Pyncheon and the carpenter, the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without attracting the notice of either of the two
colloquists. And finally, at Matthew Maule's audacious suggestion of a transfer of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown itself on the point of descending bodily from its frame.
Rolandus and Stephen apparently held that there is no intrinsic reason why deaconesses could not once again be ordained if church law should so dictate.(76) The possibility of this happening was real, since most canonists agreed with Atto's
colloquist that the former role of deaconess had been replaced by the contemporary position of abbess.(77) The canonists, incidentally, were joined in this opinion by the twelfth-century theologian and monk Abelard in a letter to his wife Heloise, herself an abbess.(78)