Abstract
In times past, people often complained about the excessive drinking, fighting and fornication as they do today, yet these things posed no grave threat to the established order. And even though many towns celebrated feasts of fools, when figures of authority such as the local bishop made way for mocking caricatures (a ‘boy bishop’, for example), these were safety values, in effect allowing people to let off steam without meaningfully challenging the way things were. (Sandbrook 2011: 41)