The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
Mortival, enacted in 1319; and two of the great service-books of the Sarum
use, the Breviary and the Processional, furnish full details of the
ministrations of the Boy Bishop and his fellows. He is even said to have
enjoyed the right of disposing of such prebends as happened to fall vacant
during the days of his episcopacy. But the pranks of the mock bishop were
not confined to the church. Arrayed in full canonicals he was led about
with songs and dances from house to house, blessing the grinning people
and collecting money in return for his benedictions. At York in the year
1396 the Boy Bishop is known to have gone on his rounds to places so far
distant as Bridlington, Leeds, Beverley, Fountains Abbey, and Allerton;
and the profits which he made were considerable. William of Wykeham
ordained in 1400 that a Boy Bishop should be chosen at Winchester College
and another at New College, Oxford, and that he should recite the office
at the Feast of the Innocents. His example was followed some forty years
afterwards in the statutes of the royal foundations of Eton College and of
King’s College, Cambridge. From being elected on St. Nicholas’s Day the
Boy Bishop was sometimes called a Nicholas Bishop (_Episcopus
Nicholatensis_).(773) In Spanish cathedrals, also, it appears to have been
customary on St. Nicholas’s Day to elect a chorister to the office of
Bishop. He exercised a certain jurisdiction till Holy Innocents’ Day, and
his prebendaries took secular offices, acting in the capacity of
alguazils, catchpoles, dog-whippers, and sweepers.(774)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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