El Obispillo - the boy bishop (Episcopus puerorum)

900

Recurring custom, with revels traceable to the 10th century, in which a boy chorister was elected to parody a bishop, commonly on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December). In England the boy was elected on St Nicholas's Day and his authority ran to 28 December. Henry VIII abolished it in 1542; Mary I reinstated it in 1553; Elizabeth I ended it. The initial motive was apparently the exaltation of the innocent and the lowly.