Drinkers Masses, alongside the related Gamblers Masses, were a genre of medieval Latin poetry that parodied the Roman Catholic Latin Mass to mock drinking and gambling among monks and clerics. Composed by wandering clerics between roughly 1100 and 1700, the earliest known example, a gamblers mass called the officium lusorum, appears in the Carmina Burana manuscript, and the genre is part of a broader tradition of medieval religious satire that also includes the Feast of Fools and the Feast of the Ass.
Facts
Notable ExampleThe gamblers mass (officium lusorum) in the Carmina Burana 1 Defining TraitFollows the Latin Mass line for line while parodying it with Bacchus and Decius in place of Dominus and Deus 1 Sources
1. Drinkers Mass (Wikipedia)
Section: Description
carefully reworded to create a parody of the Mass, with themes such as Bacchus, the god of wine, and Decius, the god of dice, replacing the 'Dominus' and 'Deus' (Lord and God) of the Mass.
Opening paragraph
the first example being the gamblers mass (officium lusorum), found in the Carmina Burana.
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