To Carol Symes' helpful discussion of the kinds of festivals, plays, and
public performances twelfth-century (and later!) reformers sought to keep
the clergy out of, we should add the Boy Bishop festival during Christmas
season. The fact that the clergy were explicitly urged to participate in
Nativity and Marian plays makes all the more significant the specific
papal injunctions against the riotous Boy Bishop festivals which
turned the traditional church hierarchy upside down, if only for a few days.
Mark Amsler
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