Abbess of Andoüillets’s ankylosis

The Abbess of Andoüillets’s ankylosis is a chronic stiffness of the knee, attributed to hardened synovia after long Matins. The condition persists despite an extravagant sequence of devotions and treatments; when the abbess finally sets out for the Hot Baths of Bourbon, her illness becomes the cause of a journey and the organizing premise of an embedded tale.

Condition and Failed Remedies

The narrator identifies the abbess’s ailment as ankylosis, or a stiff joint, and links it to the hardening of the synovia in her knee through long hours at Matins. The diagnosis is followed by a catalogue of remedies, arranged as a mounting record of unsuccessful effort. The abbess begins with prayers and thanksgiving, then invokes the saints collectively and individually, especially those said to have suffered a stiff leg.

Sacred objects and bodily treatments follow. The convent’s relics are applied to the knee, notably the thigh-bone of the man of Lystra, who had been impotent from youth; the abbess wraps the joint in her veil at night, crosses it with her rosary, and calls in the secular arm. Animal oils and hot fat give way to emollient fomentations and poultices made from marsh-mallows, mallows, bonus Henricus, white lilies, and fenugreek. She next tries the smoke of woods, holding her scapulary across her lap, and decoctions of wild chicory, water-cresses, chervil, sweet cicely, and cochlearia. None of these measures answers.

The Journey to Bourbon

After the remedies fail, the abbess is persuaded to try the Hot Baths of Bourbon. She first obtains the visitor-general’s leave to take care of her existence, then orders preparations for the journey. The change from prayers, relics, and domestic treatments to a trip for bathing marks the practical consequence of the unrelieved condition: the knee prompts a departure from the convent.

The proposed companion is selected through a small history of illness of her own. Margarita, a novice of about seventeen, had developed a whitlow in her middle finger by repeatedly sticking it into the abbess’s discarded poultices. That experience has given her sufficient standing to be chosen for the journey, even though an older nun with sciatica might also have benefited from the baths. The abbess’s ailment thus determines not only the destination but also the unlikely composition of her travelling party.

Narrative Function

The stiffness is introduced as the immediate cause of the journey that begins the embedded narrative. Its long list of remedies turns a physical complaint into a comic sequence of escalating attempts, moving from prayer and relics through animal fats and herbal preparations to the baths. The treatment history also establishes the narrator’s digressive method: a single impaired knee opens onto the convent’s customs, its novice, and the preparations required for travel.

The episode presents the abbess’s condition chiefly through the remedies tried and the journey it occasions; it does not describe a cure or report the eventual state of her knee. The narrative emphasis falls instead on persistence, failed treatment, and the elaborate human arrangements that follow when the body does not respond.