Professional Documents
Culture Documents
When Things Grow Many: Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature 1st Edition Lawrence S. Schulman full chapter instant download
When Things Grow Many: Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature 1st Edition Lawrence S. Schulman full chapter instant download
When Things Grow Many: Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature 1st Edition Lawrence S. Schulman full chapter instant download
https://ebookmass.com/product/complexity-emergence-and-causality-
in-applied-linguistics-a-social-realist-viewpoint-jeremie-
bouchard/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-book-of-many-things-dd-beyond/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-vasculome-from-many-one-1st-
edition-zorina-s-galis-editor/
https://ebookmass.com/product/chemistry-for-engineering-
students-4th-edition-lawrence-s-brown/
Bad Things: The Nature and Normative Role of Harm Neil
Feit
https://ebookmass.com/product/bad-things-the-nature-and-
normative-role-of-harm-neil-feit/
https://ebookmass.com/product/romanticism-hellenism-and-the-
philosophy-of-nature-1st-ed-edition-william-s-davis/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nourishing-tomorrow-clean-
engineering-and-nature-friendly-living-david-s-k-ting/
https://ebookmass.com/product/tibetan-buddhist-philosophy-of-
mind-and-nature-douglas-s-duckworth/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-lithic-garden-nature-and-the-
transformation-of-the-medieval-church-1st-edition-mailan-s-
doquang/
When Things Grow Many
When Things Grow Many
Complexity, Universality and Emergence in Nature
L. S. Schulman
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Lawrence S. Schulman 2022
The moral rights of the author[s] have been asserted
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936303
ISBN 978-0-19-886188-1 (hbk.)
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198861881.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Dedicated to
my wife, Claire
Preface
This is a book about statistical mechanics, but not so much about statistical physics.
The distinction is in the applications, not the methods. The central idea is that when
dealing with objects that have a large number of constituents qualitatively new phe-
nomena emerge. This is a message one can take from physics and apply to a myriad of
topics. Much, but not all, of the material is based on courses given at Clarkson Univer-
sity and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The presentation is aimed at advanced
undergraduates and graduate students, including—in fact, especially—those not di-
rectly involved in traditional areas of physics. The general theme is that statistical
mechanics is useful in many areas of science, both those where the subject developed,
such as chemistry, as well as more recent applications in biological, financial, linguistic,
social and other fields.
The organization of the book is chaotic—perhaps as befits the subject matter. At
one point I thought it best to sort things out along topics, biology here, sociology in
its own chapter, and so forth. But as I wrote and thought, the areas became so inter-
twined that I abandoned this plan. There are applications of power laws to linguistics,
sociology, economics, and more. Ditto for maximum entropy methods; ditto for self-
organized criticality and so on. So in the end, I jump around a bit, sometimes focusing
on the application, sometimes on the method. This means that if you’re interested in
economics—and although you might care about firefly synchronization, it’s not your
priority—you’ll have to hunt around a bit. I have tried to make the index compensate
for the lack of clear boundaries.
The first eight chapters are an introduction to the methods of statistical physics,
although many examples from Nature are provided along the way (in Appendix B more
formal results in statistical physics are given). The problems dealt with are simplified,
but the methods are those used in richer situations. And richer situations follow; quite
a few individual applications are given in the final chapters although they are only a
small fraction of those treated in the literature. (Appendix A presents the notation we
use.)
As to the mathematical level, I have been free in the use of equations, although
in many cases footnotes or appendices are provided with some of the necessary back-
ground. The goal is to make this readable to as large an audience as possible. The
footnotes, which are plentiful, serve three purposes. They fill in material that may
be unfamiliar to the reader, they cover advanced material whose details often can be
ignored, and finally there are ordinary footnotes, guides to citations or extra material
whose insertion in the main text would be a distraction.
And now for the mea culpa: First, I confess to a certain amount of myopia. I did
not read every paper on every subject. I didn’t even read a significant fraction of
Preface vii
them. So in many cases I’m out of date, in many cases I report what I’m familiar with,
omitting significant other work. I apologize to those I slight. There are also value
judgements: The data are inadequate for the conclusion, or some article misses the
point, and so forth. I think I’m right, but maybe not. So take those “conclusions” with a
grain of salt. It also must be said that this book has an emphasis different from books on
a particular subject matter. I’m not going to teach anyone ecology, linguistics, finance
or any specific field. Rather this should teach approaches to a problem. (Witness, the
number of times I express ignorance. And ignorance can take two forms: my own or
that of the human race.) There’s also an apology due over the selection of matlab™
for the sample programs. I once knew Fortran and a smattering of other computer
languages, but in the last few years I’ve focused on matlab™. Yes, I know that (for
example) Python is (1) free and (2) superior in some respects (Airy functions as of
2015). True, some books give generic programs, but I’ll have to leave such translations
to readers. There is also the issue of classification. Does linguistics (Zipf’s law) belong
in the social sciences? Does an electronic application of the Kuramoto model belong
in biological sciences? Maybe yes, maybe no, but please don’t worry about it.
And finally it’s likely that some instructors will develop new topics that I don’t
treat. Tell me about it!1 There might be a second edition. This also goes for interesting
applications that don’t appear in the present volume. I’m sure there are topics that
are omitted through my own ignorance.
1 My email address is schulman (at) clarkson.edu and variations are given on both of my (out of
date) Clarkson websites. I can also be reached at schulman137 (at) gmail.com.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to people at all institutions where this course has been taught and
especially to the students who participated in the presentation of these ideas.
Those students who contributed were Rachel E. Barker, Jonathan Brassard, Pablo
Bravo, Isabel Dengos, Lawson Glasby, Nick Gravish, Conner J. Herndon, Shane
J. Jacobeen, Matthew W. Jensen-Bukovinsky, Shengkai Li, Michael Lovall, Megan
G. Matthews, Christopher R. McBryde, James (Cordy) McCord, James McInerny,
Karan P. Mehta, Collin Reff, Karan Shah, James Taylor, Jacob Troupe, and Mackenna
Wood. In addition many colleagues have contributed to my own understanding as well
as posing questions to which I often had no answer. Those who have directly influenced
this work are John Beggs, Bruce Boghosian, Marcos da Luz, Bernard Gaveau, Dan
Goldman, Nicholas Gotelli, John Harte, Ady Mann, Eva Mihóková, David Storch,
Lucas Wetzel, and Marina Wosniack
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Building 2
2 Ideal gas 6
2.1 Fluctuations of the ideal gas 8
3 Rubber bands 11
3.1 The game 11
3.2 Analysis 11
3.3 Simulation 13
3.4 Independent folk 15
3.5 How often does the prediction go wrong? 17
4 Percolitis 19
4.1 An epidemic model 19
4.2 Discussion 22
4.3 Behavior of the order parameter near the critical point 24
4.4 Approach to equilibrium 25
4.5 Discreteness and fluctuations* 30
4.6 Self-organized criticality (SOC): Applications to galaxies
and mean field theory 34
4.7 The truth about percolitis 38
4.8 Abstract percolation 42
4.9 Percolation applications 44
4.10 True epidemiology 45
5 Ferromagnetism 50
5.1 Curie–Weiss ferromagnets 55
5.2 Magnetization √ 57
5.3 Fluctuations greater than N 60
6 Maximum entropy methods 63
6.1 Information 63
6.2 Maximum entropy 66
6.3 Using maximum entropy to study Supreme Court voting 71
x Contents
7 Power laws 76
7.1 Power laws are scale free 78
7.2 Diffusion 79
7.3 Preferential attachment (the rich get richer) 81
7.4 Exponential functions of exponential distributions 84
7.5 Superposition of exponentials 85
7.6 Critical phenomena and self-organized criticality (SOC) 85
8 Universality, renormalization and critical phenomena 89
8.1 The nearest neighbor one-dimensional Ising model 90
9 Social sciences 104
9.1 Econophysics 105
9.2 Stock market bubbles and crashes 110
9.3 Linguistics 115
9.4 Power laws for cities 119
9.5 Urban discrimination 121
9.6 Voter models and elections 128
9.7 Crowd control 131
9.8 Traffic 133
10 Biological sciences 140
10.1 Firefly synchronization 140
10.2 Biorobotics and glass 147
10.3 Gene distributions 151
10.4 Flocking 156
10.5 Kuramoto model 162
10.6 Ecology 171
10.7 Neurology 176
11 Physical sciences 180
11.1 Power laws for luminescence 180
11.2 Large scale structure 184
11.3 Galactic morphology 187
12 Putting it all together 191
Appendix A Notation 196
Appendix B Background in statistical physics 198
Appendix C Fractals 204
Appendix D Review of probability 206
D.1 Basics 206
D.2 Counting 210
D.3 The central limit theorem 211
D.4 Markov processes 213
D.5 Stochastic dynamics 214
Contents xi
You can often solve a one-body problem, r(t), the trajectory of a particle as a function
of time. You can sometimes solve a two-body problem, and every once in a while you
can find the paths of three particles.1 But what happens if you have 1023 of them?
It turns out that
More is simpler.
That doesn’t mean you can solve the 1023 -body problem; it does mean you can make
statements about the collective behavior of a large number of particles, statements
that are informative, even though they lack detail.
And once you’ve learned to do this for gases and physical systems, you can often
do it for other systems having a large number of constituents, for example neurons
in the brain, or starlings in flight, or stars in galaxies, or people buying houses in a
neighborhood, or stock market prices, or epidemics, or evolution . . .. The list goes on.
There is a second phenomenon that will also interest us. This is epitomized in the
title of an article by Phil Anderson [9],2
More is different.
Anderson was opposing the (then) accepted wisdom, for example the idea that soci-
ology is simply applied psychology or solid state physics an application of elementary
particle physics. Here the point is complexity and emergence. At the end of his article
he quotes a (probably fictitious) exchange between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hem-
ingway: SF: The rich are different from us. EH: Yes, they have more money. Leaving
aside positive and negative nuances in this exchange, it is nevertheless clear that in the
United States annual salaries of $106 and $104 yield qualitatively different experiences.
The first part of this book will be devoted to how some of these ideas can be
applied to gases, social systems, (pseudo-)epidemiology and ferromagnetism. In these
1 Apropos of solving there’s an amusing history of not solving. I’ve heard the following sequence
from various sources, including the names of the people who showed what can’t be solved. Here’s
one version: “In eighteenth-century Newtonian mechanics, the three-body problem was insoluble.
With the birth of general relativity around 1910 and quantum electrodynamics in 1930, the two- and
one-body problems became insoluble. And within modern quantum field theory, the problem of zero
bodies (vacuum) is insoluble. So, if we are out after exact solutions, no bodies at all is already too
many!” This quote is ascribed to G. E. Brown and appears in [149].
2 P. W. Anderson, American, Nobel Prize, condensed matter physics, Bell Labs, Princeton, 1923–
2020. Held strong opinions and told you about them. In this article it’s clear that Anderson was
annoyed by his perception of the arrogance of particle physicists.
examples considerable simplification has been made in order to develop notions used
in more realistic applications.
1.1 Building
The plan is to build gradually to situations where the collective behavior becomes more
and more complicated. First we will consider situations where you simply have a lot of
participants, but they seldom interact with each other. If there are N participants
√ we
will see that fluctuations—deviations from the simplest predictions—go like N . The
next level of complexity has the participants/particles/constituents interacting with
one another. Now you can get “phase transitions,” sudden changes in behavior as an
external parameter is varied. Finally you can get critical points, situations where the
details of the interaction really do seem to disappear and many systems—systems that
have different microscopic interactions—all behave in the same way. The archetype of
this behavior was noted by Guggenheim many years ago.3 He found that when certain
properties of fluids are plotted in a particular way, they all fall on a common curve. See
Fig. 1.1. To explain that figure requires a bit of background on critical phenomena. A
gas and a liquid may seem different, but there is a temperature and a pressure where
the two concepts merge and one describes the system as a “fluid.” For steam and water
if you heat H2 O to 647 K (about 705○ F) and keep it at a pressure of 218 atmospheres,
the difference between liquid and gas disappears. Below that temperature there is a
phase transition, namely a temperature and pressure at which the two phases, liquid
and gas, can coexist. When they do, there are two different allowed densities for the
substance.
What Guggenheim did was look at the corresponding critical points for eight dif-
ferent substances, Ne, A, Kr, etc.4 For each of them there is a critical temperature and
density at which liquid and gas are identical; call them T c and ρc . He then looked at
temperatures below T c (where there was a phase transition) and found the densities
of the liquid and of the gas at that particular temperature. The plot shows the scaled
quantities, T/T c and ρ/ρc . For each temperature (below T c ) there are two values of
ρ/ρc and this is what is plotted.
The absolutely remarkable feature of this graph is that for all eight substances
and near the critical point the points fall on the same curve.5 A more subtle feature
concerns the curve itself: it turns out that ∆ρ ∼ const ⋅ (∆T )1/3 (for ∆T ≥ 0). That
exponent (1/3) remained a mystery for more than 20 years and we will not derive it,
but we will see how it could come about.6
It also happens that at the critical point the fluctuations are larger. For a simple
model of a ferromagnet it’s not difficult to show that the relative fluctuations go like
3 Guggenheim considered his graph an illustration of the “law of corresponding states.” This is still
some way from recognizing renormalization theory. For a history of the subject see Kadanoff [121].
See also a history of earlier years in [120].
4 Ne is neon, A argon, Kr krypton, Xe xenon, N molecular nitrogen, O molecular oxygen, CO
2 2
carbon monoxide, and CH4 methane. At room temperature and 1 atmosphere all these are gases.
5 They also are pretty close away from the critical point, but that’s another matter.
6 It’s not exactly 1/3, but it’s close. See Footnote 2, Chapter 8.
1.1 Building 3
1.00
++
+
+
+
T + +
+
+
0.95 Tc
+
+
+ +
+
0.90
+
+ +
+
+
0.85 +
+
+
+
0.80
+
0.75 +Ne
A
+
+
Kr
+
+
Xe
+
0.70 N2
02
+ +
CO
0.65 CH4
+ +
0.66
+
+ ρ/ρc +
0.55
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 .10 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6
Fig. 1.1 Illustrating the principle of corresponding states. The fluids studied are Ne, A,
Kr, Xe, N2 , O2 , CO, and CH4 .4 At each temperature at which there is a first-order phase
transition, two densities are plotted: that of the liquid and that of the gas. Both density and
temperature are normalized by their critical values, that is, for each element or compound
the actual values are divided by the pair of values at the critical point (where there is no
longer a distinction between liquid and gas). This figure is adapted from [92].
one over the fourth root of N, much larger than the usual (one over the) square root.
(This will be derived in Sec. 5.3.)
The fact that many critical point exponents (like the 1/3 just noted) are the same
for a variety of substances, substances for which the detailed interactions can be
different, is a manifestation of universality.
At this point the other mysteries enter. First, a lot of systems seem poised at criti-
cality. One of the characteristics of criticality is the appearance of fractal 7 dimensions
in the description. (For example, near the fluid transition mentioned above, the sur-
faces of constant density have fractal structure.) Many systems exhibit this behavior
(e.g., the coast of England is of fractal dimension). Nevertheless, criticality is non-
generic, meaning it requires special values of the governing parameters to occur. Why
then is it so common? One answer is self-organized criticality (SOC). The idea is that
a system, on its own, will adjust its parameters to achieve criticality. (More on this
later.)
Closely related to fractality and criticality is the occurrence of power laws. This will
also be discussed more fully later, but let me give one example that I have recently
encountered in my own research. The question is, how rare is a rare gene? Naively
you would expect that the distribution of genes is “normally distributed,” that is, it
is proportional to exp(−const ⋅ (x − x0 )2 ) (x is the probability of finding a particular
gene and there is a central value x 0 ); after all that’s how height is distributed and
height is governed by genes.8 But it turns out that the dropoff is much slower. (For
large deviations a power law is slower than an exponential, and smaller yet than the
exponential of a square.) I was studying evolution in the “Tangled Nature” model9
and found that the probability distribution for genomes was not normal, but instead
drops off like Pr(x) ∼ x−α , with α less than 2.10 This is a significant issue since it
could contribute to rapid evolution (including antibiotic resistance), so I was eager
to see if this property held in Nature, not only in the Tangled Nature model. I soon
learned that indeed it did—and that questions of this sort had been investigated once
there was sufficient information available on natural DNA. See [77]. So rather than a
discovery about Nature I had discovered another way in which the Tangled Nature
model gave natural results; and, as remarked earlier, the long-tailed distribution gave
us something more to worry about with respect to antibiotic resistance—the presence
of rare genes means that antibiotics will wipe out most bacteria, but there might be
a few that resist the onslaught. And these few will rapidly multiply in the absence of
competition.
Two other words often make their appearance, when “things grow many.” They
are complexity and emergence. Complexity is an ill-defined notion that seems to be
common to the kind of systems we’ll be looking at: ecology, cell dynamics, neuron
behavior, financial markets, . . .. Complexity is a bit like obscenity (to paraphrase
US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart): you know it when you see it, but it can
be difficult or impossible to come up with a clear definition.11 Many of the systems
where statistical mechanics gives useful insights are of this sort. One of the puzzles of
complexity is the side-by-side features of robustness and fragility. To quote Carlson
and Doyle [37],
The [Boeing-]777 is robust to large-scale atmospheric disturbances, variations in cargo
loads and fuels, turbulent boundary layers, and inhomogeneities and aging of materials,
but could be catastrophically disabled by microscopic alterations in a handful of very
large-scale integrated chips or by software failures.
This is another aspect of “more”: More may induce fragility: robust with what’s
anticipated, fragile with respect to what’s not solvable—even if anticipated.
8 Heightalso depends on nutrition but presumably the genetic part alone is normally distributed.
9 TheTangled Nature model is due to H. J. Jensen and collaborators. See [97; 197] and Sec. 10.3.
10 The variable x is here the (normalized) number of appearances of a particular genome. Sometimes
the power in the “power law” is such that ∫1∞ dx x−α does not converge (α ≤ 1), implying that there
must be some large-x cutoff.
11 See Appendix H for some of my own ideas on this subject.
1.1 Building 5
12 The “presumably” at the beginning of this sentence covers all its assertions. Simple rules can
account for flocking, yielding a sufficient condition but not a necessary one. Moreover, with more
information about animal learning, the issue of instinct is no longer so clear.
2
Ideal gas
In a way this is the simplest example. You have a gas, but you consider each particle’s
motion on its own. As usual there’s a bit of a fairy tale here. On the one hand, you
assume there’s enough interaction so that the gas particles reach equilibrium at some
temperature, T. On the other hand, we pretend that for our calculation they don’t
talk to each other (i.e., interact with each other). What we’re looking to obtain is the
well-known “ideal gas law,”
P V = N kB T, (2.1)
where P is the pressure in the gas, T the temperature, V the volume, kB Boltzmann’s
constant (∼1.38 × 10−23 J/K) and N the number of atoms.1
We look at the kinematics of this ideal gas. Our aim is to find the pressure the
atoms exert on a wall. Let the “wall” be the y-z plane, so that momentum transfer with
that wall will only take place if the particles have positive velocity in the x direction.
And we only need to consider a small area of this wall, call it A, so that we could
imagine on a larger scale the wall is curved, but locally it looks flat. For pressure we
divide by A anyway, so as long as we don’t go down to atomic size areas, we’re fine.
The force on this area arises from all the impacts. We focus on a short time interval,
∆t, which we’ll eventually divide by, so it too will disappear. Now assume that the
particles have mass m. If a particle is reflected off the wall and had velocity in the
x-direction, vx , then the change in momentum is ∆p = 2mvx . Velocities in the other
directions are irrelevant. The contribution to the momentum change during the interval
∆t of this one impact is thus ∆p = 2mvx .
Not all particles will hit the area A of the wall—only those whose x-velocity is such
they are within a distance vx ∆t of the wall. To handle this we introduce a number
density (# per volume) of atoms, namely n(vx )dvx is the number of particles per
volume that have velocity between vx and vx + dvx . The force exerted by those with
this velocity within this interval will be ∆p
∆t
, or
1 Some readers may be more familiar with the form P V = nRT (Pressure × Volume = [number
of moles] × [Gas Constant] × Temperature), which is the same as Eq. (2.1), with nR = N kB . In
this equation # moles = n = N /NA , with N the total number of particles, NA Avogadro’s number
∼6.022 × 1023 (the number of atoms in a mole), and R = kB NA ∼8.314 J/(mol-K). This language is
more common in chemistry.
(Note that the integral goes over positive vx only.) One can define an average velocity
that looks very much like the integral in Eq. (2.3). In particular the average of the
square of the velocity in the positive x-direction is
V ∞
⟨vx2 ⟩ = ∫ n(vx )vx2 dvx , (2.4)
N /2 0
where the “2” (in N /2) comes because only half the particles are being counted, those
moving in the direction of the wall. It has also been assumed that the distribution
function n(vx ) is the same for negative vx as for positive values. Putting Eqs. (2.3)
and (2.4) together yields
N /2 2
P = 2m ⟨vx ⟩. (2.5)
V
Of course the x direction was only adopted for convenience. What really interests us
is the total velocity, v 2 = vx2 + vy2 + vz2 (where v with no subscript is the magnitude of
the vector v). Assuming isotropy—all directions are equivalent—we have ⟨vx2 ⟩ = 13 ⟨v 2 ⟩
so that we get
1 N
P = m ⟨v 2 ⟩. (2.6)
3 V
The quantity m⟨v 2 ⟩ is twice the average kinetic energy of the particles, and since the
gas is “ideal” it’s the only energy they have. Letting ⟨ϵ⟩ be the average energy per
particle (= 12 mv 2 ) we have
2N
P= ⟨ϵ⟩. (2.7)
3V
This equation is of the same form as Eq. (2.1) if the average energy and the temper-
ature are identified, up to proportionality. In particular for our kinetic derivation to
reproduce the ideal gas equation, we must set
3
⟨ϵ⟩ = kB T. (2.8)
2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
[1130] Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon, s. v. Epiphany,
quoting Crombach, Hist. Trium Regum (1654), 752;
Galenius, de admir. Coloniae (1645), 661. The date of the
Ritual is not given, but the ceremony had disappeared by
1645.
[1131] ‘Admiscent autem natalitias cantiones, non sine
gestientis animi voluptate.’
[1132] Tractatus de precatione Dei, i. 302 ( † 1406-15), in F.
Palacký, Documenta Mag. Ioannis Hus vitam illustrantia
(1869), 722: ‘Quantam autem quamque manifestam
licentiam in ecclesia committant, larvas induentes—sicut
ipse quoque adolescens proh dolor larva fui—quis Pragae
describat? Namque clericum monstrosis vestibus indutum
facientes episcopum, imponunt asinae, facie ad caudam
conversa, in ecclesiam eum ad missam ducunt,
praeferentes lancem iusculi et cantharum vel amphoram
cerevisiae; atque dum haec praetendunt, ille cibum
potionemque in ecclesia capit. Vidi quoque eum aras
suffientem et pedem sursum tollentem audivique magna
voce clamantem: bú! Clerici autem magnas faces
cereorum loco ei praeferebant, singulas aras obeunti et
suffienti. Deinde vidi clericos cucullos pellicios aversa parte
induentes et in ecclesia tripudiantes. Spectatores autem
rident atque haec omnia religiosa et iusta esse putant;
opinantur enim, hos esse in eorum rubricis, id est institutis.
Praeclarum vero institutum: pravitas, foeditas!—Atque
quum tenera aetate et mente essem, ipse quoque talium
nugarum socius eram; sed ut primum dei auxilio adiutus
sacras literas intelligere coepi, statim hanc rubricam, id est
institutum huius insaniae, ex stultitia mea delevi. Ac
sanctae memoriae dominus Ioannes archiepiscopus, is
quidem excommunicationis poena proposita hanc licentiam
ludosque fieri vetuit, idque summo iure, &c.’
[1133] The quotation given above is a translation by J. Kvíčala
from the Bohemian of Huss. There seems to be a
confusion between the ‘bishop’ and his steed. It was
probably the latter who lifted up his leg and cried bú.
[1134] Grosseteste, Epistolae (ed. Luard, R. S.), 118 ‘vobis
mandamus in virtute obedientiae firmiter iniungentes,
quatenus festum stultorum cum sit vanitate plenum et
voluptatibus spurcum, Deo odibile et daemonibus amabile,
ne de caetero in ecclesia Lincolniensi die venerandae
circumcisionis Domini nullatenus permittatis fieri.’
[1135] Ibid. op. cit. 161 ‘execrabilem etiam consuetudinem,
quae consuevit in quibusdam ecclesiis observari de
faciendo festo stultorum, speciali authoritate rescripti
apostolici penitus inhibemus; ne de domo orationis fiat
domus ludibrii, et acerbitas circumcisionis Domini Iesu
Christi iocis et voluptatibus subsannetur.’ The ‘rescript’ will
be Innocent III’s decretal of 1207, just republished in
Gregory IX’s Decretales of 1234; cf. p. 279.
[1136] Lincoln Statutes, ii. 247 ‘quia in eadem visitacione
nostra coram nobis a nonnullis fide dignis delatum extitit
quod vicarii et clerici ipsius ecclesiae in die Circumcisionis
Domini induti veste laicali per eorum strepitus truffas
garulaciones et ludos, quos festa stultorum communiter et
convenienter appellant, divinum officium multipliciter et
consuete impediunt, tenore presencium. Inhibemus ne ipsi
vicarii qui nunc sunt, vel erunt pro tempore, talibus uti de
caetero non praesumant nec idem vicarii seu quivis alii
ecclesiae ministri publicas potaciones aut insolencias alias
in ecclesia, quae domus oracionis existit, contra
honestatem eiusdem faciant quouismodo.’ Mr. Leach, in
Furnivall Miscellany, 222, notes ‘a sarcastic vicar has
written in the margin, “Harrow barrow. Here goes the Feast
of Fools (hic subducitur festum stultorum).”’
[1137] What was ly ffolcfeste of which Canon John Marchall
complained in Bishop Alnwick’s visitation of 1437 that he
was called upon to bear the expense? Cf. Lincoln Statutes,
ii. 388 ‘item dicit quod subtrahuntur ab ipso expensae per
eum factae pascendo ly ffolcfeste in ultimo Natali, quod
non erat in propria, nec in cursu, sed tamen rogatus fecit
cum promisso sibi facto de effusione expensarum et non
est sibi satisfactum.’
[1138] Statutes of Thos. abp. of York (1391) in Monasticon, vi.
1310 ‘in die etiam Circumcisionis Domini subdiaconis et
clericis de secunda forma de victualibus annis singulis,
secundum morem et consuetudinem ecclesiae ab antiquo
usitatos, debite ministrabit [praepositus], antiqua
consuetudine immo verius corruptela regis stultorum infra
ecclesiam et extra hactenus usitata sublata penitus et
extirpata.’
[1139] Inventory of St. Paul’s (1245) in Archaeologia, l. 472,
480 ‘Baculus stultorum est de ebore et sine cambuca, cum
pomello de ebore subtus indentatus ebore et
cornu: ... capa et mantella puerorum ad festum Innocentum
et Stultorum sunt xxviij debiles et contritae.’
[1140] Sarum Inventory of 1222 in W. H. R. Jones, Vetus
Registr. Sarisb. (R. S.), ii. 135 ‘Item baculi ii ad “Festum
Folorum.”’
[1141] No. 27 in the list given for ch. x. Father Christmas says
‘Here comes in “The Feast of Fools.”’
[1142] Cf. the further account of these post-Nativity feasts in
ch. xv.
[1143] The C. of Paris in 1212 (p. 279) forbids the Feast of
Fools in religious houses. But that in the Franciscan
convent at Antibes is the only actual instance I have come
across.
[1144] There were canonici presbiteri, diaconi, subdiaconi and
even pueri at Salisbury (W. H. Frere, Use of Sarum, i. 51).
[1145] On the nature and growth of vicars choral, cf. Cutts,
341; W. H. Frere, Use of Sarum, i. xvii; Lincoln Statutes,
passim; A. R. Maddison, Vicars Choral of Lincoln (1878);
H. E. Reynolds, Wells Cathedral, xxix, cvii, clxx. Vicars
choral make their appearance in the eleventh century as
choir substitutes for non-resident canons. At Lincoln they
got benefactions from about 1190, and in the thirteenth
century formed a regularly organized communitas. The
vicarii were often at the same time capellani or chantry-
priests. On chantries see Cutts, 438.
[1146] The Lincoln vicars chose two Provosts yearly
(Maddison, op. cit.); the Wells vicars two Principals
(Reynolds, op. cit. clxxi).
[1147] Reynolds, op. cit., gives numerous and interesting
notices of chapter discipline from the Wells Liber Ruber.
[1148] In Leber, ix. 379, 407, is described a curious way of
raising funds for choir suppers, known at Auxerre and in
Auvergne, and not quite extinct in the eighteenth century. It
has a certain analogy to the Deposuit. From Christmas to
Epiphany the Psalm Memento was sung at Vespers, and
the anthem De fructu ventris inserted in it. When this began
the ruler of the choir advanced and presented a bouquet to
some canon or bourgeois as a sign that the choir would
sup with him. This was called ‘annonce en forme
d’antienne,’ and the suppers defructus. The C. of Narbonne
(1551), c. 47, forbade ‘parochis ... ne ... ad
commessationes quas defructus appellant, ullo modo
parochianos suos admittant, nec permittant quempiam
canere ut dicunt: Memento, Domine, David sans truffe, &c.
Nec alia huiusmodi ridenda, quae in contemptum divini
officii ac in dedecus et probrum totius cleri et fiunt et
cantantur.’
[1149] When, however, Ducange says that the feast was not
called Subdiaconorum, because the sub-deacons held it,
but rather as being ‘ebriorum Clericorum seu Diaconorum:
id enim evincit vox Soudiacres, id est, ad litteram, Saturi
Diaconi, quasi Diacres Saouls,’ we must take it for a ‘sole
joke of Thucydides.’ I believe there is also a joke
somewhere in Liddell and Scott.
[1150] Cf. p. 60; Gautier, Les Tropaires, i. 186; and C. of
Treves in 1227 (J. F. Schannat, Conc. Germ. iii. 532)
‘praecipimus ut omnes Sacerdotes non permittant
trutannos et alios vagos scolares aut goliardos cantare
versus super Sanctus et Agnus Dei.’
[1151] The ‘abbot’ appears to have been sometimes charged
with choir discipline throughout the year, and at Vienne and
Viviers exists side by side with another dominus festi.
Similarly at St. Omer there was a ‘dean’ as well as a
‘bishop.’ The vicars of Lincoln and Wells also chose two
officers.
[1152] I suppose that ‘portetur in rost’ at Vienne means that the
victims were roasted like the fags in Tom Brown.
[1153] Ducange, s. v. Kalendae.
[1154] Gibbon-Bury, v. 201. The Byzantine authorities are
Genesius, iv. p. 49 B (Corp. Hist. Byz. xi. 2. 102);
Paphlagon (Migne, P. G. cv. 527); Theophanes
Continuatus, iv. 38 (Corp. Hist. Byz. xxii. 200); Symeon
Magister, p. 437 D (Corp. Hist. Byz. xxii. 661), on all of
whom see Bury, App. I to tom. cit.
[1155] C. of Constantinople (869-70), c. 16 (Mansi, xvi. 169, ex
versione Latina, abest in Graeca) ‘fuisse quosdam laicos,
qui secundum diversam imperatoriam dignitatem
videbantur capillorum comam circumplexam involvere
atque reponere, et gradum quasi sacerdotalem per
quaedam inducia et vestimenta sacerdotalia sumere, et, ut
putabatur, episcopos constituere, superhumeralibus, id est,
palliis, circumamictos, et omnem aliam Pontificalem
indutos stolam, qui etiam proprium patriarcham
adscribentes eum qui in adinventionibus risum moventibus
praelatus et princeps erat, et insultabant et illudebant
quibusque divinis, modo quidem electiones, promotiones et
consecrationes, modo autem acute calumnias,
damnationes et depositiones episcoporum quasi ab
invicem et per invicem miserabiliter et praevaricatorie
agentes et patientes. Talis autem actio nec apud gentes a
saeculo unquam audita est.’
[1156] Cedrenus, Historiarum Compendium, p. 639 B (ed.
Bekker, in Corp. Hist. Byz. xxiv. 2. 333), follows verbatim
the still unprinted eleventh-century John Scylitzes (Gibbon-
Bury, v. 508). Theophylactus was Patriarch from 933 to
956.
[1157] Theodorus Balsamon, In Can. lxii Conc. in Trullo (P. G.
cxxxvii. 727) Σημείωσαι τὸν παρόντα κανόνα, καὶ ζήτησον
διόρθωσιν ἐπὶ τοῖς γινομένοις παρὰ τῶν κληρικῶν εἰς τήν
ἑορτὴν ἐπὶ τῆς γεννήσεως τοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ τὴν ἑορτὴν τῶν
Φώτων [Luminarium, Candlemas] ὑπεναντίως τούτῳ· καὶ
μᾶλλον εἰς τὴν ἁγιωτάτην Μεγάλην ἐκκλησίαν ... ἀλλὰ καί
τινες κληρικοὶ κατά τινας ἑορτὰς πρὸς διάφορα
μετασχηματίζονται προσωπεῖα. καὶ ποτὲ μὲν ξιφήρεις ἐν τῷ
μεσονάω τῆς ἐκκλησίας μετὰ στρατιωτικῶν ἀμφίων
εἰσέρχονται, ποτὲ δὲ καὶ ὡς μοναχοὶ προοδεύουσιν, ἢ καὶ
ὡς ζῶα τετράποδα. ἐρωτήσας οὖν ὅπως ταῦτα
παρεχωρήθησαν γίνεσθαι, οὐδέν τε ἕτερον ἤκουσα ἀλλ’ ἢ
ἐκ μακρᾶς συνθείας ταῦτα τελεῖσθαι. τοιαῦτά εἰσιν, ὡς ἐμοὶ
δοκεῖ, καὶ τὰ παρά τινων δομεστικευόντων ἐν κλήρῳ
γινόμενα, τὸν ἀέρα τοῖς δακτύλοις κατὰ ἡνιόχους
τυπτόντων, καὶ φύκη ταῖς γνάθοις δῆθεν περιτιθεμένων καὶ
ὑπορρινομένων ἔργα τινὰ γυναικεῖα, καὶ ἕτερα ἀπρεπῆ, ἵνα
πρὸς γελωτα τοὺς βλέποντας μετακινήσωσι. τὸ δὲ γελᾶν
τοὺς ἀγρότας ἐγχεομένους τοῦ οἴνου τοῖς πίθοις, ὡσεί τι
παρεπόμενον ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐστὶ τοῖς ληνοβατοισιν· εἰ μήτις
εἴπη τὴν σατανικὴν ταύτην ἐργασίαν καταργεῖσθαι διὰ τοῦ
λέγειν τοὺς ἀγρότας συχνότερον ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ μέτρῳ σχεδὸν
τό, Κύριε ἐλέησον. τὰ μέντοι ποτὲ γινόμενα ἀπρεπῆ παρὰ
τῶν νοταρίων παιδοδιδασκάλων κατὰ τὴν ἑορτὴν τῶν
ἁγίων νοταρίων, μετὰ προσωπείων σκηνικῶν διερχομένων
τὴν ἀγοράν, πρὸ χρόνων τινῶν κατηργήθησαν, καθ’
ὁρισμὸν τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου ἐκείνου πατριάρχου κυρίου Λουκᾶ.
[1158] Belethus, c. 120, compares the ecclesiastical ball-play
at Easter to the libertas Decembrica. He is not speaking
here of the Feast of Fools.
[1159] e.g. Du Tilliot, 2.
[1160] S. R. Maitland, The Dark Ages, 141, tilts at the
Protestant historian Robertson’s History of Charles V, as
do F. Clément, 159, and A. Walter, Das Eselsfest in
Caecilien-Kalender (1885), 75, at Dulaure, Hist. des
Environs de Paris, iii. 509, and other ‘Voltairiens.’
[1161] Chérest, 81.
[1162] J. Bujeaud, Chants et Chansons populaires des
Provinces de l’Ouest, i. 63. The ronde is known in Poitou,
Aunis, Angoumois. P. Tarbé, Romancero de Champagne
(2e partie), 257, gives a variant. Bujeaud, i. 61, gives
another ronde, the Testament de l’Âne, in which the ass
has fallen into a ditch, and amongst other legacies leaves
his tail to the curé for an aspersoir. This is known in Poitou,
Angoumois, Franche-Comté. He also says that he has
heard children of Poitou and Angoumois go through a
mock catechism, giving an ecclesiastical significance to
each part of the ass. The tail is the goupillon, and so forth.
Fournier-Verneuil, Paris, Tableau moral et philosophique
(1826), 522, with the Beauvais Officium in his mind, says
‘Voulez-vous qu’au lieu de dire, Ite, missa est, le prêtre se
mette à braire trois fois de toute sa force, et que le peuple
réponde en chœur, comme je l’ai vu faire en 1788, dans
l’église de Bellaigues, en Périgord?’
[1163] Cf. ch. xx. Gasté, 20, considers the Rouen Festum
Asinorum ‘l’origine de toutes les Fêtes de l’Âne qui se
célébraient dans d’autres diocèses’: but the Rouen MS. in
which it occurs is only of the fourteenth century, and the
Balaam episode does not occur at all in the more primitive
forms of the Prophetae, while the Sens Feast of Fools is
called the festa asinaria in the Officium of the early
thirteenth century.
[1164] Tille, D. W. 31. In Madrid an ass was led in procession
on Jan. 17, with anthems on the Balaam legend (Clément,
181).
[1165] Clément, 182; Didron, Annales archéologiques, xv. 384.
[1166] Dulaure, Hist. des Environs de Paris, iii. 509, quotes a
legend to the effect that the very ass ridden by Christ came
ultimately to Verona, died there, was buried in a wooden
effigy at Sta-Maria in Organo, and honoured by a yearly
procession. He guesses at this as the origin of the
Beauvais and other fêtes. Didron, Annales arch. xv. 377,
xvi. 33, found that nothing was known of this legend at
Verona, though such a statue group as is described above
apparently existed in the church named. Dulaure gives as
his authorities F. M. Misson, Nouveau Voyage d’ Italie
(1731), i. 164; Dict. de l’ Italie, i. 56. Misson’s visit to
Verona was in 1687, although the passage was not printed
in the first edition (1691) of his book. It is in the English
translation of 1714 (i. 198). His authority was a French
merchant (M. Montel) living in Verona, who had often seen
the procession. In Cenni intorno all’ origine e descrizione
della Festa che annualmente si celebra in Verona l’ ultimo
Venerdì del Carnovale, comunamente denominata
Gnoccolare (1818), 75, is a mention of the ‘asinello del
vecchio padre Sileno’ which served as a mount for the
‘Capo de’ Maccheroni.’ This is probably Misson’s
procession, but there is no mention of the legend in any of
the eighteenth-century accounts quoted in the pamphlet.
Rienzi was likened to an ‘Abbate Asinino’ (Gibbon, vii.
269).
[1167] Ducange, s. v. Festum Asinorum; cf. Leber, ix. 270;
Molanus, de Hist. SS. Imaginum et Picturarum (1594), iv.
18.
[1168] T. Naogeorgus (Kirchmeyer), The Popish Kingdom, iv.
443 (1553, transl. Barnabe Googe, 1570, in New
Shakspere Society edition of Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses,
i. 332); cf. Beehive of the Roman Church, 199. The earliest
notice is in Gerardus, Leben St. Ulrichs von Augsburg (ob.
973), c. 4. E. Bishop, in Dublin Review, cxxiii. 405, traces
the custom in a Prague fourteenth-century Missal and
sixteenth-century Breviary; also in the modern Greek
Church at Moscow where until recently the Czar held the
bridle. But there is no ass, as he says, in the Palm Sunday
ceremony described in the Peregrinatio Silviae (Duchesne,
486).
[1169] A peeress of the realm lately stated that this custom
had been introduced in recent years into the Anglican
church. Denials were to hand, and an amazing conflict of
evidence resulted. Is there any proof that the Palmesel was
ever an English ceremony at all? The Hereford riding of
1706 (cf. Representations) was not in the church. Brand, i.
73, quotes A Dialogue: the Pilgremage of Pure Devotyon
(1551?), ‘Upon Palme Sondaye they play the foles sadely,
drawynge after them an Asse in a rope, when they be not
moche distante from the Woden Asse that they drawe.’
Clearly this, like Googe’s translation of Naogeorgus, is a
description of contemporary continental Papistry. W. Fulke,
The Text of the New Testament (ed. 1633), 76 (ad Marc. xi.
8) quotes a note of the Rheims translation to the effect that
in memory of the entry into Jerusalem is a procession on
Palm Sunday ‘with the blessed Sacrament reverently
carried as it were Christ upon the Asse,’ and comments,
‘But it is pretty sport, that you make the Priest that carrieth
the idoll, to supply the roome of the Asse on which Christ
did ride.... Thus you turn the holy mysterie of Christ’s riding
to Jerusalem to a May-game and Pageant-play.’ Fulke,
who lived 1538-89, is evidently unaware that there was an
ass, as well as the priest, in the procession, from which I
infer that the custom was not known in England. Not that
this consideration would weigh with the mediaevally-
minded curate, who is as a rule only too ready to make up
by the ceremonial inaccuracy of his mummeries for the
offence which they cause to his congregation.
[1170] Marquardt-Mommsen, vi. 191; Jevons, Plutarch’s
Romane Questions, 134; Fowler, 304, 322; Ovid, Fasti, ii.
531: