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 kalendorum, or hypodiacorum, or fluturum, 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 in vain to restrain this licence, which prevailed at the close of the 15th century.

CALENDERS. See CALENDERS.