[1297] Rimbault, xviii; Finchale Priory (Surtees Soc.), ccccxxviii; Durham Accounts (Surtees Soc.), iii. xliii, and passim.
[1298] Hist. MSS. xiv. 8. 124, 157.
[1299] Computi of Cellarer (Warton, ii. 232, iii. 300) ‘1397, pro epulis Pueri celebrantis in festo S. Nicholai ... 1490, in larvis et aliis indumentis Puerorum visentium Dominum apud Wulsey, et Constabularium Castri Winton, in apparatu suo, necnon subintrantium omnia monasteria civitatis Winton, in festo sancti Nicholai.’
[1300] G. W. Kitchin, Computus Rolls of St. Swithin’s (Hampshire Rec. Soc.), passim; G. W. Kitchin and F. T. Madge, Winchester Chapter Documents (H. R. Soc.), 24.
[1301] Warton, ii. 231 ‘1441, pro pueris Eleemosynariae una cum pueris Capellae sanctae Elizabethae, ornatis more puellarum, et saltantibus, cantantibus, et ludentibus, coram domina Abbatissa et monialibus Abbathiae beatae Mariae virginis, in aula ibidem in die sanctorum Innocentium.’
[1302] Harpsfield, Hist. Eccl. Angl. (1622), 441, citing Peckham’s Register. He says the mandate was in French.
[1303] Visitations of Diocese of Norwich (Camden Soc.), 209 ‘Domina Iohanna Botulphe dicit ... quod ... habent in festo Natalis Domini iuniorem monialem in abbatissam assumptam, vocandi [? iocandi] gratia; cuius occasione ipsa consumere et dissipare cogitur quae vel elemosina vel aliorum amicorum largitione acquisierit ... Iniunctum est ... quod de cetero non observetur assumptio abbatissae vocandi causa.’
[1304] Gregory of Tours, x. 16 (M. G. H. Script. Rerum Meroving. i. 427), mentions among the complaints laid before the visitors of the convent of St. Radegund in Poitou, that the abbess ‘vittam de auro exornatam idem neptae suae superflue fecerit, barbaturias intus eo quod celebraverit.’ Ducange, s. v. Barbatoriae, finds here a reference to some kind of masquing, and Peter of Blois, Epist. 14, certainly uses barbatores as a synonym for mimi. The M. G. H. editors of Gregory, however, explain ‘barbatoria’ as ‘primam barbam ponere’ the sense borne by the term in Petronius, Sat. lxxiii. 6. The abbess’s niece had probably no beard, but may not the reference be to the cutting of the hair of a novice when she takes the vows?
[1305] 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.
[1306] Howlett, Monumenta Franciscana (R. S.), ii. 93 ‘Caveant fratres in festo Sancti Nicolai seu Innocentium, vel quibuscunque aliis festis vestes extraneas religiosas seu seculares aut clericales vel muliebres sub specie devotionis induere; nec habitus fratrum secularibus pro ludis faciendis accommodentur sub poena amotionis confusibilis de conventu.’