CORNOMANIA. - A Roman popular festival that took place on the afternoon of Low Saturday (sabato in albis) at the Lateran in the presence of the pope and which then continued in the individual parishes of the city.
The name c. (also cornomannia) seems to derive from the words cornu and μανία, frenzy of horns, from the frenetic appearance that the dance of the individual mansionarii must have assumed, who carried on their heads a horned crown. The ingenious hypothesis of Mercati, according to which this name would derive from κοφμός (trunk) and μανία, does not seem convincing.
The origin of this sacred-profane festival is not known to us; the first testimony of it is found in the prologue prefixed in 876 to the satirical burlesque poem entitled Caena Cypriani (v.) by John the Deacon (cf. the critical text in A. Lapôtre, p. 319). It ceased under the pontificate of Gregory VII «postquam expendium guerre crevit», as Benedict the Canon observes (cf. P. Fabre, p. 23), with probable allusion to the struggles against Henry IV. The oldest description of this festival has been preserved for us, under the title De laudibus cornomanniae, in the Cambrai manuscript 512 (12th century, 2nd half) containing the Liber politicus of Benedict the Canon (1140).
On the afternoon of Low Saturday, as has been said, the archpriests of the eighteen deaconries, having gathered the clergy and parishioners, went to the Lateran. The archpriest was vested in the cope and the mansionarius (sacristan) in a tunic or alb, with a horned crown of flowers on his head «coronatus corona de floribus cornuta» and in his hand the finobolo, a concave instrument of copper adorned with little bells. When the people of the eighteen parishes or deaconries had gathered, the pope came down from his palace and went to sit near the «Follonia»; meanwhile the archpriests, having arranged the clergy and parishioners in a circle, began the singing of the «laudes cornomanniae», that is, of acclamations, the text of which is preserved in Latin and in Greek. At the same time the mansionarius began to dance and to play the finobolo «cornutum caput reclinando». When the songs were finished, an archpriest mounted backwards on a donkey and then, bending backwards three times, tried to take into a basin, held on the donkey's head by a cubicularius, three handfuls of coins, which then remained his property. There followed on the part of the archpriests and the clergy the offering to the pope of the crowns, with a curious exception: the archpriest of S. Maria in via Lata offered in addition a young fox not tied up, which naturally fled, the archpriest of S. Maria in Aquiro a rooster, and the archpriest of S. Eustachio a small fallow deer. The archpriests received a gift from the pope and the festival ended with his blessing.
On returning to his own parish (deaconry), the mansionarius, with a priest accompanied by two other persons, carrying with him holy water, laurel branches and pasterelle (nebulas), went through the parish leaping and singing. The priest blessed the houses, burned the laurel branches in the hearths and distributed the pasterelle to the children, while the mansionarius sang two incomprehensible verses: «Iaritan, Iaritan, Iarariasti, Raphayn, Ierconyn, Iarariasti». Each head of the family then gave his offering.
Bibliography4 works
A. Pietro Frutaz