[160] i.e. a lay brother or affiliate.
[161] i.e. the canticles of praise chanted by certain lay confraternities, established for that purpose and answering to our præ-Reformation Laudsingers.
[162] An order of lay penitents, who were wont at certain times to go masked about the streets, scourging themselves in expiation of the sins of the people. This expiatory practice was particularly prevalent in Italy in the middle of the thirteenth century.
[163] Contraction of Elisabetta.
[164] Dom, contraction of Dominus (lord), the title commonly given to the beneficed clergy in the middle ages, answering to our Sir as used by Shakespeare (e.g. Sir Hugh Evans the Welsh Parson, Sir Topas the Curate, etc.). The expression survives in the title Dominie (i.e. Domine, voc. of Dominus) still familiarly applied to schoolmasters, who were of course originally invariably clergymen.
[165] A Conventual is a member of some monastic order attached to the regular service of a church, or (as would nowadays be said) a "beneficed" monk.
[166] Sic. This confusion of persons constantly occurs in Boccaccio, especially in the conversational parts of the Decameron, in which he makes the freest use of the various forms of enallage and of other rhetorical figures, such as hyperbaton, synecdoche, etc., to the no small detriment of his style in the matter of clearness.
[167] i.e. nine o'clock p.m.
[168] i.e. a gentleman of Pistoia.
[169] Lit. "The summit," or in modern slang "The tiptop," i.e. the pink of fashion.