The Christians retained much of the ceremony and wantonness of the kalends of January, which for many ages was held a feast, and celebrated by the clergy with great indecencies, under the names festum kalendarum, or hypodiaco-norum, or fluttorum, that is, the feast of fools: sometimes also libertas decembrica. The people met masked in the church; and in a ludicrous way proceeded to the election of a mock pope, or bishop, who exercised a jurisdiction over them suitable to the festivity of the occasion. Fathers, councils, and popes, long laboured to restrain this licence, to little purpose. We find