THE PAGEANTS

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declared he was not opposed to medicine, nor to those who ascribed
the plague to the stars or the comet; salvation, however, could
only be found in faith. Yet Osiander himself had at times indulged
in mystic prophecy,252 and his inconsistency called forth this
satire on the Holle. Perhaps the masker in the guise of Osiander
in this festival of fools preached a mock sermon in imitation of
the theologian, a kind of sermon joyeux.253
Not satisfied with their mockery of Osiander on the Holle,
the Ldufer also attacked his home, shooting off their fireworks at
his windows and threatening to break into the house, which, how-
ever, was barricaded for protection.254 This rioting cost the Ldufer
dearly, for they found that even in the carnival not everything
was permissible: Osiander presented his case to the Council with
such effect that the Ldufer were deprived of their privilege and the
Schembartlauf forbidden. Doubtless the satire of Osiander was
not the only cause for the ban, for opposition to the carnival, with
its masking and rioting, had been strong enough before to bring
about the hiatus of fifteen years between the Schembartlauf of
1524 and the last occurrence of the festival in 1539. The times
had changed, the Reformation created new attitudes, but of most
influence was perhaps the fear of the growing power of the guilds.
Under the mask sedition might flourish. For this reason mumming
was forbidden in England at intervals from the Fourteenth Cen-
tury on,255 while the Sixteenth Century saw the suspension and

252 Ibid., pp. 97-104 ("Eine wundervolle Weissagung von dem Papsttum, wie
es ihm bis an das Ende der Welt gehen soil u.s.w.").

253 Cf. Petit de Julleville (Les Comediens), p. 33. Ulrich Wirschung, masked as a
corpulent doctor in the Nuremberg carnival of 1588, delivered himself of humorous
verses before the homes of patricians, cf. Vulpius, X, 394; wherever the "Gugelfuhre"
on which he was riding went, the "Doctor" greeted the crowd with grotesque
gesticulation and carnivalistic rimes.

Cf. Moller, op. cit., p. 188: "wurde also des Evangelii weidlich verspottet,
liefen dem Herrn Osiander vor sein Haus, schossen ihm mit Rbhrlein in dasselbe
hinein, hatten ihm dasselbe gern gar aufgestoBen, wenn es nicht mit Weinleitern
und andern ware vermacht worden, hat mir Herr Osiander gesagt. Danach liefen sie
ins Teufels Namen enhinder ins Frauenhaus, wie der Leute Art ist. Herr Jacob
Muffel wurde auf Ostern aus dem Rath gesetzt."

255 Cf. Withington, I, 103-4. Because of royal opposition and the lack of religious
naivete the English Corpus Christi plays began to disappear early in the Sixteenth
Century, cf. Spencer, pp. 248ft. (p. 261: "The Corpus Christi plays . . . were
creatures of a single age killed by the sophistication of a new era."