The Abbess Caught Wearing the Priest’s Breeches is a comic exposure of clerical hypocrisy: when Isabetta is discovered with her lover, the abbess who means to condemn her is herself revealed by the priest’s breeches she has mistaken for a nun’s head covering. The mishap overturns the convent’s performance of sanctity and changes the outcome from punishment to permission.

The convent and Isabetta’s affair

The story, told by Elisa, begins in a Lombard convent reputed for sanctity and religion. Among its nuns is Isabetta, a young woman of noble birth and remarkable beauty. She falls in love with a handsome young man who accompanies a kinsman of hers to speak with her at the convent grille. He returns her love, and after a long period in which their desire remains unfulfilled, he finds a way to visit her secretly. Their meetings continue repeatedly, to the delight of both.

One night, a nun sees Isabetta’s lover taking leave of her cell. Rather than report the discovery at once, several nuns decide to ensure that Isabetta is caught with him and cannot deny the charge. They keep the secret and take turns watching. Their plan turns the convent into a place of surveillance: the young couple are not merely suspected but deliberately awaited.

The mistaken head covering

When Isabetta, unaware that she is being watched, receives her lover one night, the nuns on duty wait until much of the night has passed. One group guards her cell while another hurries to wake the abbess, Madam Usimbalda, and tell her that Isabetta has a young man with her. The alarm threatens to expose the abbess as well: she is in bed with a priest whom she has often admitted secretly, concealed in a chest.

Fearing that the nuns will force their way into her room, Madam Usimbalda gets up and dresses hurriedly in the dark. She means to put on the folded veils worn on nuns’ heads, but instead picks up the priest’s breeches and puts them over her head. She rushes out without noticing the mistake, locks her door, and joins the nuns on their way to Isabetta’s cell. Their eagerness to catch the accused nun is so great that they fail to notice what the abbess is wearing.

Exposure and reversal

The nuns break into Isabetta’s cell and find her and her lover in bed, clasped in each other’s arms. They seize Isabetta and take her to the chapter-house, where Madam Usimbalda rebukes her at length for conduct that, if discovered beyond the convent walls, would stain the house’s sanctity, honor, and reputation. Isabetta is ashamed and frightened, and at first cannot answer.

Then she looks up and sees the breeches on the abbess’s head, their hose-points hanging on either side. Reassured, she tells Madam Usimbalda to tie up her coif before continuing her reprimand. The abbess initially treats this as insolence, but the other nuns look up and see the mistake for themselves. The object that was meant to remain concealed becomes unmistakable evidence: the abbess’s attempt to discipline Isabetta is undercut by her own secret conduct.

An altered rule of conduct

Once Madam Usimbalda understands that everyone has seen her, she abandons her condemnation. Instead, she argues that the impulses of the flesh cannot be resisted and concludes that each nun should privately take pleasure when she can, as had already been done. She returns to the priest, and Isabetta is released to return to her lover. She continues receiving him in secret, despite the envy of some of the other nuns; those without lovers quietly seek their own opportunities.

The ending does not restore the convent’s original claim to discipline. The abbess’s authority survives only by yielding to the conduct she had denounced, and the nuns’ private arrangements continue under a newly voiced, unofficial tolerance. The breeches provide the scene’s sharp reversal: the attempt to expose one woman instead makes the censor’s own desire visible, and converts a threatened punishment into a shared secret.