The Boy-Bishop's term of office
was yet longer, extending from St. Nicholas' Day (December 6th) to Holy
Innocents' Day (December 28th).
The distinctive feature of the Saturnalia was the inversion of ordinary
relationships; the world was turned upside down, and the licence that
prevailed, by dint of long usage and inviolable sentiment, imparted to
the merry-making a rough and even immoral character. Slaves assumed the
position of masters, and masters of slaves; and the general nature of
the observance is aptly described by the patron deity in Lucian's play
on the subject: "During my reign of a week no one may attend to his
business, but only to drinking, singing, playing, making imaginary
kings, playing servants at table with their masters."
The advent of Christianity was impotent to arrest the annual scenes of
disorder; and, in some form or another--sometimes tolerated, sometimes
the object of the Church's anathema--the tradition held its own down
through the Dark Ages, and we meet with the substance of the Saturnalia,
during the centuries immediately preceding the Reformation, in the
burlesque festivals with which the rule of the Boy-Bishop has been often
identified. We shall see presently how far this judgment is correct. An
example will, no doubt, readily recur to the reader from a source to
which we owe so many impressions of the Middle Ages, some true, others
false or at least exaggerated--we mean the historical romances of Sir
Walter Scott.
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