The ecclesiastical Feast of Fools flourished rather in cathedrals than in monasteries. The _sociétés_ however, like some more serious _confréries_[1340], seem to have preferred a conventual to a capitular model for their organization[1341]. The _Cornards_, both at Rouen and Evreux, were under an _Abbé_. Cambrai had its _Abbaye joyeuse de Lescache-Profit_, Chalons-sur-Saône its _Abbé de la Grande Abbaye_, Arras its _Abbé de Liesse_, Poitiers its _Abbé de Mau Gouverne_[1342]. The literary adaptation of this idea by Rabelais in the _Abbaye de Thélème_ is familiar. This term _abbaye_ is common to the _sociétés_, with some at least of the _Basoches_ or associations of law-clerks to the _Parlements_ of Paris and the greater provincial towns. The _Basoches_ existed for mutual protection, but for mutual amusement also, and on one side at least of their activity they were much of the nature of _sociétés joyeuses_[1343]. At Rheims in 1490 a _Basoche_ entered into rivalry of dramatic invective with the celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools[1344]. The _Basoche_ of Paris was in the closest relations to, if not actually identical with, the _société_ of the _Enfants-sans-Souci_[1345]. Just as the law-clerks of Paris were banded together in their _Basoche_, so were the students of Paris in their ‘university,’ ‘faculties,’ ‘nations,’ and other groups; and in 1470, long after the regular Feast of Fools had disappeared from the city, the students were still wont to put on the fool habit and elect their _rex fatuorum_ on Twelfth night[1346]. Yet other guilds of a more serious character, generally speaking, than the _sociétés joyeuses_, none the less occasionally gave themselves over to _joyeuseté_. The _Deposuit_ brought rebuke upon religious _confréries_ up to a quite late date[1347]; and traces of the _fous_ are to be found amongst the recreations of no less a body than the famous and highly literary _puy_ of Arras. The _sociétés joyeuses_, like the _puys_, were primarily associations of amateur, rather than professional merry-makers, a fact which distinguishes them from the corporations of minstrels described in a previous chapter[1348]. But minstrels and _trouvères_ were by no means excluded. The poet Gringoire was _Mère-Sotte_ of the Paris _Enfants-sans-Souci_. Clément Marot was a member of the same body. In the _puy_ of Arras the minstrels traditionally held an important place; and as the literary and dramatic side of the _sociétés_ grew, it is evident that the men who were professionally ready with their pens must everywhere have been in demand.