Child Bishop
The children bishop or the kids Bishop's is in the middle ages incurred custom of monasteries and pen schools on certain days one student to be " bishop " or the " Abbot (in" Augsburg , there was a "children's Pope") choose to let him with appropriate To equip robes and to give him part of the episcopal official duties for a day together with his " chaplains ".
The oldest evidence of a child bishop can be found in Casus Sancti Galli Ekkehards IV of St. Gallen . The game evolved from the example of the fools' festival and took place mainly on the day of the innocent children , New Year and (since the 13th century) on Nicholas .
The custom of the child bishop spread across the whole of the West through the city and community schools, which were founded on the model of the monastery schools. A high spirits criticized as early as the 13th century, as well as the church reformation and the Enlightenment, put an end to it in the 18th century.
The tradition is being taken up on various occasions, for example in Hamburg , Göttingen and Ottstedt (Magdala) , whereby the role reversal gives the opportunity to articulate the concerns of children, which are often neglected, to adults. They made u. a. to child bishop sermons of the 16th century.
See also
literature
- Klaus Beitl, Bruno Steimer: Kinderbischof, Bischofsspiel , in: Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. Herder, Freiburg 1996, Volume 6, Sp. 1438f.
- Manfred Knedlik: Bischofsspiel , in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns , 2017
- Tanja Skambraks: The Children's Bishop Festival in the Middle Ages . Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze 2014, ISBN 978-88-8450-570-5 ( review by H-Soz-Kult )
- Ferdinand Ahuis: The child bishop sermon - a rediscovered genre of child sermon. In: Pastoral Theology. Monthly for Science and Practice in Church and Society 88 (1999), pp. 123–140