Few Holidays have undergone such transformational changes as what we now call April Fool’s Day. The change reflects our cynicism toward all things humorous and betrays our loss of faith in comedy. Our materialism and love of money have forced this once noble and meaningful holiday into the back row where we barely notice it behind Easter, Christmas and Mother's Day.
The history of April Fool’s Day is actually fascinating and worth a closer look as it may give us limited inspiration come the day. The story starts, as so many funny stories do, in tragedy. During the fourteenth century, at the rise of the first waves of the Black Death, a girl was born into a peasant family in the north of England, near modern day York. Her father died a few weeks after her birth, not of the plague, but rather from a Saracen arrow in the Holy Land. Her mother, forced into extremity by debilitating poverty was unable to feed the girl and sent her with traveling friars to the abbey inside the walls of York. There she was raised as an orphan at St. Mary’s Abbey where she was expected to eventually take orders and join a convent. In this case, our young heroine joined the monastery at Harrowthorpe, where she was expected to be demure, obedient to the hierarchy (at the top of which sat Christ) and to live a life of solemn prayer and reflection. This she was unable to do.
The annals of history are full of records of nuns who rebelled against their orders and departed or were punished (sometimes severely) for their behavior. It is important to remember that our heroine was not a willing supplicant. Although records are fuzzy at best, it is clear that on several occasions she was threatened with expulsion, though it isn’t obvious at what age she began to show her disobedient side. All we know is that she eventually took all she could and began an annual tradition in her own honor.
The Abbot of St. Mary’s Abbey in 1336 was Thomas de Walton. He is one of the only Abbots on record to have resigned his position as it was common for abbots to die in their role having served for their entire life. However, de Walton was about to experience the savage revenge of a sense of humor gone amok.
The nun in question has only the name of her religious order, but we will call her Sister April. Throughout her novitiate she had regularly been punished for her lack of obedience. In one preserved parchment, her superior had a scribe write in Latin, “ Unus non habet sensum, ut obediat”; this one has no sense to obey. Punishments were severe and cruel. We can assume that she was forced to self-flagellate (to whip herself with barbed lashes in imitation of the cat-of-nine-tails used on Christ before the crucifixion), or was otherwise tortured. A favorite was to dunk the offending person into first scalding water and then ice-cold water and then back again. Many were given prison sentences (there were always dungeons beneath the Abbey) and some were tortured to death. Sister April, bruised, bloody and in deep agony for her shenanigans may have been strong-willed enough to mentally endure, but at some point her patience and tolerance of the power structure which abused her broke.
As she was nursed and tended by one of her order in her tiny prayer closet, the embers of pent up rage were kindled against her superior and the entire enterprise. Although there is no evidential anchor to when the idea came to her, history shares with us the consequences of her decision.
This same year, a delegation from Rome was set to arrive to “inspect” the Abbey of St. Marys and all surrounding monasteries and convents. The survey was actually a prolonged process of grilling (sometimes literally) of the members of the orders to look for examples of heresy and of apostasy. News of the imminent arrival of the emissaries from Rome had reached every corner and the Abbot was hopeful that their visit would be short and sweet. Sister April began to make her plans in anticipation. In an apparent turn of helpful obedience, Sister April offered to help a small group bring supplies to the monastery. This was a regular weekly event, but her new helpfulness surprised and pleased her superiors, so she joined the small band of carts and horses. One of their stops was a mill that ground flour. Before the monk who baked the bread could make his order, Sister April had gone in and requested double the normal amount. The miller agreed and several strong young lads carried sacks of flour to a cart. Once their provisions had been gathered, the group turned back, singing hymns and enjoying the brief excuse to be outside the monastery walls.
Back at Harrowthorpe convent, Sister April took charge and ordered that only half of the flour be taken to the sculleries. The rest, she said, must be taken to the belfry. No one argued. Each week, the same band of provision seekers went out to get food and supplies. Each week, Sister April ordered double the provision of flour and ordered that half be taken to the belfry. Eventually, there was an entire pile of flour, carefully stacked against the walls of the bell housing. Each day, between her requirements for prayer and study, which she dutifully attended, she would sneak away to the belfry to begin her final stage of the plan.
Harrowthorpe’s belfry stood over the main entrance to the walled convent. The ancient stone structure was solid and had become part of the recognized skyline. Although the bell was used to signal holidays, other times of prayer were signaled through a lesser belfry on the north side that had been built much more recently. The arrival of the emissaries of Rome would be heralded by the ringing of the main bell, though, Sister April knew, so she finalized her plans. Through an intricate series of pulleys and rope, a member of her order could step inside a small vestibule within the main archway and, drawing down the bell rope, cause the bell to ring. Sister April had, through the cunning appearance of newly found piety, weaseled her way into being the one who would ring the bell. Pleased with her change of demeanor, her superior allowed this.
On the day the emissaries arrived in York, they sent a small boy ahead to signal their coming. On the first day of the visit, of course, the delegation would stay at St. Mary’s Abbey, but within a week, the boy would alert them of their coming to Harrowthorpe. It was later March and winter had yet to withdraw its frozen mantle of ice and mud. News came that the delegation were to be welcomed in the morning on the first of April. Sister April made her final preparations.
Among the thirty or so inquisitors, scribes, delegates, Abbot de Walton and his own entourage, there were a handful of Italian and Spanish priests who were the vanguard of the procession. Their leader and the head inquisitor was Ezzelino Spietato, a bishop who was known far and wide for his ruthlessness and tyrannical nature. The dour Italian rode up on a white palfrey and smiled at the superior of Harrowthorpe. His smile did not reach his eyes. They stood just below the belfry tower. Rain lashed down as they exchanged the pleasantries of their respective orders and the scribe of Spietato handed over the papal orders surmounted by a heavy red wax seal imprinted with the papal signet. Sister April saw the Abbot nod and she reached—with devilish glee—for the bell rope and pulled in order to solemnize the moment.
The wind howled through the ancient stone edifices. Iron-grey clouds lowered over the city, pelting the godly, the noble and the peasant alike with icy rain. The strong hempen rope engaged the complex series of pulleys and finally began the swinging of the iron bell. Suddenly, like a blizzard, huge clouds of white powder smashed down from on high. Thomas de Walton, the superior of Harrowthorpe monastery, the delegates, the scribes, the porters and every sundry person in the train who were already soaked to their bones with cold rain were covered with clouds of flour which coated them and blinded them and choked them and bowled them over into the mud at the gate.
Sister April, safe inside her vestibule, removed her habit (under which she had put on the clothes of a peasant lad) and grabbing a torch from a sconce on the wall, stepped out into the archway, where chaos held sway, and set her habit on fire. She may have, had she been schooled in anything but her orders, understood that an open flame in contact with the flammable flour cloud would cause an explosion of incredible proportions. However, this orphaned and exiled child only knew that she wished to send a message. Nevertheless, the flour that clouded the air ignited in a huge explosion that propelled anyone yet standing in all directions. Perhaps only the pelting rain saved all but a few that day from incineration.
Sister April, it is told, narrowly escaped the flames and ran down into the town to hide in the inns and brothels until she could make a journey far away. Whatever became of her is not truly known. If she was killed by her practical joke, her legend lived far beyond a nine-days wonder. The flames kindled with the flour that had not been hurled into the crowd and caught the wood beams and structures of Harrowthorpe Monastery which promptly burned. The Abbot was forced to resign by papal order when tales of the joke eventually reached Rome. Ezzelino Spietato was killed by the blast, which likely saved many lives since he had racked up quite a number of ‘confessions’ in his time as inquisitor.
Two hundred years later, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and abbeys all across England and had them largely destroyed. St. Mary’s Abbey lies in ruins which can be seen today. Of the convent at Harrowthorpe nothing remains except the legend of The Fool. Sister April’s deeds spread across the nation island and grew in the telling. Some (but not all) chose to honor her in the same way that some honored the saints by playing small jokes on their family and friends on the anniversary of the fire. By the decade and the century the nun’s deed became a kind of myth of tradition. Mischievous boys would tug on their sweethearts on the ear and shout “April’s Fool” in her honor. Brothers would put salt in the inkpot of their younger siblings. Someone would put vinegar in the wine, while another would place a small rodent in the privy to hector a mother or an aunt. Tales of the fire and of the sacking of the Abbot faded with time, but not of the joy of the joke on the first day of April.
Today, nearly seven centuries later, we still tell jokes or play pranks on our friends and family, but with no understanding of the history of a disobedient nun and her deadly prank one rainy day in York in the year 1336.
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