A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 43

Take a mind unto thee now Like unto St. Martin;[514]

Clothe the pilgrim's nakedness Wish him well at parting.

So may G.o.d translate your soul Into peace eternal, And the bliss of saints be yours In His realm supernal.

The following jovial _Song of the Open Road_ throbs with exhilaration and even impudence. Two vagabond students are drinking together before they part. One of them undertakes to expound the laws of the brotherhood which bind them together. The refrain is intended apparently to imitate a bugle call.

We in our wandering, Blithesome and squandering, Tara, tantara, teino!

Eat to satiety, Drink to propriety; Tara, tantara, teino!

Laugh till our sides we split, Rags on our hides we fit; Tara, tantara, teino!

Jesting eternally, Quaffing infernally.

Tara, tantara, teino!

Craft's in the bone of us, Fear 'tis unknown of us; Tara, tantara, teino!

When we're in neediness, Thieve we with greediness: Tara, tantara, teino!

Brother catholical, Man apostolical, Tara, tantara, teino!

Say what you will have done, What you ask 'twill be done!

Tara, tantara, teino!

Folk, fear the toss of the Horns of philosophy!

Tara, tantara, teino!

Here comes a quadruple Spoiler and prodigal![515]

Tara, tantara, teino!

License and vanity Pamper insanity: Tara, tantara, teino!

As the Pope bade us do, Brother to brother's true: Tara, tantara, teino!

Brother, best friend, adieu!

Now, I must part from you!

Tara, tantara, teino!

When will our meeting be?

Glad shall our greeting be!

Tara, tantara, teino!

Vows valedictory Now have the victory: Tara, tantara, teino!

Clasped on each other's breast, Brother to brother pressed, Tara, tantara, teino!

Here is a song ent.i.tled _The Vow to Cupid_.

Winter, now thy spite is spent, Frost and ice and branches bent!

Fogs and furious storms are o'er, Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore, Pallid wrath, lean discontent.

Comes the graceful band of May!

Cloudless shines the limpid day, Shine by night the Pleiades; While a grateful summer breeze Makes the season soft and gay.

Golden Love! shine forth to view!

Souls of stubborn men subdue!

See me bend! what is thy mind?

Make the girl thou givest kind, And a leaping ram's thy due![516]

O the jocund face of earth, Breathing with young gra.s.sy birth!

Every tree with foliage clad, Singing birds in greenwood glad, Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!

Here is another song of exceedingly delicate sentiment. It is ent.i.tled _The Love-Letter in Spring_.

Now the sun is streaming, Clear and pure his ray; April's glad face beaming On our earth to-day.

Unto love returneth Every gentle mind; And the boy-G.o.d burneth Jocund hearts to bind.

All this budding beauty, Festival array, Lays on us the duty To be blithe and gay.

Trodden ways are known, love!

And in this thy youth, To retain thy own love Were but faith and truth.

In faith love me solely, Mark the faith of me, From thy whole heart wholly, From the soul of thee.

At this time of bliss, dear, I am far away; Those who love like this, dear, Suffer every day!

Next to love and the springtime, the average student set his affections princ.i.p.ally on the tavern and the wine-bowl. From his p.r.o.neness to frequent the tavern's jovial company of topers and gamesters naturally sprang a liberal supply of drinking songs. Here is a fragment from one of them.

Some are gaming, some are drinking, Some are living without thinking; And of those who make the racket, Some are stripped of coat and jacket; Some get clothes of finer feather, Some are cleaned out altogether; No one there dreads death's invasion, But all drink in emulation.

Finally may be given, in the original Latin, a stanza of a drinking song which fell to such depths of irreverence as to comprise a parody of Thomas Aquinas's hymn on the Lord's Supper.

_Bibit hera, bibit herus, Bibit miles, bibit clerus, Bibit ille, bibit illa, Bibit servus c.u.m ancilla, Bibit velox, bibit piger, Bibit albus, bibit niger, Bibit constans, bibit vagus, Bibit rudis, bibit magus._

FOOTNOTES:

[494] That is, the _trivium_ (Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the _quadrivium_ (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music).

[495] The earliest degrees granted at Bologna, Paris, etc., were those of master of arts and doctor of philosophy. "Master" and "Doctor" were practically equivalent terms and both signified simply that the bearer, after suitable examinations, had been recognized as sufficiently proficient to be admitted to the guild of teachers. The bachelor's degree grew up more obscurely. It might be taken somewhere on the road to the master's degree, but was merely an incidental stamp of proficiency up to a certain stage of advancement. Throughout mediaeval times the master's, or doctor's, degree, which carried the right to become a teacher, was the normal goal and few stopped short of its attainment.

[496] Hastings Rashdall, _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_ (Oxford, 1895), Vol. I., p. 146.

[497] Evidently, from other pa.s.sages, including students of law as well as teachers.

[498] Greedy creditors sometimes compelled students to pay debts owed by the fellow-countrymen of the latter--a very thinly disguised form of robbery. This abuse was now to be abolished.

[499] That is, in any legal proceedings against a scholar the defendant was to choose whether he would be tried before his own master or before the bishop. In later times this right of choice pa.s.sed generally to the plaintiff.

[500] The students of the French universities were regarded as, for all practical purposes, members of the clergy (_clerici_) and thus to be distinguished from laymen. They were not clergy in the full sense, but were subject to a special sort of jurisdiction closely akin to that applying to the clergy.