Longstalked Hibiscus. _Hibiscus pedunculatus._
Dedicated to _St. Crispina_.
~December 6.~
_St. Nicholas_, Abp. of Myra, A. D. 342. _Sts. Dionysia_, _Dativa_,
_Æmilianus_, _Boniface_, _Leontia_, _Tertius_, and _Majoricus_,
Martyrs. _St. Peter Paschal_, A. D. 1300. _St. Theophilus_, Bp. of
Antioch, A. D. 190.
~St. Nicholas.~
He is in the almanacs, and church of England calendar. He is patron or
titular saint of virgins, boys, sailors, and the worshipful company of
parish clerks of the city of London. Mr. Audley briefly observes of him,
that he was remarkable in his infancy for piety, and the knowledge of
the scriptures; that he was made bishop of Myra, in Lycia, by
Constantine the Great, and that “he was present in the council of Nice,
where, it is said, he gave Arius a box on the ear.”[403]
According to catholic story, St. Nicholas was a saint of great virtue,
and disposed so early in life to conform to ecclesiastical rule, that
when an infant at the breast he fasted on Wednesday and Friday, and
sucked but once on each of those days, and that towards night.[404] A
story is related to his credit which is of considerable curiosity. It is
told, that “an Asiatic gentleman” sent his two sons to “Athens” for
education, and ordered them to wait on the bishop for his benediction.
On arriving at Myra with their baggage they took up their lodging at an
inn, purposing, as it was late in the day, to defer their visit till the
morrow; but in the mean time the innkeeper, to secure their effects to
himself, wickedly killed the young gentlemen, cut them into pieces,
salted them, and intended to sell them for pickled pork. Happily St.
Nicholas was favoured with a sight of these proceedings in a vision, and
in the morning went to the inn, and reproached the cruel landlord with
his crime, who immediately confessed it, and entreated the saint to pray
to heaven for his pardon. Then the bishop, being moved by his confession
and contrition, besought forgiveness for him, and supplicated
restoration of life to the children; whereupon the pickled pieces
reunited, and the reanimated youths stepping from the brine-tub threw
themselves at the feet of St. Nicholas, who raised them up, exhorted
them to return thanks to God alone, gave them good advice for the
future, bestowed his blessing on them, and sent them to Athens with
great joy to prosecute their studies.[405]
[Illustration]
The Salisbury missal of 1534, fol. xxvii. contains a prayer to St.
Nicholas, before which is an engraving on wood of the bishop with the
children rising from the tub; but better than all, by a licence that
artists formerly assumed of representing successive scenes in the same
print, the landlord himself is shown in the act of reducing a limb into
sizes suitable for his mercenary purpose. There are only two children in
the story, and there are three in the tub of the engraving; but it is
fairly to be conjectured, that the story was thought so good as to be
worth making a little better. It is deemed seemly to introduce this
narration by a fac-simile of the missal cut. Ribadeneira says of St.
Nicholas, that “being present at the council of Nice, among three
hundred and eighteen bishops, who were there assembled together to
condemn the heresy of Arius, he shone among them all with so great
clarity, and opinion of sanctity, that he appeared like a sun amongst so
many stars.” It will be remembered that he is affirmed to have given
Arius a clarifying “box on the ear.”
~The Boy Bishop.~
If there were no other, the miracle of the pickled children would be
sufficient to establish Nicholas’s fame as the patron of youth, and we
find his festival day was selected by scholars, and the children of the
church, for a remarkable exhibition about to be described.
Anciently on the 6th of December, it being St. Nicholas’s day, the choir
boys in cathedral churches, chose one of their number to maintain the
state and authority of a bishop, for which purpose the boy was habited
in rich episcopal robes, wore a mitre on his head, and bore a crosier in
his hand; and his fellows, for the time being, assumed the character and
dress of priests, yielded him canonical obedience, took possession of
the church, and except mass, performed all the ecclesiastical ceremonies
and offices. Though the boy bishop’s election was on the 6th of
December, yet his office and authority lasted till the 28th, being
Innocents’ day.
It appears from a printed church book containing the service of the boy
bishop set to music, that at Sarum,[406] on the eve of Innocents’ day,
the boy bishop and his youthful clergy, in their copes, and with burning
tapers in their hands, went in solemn procession, chanting and singing
versicles as they walked into the choir by the west door, in such order
that the dean and canons went foremost, the chaplains next, and the boy
bishop with his priests in the last and highest place. He then took his
seat, and the rest of the children disposed themselves on each side of
the choir upon the uppermost ascent, the canons resident bore the
incense and the book, and the petit-canons the tapers according to the
Romish rubric. Afterwards the boy bishop proceeded to the altar of the
Holy Trinity, and All Saints, which he first censed, and next the image
of the Holy Trinity, while his priests were singing. Then they all
chanted a service with prayers and responses, and the boy bishop taking
his seat, repeated salutations, prayers, and versicles, and in
conclusion gave his benediction to the people, the chorus answering,
_Deo gratias_. Having received his crosier from the cross-bearer other
ceremonies were performed; he chanted the complyn; turning towards the
quire delivered an exhortation; and last of all said, “_Benedicat Vos
omnipotens Deus, Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus._”
By the statutes of the church of Sarum, for the regulation of this
extraordinary scene, no one was to interrupt or press upon the boy
bishop and the other children, during their procession or service in the
cathedral, upon pain of anathema. It farther appears that at this
cathedral the boy bishop held a kind of visitation, and maintained a
corresponding state and prerogative; and he is supposed to have had
power to dispose of prebends that fell vacant during his episcopacy. If
he died within the month he was buried like other bishops in his
episcopal ornaments, his obsequies were solemnized with great pomp, and
a monument was erected to his memory, with his episcopal effigy.
About a hundred and fifty years ago a stone monument to one of these boy
bishops was discovered in Salisbury cathedral, under the seats near the
pulpit, from whence it was removed to the north part of the nave between
the pillars, and covered over with a box of wood, to the great
admiration of those, who, unacquainted with the anomalous character it
designed to commemorate, thought it “almost impossible that a bishop
should be so small in person, or a child so great in clothes.”
Mr. Gregorie found the processional of the boy bishop. He notices the
same custom at _York_; and cites Molanus as saying, “that this bishop in
some places did _reditat census, et capones annuo accipere_, receive
rents, capons, &c. during his year,” &c. He relates that a boy bishop in
the church of Cambray disposed of a prebend, which fell void during his
episcopal assumption to his master; and he refers to the denunciation of
the boy bishop by the council of Basil which, at the time of the holding
of that council, was a well-known custom. Mr. Gregorie, who was a
prebendary of Salisbury, describes the finding of the boy bishop’s
monument at that place, and inserts a representation of it in his
treatise, from which the annexed engraving is taken.
[Illustration: ~Monument to a Boy Bishop~