Note 1340 — Chapter XVI · GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS

Conc. of Avignon (1326), c. 37, de societatibus colligationibus et coniurationibus quas confratrias appellant radicitus extirpandis (Labbé, xi. 1738), forbids both clerks and laymen ‘ne se confratres priores abbatas praedictae societatis appellent.’ The charges brought against the confréries are of perverting justice, not of wanton revelry, and therefore it is probably not ‘sociétés joyeuses’ that are in question; cf. Ducange, s. v. Abbas Confratriae, quoting a Paris example. Grenier, 362, however, mentions a ‘confrérie’ in the Hôpital de Rue at Amiens (†1210) which was under an ‘évêque’; cf. the following note.