origin much earlier than any ecclesiastical observance, and
used in the same way as " Saturnalia," " Liberalia," &c.And, in fact, whatever may have been the origin of the word, there can be little doubt that the origin of the thing dates from ante-Christian times. The Bacchanalian festivals of antiquity were celebrated by the Romans, who adopted them from older nations, twice in the year, indicating the early connection of those rites with the phenomena of the solar system, in the winter and in the summer. And the primitive church, finding it, doubtless, impossible to suppress, as it would fain have done, those popular revels, adopted its usual policy of at least fitting them in to its system, and assigning to them a meaning connected with its own practices and observances. The Lupercalian festival in honour of Pan and Ceres, observed in February (which Pope Gelasius I., who died in 496, strove to supersede by substituting for them the festival of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, with special illumination of candles on the altar Candlemass) also coincided with the period of carnival, as did also (at a little earlier period of the year) the mediaeval celebration of the Festival of Fools, equally a survival of the same old Pagan midwinter revelling. Specially the use of masks and torches can be traced as the continuation of ancient practices.
The spirit of compromise, which has so generally characterized the dealings of the church with " the world " is very notable in its attitude towards the popular observances of carnival ; and more especially so, as needs must have been the case, in those cities in which the Pope was temporal ruler as well as spiritual pastor. For many generations past these carnival gala doings, especially at Rome, were recognized as an important element in the material prosperity of the city. They were good for trade. They induced large numbers of people, foreigners and provincials, to throng to Rome. The Government of the popes, accordingly, not only looked leniently on carnival excesses, but took active steps to promote and assist the revelry. But the Pope was at the same time the universal bishop of souls ! And, as the writer of Moroni s dissertation on the subject says, " If the church tolerates the inveterate custom of carnivalesque diversions, especially the masquerades, groaning all the while, it promotes exercises of piety at the same time, since the consequences of these travesties are dangerous, as affording opportunites for immoral conduct. And the Bacchanalian revelries of carnival, which are nothing else than an imitation of the abominable debauches of Pagans, when they abandon themselves to their passions, have been constantly denounced by the voice of reason, by that of the gospel, by the sacred canons, by the councils, and by all the pontiffs and zealous pastors of the churches, from the earliest ages down to our own days. The church from Septuagesima Sunday covers her altars, and her ministers assume vestments of penitence. She suspends the song of Hallelujah, and mingles tears and sighs of sadness with the joyous accents of the people. She assumes purple-coloured vestments and altar-cloths in sign of mourning, supresses her hymns, and proposes for our contemplation the fatal fall of our first parents, and the lamentable effects of that great sin." But at the same time the Cardinal Vicar, in whose hands was the police of Rome, was giving special permission for the wearing of masks in the streets, naming the days when people might pelt each other with sham comfits, regulating the exact size and nature of these, and planning the whole arrangement of the revels. Clement IX. (ob. 1669) meanwhile used to shut himself every year during carnival in the convent of St Sabina en the Aventine, that he might at least not see what he could not avoid tolerating. Clement XL, in 1719 and 1721, issued two apostolical briefs with the view of repressing the licence of carnival. Benedict XIIL (ob. 1 730) always passed the carnival in the strictest retirement in the Dominican convent of St Sixtus. Benedict XIV. (ob. 1758) strove, by an encyclical letter of the 1st of January 1 748, to moderate some of the worst excesses of licentious ness to which the carnival every year gave rise. But his efforts mainly restricted themselves to the merely formal points of insisting that the revelry should not be prolonged beyond the midnight of Shrove Tuesday, and forbidding the appearance of masks in the streets on Sundays and Fridays ; adding a promise of plenary indulgence to all who would contribute to counterbalance the sins of carnival by the practice of certain extra devotional exercises during those days. Nevertheless, in the last years which preceded the destruction of the Pope s temporal power, when the inhabi tants of Rome were bent on manifesting by every possible means their discontent at the ruling order of things, and their desire to associate themselves with the rest of liberated and united Italy, and for this reason were disposed to abstain from all carnival rejoicings, the priestly Government did everything in its power to promote the usual holiday doings, and excite the people to the accustomed revelry.
The Roman Carnival is recorded by several contemporary writers of records and diaries to have -been especially splendid during the papacy of the great Farnese Pope Paul III., 1534-1549, days when Rome was still over flowing with wealth sent thither by all tributary Chris tendom. And the year 1545 is mentioned by several chroniclers as having been marked by special magnificence. The carnival sports seem at that time to have consisted mainly of three divisions, the races in the Corso (which, formerly called the Via Lata, took its present name from them), and the spectacular pageants of the " Agona/ now the Piazza Navona, and of the Testaccio. The races seem to have taken place on each of the eight days which were then held to constitute the period devoted to holiday- making. These races seem to have prevailed in one form or another from time immemorial ; and before they were run in the Corso, as at present, took place in the open space in the neighbourhood of the Porta St Sebastiano, not far from the present Protestant cemetery. It was in the time of Paul II. (ob. 1471) that they were moved to the Corso. The Piazza del Popolo, which now forms the starting-place, was not then in existence. The races started from the Arch of Domitian, in the immediate vicinity of the Palazzo Fiano, and terminated in the Piazza di Venezia, so named from the huge palace, now the property of Austria, which the Venetian Pope Paul II. (Barbo) had just built. " In these races," says the writer in Moroni s Dizionario, " ran, during the eight days of carnival, old and young, boys, Jews, horses, asses, and buffaloes, the prizes consisting in a certain flag or banner called palio." The institution of these races as they existed subsequently, and still exist to the present day, belongs to a subsequent period. The principal feature of the carnival, however, in the days we are speaking of, consisted in the so-called sports, " giuochi," of the Agona and the Monte Testaccio. The former seem to have consisted of little more than one of those colossal processions of which that age was so fond. A full account of those processions may be found in a MS. preserved in the Albani library, entitled The True Progression of thi Festival of Agone and Testaccio, celebrated by the Gentlemen of Rome, on the Thursday and the Monday of Carnival in the year 1545, according to the practice of the Ancient Romans, together with a True Description of the Triumphal Cars.
The following account of the games at Monte Testaccio is abridged from Crescimbeni, who has preserved the de scription left by a contemporary writer. The Testaccio is an artificial mound of considerable size, composed of pot sherds, the accumulation of many generations, long since well covered with turf.
