Note 1305 — Chapter XV · THE BOY BISHOP

Ducange, s. v. Kalendae (‘de monialibus Villae-Arcelli’), ‘Item inhibemus ne de caetero in festis Innocentum et B. M. Magdalenae ludibria exerceatis consueta, induendo vos scilicet vestibus saecularium aut inter vos seu cum secularibus choreas ducendo’; and again ‘in festo S. Iohannis et Innocentium mimia iocositate et scurrilibus cantibus utebantur, ut pote farsis, conductis, motulis; praecepimus quod honestius et cum maiori devotione alias se haberent’; Gasté, 36 (on Caen) ‘iuniores in festo Innocentium cantant lectiones suas cum farsis. Hoc inhibuimus.’ In 1423, the real abbess gave place to the little abbess at the Deposuit. Gasté, 44, describes a survival of the election of an ‘abbess’ from amongst the pensionnaires on the days of St. Catherine and the Innocents in the Abbaye aux Bois, Faubourg St. Germain, from the Mémoires of Hélène Massalska. This was about 1773.