Easter laughter

Easter laughter (Latin risus paschalis ), also Easter laughter , refers to the practice, in the sermon on Easter participants in a church service to laugh to bring. In some regions - especially in Bavaria - it was an integral part of Christian customs from the 14th to 19th centuries .

history

There are no sources about the reasons for it. The Easter laugh is the only form in which laughter has been incorporated into the Christian liturgy . However, the Easter laughter is mentioned in official church announcements, e.g. B. papal bulls , encyclicals or decisions of a council , never mentioned.

It was a custom - especially in the late Middle Ages - for the pastor to tell an Easter fairy tale from the pulpit on Easter Day , i.e. an amusing and not always entirely flawless story. Or he played an improvised string . Both were done with the aim of making the church laugh. The stories were also referred to as Easter tales.

The main concern of the Easter laugh was to express the joy of Easter. It should symbolize the superiority and the victory over death , which has "choked itself" on Christ and is exposed to ridicule. The Easter laugh was also a funny way of criticizing secular or ecclesiastical authorities. The preaching style of the Viennese court preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara should be considered exemplary . Nowadays, some carnival sermons come closest to this custom on Carnival Sunday, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday (such as the Cologne mass ).

Since in the late Middle Ages people tried to make the community laugh with obscene acts and words, the Easter laugh was met with sharp criticism in Protestantism. The term risus paschalis goes back to the reformer Johannes Ökolampad , who wrote a letter against this custom that was published in 1518 by Wolfgang Capito .

In the 18th century the Easter laugh became increasingly rare; at some point only the little Easter fairy tales lasted. The Regensburg diocesan constitutions of 1835 banned "fables, rhyming poems and obscures" from the sermons.

Today (as of 2019) individual pastors are reviving the Easter laugh.

literature

• Hanns Fluck: The Risus paschalis. A contribution to religious folklore. In: ARW 31 (1934), pp. 188-212
• Maria Caterina Jacobelli: Easter laughter. Sexuality and lust in the space of the sacred. Translated from the Italian by Fortunat Sommerfeld. Pustet, Regensburg 1992, ISBN 3-7917-1317-5 .
• Lenz Prütting : Homo ridens. A phenomenological study of the nature, forms and functions of laughter. Volume 1. Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau, ISBN 978-3-495-48602-3 , pp. 556-588
• Stefanie Wolff: Death Laughter: Laughter in religious and profane culture and literature in France in the 17th century. Dissertation University of Bochum. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-58753-9 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Easter laugh  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Wiktionary: Easter Laughter  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Theologisches Realenzyklopädie (Tre) study edition part II, article “Oster / Osterfest / Osterpredigt II”, section 4.2, p. 532.
• Karl Veitschegger: Jokes from the pulpit - laughter in the nave. The vanished custom of the “risus paschalis”. (2004)
• Reinhard Röhrner: Risus paschalis - thoughts on the old custom of the Easter laugh.
• Adrian Suter: The laughter of the liberated. In: Christkatholisches Kirchenblatt No. 6/2005, p. 4. (PDF file; 1.64 MB)
• Christhard Rüdiger: Sermon about the “Easter laugh”. In: The Sermon Prize 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lenz Prütting: Homo ridens. A phenomenological study of the nature, forms and functions of laughter. Volume 1. Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 556.
2. ↑ Hanns Fluck: The Risus paschalis. A contribution to religious folklore. In: Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 31/1934, S. 188. Quoted from: Lenz Prütting: Homo ridens. A phenomenological study of the nature, forms and functions of laughter. Volume 1. Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 557.
3. ↑ For the Easter laugh at mass, see Pastor Friedrich Barkey, Witten: Pope Francis, rejoice and cheer - Gaudete et exsultate. Apostolic Letter on the Call to Holiness in Today's World. With contributions by Thomas Andonie, Friedrich Barkey, Malu Dreyer, Frank Johannes Hensel, Dieter Puhl, Rita Süssmuth and Jan-Heiner Tück. Bergisch Gladbach 2018. ISBN 978-3-9819850-0-9 .
4. ↑ Stefan Sessler: The Resurrection of the Easter Laughter. Merkur-online.de, March 31, 2015, accessed on April 19, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Resurrection and humor blonde jokes from the pulpit: The Easter laugh. Berliner Morgenpost , March 30, 2018, archived from the original on April 19, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Stefan Maier: Ban on dancing on Good Friday - nuisance on the "silent day"? tagesschau.de , April 18, 2019, accessed on April 19, 2019 . 
7. ^ Lenz Prütting: Homo ridens. A phenomenological study of the nature, forms and functions of laughter. Volume 1. Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 586.