THE BOY BISHOP
[_Bibliographical Note._--Most of the authorities for chh.
xiii, xiv, are still available, since many writers have not
been careful to distinguish between the various feasts of the
Twelve nights. The best modern account of the Boy Bishop is
Mr. A. F. Leach’s paper on _The Schoolboys’ Feast_ in _The
Fortnightly Review_, N. S. lix (1896), 128. The contributions
of F. A. Dürr, _Commentatio Historica de Episcopo Puerorum,
vulgo vom Schul-Bischoff_ (1755); F. A. Specht, _Geschichte
des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland_, 222 sqq. (1885); A.
Gasté, _Les Drames liturgiques de la Cathédrale de Rouen_, 35
sqq. (1893); E. F. Rimbault, _The Festival of the Boy Bishop
in England_ in _The Camden Miscellany_, vol. vii (Camden Soc.
1875), are also valuable. Dr. Rimbault speaks of ‘considerable
collections for a history of the festival of the Boy Bishop
throughout Europe,’ made by Mr. J. G. Nichols, but I do not know
where these are to be found. Brand (ed. Ellis), i. 227 sqq.,
has some miscellaneous data, and a notice interesting by reason
of its antiquity is that on the _Episcopus Puerorum, in Die
Innocentium_, in the _Posthuma_, 95 sqq., of John Gregory (1649).]
Joannes Belethus, the learned theologian of Paris and Amiens, towards
the end of the twelfth century, describes, as well as the Feast of
Fools, no less than three other _tripudia_ falling in Christmas
week[1173]. Upon the days of St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and
the Holy Innocents, the deacons, the priests, the choir-boys, held
their respective revels, each body in turn claiming that pre-eminence
in the divine services which in the Feast of Fools was assigned to the
sub-deacons. The distinction drawn by Belethus is not wholly observed
in the ecclesiastical prohibitions either of the thirteenth or of the
fifteenth century. In many of these the term ‘Feast of Fools’ has a
wide meaning. The council of Nevers in 1246 includes under it the
feasts of the Innocents and the New Year; that of Langres in 1404
the ‘festivals of the Nativity’; that of Nantes in 1431 the Nativity
itself, St. Stephen’s, St. John’s, and the Innocents’. For the council
of Basle it is apparently synonymous with the ‘Feast of Innocents or
Boys’; the Paris theologians speak of its rites as practised on St.
Stephen’s, the Innocents’, the Circumcision, and other dates. The same
tendency to group all these _tripudia_ together recurs in passages
in which the ‘Feast of Fools’ is not in so many words mentioned. The
famous decretal of Pope Innocent III is directed against the _ludibria_
practised in turns by deacons, priests, and sub-deacons during the
feasts immediately following upon Christmas. The _irrisio servitii_
inveighed against in the _Rememoratio_ of Gerson took place on
Innocents’ day, on the Circumcision, on the Epiphany, or at Shrovetide.
Local usage, however, only partly bears out this loose language of the
prohibitions. At Châlons-sur-Marne, in 1570, the ‘bishop’ of Fools
sported on St. Stephen’s day. At Besançon, in 1387, a distinct _dominus
festi_ was chosen on each of the three days after Christmas, and all
alike were called _rois des fous_. At Autun, during the fifteenth
century, the _regna_ of the ‘bishop’ and ‘dean’ of Innocents and of
‘Herod’ at the New Year were known together as the _festa folorum_.
Further south, the identification is perhaps more common. At Avallon,
Aix, Antibes, the Feast of Fools was on Innocents’ day; at Arles the
_episcopus stultorum_ officiated both on the Innocents’ and on St.
John’s, at Viviers on all three of the post-Nativity feasts. But these
are exceptions, and, at least outside Provence, the rule seems to
have been to apply the name of ‘Feast of Fools’ to the _tripudium_,
originally that of the sub-deacons, on New Year’s day or the Epiphany,
and to distinguish from this, as does Belethus, the _tripudia_ of the
deacons, priests, and choir-boys in Christmas week.
We may go further and say, without much hesitation, that the three
latter feasts are of older ecclesiastical standing than their riotous
rival. Belethus is the first writer to mention the Feast of Fools,
but he is by no means the first writer to mention the Christmas
_tripudia_. They were known to Honorius of Autun[1174], early in the
twelfth century, and to John of Avranches[1175], late in the eleventh.
They can be traced at least from the beginning of the tenth, more
than two hundred and fifty years before the Feast of Fools is heard
of. The earliest notice I have come across is at the monastery of
St. Gall, hard by Constance, in 911. In that year King Conrad I was
spending Christmas with Bishop Solomon of Constance. He heard so much
of the Vespers processions during the _triduum_ at St. Gall that he
insisted on visiting the monastery, and arrived there in the midst of
the revels. It was all very amusing, and especially the procession of
children, so grave and sedate that even when Conrad bade his train roll
apples along the aisle they did not budge[1176]. That the other Vespers
processions of the _triduum_ were of deacons and priests may be taken
for granted. I do not know whether the _triduum_ originated at St.
Gall, but the famous song-school of that monastery was all-important
in the movement towards the greater elaboration of church ceremonial,
and even more of chant, which marked the tenth century. This gave rise
to the tropes, of which much will be said in the next volume; and it is
in a tropary, an English tropary from Winchester, dating from before
980, that the feasts of the _triduum_ next occur. The ceremonies of
those feasts, as described by Belethus, belong mainly to the Office,
and the tropes are mainly chanted elaborations of the text of the
Mass: but the Winchester tropes for the days of St. Stephen, St.
John, and the Holy Innocents clearly imply the respective connexion
of the services, to which they belong, with deacons, priests, and
choir-boys[1177]. Of the sub-deacons, on Circumcision or Epiphany,
there is as yet nothing. John of Avranches, Honorius of Autun, and
Belethus bridge a gap, and from the thirteenth century the _triduum_
is normal in service-books, both continental and English, throughout
the Middle Ages[1178]. It is provided for in the Nantes _Ordinarium_
of 1263[1179], in the Amiens _Ordinarium_ of 1291[1180], and in the
Tours _Rituale_ of the fourteenth century[1181]. It required reforming
at Vienne in 1385, but continued to exist there up to 1670[1182].
In the last three cases it is clearly marked side by side with, but
other than, the Feast of Fools. In Germany, it is contemplated in the
_Ritual_ of Mainz[1183]. In England I trace it at Salisbury[1184], at
York[1185], at Lincoln[1186], at St. Albans[1187]. These instances
could doubtless be multiplied, although there were certainly places
where the special devotion of the three feasts to the three bodies
dropped out at an early date. The Rheims _Ordinarium_ of the fourteenth
century, for instance, knows nothing of it[1188]. The extent of the
ceremonies, again, would naturally be subject to local variation.
The germ of them lay in the procession at first Vespers described by
Ekkehard at St. Gall. But they often grew to a good deal more than
this. The deacons, priests, or choir-boys, as the case might be,
took the higher stalls, and the whole conduct of the services; the
_Deposuit_ was sung; _epistolae farcitae_ were read[1189]; there was a
_dominus festi_.
The main outlines of the feasts of the _triduum_ are thus almost
exactly parallel, so far as the divine _servitium_ is concerned, to
those of the Feast of Fools, for which indeed they probably served as
a model. And like the Feast of Fools, they had their secular side,
which often became riotousness. Occasionally they were absorbed in,
or overshadowed by, the more popular and wilder merry-making of
the inferior clergy. But elsewhere they have their own history of
reformations or suppression, or are grouped with the Feast of Fools,
as by the decretal of Innocent III, in a common condemnation. The
diversity of local practice is well illustrated by the records of such
acts of discipline. Sometimes, as at Paris[1190], or Soissons[1191],
it is the deacons’ feast alone that has become an abuse; sometimes,
as at Worms, that of the priests’[1192]; sometimes two of them[1193],
sometimes all three[1194], require correction. I need only refer
more particularly to two interesting English examples. One is at
Wells, where a chapter statute of about 1331 condemns the tumult and
_ludibrium_ with which divine service was celebrated from the Nativity
to the octave of the Innocents, and in particular the _ludi theatrales_
and _monstra larvarum_ introduced into the cathedral by the deacons,
priests, sub-deacons, and even vicars during this period[1195]. Nor was
the abuse easy to check, for about 1338 a second statute was required
to reinforce and strengthen the prohibition[1196]. So, too, in the
neighbouring diocese of Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson
records the mandates against _ludi inhonesti_ addressed by him in 1360
to the chapters of Exeter cathedral, and of the collegiate churches
of Ottery, Crediton, and Glasney. These _ludi_ were performed by
men and boys at Vespers, Matins, and Mass on Christmas and the three
following days. They amounted to a mockery of the divine worship, did
much damage to the church vestments and ornaments, and brought the
clergy into disrepute[1197]. These southern prohibitions are shortly
before the final suppression of the Feast of Fools in the north at
Beverley and Lincoln. The Wells customs, indeed, probably included
a regular Feast of Fools, for the part taken by the sub-deacons and
vicars is specifically mentioned, and the proceedings lasted over the
New Year. But it is clear that even where the term ‘Feast of Fools’ is
not known to have been in use, the temper of that revel found a ready
vent in other of the winter rejoicings. Nor was it the _triduum_ alone
which afforded its opportunities. More rarely the performances of the
_Pastores_ on Christmas day itself[1198], or the suppers given by the
great officers of cathedrals and monasteries, when they sang their
‘_Oes_,’ on the nights between December 16 and Christmas[1199], were
the occasions for excesses which called for reprehension.
Already, when Conrad visited St. Gall in 911, the third feast of the
_triduum_ was the most interesting. In after years this reached an
importance denied to the other two. The Vespers procession was the
germ of an annual rejoicing, secular as well as ritual, which became
for the _pueri_ attached as choir-boys and servers to the cathedrals
and great churches very much what the Feast of Fools became for the
adult inferior clergy of the same bodies. Where the two feasts were not
merged in one, this distinction of _personnel_ was retained. A good
example is afforded by Sens. Here, from the middle of the fourteenth
century, the chapter accounts show an _archiepiscopus puerorum_ side by
side with the _dominus_ of the Feast of Fools. Each feast got its own
grant of wine from the chapter, and had its own prebend in the chapter
woods. In the fifteenth century the two fell and rose together. In the
sixteenth, the Feast of Boys was the more flourishing, and claimed
certain dues from a market in Sens, which were commuted for a small
money payment by the chapter. Finally, both feasts are suppressed
together in 1547[1200]. It is to be observed that the original
celebration of the Holy Innocents’ day in the western Church was not of
an unmixed festal character. It commemorated a martyrdom which typified
and might actually have been that of Christ himself, and it was
therefore held _cum tristitia_. As in Lent or on Good Friday itself,
the ‘joyful chants,’ such as the _Te Deum_ or the _Alleluia_, were
silenced. This characteristic of the day was known to Belethus, but
even before his time it had begun to give way to the festal tendencies.
Local practice differed widely, as the notices collected by Martene
show, but even when John of Avranches wrote, at the end of the eleventh
century, the ‘modern’ custom was to sing the chants[1201].
Many interesting details of the Feast of Boys, as it was celebrated
in France, are contained in various ceremonial books. The _Officium
Infantum_ of Rouen may be taken as typical[1202]. After second Vespers
on St. John’s day the boys marched out of the vestry, two by two, with
their ‘bishop,’ singing _Centum quadraginta_. There was a procession to
the altar of the Holy Innocents, and _Hi empti sunt_ was sung[1203].
Then the ‘bishop’ gave the Benediction. The feast of the following
day was ‘double,’ but the boys might make it ‘triple,’ if they would.
There was a procession, with the _Centum quadraginta_, at Matins. At
Mass, the boys led the choir. At Vespers the _baculus_ was handed over,
while the _Deposuit potentes_ was being sung[1204]. At Bayeux the feast
followed the same general lines, but the procession at first Vespers
was to the altar, not of the Holy Innocents, but of St. Nicholas[1205].
Precise directions are given as to the functions of the ‘bishop.’ He is
to wear a silk tunic and cope, and to have a mitre and pastoral staff,
but not a ring. The boys are to do him the same reverence that is done
to the real bishop. There are also to be a boy _cantor_ and a boy
‘chaplain.’ The ‘bishop’ is to perform the duties of a priest, so long
as the feast lasts, except in the Mass. He is to give the benediction
after _Benedicamus_ at first Vespers. Then the boys are to take the
higher stalls, and to keep them throughout the following day, the
‘bishop’ sitting in the dean’s chair. The boys are to say Compline as
they will. The ‘bishop’ is to be solemnly conducted home with the prose
_Sedentem_, and on the following day he is to be similarly conducted
both to and from service. At Mass he is to cense and be censed like the
‘great bishop’ on solemn occasions. He is also to give the benediction
at Mass. There is a minute description of the ceremony of _Deposuit_,
from which it is clear that, at Bayeux at least, the handing over of
the _baculus_ was from an incoming to an outgoing ‘bishop,’ to whom
the former was in turn to act as ‘chaplain[1206].’ The rubrics of the
Coutances feast are even more minute[1207]. The proceedings began after
Matins on St. John’s day, when the boys drew up a _tabula_ appointing
their superiors to the minor offices of the coming feast. This,
however, they were to do without impertinence[1208]. The vesting of the
‘bishop’ and the Vespers procession are exactly described. As at Bayeux
the boys take the high stalls for Compline. The canon who holds a
particular prebend is bound to carry the candle and the _collectarium_
for the ‘bishop.’ After Compline the ‘bishop’ is led home with
_Laetabundus_, but not in pontificals. Throughout the services of the
following day the ‘bishop’ plays his part, and when Vespers comes gives
way to a ‘bishop’-elect at the _Deposuit_[1209]. The ‘bishop’ of St.
Martin of Tours was installed in the neighbouring convent of Beaumont,
whither all the _clericuli_ rode for the purpose after Prime on St.
John’s day. He was vested in the church there, blessed the nuns, then
returned to Tours, was installed in his own cathedral, and blessed the
populace[1210]. The secular side of the feast comes out in the Toul
_Statutes_ of 1497[1211]. Here it may be said to have absorbed in its
turn the Feast of Fools, for the ‘bishop’ was a choir-boy chosen by the
choir-boys themselves and also by the sub-deacons, who shared with them
the name of _Innocentes_[1212]. The election took place after Compline
on the first Sunday in Advent, and the ‘bishop’ was enthroned with a
_Te Deum_. He officiated in the usual way throughout the Innocents’
day services. In the morning he rode at the head of a _cortège_ to the
monasteries of St. Mansuetus and St. Aper, sang an anthem and said a
prayer at the door of each church, and claimed a customary fee[1213].
After Vespers he again rode in state with mimes and trumpeters through
the city[1214]. On the following day, all the ‘Innocents’ went masked
into the city, where, if it was fine enough, farces and apparently
also moralities and miracles were played[1215]. On the octave the
‘bishop’ and his _cortège_ went to the church of St. Geneviève. After
an anthem and collect they adjourned to the ‘church-house,’ where they
were entertained by the hospital at a dessert of cake, apples and
nuts, during which they chose disciplinary officers for the coming
year[1216]. The expenses of the feast, with the exception of the dinner
on the day after Innocents’ day which came out of the disciplinary
fines, are assigned by the statutes to the canons in the order of their
appointment. The responsible canon must give a supper on Innocents’
day, and a dessert out of what is over on the following day. He must
also provide the ‘bishop’ with a horse, gloves, and a _biretta_ when he
rides abroad. At the supper a curious ceremony took place. The canon
returned thanks to the ‘bishop,’ apologized for any short-comings in
the preparations, and finally handed the ‘bishop’ a cap of rosemary or
other flowers, which was then conferred upon the canon to whose lot it
would fall to provide the feast for the next anniversary[1217]. Should
the canon disregard his duties the boys and sub-deacons were entitled
to hang up a black cope on a candlestick in the middle of the choir _in
illius vituperium_ for as long as they might choose[1218].
I cannot pretend to give a complete account of all the French
examples of the Boy Bishop with which I have met, and it is the less
necessary, as the feast seems to have been far more popular and
enduring in England than the Feast of Fools. I content myself with
giving references for its history at Amiens[1219], St. Quentin[1220],
Senlis[1221], Soissons[1222], Roye[1223], Peronne[1224], Rheims[1225],
Brussels[1226], Lille[1227], Liège[1228], Laon[1229], Troyes[1230],
Mans[1231], Bourges[1232], Châlons-sur-Saône[1233], Grenoble[1234]. Not
unnaturally it proved less of a scandal to ecclesiastical reformers
than the Feast of Fools; for the choir-boys must have been more
amenable to discipline, even in moments of festivity, than the adult
clerks. But it shared in the general condemnation of all such customs,
and was specifically arraigned by more than one council, rather perhaps
for puerility than for any graver offence[1235]. Gradually therefore,
it vanished, leaving only a few survivals to recent centuries[1236].
As was the case with the Feast of Fools, the question of its
suppression sometimes set a chapter by the ears. Notably was this so
at Noyon, where the act of his reforming colleagues in 1622 was highly
disapproved of by the dean, Jacques Le Vasseur. In a letter written on
the occasion he declares that the Boy Bishop had flourished in Noyon
cathedral for four hundred years, and brands the reformers as brute
beasts masquerading in the robes and beards of philosophy[1237].
I have no special records of the Boy Bishop in Spain except the council
decrees already quoted. In Germany he appears to have been more widely
popular than his rival of Fools. My first notice, however, is two
centuries after the visit of Conrad to the _triduum_ at St. Gall. The
chronicle of the monastery of St. Petersburg, hard by Halle, mentions
an accident _in ludo qui vocatur puerorum_, by which a lad was trodden
to death. This was in 1137[1238]. The thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries yield more examples. In 1249 Pope Innocent IV complained to
the bishop of Ratisbon that the clerks and scholars of that cathedral,
when choosing their anniversary ‘bishop,’ did violence to the abbey
of Pruviningen[1239]. In 1357 the Ratisbon feast was stained with
homicide, and was consequently suppressed[1240]. In 1282 the feast was
forbidden at Eichstädt[1241]. In 1304 it led to a dispute between the
municipality and the chapter of Hamburg, which ended in a promise by
the _scholares_ to refrain from defamatory songs either in Latin or
German[1242]. Similarly at Worms in 1307 the _pueri_ were forbidden
to sing in the streets after Compline, as had been the custom on
the feasts of St. Nicholas and St. Lucy, on Christmas and the three
following days, and on the octave of the Holy Innocents’[1243]. At
Lübeck the feast was abolished in 1336[1244]. I have already quoted the
long reference to the _scholarium episcopus_ in the Mosburg Gradual
of 1360[1245]. He may be traced also at Regensburg[1246] and at
Prague[1247]. But the fullest account of him is from Mainz[1248]. Here
he was called the _Schul-Bischoff_, and in derision _Apffeln-Bischoff_.
He was chosen before St. Nicholas’ day by the _ludi magister_ of the
_schola trivialis_. He had his _equites_, his _capellani_, and his
_pedelli_. On St. Nicholas’ day, and on that of the Holy Innocents’, he
had a seat near the high altar, and took part in the first and second
Vespers. In the interval he paid a visit with his company to the palace
of the elector, sang a hymn[1249], and claimed a banquet or a donation.
The custom was not altogether extinct in Mainz by 1779[1250]. In other
German towns, also, it well outlived the Middle Ages. At Cologne, for
instance, it was only suppressed by the statutes of Bishop Max Heinrich
in 1662[1251].
In England, the Boy Bishop weathered the storms of discipline which
swept away the Feast of Fools in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. He was widely popular in the later Middle Ages, and finally
fell before an austerity of the Reformation. The prerogative instance
of the custom is in the church of Salisbury. Here the existence of the
Boy Bishop is already implied by the notice of a ring for use at the
‘Feast of Boys’ in an inventory of 1222[1252]. A century later, the
statutes of Roger de Mortival in 1319 include elaborate regulations
for the ceremony. The ‘bishop’ may perform the _officium_ as is the
use, but he must hold no banquet, and no visitation either within or
without the cathedral. He may be invited to the table of a canon, but
otherwise he must remain in the common house, and must return to his
duties in church and school immediately after the feast of Innocents.
The statute also regulates the behaviour of the crowds which were wont
to press upon and impede the boys in their annual procession to the
altar of the Holy Trinity, and the rest of their ministry[1253]. Two
of the great service-books of the Sarum use, the Breviary and the
Processional, give ample details as to the ‘ministry’ of the Boy Bishop
and his fellows. The office, as preserved in these, will be found
in an appendix[1254]. The proceedings differ in some respects from
the continental models already described. There is no mention of the
_Deposuit_; and the central rite is still the great procession between
Vespers and Compline on the eve of the Holy Innocents. This procession
went from the choir either to the altar of the Holy Innocents or to
that of the Holy Trinity and All Saints in the Lady chapel, and at its
return the boys took the higher stalls and kept them until the second
Vespers of the feast. For this procession the boys were entitled to
assign the functions of carrying the book, the censer, the candles, and
so forth to the canons. Some miscellaneous notices of the Salisbury
feast are contained in the chapter register between 1387 and 1473.
From 1387 the oblations on the feast appear to have been given to the
‘bishop.’ In 1413 he was allowed a banquet. In 1448 the precentor,
Nicholas Upton, proposed that the boys, instead of freely electing a
‘bishop,’ should be confined to a choice amongst three candidates named
by the chapter. But this innovation was successfully resisted[1255].
Cathedral documents also give the names of twenty-one boys who held
the office[1256]. There is in Salisbury cathedral a dwarf effigy of a
bishop, dating from the latter part of the thirteenth century. Local
tradition, from at least the beginning of the seventeenth century,
has regarded this as the monument of a Boy Bishop who died during his
term of office. But modern archaeologists repudiate the theory. Such
miniature effigies are not uncommon, and possibly indicate that the
heart alone of the person commemorated is buried in the spot which they
mark[1257].
The gradual adoption of the use of Sarum by other dioceses would
naturally tend to carry with it that of the Boy Bishop. But he is
to be found at Exeter and at St. Paul’s before the change of use,
as well as at Lincoln and York which retained their own uses up to
the Reformation. At Exeter Bishop Grandisson’s _Ordinale_ of 1337
provides an _Officium puerorum_ for the eve and day of the Innocents
which, with different detail, is on the same general lines as that of
Salisbury[1258]. At St. Paul’s there was a Boy Bishop about 1225, when
a gift was made to him of a mitre by John de Belemains, prebendary
of Chiswick. This appears, with other vestments for the feast, in an
inventory drawn up some twenty years later[1259]. By 1263 abuses had
grown up, and the chapter passed a statute to reform them[1260]. They
required the election of the _praesul_ and his chapter and the drawing
up of the _tabula_ to take place in the chapter-house instead of in
the cathedral, on account of the irreverence of the crowds pressing to
see. The great dignitaries must not be put down on the _tabula_ for the
servers’ functions, but only the clergy of the second or third ‘form.’
The procession and all the proceedings in the cathedral must be orderly
and creditable to the boys[1261]. Minute directions follow as to the
right of the ‘bishop’ to claim a supper on the eve from one of the
canons, and as to the train he may take with him, as well as for the
dinner and supper of the feast-day itself. After dinner a cavalcade
is to start from the cathedral for the blessing of the people. The
dean must find a horse for the ‘bishop,’ and each canon residentiary
one for the lad who personates him[1262]. Other statutes of earlier
date make it incumbent on a new residentiary to entertain his own
boy-representative _cum daunsa et chorea et torchiis_ on Innocents’
day, and to sit up at night for the ‘bishop’ and all his _cortège_
on the octave. If he is kept up very late, he may ‘cut’ Matins next
morning[1263]. The Boy Bishop of St. Paul’s was accustomed to preach
a sermon which, not unnaturally, he did not write himself. William de
Tolleshunte, almoner of St. Paul’s in 1329, bequeathed to the almonry
copies of all the sermons preached by the Boy Bishops in his time.
Probably he was himself responsible for them[1264]. One such sermon was
printed by Wynkyn de Worde before 1500[1265]. Another was written by
Erasmus, and exists both in Latin and English[1266]. When Dean Colet
drew up the statutes of St. Paul’s School in 1512 he was careful to
enact that the scholars should attend the cathedral on Childermass day,
hear the sermon, and mass, and give a penny to the ‘bishop[1267].’
The earliest notice of the Boy Bishop at York, or for the matter of
that, in England, is in a statute (before 1221), which lays on him the
duty of finding rushes for the Nativity and Epiphany feasts[1268].
After this, there is nothing further until the second half of the
fourteenth century, when some interesting documents become available.
The chapter register for 1367 requires that in future the ‘bishop’
shall be the boy who has served longest and proved most useful in
the cathedral. A saving clause is added: _dum tamen competenter sit
corpore formosus_[1269]. This shows a sense of humour in the chapter,
for at York, as at Salisbury, _Corpore enim formosus es, O fili_ was a
respond for the day. In 1390, was added a further qualification that
the ‘bishop’ must be a lad in good voice[1270]. Doubtless the office
was much coveted, for it was a very remunerative one. The visitation
forbidden at Salisbury by Roger de Mortival was permitted at York,
and the profits were considerable. Robert de Holme, who was ‘bishop’
in 1369, received from the choirmaster, John Gisson, who acted as his
treasurer, no less a sum than £3 15_s._ 1¹⁄₂_d._[1271] In 1396 the
amount was only £2 0_s._ 6¹⁄₂_d._ But this was only a small portion
of the total receipts. The complete _Computus_ for this year happens
to be preserved, and shows that the Boy Bishop made a _quête_ at
intervals during the weeks between Christmas and Candlemas, travelling
with a ‘seneschal,’ four singers and a servant to such distant places
as Bridlington, Leeds, Beverley, Fountains abbey and Allerton. Their
principal journey lasted a fortnight. The oblations on Christmas and
Innocents’ days and the collection from the dignitaries in the cloister
realized £2 15_s._ 5_d._ In the city they got 10_s._ and abroad £5
10_s._ Out of this there were heavy expenses. The supper given by
the ‘bishop’ cost 15_s._ 6¹⁄₂_d._ Purchased meals had to supplement
hospitality at home and abroad. Horse hire and stable expenses had
to be met. There were the ‘bishop’s’ outfit, candles to be borne in
procession, fees to the minor cathedral officials, gloves for presents
to the vicars and schoolmasters. There was the ‘bishop’s’ own company
to be rewarded for its services. The £2 0_s._ 6¹⁄₂_d._ represents
the balance available for his private use[1272]. The most generous
contributor to the _quête_ was the countess of Northumberland, who
gave 20s. and a gold ring. This is precisely the amount of the reward
prescribed about 1522 for the ‘barne bishop’ of York, as well as for
his brother of Beverley in the _Household Book_ of the fifth earl of
Northumberland[1273].
The printed service-books of the use of York do not deal as fully
with the Feast of Boys as do those of Sarum; but a manuscript missal
of the fifteenth century used in the cathedral itself contains some
additional rubrics with regard to the functions of the ‘bishop’ and
his ‘precentor’ at Mass[1274]. The names of some of the York ‘bishops’
are preserved, and show that the ceremony prevailed up to the
Reformation[1275]. And this is confirmed by a list of ornaments for the
‘bishop’ in a sixteenth-century inventory[1276].
I am unable to give such full data for Lincoln as for the cathedrals
already named; but regulations of 1300 and 1527 provide for the
supply of candles to the ‘bishop’ and the rest of the choir at
Vespers on the eve and matins on the day of the Innocents[1277], and
an inventory of 1536 mentions a cope for the ‘barne busshop’ with a
moral ‘scriptur’ embroidered on it[1278]. Nor can I hope to supply any
exhaustive list of localities where the Boy Bishop flourished. These
include minor cathedrals such as Hereford[1279], Lichfield[1280],
Gloucester[1281], and Norwich[1282], great collegiate churches such
as Beverley minster[1283], St. Peter’s, Canterbury[1284], and Ottery
St. Mary’s[1285], college chapels such as Magdalen[1286] and All
Souls[1287], at Oxford, the private chapels of the king[1288] and
the earl of Northumberland[1289], and many parish churches both in
London[1290], and throughout the length and breadth of England[1291]
and Scotland[1292].
Nor is this all. Unlike the Feast of Fools, the Feast of Boys enjoyed
a considerable vogue in religious houses. When John Peckham,
archbishop of Canterbury, was drawing up his constitutions for such
communities in 1279, he found it necessary to limit the duration of
this feast to the eve and day of the Holy Innocents[1293]. Traces of
the Boy Bishop are to be found in the archives of more than one great
monastery. A Westminster inventory of 1388 gives minute descriptions
of vestments and ornaments for his use, many of which appear to have
been quite recently provided by the ‘westerer’ or _vestiarius_, Richard
Tonworthe[1294]. There was a mitre with silvered and gilt plates and
gems, and the inscription _Sancte Nicholae ora pro nobis_ set in
pearls. There was a _baculus_ with images of St. Peter and St. Edward
the Confessor upon thrones. There were two pair of cheveril gloves, to
match the mitre. There were an amice, a rochet and a surplice. There
were two albs and a cope of blood colour worked with gryphons and other
beasts and cisterns spouting water. There was another ‘principal’
cope of ruby and blood-coloured velvet embroidered in gold, and with
the ‘new arms of England’ woven into it. An older mitre and pair of
gloves and a ring had been laid aside as old-fashioned or worn out.
Evidently the feast was celebrated with some splendour. Several of
the vestments are again inventoried in 1540[1295]. A payment for the
feast is recorded in a _Computus_ of 1413-14[1296]. The accounts
of the obedientiaries of Durham priory show from 1369 onwards many
payments by nearly all these officers to a Boy Bishop of the almonry.
He also received a gift up to 1528 from the dependent house or ‘cell’
of Finchale priory. This payment was made at the office of the
_feretrarius_ or keeper of Saint Cuthbert’s shrine. The ‘bishop’ is
called _episcopus puerilis_, _episcopus eleemosynariae_, or the like.
In 1405 he was not elected, _propter guerras eo tempore_. In 1423 and
1434 there was also an _episcopus de Elvett_ or Elvetham, a manor of
the priory[1297]. The abbey of Bury St. Edmunds had its _episcopus
sancti Nicolai_ in 1418 and for at least a century longer[1298].
At Winchester each of the great monasteries held a Feast of Boys;
the abbey of Hyde on St. Nicholas’ day[1299]; the priory of St.
Swithin’s on that of the Holy Innocents. Here, too, the accounts of
the obedientiaries contain evidence of the feast in payments between
1312 and 1536 for beer or wine sent to the _episcopus iuvenum_.
Nearly all the officers whose rolls are preserved, the chamberlain,
the curtarian, the cellarian, the almoner, the sacristan, the _custos
operum_, the hordarian, seem to have contributed[1300]. A _Computus_
of 1441 contains a payment to the _pueri eleemosynariae_ who, with
the _pueri_ of St. Elizabeth’s chapel, visited St. Mary’s convent,
dressed as girls, and danced, sang and sported before the abbess and
the nuns[1301]. We have had some French instances in which the Boy
Bishop visited a neighbouring convent. But the nuns were not always
dependent on outside visitors for their revel. In some places they held
their own feast, with an ‘abbess’ instead of a ‘bishop.’ Archbishop
John Peckham, in addition to his general constitution already quoted,
issued a special mandate to Godstow nunnery, forbidding the office
and prayers to be said _per parvulas_ on Innocents’ day[1302]. Three
centuries later, in 1526, a visitation of Carrow nunnery by Richard
Nicke, bishop of Norwich, disclosed a custom of electing a Christmas
‘abbess’ there, which the bishop condemned[1303]. Continental parallels
to these examples are available. An eighth-century case, indeed,
which is quoted by some writers, has probably been the subject of
a misinterpretation[1304]. But the visitation-books of Odo Rigaud,
archbishop of Rouen (1248-69) record that he forbade the _ludibria_
of the younger nuns at the Christmas feasts and the feast of St. Mary
Magdalen in more than one convent of his diocese. One of these was the
convent of the Holy Trinity at Caen, in which an ‘abbess’ was still
chosen by the novices in 1423[1305]. All the monastic examples here
quoted come from houses of the older foundations. The _Statutes_,
however, of the Observant Franciscans made at Barcelona in 1401,
expressly forbid the use of secular garments or the loan of habits of
the order for _ludi_ on St. Nicholas’ or Innocents’ days[1306]; whence
it may be inferred that the irregularities provided against were not
unknown.
Mediaeval education began with the song-school: and although the
universities and other great seats of learning came to be much more
than glorified choirs, they still retained certain traces of their
humble origin. Amongst these was the Boy Bishop. The students of Paris
regularly chose their Boy Bishops on St. Nicholas’ day. In 1275,
indeed, the Faculty of Arts forbade the torchlight processions which
took place on that day and on St. Catherine’s, the two great common
holidays of the clerks[1307]. But in 1367 such processions were held
as of ancient custom, and it would appear that every little group of
students gathered together under the protection and in the house of a
master of arts considered itself entitled to choose a ‘bishop,’ and to
lead him in a rout through the streets. In that year the custom led
to a tragic brawl which came under the cognizance of the _Parlement_
of Paris[1308]. The scholars of one Peter de Zippa, dwelling _in vico
Bucherie ultra Parvum Pontem_, had chosen as ‘bishop’ Bartholomew
Divitis of Ypres. On St. Nicholas’ eve, they were promenading, with
a torch but unarmed, to the houses of the rector of the Faculty and
others _causa solacii et iocosa_, when they met with the watch. Peter
de Zippa was with them, and the watch had a grudge against Peter. On
the previous St. Catherine’s day they had arrested him, but he had been
released by the _préfet_. They now attacked the procession with drawn
swords, and wounded Jacobus de Buissono in the leg. As the scholars
were remonstrating, up came Philippus de Villaribus, _miles gueti_, and
Bernardus Blondelli, his deputy, and cried ‘_Ad mortem_’. The scholars
fled home, but the watch made an attack on the house. Peter de Zippa
attempted to appease them from a window, and was wounded four fingers
from a mortal spot. As the watch were on the point of breaking in, the
scholars surrendered. The house was looted, and the inmates beaten.
One lad was pitched out on his head and driven into the Seine, out of
which he was helped by a woman. Peter de Zippa and twenty-four others
were rolled in the mud and then carried off to the _Châtelet_, where
they were shut up in a dark and malodorous cell. Worst of all, the
‘bishop’ had disappeared altogether. It was believed that the watch had
slain him, and flung the body into the Seine. A complaint was brought
before the _Parlement_, and a commission of inquiry appointed. The
watch declared that Peter de Zippa was insubordinate to authority and,
although warned, as a foreigner, both in French and Latin[1309], that
they were the king’s men, persisted in hurling logs and stones out of
his window, with the result of knocking four teeth out of Peter Patou’s
mouth, and wounding the horse of Philip de Villaribus. This defence was
apparently thought unsatisfactory, and a further inquiry was held, with
the aid of torture. Finally the court condemned the offending watch
to terms of imprisonment and the payment of damages. They had also to
offer a humble apology, with bare head and bent knee, to the bishop
of Paris, the rector of the Faculty, Peter de Zippa, and the injured
scholars, in the cloister or the chapter-house of St. Mathurin’s. The
case of the alleged murder of the ‘bishop,’ Bartholomew Divitis, was
not to be prejudiced by this judgement, and Peter de Zippa was warned
to be more submissive to authority in future. The whole episode is an
interesting parallel to the famous ‘town and gown’ at Oxford on St.
Scholastica’s day, 1353[1310].
Provision is made for a Boy Bishop in the statutes of more than one
great English educational foundation. William of Wykeham ordained
in 1400 that one should be chosen at Winchester College, and at New
College, Oxford, and should recite the office at the Feast of the
Innocents[1311]. Some notices in the Winchester College accounts
during the fifteenth century show that he also presided at secular
revels. In 1462 he is called _Episcopus Nicholatensis_, and on St.
Nicholas’ day he paid a visit of ceremony to the warden, who presented
him, out of the college funds, with fourpence[1312]. The example of
William of Wykeham was followed, forty years later, in the statutes of
the royal foundations of Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge.
But there was one modification. These colleges were dedicated to
the Virgin and to St. Nicholas, and it was carefully laid down that
the performance of the _officium_ by the ‘bishop’ was to be on St.
Nicholas’ day, ‘and by no means on that of the Innocents[1313].’
The Eton ‘bishop’ is said by the Elizabethan schoolmaster Malim,
who wrote a _Consuetudinarium_ of the college in 1561, to have been
called _episcopus Nihilensis_, and to have been chosen on St. Hugh’s
day (November 17). Probably _Nihilensis_ is a scribal mistake for
_Nicholatensis_[1314]. The custom had been abolished before Malim
wrote, but was extant in 1507, for in that year the ‘bishop’s’ rochet
was mended[1315]. Some Eton historians have thought that the Boy Bishop
ceremony was the origin of the famous ‘Montem’; but as the ‘Montem’
was held on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25), and
as Malim mentions both customs independently, this is improbable[1316].
Smaller schools than Winchester or Eton had none the less their Boy
Bishops. Archbishop Rotherham, who founded in 1481 a college at his
native place of Rotherham in Yorkshire, left by will in 1500 a mitre
for the ‘barnebishop[1317].’ The grammar school at Canterbury had, or
should have had, its Boy Bishop in 1464[1318]. Aberdeen was a city of
which St. Nicholas was the patron, and at Aberdeen the master of the
grammar school was paid by a collection taken when he went the rounds
with the ‘bishop’ on St. Nicholas’ day[1319]. Dean Colet, on the other
hand, when founding St. Paul’s school did not provide for a ‘bishop’
in the school itself, but, as we have seen, directed the scholars to
attend the mass and sermon of the ‘bishop’ in the cathedral.
Naturally the Reformation made war on the Boy Bishop. A royal
proclamation of July 22, 1541, forbade the ‘gatherings’ by children
‘decked and apparalid to counterfaite priestes, bysshopps, and women’
on ‘sainte Nicolas, sainte Catheryne, sainte Clement, the holye
Innocentes, and such like,’ and also the singing of mass and preaching
by boys on these days[1320]. Naturally also, during the Marian reaction
the Boy Bishop reappeared. On November 13, 1554, Bishop Bonner issued
an order permitting all clerks in the diocese of London to have St.
Nicholas and to go abroad; and although this order was annulled on
the very eve of the festival, apparently because Cardinal Pole had
appointed St. Nicholas’ day for a great ceremony of reconciliation
at Lambeth, yet the custom was actually revived in several London
parishes, including St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and St. Nicholas Olave,
Bread Street[1321]. In 1556 it was still more widely observed[1322].
But upon the accession of Elizabeth it naturally fell again into
disuse, and it has left few, if any, traces in modern folk-custom[1323].
I need not, after the last two chapters, attempt an elaborate analysis
of the customs connected with the Boy Bishop. In the main they are
parallel to those of the Feast of Fools. They include the burlesque
of divine service, the _quête_, the banquet, the _dominus festi_.
Like the Feast of Fools, they probably contain a folk as well as an
ecclesiastical element. But the former is chastened and subdued, the
strength of ecclesiastical discipline having proved sufficient, in
the case of the boys, to bar for the most part such excesses as the
adult clerks inherited from the pagan Kalends. On one point, however,
a little more must be said. The _dominus festi_, who at the Feast of
Fools bears various names, is almost invariably at the Feast of Boys
a ‘bishop[1324].’ This term must have been familiar by the end of
the eleventh century for it lends a point of sarcasm to the protest
made by Yves, bishop of Chartres, in a letter to Pope Urban II against
the disgraceful nomination by Philip I of France of a wanton lad to
be bishop of Orleans in 1099[1325]. In later documents it appears in
various forms, _episcopus puerorum_, _episcopellus_[1326], _episcopus
puerilis_ or _parvulus_, ‘boy bishop,’ ‘child bishop,’ ‘barne
bishop.’ In some English monasteries it is _episcopus eleemosynariae_
(‘of the almonry’); in Germany, _Schul-Bischof_, or, derisively,
_Apfeln-Bischof_. More significant than any of these is the common
variant _episcopus Nicholatensis_, ‘Nicholas bishop.’ For St. Nicholas’
day (December 6) was hardly less important in the career of the Boy
Bishop than that of the Holy Innocents itself. At this feast he was
generally chosen and began his _quête_ through the streets. In more
than one locality, Mainz for instance in Germany, Eton in England,
it was on this day as well as, or in substitution for, that of the
Innocents that he made his appearance in divine service[1327]. St.
Nicholas was, of course, the patron saint of schoolboys and of
children generally[1328]. His prominence in the winter processions
of Germany and the presents which in modern folk-belief he brings to
children have been touched upon in an earlier chapter. It now appears
that originally he took rather than gave presents, and that where he
appeared in person he was represented by the Boy Bishop. And this
suggests the possibility that it was this connexion with St. Nicholas,
and not the profane mummings of Michael the Drunkard at Constantinople,
which led to the use of the term ‘bishop’ for the _dominus festi_,
first at the Feast of Boys, and ultimately at the other Christmas
feasts as well. For St. Nicholas was not only the boys’ saint _par
excellence_; he was also, owing to the legend of his divinely ordered
consecration when only a layman as bishop of Myra, the bishop saint
_par excellence_[1329]. However this may be, I think it is a fair guess
that St. Nicholas’ day was an older date for a Feast of Boys than that
of the Holy Innocents, and that the double date records an instance of
the process, generally imperfect, by which, under Roman and Christian
influence, the beginning of winter customs of the Germano-Keltic
peoples were gradually transformed into mid-winter customs[1330].
The beginning of winter feast was largely a domestic feast, and the
children probably had a special part in it. It is possible also to
trace a survival of the corresponding beginning of summer feast in the
day of St. Gregory on March 12, which was also sometimes marked by the
election of a _Schul-Bischof_[1331].