Definition
Latin: "bishop of the boys." A ceremonial figure from medieval ecclesiastical custom in which a layperson — typically a choirboy or young cleric — was dressed in episcopal vestments and permitted to perform mock episcopal functions during certain feast days, most commonly the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28) or St. Nicholas Day (December 6). The person so designated would briefly assume the outward trappings of a bishop, process with ceremony, and perform comic or satirical imitations of episcopal jurisdiction, before the role lapsed at the conclusion of the festival. The custom was widespread across England and Europe during the medieval period and persisted in some localities well after official condemnation by ecclesiastical authorities.
The term carries no legal force or operative meaning in modern law. It appears in legal dictionaries primarily as an antiquarian entry documenting a dissolved ecclesiastical custom with marginal relevance to ecclesiastical law and the history of clerical regulation.
Common Confusion
EPISCOPUS PUERORUM should not be confused with the related but distinct "Feast of Fools" (Festum Fatuorum), a broader category of medieval festive inversion in which lower clergy temporarily assumed the roles of their superiors. The "bishop of the boys" custom was more specifically associated with choirboys and cathedral schools, whereas the Feast of Fools extended to subdeacons and other minor orders. Both customs drew ecclesiastical censure, but they were separate traditions with distinct liturgical occasions and participants. Researchers encountering either term in ecclesiastical records should not assume they refer to the same event.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is functionally obsolete as a legal concept but surfaces in several research contexts worth anticipating.
Ecclesiastical law history. Researchers working in medieval canon law, cathedral chapter records, or the history of ecclesiastical discipline may encounter episcopus puerorum in sources documenting efforts to suppress the custom. English ecclesiastical constitutions of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries periodically addressed festive abuses, and the "bishop of the boys" is named or implied in some of these instruments. Locating those prohibitions requires searching under both the Latin form and its English equivalents.
English legal antiquities. The term appears in Blount's Fragmenta Antiquitatis and similar antiquarian legal compilations. Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence both cite Blount directly, which means the legal dictionary entries are themselves derived from a single secondary antiquarian source rather than from primary legal instruments. Researchers should treat the dictionary entries as pointers to Blount, not as independent legal authority.
Terminology instability in historical sources. Historical sources use variant names: "Boy Bishop," "Bishop of the Innocents," "Nicholas Bishop," and episcopus puerorum interchangeably. A corpus search on any single term will miss sources using the others. Researchers should construct searches that capture the Latin form, the English translations, and the feast-day associations together.
No operative legal doctrine. Unlike many Latin terms in legal dictionaries that retain operative significance, episcopus puerorum is purely descriptive of a historical custom. It establishes no legal rights, creates no ecclesiastical office, and generates no precedent. Its presence in a legal dictionary reflects the nineteenth-century practice of encyclopedic inclusion of legal antiquities rather than any practical application.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence give virtually identical entries, both drawing explicitly from Thomas Blount. This convergence is not independent corroboration — it is a shared source. Both entries describe the custom accurately as far as they go: a layperson dressed in episcopal garments, performing mock jurisdictional acts on certain feast days, called "bishop of the boys." Rapalje & Lawrence's entry notes that "this custom obtained here long after several constitutions were made to abolish it," which is historically accurate and adds useful context absent from Black's. Neither entry identifies the specific constitutions referenced, which limits their utility for primary source research.
What the historical dictionaries miss is the distinction between episcopus puerorum as practiced in cathedral contexts (choirboys) versus the broader festive inversion traditions affecting adult minor clergy. They also do not address the geographic variation in how the custom was observed or suppressed across English dioceses. Researchers needing that granularity must go beyond the dictionary sources entirely.
Jurisdictional Note
The custom was observed across Catholic Europe but had particular longevity in England, where it survived in some cathedral cities into the early sixteenth century. The English Reformation effectively ended it as an institutional practice. The term has no current jurisdictional significance in any common law or civil law system.