Discover the lost tradition of playing ball in church to celebrate easter!

In the nave of Chartres Cathedral, in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France and about 90 km southwest of Paris, the stones of the floor were arranged, already hundreds of years ago, to form a curious flat labyrinth with paths large enough for a person to walk its full winding course.
In medieval times, labyrinths represented a union of art and design with a cosmological worldview, suggesting a greater harmony in the universe.
A labyrinth has symbolic winding curves, relating to the challenges and difficulties of life, and the act of mindfully walking the path purges the walker, allowing him or her to reach illumination. Although labyrinths have origins in Greek mythology, the Roman Catholic Church used the concept in a number of cathedrals throughout the late medieval period.
The turns in the labyrinth in the Chartres Cathedral, for example, form a cross within the design, connecting the mythological design to the Roman Catholic Church itself. Walking this labyrinth would have been a substitute for a pilgrimage to the holy land, and today many pilgrims travel to Chartres to walk the path.

Actually, starting back in the 12th century, labyrinths like this became part of the design of cathedrals in northern France and also somewhere in Italy.
Although their purpose is somewhat mysterious, it’s usually assumed to be allegorical in some way, and following their paths might have symbolically recreated yes, a pilgrimage, or perhaps also the symbol represented Christ’s trip through Hell between his crucifixion and resurrection.
Sometimes the labyrinths were decorated with images of the Minotaur, from the ancient Greek myth involving the hero Theseus, probably to symbolize Christ’s journey.

However, thanks to a 14th-century document, though, we know that (at least) one cathedral labyrinth had another purpose, but just once a year: it was used as a ball court on Easter Monday!
In Auxerre Cathedral in northern France, and most likely also in cathedrals in Sens and Amiens and perhaps our Chartres, as well, clergy gathered around the labyrinth, danced in a circle, and tossed a ball from person to person.
These games, according to medieval religious observers, had ties to pagan practices and, in certain places, they were incorporated into church rituals for hundreds of years.
It seems that, before vespers on Easter Monday, the cathedral chapter would gather at the archbishop’s house to eat meat and drink spiced wine and, then the archbishop should throw the ball.
If the archbishop was absent, his deputy could step in.
During the ritual, the priest who had most recently joined the community would carry the ball, which was supposed to be too large to be grasped in one man’s hand, requiring two hands to stop it to the circle, even if the sources don’t say what it was made of.
So he would toss the ball to the church’s leader, who would dance with it into the labyrinth, while assembled group would sing the antiphonal hymn “Victimae paschali laudes,” with the organ that would keep time.
The priests would start a circle dance around the labyrinth, while the archbishop (or deputy) started dancing along the path of the labyrinth.
As he proceeded through the winding maze, which took him back and forth around the circumference, and toward the center and out again, he would toss the ball to each of the priests, and the game lasted as long as it took the archbishop to reach the center of the maze.

No one knows for sure what was the meaning of this ritual, but it referenced some of the big questions in life, such as what is our place in the world, or how do we face down challenges, for example.
Moreover, the labyrinth’s ring-like paths may have gestured to the organization of the universe, imagined in medieval minds as 12 concentric layers, and the dance was thus a way of relaying belief in a divine order, no matter how confused our path through life at present appears to be.

Or, the dance was meant to recreate the journey of Theseus, and the ball could be one or both of the balls used to defeat the Minotaur itself.
A ball of pitch, used to stop the monster’s mouth, represents Christ’s humanity, while the ball of thread that Theseus unwound to navigate the maze represents Christ’s divinity.
Another hypothesis gave the ball a simpler explanation: the rising sun on Easter morning but, whatever its purpose, the ball game tradition was limited to northern France, and eventually disappeared.
Late in the 15th century, in fact, the newest priest at Auxerre was not a fan, and did not bring the ball with him when he was supposed to.
He was eventually convinced to play, but that began the end of the tradition, and also the stone labyrinths began to disappear, including the one in the Auxerre Cathedral (in photo below), removed before 1690.