the auspices of St. Augustine, whom the presiding dignitary called on each of the prophets, who successively testified to the birth of the Messiah.

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