Note 1327 — Chapter XV · THE BOY BISHOP
Reading edition
The Ritual (†1264) of St. Omer (Mém. de la Soc. des Antiq. de la Morinie, xx. 186) has the following rubric for St. Nicholas’ Day ‘in secundis vesperis ... a choristis incipitur prosa Sospitati dedit egros, in qua altercando cantatur iste versus Ergo laudes novies tantum, ne immoderatum tedium generet vel derisum.’ The same rubric recurs on St. Catherine’s Day. At St. Omer, as at Paris (cf. p. 363), these were the two winter holidays for scholars. Cf. also p. 289, and A. Legrand, Réjouissances des écoliers de N.-D. de St. Omer, le jour de St.-Nicholas, leur glorieux patron (Mémoires, ut cit. vii. 160). The St. Omer Episcopus puerorum also officiated on Innocents’ Eve and the octave. Dreves, Anal. Hymn. xxi. 82, gives various cantiones for St. Nicholas’ Day; e.g.
‘Nicolai praesulis Festum celebremus, . . . . . In tanto natalitio Patrum docet traditio Ut consonet in gaudio Fidelium devotio, Est ergo superstitio Vacare a tripudio.’
In England it is probable that the Beverley Boy Bishop also officiated on St. Nicholas’ Day. A chapter order of Jan. 7, 1313, directs the transfer of the ‘servitium sancti Nicholai in festo eiusdem per Magistrum Scholarum Beverlacensium celebrandum’ to the altar of St. Blaize during the building of a new nave (A. F. Leach, Memorials of Beverley Minster, Surtees Soc. i. 307).