Item we forbid you in future to indulge in your accustomed gaieties (ne ludibria exerceatis consueta) to wit, dressing yourselves up in secular clothes or leading dance-songs (choreas) among yourselves or with seculars[2058].
But the nuns clung to their rare amusements and in 1253 the Archbishop noted: “They sing ditties (cantilenas) on the Feast of Innocents”[2059]. At St Léger des Préaux in 1254 the diary has: “We forbade disorders (inordinaciones) on the Feast of Innocents”[2060] and at the Holy Trinity of Caen two years later: “The younger ones on the Feast of Innocents sing the scriptures with farsa; this we forbade”[2061]. Montivilliers was a serious offender and the Archbishop’s note is learnedly technical over the different kinds of songs sung by the nuns:
Item on the Feasts of St John, St Stephen and the Innocents they use excessive frivolity (nimia iocositate) and scurrilous songs, to wit, farces (farsis), canticles (conductis) and motets (motulis); we ordered that they should bear themselves more fittingly and with greater devotion[2062].
The order seems to have borne fruit, for in 1262 he noted: “The frivolities which used to take place on Innocents’ Day have been utterly given up, so they say”; and then, and again in 1265, he simply repeated the injunction that such things should cease[2063]. At St Amand in 1263 he ordered:
That the younger nuns are not to remain behind in the choir on the Feast of Innocents, as they have done in the past, singing the office and proses which belong to the day, the seniors having gone away and left the juniors there[2064].
But afterwards we hear no more of these sports among the nuns; so perhaps Rigaud succeeded in stamping them out. They were perhaps (if one may judge from the usual character of the Feast of Fools) more scurrilous and less innocently pretty than they sound; but it is difficult not to feel a little out of sympathy with the conscientious Archbishop[2065].
The keeping of pet animals here, as in England, was a common fault and one against which Rigaud’s animadversions were singularly unsuccessful. The nuns of St Sauveur d’Evreux had small dogs, squirrels and birds, “and we ordered such things to be removed; they do not profit the rule”[2066]; but we had to repeat our injunction in 1258 and again in 1269[2067]. At St Léger des Préaux they had two small dogs and three squirrels[2068], and at the Holy Trinity of Caen they kept larks and little birds in cages, which were to be removed[2069]; but the cage birds were still there six years later[2070]. The most amusing case was at Villarceaux in 1268, where for once one of the nuns gave the Archbishop a piece of her mind. “Eustachia, late prioress” (we shall hear of her again), “had a certain bird, which she kept to the annoyance and displeasure of some of the more elderly nuns” (did it disturb their slumbers?) “For the which reason we ordered her to remove it; and she thereupon bespake us with little discretion or reverence, which greatly displeased us”[2071]. One may forgive the archbishop for this lapse in his sense of humour; he had had trouble with Eustachia before; it was just like her to keep a bird that squawked in the dorter.
Nor probably did Rigaud fare better than any other medieval visitor in his attempts to turn fashionable clothes out of the nunneries. The disreputable ladies of Villarceaux (1249) curled their hair and scented their veils with saffron, they had pilches of rabbit and hare and fox fur, they wore belts adorned with silver-work and steel-work[2072]. Those of Montivilliers (1265 and 1266) were nearly as luxurious, though their morals were unimpeachable; they also wore their hair in ringlets, had pilches of squirrel fur and of the costly “griz,” and used girdles curiously adorned with ironwork; they ornamented their collars and cuffs with expensive cloth trimmings and possessed “excessively curious and precious knives, with carved and silvered handles”[2073]. The nuns of St Amand also used not only shifts and pilches, but also pillows and bedclothes soft with the fur of rabbit, hare, fox and cat[2074]; and the ornamented girdles of ironwork were found at St Aubin and at St Sauveur[2075]. The Archbishop strenuously forbade long hair and curls, belts of ironwork, saffron, rich cloth and the more costly kinds of fur. It is unlikely that he was successful. The world never called more seductively to medieval nuns than in contemporary fashions. The Church clung to the belief that the habit made the nun, but the souls of sister Jacqueline and sister Johanna, and sister Philippa and sister Marguerite expressed themselves appropriately in furs and saffron and, one fears, would not have been less frivolous in the regular garb of their order:
Il est bien vray que tourel, voille ou guymple
Fort scapullaire ou autre habit de corps,
Ne rend jamais homme ou femme plus simple,
Mais rompt souvent l’union et accords
Mectant divorce entre l’âme et le corps[2076].
(7) It is now necessary to consider the more serious faults, such as quarrelling, drunkenness or immorality, detected by Eudes Rigaud in his visitations, and to give a fuller account of those nunneries which were in a particularly evil state. The quarrels which were inseparable from convent life continually occupied his attention; and nine out of the twelve houses which he visited more than once were at one time or another disturbed by petty squabblings among the nuns. It is clear—as might be expected—that the discord was worse in those convents where discipline was loose, and where the behaviour of the nuns in other directions was open to grave censure. At the visitation of Villarceaux in 1249, for instance, Ermengarde of Gisors and Johanna of Auvilliers beat one another and the Archbishop was obliged to order the punishment of quarrels passing from words to blows[2077] (de verbis ad verbera—he was not above a mild ecclesiastical pun in the privacy of his diary)[2078]. At St Aubin (1254) Agnes of the Bridge (de Ponte) and Petronilla refused to speak to each other, and Agnes, “who is a fomenter of discord and a scold,” was ordered to give up her rancour against Petronilla, on pain of being removed from the convent[2079]. At Bival in 1252 two sisters were described as rebellious[2080] and two years later the Register contains the following entry: