[1169] V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 124.
[1170] Archaeologia, XLVII, pp. 56-7.
[1171] V.C.H. Yorks. III, p. 183. This episode is a striking illustration of the complaint made about those Jubilee pilgrimages by the abbots of Fountains, St Mary Graces and Stratford, who had been appointed by the Abbot and Chapter-General of Cîteaux to report on the condition of English monasteries of that order. Writing to the Abbot of Cîteaux in 1500, they beg that several bulls of Jubilee indulgence should be sent to England, adding, “for many lesser religious of the order, under pretext of obtaining the grace of this indulgence, led by a spirit less of devotion than of levity and curiosity, are begging their superiors for licence to go to the Roman curia, and we have besought them to remain at home in the hope of obtaining this jubilee [indulgence]. For we rarely see, in this country of ours, any good and devout secular or religious man visiting the Mother City (most justly though it be accounted holy), who returns home again in better holiness and devotion.” Mélanges d’Histoire offerts à M. Charles Bémont (Paris, 1913), p. 429.
[1172] Quoted in Gregorovius, Hist. of Rome in the Middle Ages, III, p. 78 note. See the fifteenth century Florentine carnival song, quoted below, pp. [617-8].
Les blanches et les grises et les noires nonains
Sont sovent pelerines aus saintes et aus sainz;
Les Diex lor en set gre, je n’en suis pas certains,
S’eles fussent bien sages eles alassent mains.
Quant ces nonains s’en vont par le pays esbatre
Les unes a Paris, les autres a Montmartre,
Tels foiz enmaine deus qu’on en ramaine quatre,
Quar s’on en perdroit une il les covenroit batre.
From “De la vie dou Monde,” Rustebeufs Gedichte hg. v. Adolf Krefaner (1885), p. 185.
[1174] And of such specific decrees as that of the Council of Oxford (1222) which forbade them to go merely to visit relatives or for recreation except (there was always a saving clause under which nuns and bishops alike could shelter) in such case as might arouse no suspicion. Wilkins, Concilia, I, p. 592.
[1175] Reg. Walter de Stapeldon, p. 95. Cf. injunctions to Polsloe, above, p. [355].
[1176] All the Familiar Colloquies of Erasmus, ed. N. Bailey, 2nd ed. 1733, p. 379.