🎉🎉 Carnival! #2
Hello Steemians!
I'm writing my second post of the day about Carnival! In this second post, I want to talk about the origins of Carnival and its evolution over time.
Ref: https://pixabay.com/pt/carnaval-baile-de-m%C3%A1scaras-veneziano-3075872/
Antique
There were several festivals in different peoples to represent symbolically the "farewell to the meat". The ancient Egyptians had the feasts of Isis and the Apis ox. The Hebrews had the feast of sorts. The ancient Greeks, the Bacchanals, and the Romans the Lupercals, the Saturnals. The Gauls, on the other hand, had similar feasts, especially the great feast of winter which is marked by farewell to the flesh. After its accomplishment, it was a great period of abstinence and fasting, as its own Latin name "carnis levale" indicates it.In antiquity, people regarded winter as a kingdom of spirits that needed to be expelled for summer to return. Carnival can therefore be considered as a rite of passage from darkness to light, from winter to summer. In the background, the first spring party of the new year.
Middle Ages
Written testimony shows that in the early Middle Ages, on the eve of Lent, processions were performed with chariots similar to ships and sumptuous feasts. However, the Catholic Church condemned what it called "devilish devastation" and "pagan rituals." In the year 325, the First Council of Nicaea tried to end this type of feasts. In the Middle Ages, Carnival lasted only a few days, but almost the whole period between Christmas and the beginning of Lent. Between 590 and 604, Pope Gregory decided that fasting would begin on Ash Wednesday. In this way, the whole carnival event was established before the fast to create a clear division between the pagan and the Christian custom. It would also be usual for the ruling class of this party to wear masks and disguises.
Christianization
Being an integral part of the Christian calendar, many carnival traditions resemble those of the pre-Christian period. It is believed that the Italian Carnival is partly derived from the ancient Roman festivities of Saturnalia and Bacchanalia. The Saturnalia, in turn, can be based on the Dionysian feasts of Ancient Greece and on Eastern festivals. Carnival was also a manifestation of medieval folk culture.
Some of the best-known traditions, including parades and masks, were first recorded in medieval Italy. The Carnival of Venice was, for a long time, the most famous Carnival. From Italy, the traditions of Carnival spread to Spain, Portugal and France. From France they went to New France in North America. Through Spain and Portugal, it spread with colonization to the Caribbean and Latin America. In the early nineteenth century, in the German Rhineland and the South Netherlands, the medieval tradition, which was weakened, came again. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as part of the abuses committed against Jews at Saturnalia in Rome, ghetto rabbis were forced to march through the city streets wearing ridiculous costumes, being exposed to the crowd. In 1823, in the Rhineland the first modern Carnival parade took place in Cologne.
Happy carnival! Have fun!!
@a-quarius