Life in the Medieval University Part 2

About 1268, Guillaume de Saone, Treasurer of Rouen, founded at Paris, the "Treasurer's College" for natives of his own diocese. It was (p. 080) founded for poor clerks, twelve of whom were to be scholars in Theology, and twelve in Arts. They were to be selected by the archdeacons of the Cathedral of Rouen, who then resided at Grand-Caux and Pet.i.t-Caux, from natives of these places, or, failing them, from the Diocese of Rouen. The scholars were to have rooms and a weekly allowance, not for the whole year, but for forty-five weeks from the feast of St Dionysius; no provision was made for the seven weeks of the vacation, except for two theologians, who were to take charge of the house at Paris. The revenues were collected and distributed by the Prior of the Hospital of St Mary Magdalen at Rouen, and the Archbishop of Rouen was Rector and Patron. The students in Arts never formed part of the foundation, for the Treasurer almost immediately restricted his community to Theologians, and their tenure of the endowment was strictly limited to two years after obtaining their licence. "For we do not wish to grant them anything more, because our intention is only to induce them to proceed to the degree of master in theology." They were furnished with books, which they were forbidden to lend, and they were placed under the immediate superintendence of the senior Bursar or Foundationer, whose duty it was to call them together once a week, and inquire into their conduct and their progress in their (p. 081) studies. Some general rules were laid down by the Founder, and offenders against them were to be expelled at these meetings. They were permitted to receive a peaceful commoner, who paid for his chamber and was a student of Theology. The interest of the Treasurer of Rouen in Theology is characteristic, and the great College of the Sorbonne, founded about the same time, was also restricted to theologians. The College of Navarre, founded in 1304, provided for twenty students of grammar, twenty in logic and philosophy (Arts) and twenty in Theology, each Faculty forming a sub-college, with a separate hall. A doctor in grammar was to superintend both the studies and the morals of the grammarians and to receive double their weekly allowance of four shillings, and similarly, a master of Arts was to supervise the Artists and receive double their weekly allowance of six shillings. The "Dean and University of the masters of the scholars of the theological Faculty at Paris" were to choose a secular clerk to be Rector of the College, and to govern it in conjunction with the body that appointed him. The masters of the Faculty of Theology, or their representatives, were to visit the College annually, to inquire into the financial and domestic arrangements, and into the behaviour of the Rector, masters, and scholars, and to punish as they deemed necessary.

Membership of the College was restricted to the kingdom of France. (p. 082) Similarly, the College du Plessis, founded in 1322, by Geoffrey du Plessis, Notary Apostolic, and Secretary of Philip the Long, was restricted to Frenchmen, with preference to certain northern dioceses.

Its forty scholars were in separate societies, with a Grand Master who had to be a master or, at least, a bachelor in Theology. The affairs of the College, as far as concerned the election, discipline and the deprivation of its members, were to be administered by two bishops and an abbot, in conjunction with the Master and with the Chancellor of the Cathedral of Paris, or, in the absence of the great dignitaries, by the Master and the Chancellor. But the financial administration was entrusted to a provisor or procurator, who undertook the collection and distribution of the revenues.

The details of college statutes at Paris, bear a general resemblance to the regulations of Oxford and Cambridge founders, and discipline became more stringent as time went on. Attendance at Chapel (the only meeting-place of students in different Faculties in the same College) came to be strictly required. Punctuality at meals was frequently insisted upon, under pain of receiving nothing but bread. Silence was enjoined at meal times and the Bible was read. Latin was, from the first, the only lawful medium of conversation. All the members of (p. 083) a college, had to be within the gates when the curfew bell rang.

Bearing arms or wearing unusual clothes was forbidden, and singing, shouting and games were denounced as interfering with the studies of others, although the Parisian legislators were more sympathetic with regard to games, than their English contemporaries. Even the Founder of the Cistercian College of St Bernard, contemplated that permission might be obtained for games, though not before dinner or after the bell rang for vespers. A sixteenth-century code of statutes for the College of Tours, while recording the complaints of the neighbours about the noise made by the scholars playing ball ("de insolentiis, exclamationibus et ludis palmariis dictorum scolarium, qui ludunt ...

pilis durissimis") permitted the game under less noisy conditions ("pilis seu scophis mollibus et manu, ac c.u.m silentio et absque clamoribus tumultuosis"). The use of dice was, as a rule, absolutely prohibited, but the statutes of the College of Cornouaille permitted it under certain conditions. It might be played to amuse a sick fellow on feast days, or without the plea of sickness, on the vigils of Christmas, and of three Holy Days. But the stakes must be small and paid in kind, not in money ("pro aliquo comestibili vel potabili").

Penalties for minor offences were much the same as in England--forfeiture of commons for varying periods, pecuniary fines, and in the (p. 084) sixteenth century, whipping. In the College of Le Mans, bursars who were not graduates were to be whipped for a first offence in a school, and for a second offence in the Hall ("prout mos est in universitate Parisiensi"). The obligation of reporting each other's faults, of which there are indications in English statutes, was almost universal at Paris, where all were bound to reveal offences "sub secreto" to the authorities. The penalty of "sconcing," still inflicted at Oxford, for offences against undergraduate etiquette, finds a place in the Parisian statutes among serious punishments. We find it in the Statutes of Cornouaille for minor offences; if a man carries wine out of the College illicitly, he is to pay for double the quant.i.ty to be drunk by the members who were present at the time; if anyone walks through the confines or chambers in pattens ("c.u.m calepodiis, id est c.u.m patinis") he is to be mulcted in a pint of wine. If a stranger is introduced without leave ("ad mensam communitatis ad comedendum vel videndum secretum mensae"), the penalty is a quart of good wine for the fellows present in Hall. For unseemly noise, especially at meals, and at time of prayers, the ordinary penalty is a quart of ordinary wine ("vini mediocris"). For speaking in the vernacular, there is a fine of "the price of a pint of wine," but, as the usual direction about drinking it, is omitted, this was probably not a sconce; at (p. 085) the Cistercian College, the penalty for this offence was a sconce. So far, the offences for which a sconce is prescribed, might in most cases, be paralleled in more recent times in an English college, but the statutes of Cornouaille also make sconcing the penalty for striking a servant, unless the injury was severe, in which case, more serious punishments were imposed. The whole sentence is an ill.u.s.tration of the lack of control over outbursts of bad temper, which is characteristic of medieval life. All the scholars are to be careful not to strike the servants in anger or with ill-will, or to injure them; he who inflicts a slight injury is to be fined a quart of wine; if the injury be more severe, the master is to deprive him of his burse for one day or more, at his own discretion and that of a majority of the scholars: if there is a large effusion of blood or a serious injury, the provisor (the Bishop of Paris or his Vicar General) is to be informed, and to deprive the offender of his burse, or even punish him otherwise. At the Sorbonne, an a.s.sault on a servant was to be followed by the drinking of a quart of specially good wine by the Fellows, at the culprit's expense; for talking too loud in Hall, the sconce was two quarts (presumably of ordinary wine). Dr Rashdall quotes from the MS.

Register of the Sorbonne, actual instances of the infliction of sconces: "A Doctor of Divinity is sconced a quart of wine for (p. 086) picking a pear off a tree in the College garden, or again, for forgetting to shut the Chapel door, or for taking his meals in the kitchen. Clerks are sconced a pint for 'very inordinately' knocking 'at the door during dinner ...' for 'confabulating' in the court late at night, and refusing to go to their chambers when ordered.... The head cook is sconced for 'badly preparing the meat for supper,' or for not putting salt in the soup." Among the examples given by Dr Rashdall from this source are a sconce of two shillings for drunkenness and a sconce in wine inflicted upon the head cook for being found "c.u.m una meretrice." An offence so serious in a bursar, is by many college statutes to be followed by expulsion, and Dr Rashdall quotes an instance of this penalty: but Parisian College Founders, were less severe in dealing with moral offences than English Founders. At the monastic College of Marmoutier, it was only on the second offence that bringing into College ("mulierem suspectam et inhonestam") led to expulsion, and at the College of Cornouaille, the penalty for a first offence was loss of commons or bursa for fifteen days, and for a second offence a month's deprivation; but even at Cornouaille actual incontinence was to be punished by expulsion.

A late code of statutes of the fourteenth-century College of (p. 087) Dainville, give us a picture of a student's day. The hour of rising was five o'clock, except on Sundays and Feast days when an hour's grace was allowed. Chapel service began at 5.30, prayers, meditation, and a New Testament lesson being followed by the ma.s.s of the College at six. All students resident in the College had to be present. The reception of commoners, an early instance of which we noted in the College of the Treasurer, had developed to such an extent, that all Colleges had, in addition to their bursars or foundations, a large number of "foranei scholares," who paid their own expenses but were subject to College discipline, and received a large part of their education in College. After ma.s.s, the day's work began; attendance at the Schools and the performance of exercises for their master in College. Dinner was about twelve o'clock, when either a bursar or an external student read, "first Holy Scripture, then a book appointed by the master, then a pa.s.sage from a martyrology." After dinner, an hour was allowed for recreation--walking within the precincts of the College, or conversation--and then everyone went to his own chamber.

Supper was at seven, with reading as at dinner, and the interval until 8.30 was again free for "deambulatio vel collocutio." At 8.30 the gates of the College were closed, and evening Chapel began. Rules against remaining in Hall after supper occur in Parisian as well (p. 088) as in English statutes, and we find prohibitions against carrying off wood to private rooms. The general arrangement of Parisian college chambers, probably resembled those of Oxford, or Cambridge, and we find references to "studies." The statutes of the monastic college of Clugny order that "because the mind is rendered prudent by sitting down and keeping quiet, the said students at the proper and wonted hours for study shall be, and sit, alone in their cells and at their studies." Parisian statutes are stricter than English statutes in insisting upon frequent inspections of students' chambers, and a sixteenth-century code for a Parisian college orders the officials to see their pupils every night before bed time, and to make sure, before they themselves retire for the night, that the students are asleep and not wandering about the quadrangles.

Strict supervision is found in colleges in other French universities, even in those which belong to the student type. It was, of course, especially strict in monastic colleges, which carried their own customs to the University; in the College of Notre Dame de Pitie, at Avignon, the master of the novices lived in a room adjoining their dormitory, and had a window, through which he might watch their proceedings. Supervision was sometimes connected with precautions against fire, _e.g._ at the College of Saint Ruf, at Montpellier, (p. 089) an officer was appointed every week to go round all chambers and rooms at night, and to warn anyone who had a candle or a fire in a dangerous position, near his bed or his study. He was to carry a pail of water with him to be ready for emergencies. A somewhat similar precaution was taken in the Collegium Maius at Leipsic, where water was kept in pails beside the dormitories, and leather pails, some centuries old, are still to be seen at Oxford. As a rule, the dormitories seem to have contained a separate bed for each occupant, but in the College of St Nicholas de Pelegry at Cahors, students in arts (who entered about the age of fourteen) were to sleep two in a bed. Insistence on the use of Latin is almost universal; the scholars of the College de Foix at Toulouse are warned that only ploughmen, swineherds and other rustics, use their mother tongues. Silence and the reading of the Bible at meals was usual, and students are sometimes told to make their needs known, if possible, by signs. Fines for lateness at meals are common, and there are injunctions against rushing into Hall with violence and greed: no one is to go near the kitchen to seize any food, and those who enter Hall first, are to wait till the rest arrive, and all are to sit down in the proper order. Prohibitions against dogs are infrequent in the French statutes; at the College des Douze Medecins at Montpellier, one watchdog was allowed to live in College. Women (p. 090) were often forbidden to enter a college, "quia mulier caput est peccati, arma dyaboli, expulsio paradysi, et corruptio legis antiquae." The College of Saint Ruf at Montpellier, in the statutes of which this formula occurs, did, however, allow women to stand in the Chapel at ma.s.s, provided that they did not enter the choir. The monastic inst.i.tution of Our Lady of Pity at Avignon, went so far as to have a matron for the young boys, an old woman, ent.i.tled "Mater Novitiorum Collegiatorum." At the College of Breuil at Angers, a woman might visit the College by day if the Princ.i.p.al was satisfied that no scandal could arise. Penalties for going about the town in masked bands and singing or dancing, occur in many statutes, but processions in honour of saints and choruses to celebrate the taking of degrees, are sometimes permitted. Blasphemy and bad language greatly troubled the French statute-makers, and there are many provisions against blaspheming the Blessed Virgin. At the College of Breuil at Angers, a fine of twopence, was imposed for speaking or singing "verba inhonesta tam alte," especially in public places of the College; in Germany, the Collegium Minus at Leipsic provides also against writing "impudentia dicta" on the walls of the College. The usual penalties for minor offences are fines and subtraction of commons: references to (p. 091) flogging are rare, though it is found in both French and German colleges. More serious crimes were visited with suspension and expulsion. At the College of Pelegry, at Cahors, to enter the college by a window or otherwise after the great gate was closed, involved rustication for two months for the first offence, six months for the second offence, and expulsion for a third. At the College de Verdale, at Toulouse, expulsion was the penalty for a list of crimes which includes theft, entering the college by stealth, breaking into the cellar, bringing in a meretrix, witch-craft, alchemy, invoking demons or sacrificing to them, forgery, and contracting "carnale vel spirituale matrimonium."

We may close our survey of the Medieval College, with a glimpse of a French college in the fourteenth century. We have the record of a visitation of the Benedictine foundation of St Benedict, at Montpellier, partly a monastery and partly a college. The Prior is strictly questioned about the conduct of the students. He gives a good character to most of them: but the little flock contained some black sheep. Peter is somewhat light-headed ("aliquantulum est levis capitis") but not incorrigible; he has been guilty of employing "verba injuriosa et provocativa," but the Prior has corrected him, and he has taken the correction patiently. Bertrand's life is "aliquantulum (p. 092) dissoluta," and he has made a conspiracy to beat (and, as some think, to kill) Dominus Savaricus, who had beaten him along with the rest, when he did not know his lessons. (Bertrand says he is eighteen and looks like twenty-one, but this is a monastic college and the beating is monastic discipline.) The Prior further reports that Bertrand is quarrelsome; he has had to make him change his bed and his chamber, because the others could not stand him; he is idle and often says openly, that he would rather be a "claustralis" than a student. Breso is simple and easily led, and was one of Bertrand's conspirators.

William is "pessimae conversationis" and incorrigible, scandalous in word and deed, idle and given to wandering about the town. Correction is vain in his case. After the Prior has reported, the students are examined _viva voce_ upon the portions of the decretals, which they are studying, and the results of the examination bear out generally the Prior's views. Bertrand, Breso and William, are found to know nothing, and to have wasted their time. The others acquit themselves well, and the examiners are merciful to a boy who is nervous in _viva voce_, but of whose studies Dominus Savaricus, who has recovered from the attack made upon him, gives a good account. Monks, and especially novices, were human, and the experience of St Benedict's at Montpellier was probably similar to that of secular colleges in (p. 093) France and elsewhere. Even in democratic Bologna, it was found necessary in the Spanish College (from the MS. statutes of which, Dr Rashdall quotes) to establish a discipline which included a penalty of five days in the stocks and a meal of bread and water, eaten sitting on the floor of the Hall, for an a.s.sault upon a brother student; if blood was shed, the penalty was double. The statutes of the Spanish College were severe for the fourteenth century, and they penalise absence from lecture, unpunctuality, nocturnal wanderings and so forth, as strictly as any English founder.

CHAPTER V (p. 094)

UNIVERSITY DISCIPLINE

The growing tradition of strict college discipline ultimately led to disciplinary statutes in the universities. From very early times, universities had, of course, made regulations about the curriculum, and the border-line between a scholar's studies and his manners and morals, could not be absolutely fixed. At Paris, indeed, it is not until the fifteenth century that we find any detailed code of disciplinary statutes; but fourteenth-century regulations about dress were partly aimed at checking misdeeds of students disguised as laymen, and in 1391 the English Nation prohibited an undue number of "potationes et convivia," in celebration of the "jocund advent" of a freshman or on other occasions. It was not till the middle of the fifteenth century that the University of Paris, awoke to the realisation of its own shortcomings in manners and morals; Cardinal William de Estoutville was commissioned by Nicholas V. to reform it, and internal reform, the necessity of which had been recognised for some years, began about the same time with an edict of the Faculty of Arts ordering a general improvement, and especially forbidding the (p. 095) celebration of feasts "c.u.m mimis seu instrumentis altis."

Estoutville's ordinances are largely concerned with the curriculum, he was at least as anxious to reform the masters as the pupils, and his exhortations are frequently in general or scriptural terms. The points of undergraduate discipline on which he lays stress are feasting, dressing improperly or wearing the clothes of laymen, quarrelling, and games and dances "dissolutas et inhonestas." Four masters or doctors are to inspect annually the colleges and pedagogies, in which the students live, and are to see that proper discipline is maintained.

From time to time, similar regulations were made by the Faculty of Arts, _e.g._ in 1469, it is ordered that no student is to wear the habit of a fool, except for a farce or a morality (amus.e.m.e.nts permitted at this period). Any one carrying arms or wearing fools'

dress is to be beaten in public and in his own hall. These last regulations are doubtless connected with town and gown riots, for which the Feast of Fools afforded a tempting opportunity.

The absence of disciplinary regulations in the records of the University of Paris, is largely to be explained by the fact that criminal charges against Parisian scholars were tried in the Bishop's Court, and civil actions in the Court of the Provost of Paris. At Oxford, where the whole jurisdiction belonged to the Chancellor of (p. 096) the University, disciplinary statutes are much more numerous. We find, from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards, a series of edicts against scholars who break the peace or carry arms, who enter citizens' houses to commit violence, who practise the art of sword and buckler, or who are guilty of gross immorality. A statute of 1250 forbids scholars to celebrate their national feast days disguised with masks or garlands, and one of 1313 restricts the carrying of arms to students who are entering on, or returning from, long journeys.

Offenders who refuse to go to prison, or who escape from it, are to be expelled. As early as the middle of the thirteenth century, it was the duty of the proctors and of the princ.i.p.als of halls, to investigate into, and to report the misdeeds of scholars who broke the rules of the University or lived evil lives. A list of fines drawn up in 1432 (a period when in the opinion of the University a pecuniary penalty was more dreaded than anything else) prescribes fines of twelve pence for threatening violence, two shillings for wearing arms, four shillings for a violent shove with the shoulders or a blow with the fist, six shillings and eight pence for a blow with a stone or stick, ten shillings for a blow with a sword, a knife, a dagger or any similar "bellicose weapon," twenty shillings for carrying bows and arrows with evil intent, thirty shillings for collecting an (p. 097) a.s.sembly to break the peace, hinder the execution of justice, or make an attack upon anyone, and forty shillings for resisting the execution of justice or wandering about by night. In every case damages have also to be paid to any injured person. The device of overaweing a court (familiar in Scottish history) is prohibited by a regulation that no one shall appear before the Chancellor with more than two companions.

The records of the Chancellor's Court furnish us with instances of the enforcement of these regulations. In 1434, a scholar is found wearing a dagger and is sentenced to be "inbocardatus,"[1] _i.e._ imprisoned in the Tower of the North Gate of the city, and another offender, in 1442, suffers a day's imprisonment, pays his fine of two shillings, and forfeits his arms. In the same year, John Hordene, a scholar of Peckwater Inn, is fined six shillings and eightpence for breaking the head of Thomas Walker, manciple of Pauline Hall, and Thomas Walker is fined the like sum for drawing his sword on Hordene and for gambling.

In 1433, two scholars, guilty of attacking Master Thomas Rygby in Bagley Wood and stealing twelve shillings and sevenpence from him, fail to appear, and are expelled from the University, their goods (estimated to be worth about thirteen shillings) being (p. 098) confiscated. In 1457, four scholars are caught entering with weapons into a warren or park to hunt deer and rabbits; they are released on taking an oath that, while they are students of the University, they will not trespa.s.s again, in closed parks or warrens. In 1452, a scholar of Haburdaysh Hall is imprisoned for using threatening language to a tailor, and is fined twelvepence and imprisoned; the tailor insults the prisoner and is fined six shillings and eightpence.

We have quoted instances of undergraduate offences, but the evil-doers are by no means invariably young students, _e.g._ in 1457 the Vicar of St Giles has to take an oath to keep the peace, his club is forfeited, and he is fined two shillings; and in the same year the Master of St John's Hospital, who has been convicted of divers enormous offences, is expelled the University for breaking prison.

[Footnote 1: The prison was called "Bocardo"

because, like the mood known as "Bocardo" in the syllogism, it was difficult to get out of.]

The increased stringency of disciplinary regulations at Oxford in the end of the medieval period is best ill.u.s.trated by the statutes which, in the fifteenth century, the University enforced upon members of the unendowed Halls. Students who were not members of a College lived, for the most part, in one of the numerous Halls which, up to the Reformation, were so important a feature of the University. A code of these statutes, printed for the first time by Dr Rashdall, shows that the liberty of the earlier medieval undergraduate had largely (p. 099) disappeared, and that the life of a resident in a Hall, in the end of the fifteenth century, was almost as much governed by statute and regulation as if he were the partaker of a founder's bounty. He must hear ma.s.s and say matins and vespers every day, under pain of a fine of a penny, and attend certain services on feast days. His table manners are no longer regulated by the customs and etiquette of his fellows, but by the rules of the University. His lapses from good morals are no longer to be visited with penalties imposed by his own society; if he gambles or practises with sword and buckler, he is to pay fourpence; if he sins with his tongue, or shouts or makes melody when others wish to study or sleep, or brings to table an unsheathed knife, or speaks English, or goes into the town or the fields unaccompanied by a fellow-student, he is fined a farthing; if he comes in after 8 P.M. in winter or 9 P.M. in summer, he contracts a gate bill of a penny; if he sleeps out, or puts up a friend for the night, without leave of his Princ.i.p.al, the fine is fourpence; if he sleeps with another student in the Hall but not in his own bed, he pays a penny; if he brings a stranger to a meal or a lecture or any other "actum communem" in the Hall, he is fined twopence; if he is pugnacious and offensive and makes odious comparisons, he is to pay sixpence; if he attacks a fellow-member or a servant, the University has (p. 100) appointed penalties varying with the severity of the a.s.sault, and for a second offence he must be expelled. He has to obey his Princ.i.p.al much as members of a College obey their Head, and, in lieu of the pecuniary penalties, the Princ.i.p.al may flog him publicly on Sat.u.r.day nights, even though his own master may certify that he has already corrected him, or declare his willingness to correct him, for his breaches of the statutes. The private master or tutor was, as Dr Rashdall suggests, probably a luxury of the rich boy, to whom his wealth might thus bring its own penalty.

It is startling to the modern mind to find University statutes and disciplinary regulations forbidding not only extravagant and unbecoming dress, but sometimes also the wearing of distinctive academic costume by undergraduates, for distinctive academic costume was the privilege of a graduate. The scholar wore ordinary clerical dress, unless the Founder of a College prescribed a special livery.

The master had a _cappa_ or cope, such as a Cambridge Vice-Chancellor wears on Degree Days, with a border and hood of minever, such as Oxford proctors still wear, and a _biretta_ or square cap. In 1489, the insolence of many Oxford scholars had grown to such a pitch that they were not afraid to wear hoods in the fashion of masters, whereas bachelors, to their own d.a.m.nation and the ruin of the University, (p. 101) were so regardless of their oaths as to wear hoods not lined throughout with fur. Penalties were prescribed for both kinds of offenders; but though the Oxford undergraduate never succeeded in annexing the hood, he gradually acquired the _biretta_, which his successor of to-day is occasionally fined for not wearing. The modern gown or toga is explained by Dr Rashdall as derived from the robe or ca.s.sock which a medieval Master of Arts wore under his _cappa_.

The disciplinary regulations of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Oxford may be paralleled from other universities. At Louvain there was a kind of proctorial walk undertaken by the University official known as the Promotor. On receiving three or four hours' notice from the Rector, the Promotor, with a staff of servants, perambulated the streets at night, and he and his "bulldogs" received a fine from anyone whom they apprehended. Offending students caught _in flagrante delicto_ he conducted to the University prison, and others he reported to the Rector. "Notabiles personae" might be incarcerated in a monastery incorporated with the University. Arms found upon anyone were forfeited. The Promotor was also the University gaoler, and was responsible for the safe custody of prisoners, and he might place in fetters dangerous prisoners or men accused of serious crimes. (p. 102) Interviews with captives had to take place in his presence; male visitors had to give up their knives or other weapons before being admitted, and female visitors had to leave their cloaks behind them.

Students were forbidden to walk in the streets at night after the bell of St Michael's Church had been rung at nine o'clock in winter, and ten o'clock in summer, unless they were accompanied by a doctor or a "gravis persona" and were bearing a torch or lantern. The list of offences at Louvain are much the same as elsewhere, but an eighteenth-century code of statutes specially prohibits bathing and skating. The laws against borrowing and lending were unusually strict, and no student under twenty-five years was allowed to sell books without the consent of his regent, the penalty for a sixteenth-century student in Arts being a public flogging in his own college.

At Leipsic, the University was generally responsible for the discipline, sometimes even when the offences had been committed in the colleges; and a record of the proceedings of the Rector's Court from 1524 to 1588, which was published by Friedrich Zarncke, the learned historian of Leipsic, gives us a large variety of incidents of University life in sixteenth-century Germany. Leipsic possessed a University prison, and we find, in 1524, two students, Philippus (p. 103) Josman and Erasmus Empedophillus, who had quarrelled, and insulted each other, sentenced to perform, in the prison, impositions for the Rector. Six or eight days' imprisonment is a frequent penalty for a drunken row. A college official brings to the Rector's Court in 1545 one of his pupils, John Ditz, who had lost much money by gambling.

Ditz and one of his friends, Caspar Winckler, who had won six florins and some books from him, have already been flogged by their preceptors; they are now sentenced to imprisonment, but as the weather is very cold, they are to be released after one day's detention, and sent back to their preceptors to be flogged again. Their companions are sentenced to return any money, books or garments which they had won in gambling games. A student of the name of Valentine m.u.f.f complains to the Rector that his pedagogue has beaten and reproved him undeservedly: after an inquiry he is condemned to the rods "once and again." For throwing stones at windows a student is fined one florin in addition to the cost of replacing them. For grave moral offences fines of three florins are imposed, and the penalty is not infrequently reduced. A month's imprisonment is the alternative of the fine of three florins, but if the weather is cold, the culprit, who has been guilty of gross immorality, is let off with two florins. A drunken youth who meets some girls in the evening and tries to (p. 104) compel them to enter his college, is sentenced to five days'

imprisonment, but is released on the intercession of the girls and many others. An attack on a servant with a knife is punished by forfeiture of the knife and a fine of half a florin, and a penalty of a florin (divided among the four victims) is inflicted for entering a house with arms and wounding the fingers of some of its inhabitants. A ruffian of n.o.ble birth, who had been guilty of gross immorality and of violence, declines to appear in the Rector's Court, and is duly sentenced to expulsion. But his father promises to satisfy the University and the injured party, and seven n.o.bles write asking that he should be pardoned, and a compromise is made, by which he appears in court and pays a fine. For the University offence of having as an attendant a boy who is not enrolled, Valentine Leo is fined three florins, which were paid. "But since he appeared to be good and learned, and produced an excellent specimen of his singular erudition, and wrote learned verses and other compositions to the Rector and his a.s.sessors, by which he begged pardon and modestly purged his offence, and especially as a doctor, whose sons he taught, and others interceded for him, he easily procured that the florins, should be returned to the doctor who had paid them for him."

The leniency of the punishments for grave moral offences, as (p. 105) contrasted with the strict insistence upon the lesser matters of the law, cannot fail to impress modern readers, but this is not a characteristic peculiar to Leipsic. Fines, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whippings were frequently inflicted in all universities for violent attacks upon the person. Dr Rashdall quotes a case at Ingolstadt where a student who had killed another in a drunken bout was let off with the confiscation of his goods, and the penalty of expulsion was remitted; and the eighteenth-century history of Corpus Christi College at Oxford supplies more recent instances of punishments which could scarcely be said to fit the crime.

The statutes of the French universities outside Paris and of the three medieval Scottish universities (St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen) supply many ill.u.s.trations of the regulations we have noted elsewhere, but contain little that is unusual. St Andrews, which allowed hawking, forbade the dangerous game of football. The Faculty of Arts at Glasgow in 1532 issued an edict which has a curious resemblance to the Eton custom of "shirking." Reverence and filial fear were so important, said the masters, that no student was to meet the Rector, the Dean, or one of the Regents openly in the streets, by day or by night; immediately he was observed he must slink away and escape as best (p. 106) he could, and he must not be found again in the streets without special leave. The penalty was a public flogging. Similarly, even a lawful game must not be played in the presence of a regent. Flogging was a recognised penalty in all the Scottish universities; it found its way into the system at St Andrews and Glasgow, and was introduced at once at Aberdeen. The early statutes of Aberdeen University (King's College) unfortunately exist only in the form in which they were edited in the seventeenth century. They include a rhymed series of rules for behaviour at table, which, though post-medieval in date, give us some clue to the table manners of the medieval students:--

Majorem ne praevenia- } Loc.u.m a.s.signatum tenea- } Mensae a.s.signatae acc.u.mba- } Manibus mundis nudis eda- } Aperientes caput faciem ne obtega- } Vultus hilares habea- } Rite in convictu comeda- } Sal cultello capia- } Salinum ne dejicia- } Manubrium haud aciem porriga- } tis Tribus cibos digitis prehenda- } Cultro priusquam dente tera- } . . . . . } Ossa in orbem depona- } Vel pavimentum jacia- } Modeste omnia facia- } Ossa si in convivas jacia- } Nedum si illos vulnera- } Ne queramini si vapula- } . . . . . } Post haustum l.a.b.i.a deterga- } (p. 107) Modic.u.m, sed crebro biba- } . . . . . } Os ante haustum evacua- } Ungues sordidulos fugia- } tis . . . . . } Ructantes terga reflecta- } Ne scalpatis cavea- } . . . . . } Edere mementote ut viva- } Non vivere ut comed- }

The Economist's accounts at Aberdeen have been preserved for part of the year 1579, and show that the food of a Scottish student, just after the medieval period, consisted of white bread, oat bread, beef, mutton, b.u.t.ter, small fish, partans (crabs), eggs, a bill of fare certainly above the food of the lower cla.s.ses in Scotland at the time.

The drinks mentioned are best ale, second ale, and beer. His victuals interested the medieval student; the conversation of two German students, as pictured in a "students' guide" to Heidelberg (_cf._ p.

116), is largely occupied with food. "The veal is soft and bad: the calf cannot have seen its mother three times: no one in my country would eat such stuff: the drink is bitter." The little book shows us the two students walking in the meadows, and when they reach the Neckar, one dissuades the other from bathing (a dangerous enterprise forbidden in the statutes of some universities, including Louvain (p. 108) and Glasgow). They quarrel about a book, and nearly come to blows; one complains that the other reported him to the master for sleeping in lecture. Both speak of the "lupi," the spies who reported students using the vernacular or visiting the kitchen. The "wolves" were part of the administrative machinery of a German University; a statute of Leipsic in 1507 orders that, according to ancient custom, "lupi" or "signatores" be appointed to note the names of any student who talked German ("vulgarisantes") that they might be fined in due course, the money being spent on feasts. One of the two Heidelberg students complains of having been given a "signum" or bad mark "pro sermone vulgariter prolato," and the other has been caught in the kitchen.

They discuss their teachers; one of them complains of a lecture because "nimis alta gravisque materia est." The little book gives, in some ways, a remarkable picture of German student life, with its interests and its temptations; but it raises more problems than it solves, and affords a fresh ill.u.s.tration of the difficulty of attempting to recreate the life of the past.

CHAPTER VI (p. 109)

THE JOCUND ADVENT

The medieval student began his academic career with an initiation ceremony which varied in different countries and at different dates, but which, so far as we know, always involved feasting and generally implied considerable personal discomfort. The designation, "bejaunus"

or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite. The tradition, which dates from very early times, and which has so many parallels outside University history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have deemed it wisest to accept it and to be content with trying to limit the expense and the "ragging" which it entailed.

We have no detailed knowledge of the initiation of the Parisian student, but a statute made by the University in 1342 proves that the two elements of bullying the new-comer and feasting at his expense were both involved in it. It relates that quarrels frequently (p. 110) arise through the custom of seizing the goods of simple scholars on the occasion of their "bejaunia," and compelling them to expend on feasting the money on which they intended to live. Insults, blows, and other dangers are the general results of the system, and the University orders that no one shall exact money or anything else from bajans except the "socii" with whom they live, and they may take only a free-will offering. Bajans are to reveal, under heavy penalties, the names of any who molest them by word or blow, threatening them or offering them insults. Offenders are to be handed over to the Provost of Paris to be punished, but not "ad penam sanguinis."

A fifteenth-century code of statutes of the Cistercian College at Paris (generally much less stern than one would expect in a house of that severe Order) refers to the traditions that had grown up in the College about the initiation of a bajan, and to the "insolentias et enormitates multas" which accompanied their observance. The whole of the ceremonies of initiation are therefore forbidden--"omnes receptiones noviter venientium, quos voluntaria opinione Bejanos nuncupare solent, c.u.m suis consequentiis, necnon bajulationes, fibrationes ... tam in capitulo, in dormitorio, in parvis scholis, in jardinis, quam ubiubi, et tam de die quam de nocte." With these evil customs is to go the very name of the Abbas Bejanorum, and all (p. 111) "vasa, munimenta, et instrumenta" used for these ceremonies are to be given up. New-comers in future are to be entrusted to the care of discreet seniors, who will instruct them in the honourable customs of the College, report their shortcomings in church, in walks, and in games, supervise their expenditure, and prevent their being overcharged "pro jocundo adventu" or in other ways. So strong was the tradition of the "jocund advent" that it thus finds a place even in a reformer's const.i.tution, and we find references to it elsewhere in the statutes of Parisian colleges. An undated early code, drawn up for the Treasurer's College, orders the members to fulfil honestly their jocund advent in accordance with the advice of their fellow students.

At Cornouaille, the new-comer is instructed to pay for his jocund advent neither too meanly nor with burdensome extravagance, but in accordance with his rank and his means. At the College of Dainville the expense of the bajan-hood is limited to a quart of good wine ("ultra unum s.e.xtarium vini non mediocris suis sociis pro novo sub ingressu seu bejanno non solvat"). At the College of Cambray, a bursar is to pay twenty shillings for utensils, and to provide a pint of good wine for the fellows then present in hall. Dr Rashdall quotes from the Register of the Sorbonne an instance in which the Abbot of the Bajans was fined eight shillings (to be expended in wine) because he had (p. 112) not fulfilled his duties in regard to the cleansing of the bajans by an aspersion of water on Innocents' Day. The bajans were not only washed, but carried in procession upon a.s.ses.

The statutes of the universities of Southern France, and especially of Avignon and Aix, give us some further information, and we possess a record of the proceedings at Avignon of the Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, referred to in the pa.s.sage we have quoted from the regulations of the Cistercian College at Paris. Similar prohibitions occur in other College statutes.

At Avignon, the Confraternity of St Sebastian existed largely for the purgation of bajans and the control of the abuses which had grown up in connection with the jocund advent. One of its statutes, dated about 1450, orders that no novice, commonly called a bajan, shall be admitted to the purgation of his sins or take the honourable name of student until he has paid the sum of six _grossi_ as entrance money to the Confraternity. There is also an annual subscription of three _grossi_, and the payment of these sums is to be enforced by the seizure of books, unless the defaulter can prove that he is unable to pay his entrance fee or subscription, as the case may be. The Prior and Councillors of the Fraternity have power to grant a dispensation on the ground of poverty. After providing his feast, and taking an (p. 113) oath, the bajan is to be admitted "jocose et benigne," is to lose his base name, and after a year is to bear the honourable t.i.tle of student. n.o.blemen and beneficed clergy are to pay double. The bajan is implored to comply with these regulations "corde hilarissimo," and his "socii" are adjured to remember that they should not seek their own things but the things of Christ, and should therefore not spend on feasts anything over six _grossi_ paid by a bajan, but devote it to the honour of G.o.d and St Sebastian. The Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, at the College of Annecy, in the same University, throws a little more light on the actual ceremony of purgation. The bajans are summoned into the Abbot's Court, where each of them receives, _pro forma_, a blow from a ferule. They all stand in the Court, with uncovered heads and by themselves ("Mundus ab immundo venit separandus"); under the penalty of two blows they are required to keep silence ("quia vox funesta in judiciis audiri non debet.") The bajan who has patiently and honestly served his time and is about to be purged, is given, in parody of an Inception in the University, a pa.s.sage in the Inst.i.tutes to expound, and his fellow-bajans, under pain of two blows, have to dispute with him. If he obtains licence, the two last-purged bajans bring water "pro lavatione et purgatione."

The other rules of the Abbot's Court deal with the duties to be (p. 114) performed by the youngest freshman in Chapel (and at table if servants are lacking), and order bajans to give place to seniors and not to go near the fire in hall when seniors are present. No one, either senior or freshman, is to apply the term "Domine" to a bajan, and no freshman is to call a senior man a bajan. The Court met twice a week, and it could impose penalties upon senior men as well as bajans, but corporal punishment is threatened only against the "infectos et fetidissimos bejannos."

At Aix, a fifteenth-century code of statutes orders every bajan to pay fees to the University, and to give a feast to the Rector, the Treasurer, and the Promotor. The Rector is to bring one scholar with him, and the Promotor two, to help "ad purgandum bejaunum," and the bajan is to invite a bedel and others. Dispensations on the ground of poverty could be obtained from the Rector, and two or three freshmen might make their purgation together, "c.u.m infinitas est vitanda," even an infinity of feasts is to be avoided. The Promotor gives the first blow with a frying-pan, and the scholars who help in the purgation are limited to two or three blows each, since an infinity of blows is also to be avoided. The Rector may remit a portion of the penalty at the request of n.o.ble or honourable ladies who happen to be present, (p. 115) for it is useless to invite ladies if no remission is to be obtained.

If the bajan is proud or troublesome, the pleas of the ladies whom he has invited will not avail; he must have his three blows from each of his purgators, without any mercy. If a freshman failed to make his purgation within a month, it was to take place "in studio sub libro super anum"; the choice between a book and a frying-pan as a weapon of castigation is characteristic of the solemn fooling of the jocund advent. The seizure of goods and of books, mentioned in some of the statutes we have quoted, is frequently forbidden. At Orleans the statutes prohibit leading the bajan "ut ovis ad occisionem" to a tavern to be forced to spend his money, and denounce the custom as provocative of "ebrietates, turpiloquia, lascivias, pernoctationes"

and other evils. They also forbid the practice of compelling him to celebrate the jocund advent by seizing books, one or more, or by exacting anything from him. There are numerous other references in French statutes, some of which denounce the _bejaunia_ as sufficiently expensive to deter men from coming to the University, but details are disappointingly few.

The initiation of the bajan attained its highest development in the German universities, where we find the French conception of the bajan, as afflicted with mortal sin and requiring purification, combined (p. 116) with the characteristic German conception of him as a wild animal who has to be tamed. His reformation was accomplished by the use of planes, augers, saws, pincers and other instruments suitable for removing horns, tusks and claws from a dangerous animal, and the Deposition, or "modus deponendi cornua iis qui in numerum studiosorum co-optari volunt," became a recognised University ceremony. The statutes attempt to check it, _e.g._ at Vienna the bajan is not to be oppressed with undue exactions or otherwise molested or insulted, and at Leipsic the insults are not to take the form of blows, stones, or water. At Prague, "those who lay down (deponent) their rustic manners and ignorance are to be treated more mildly and moderately than in recent years (1544), and their lips or other parts of their bodies are not to be defiled with filth or putrid and impure substances which produce sickness." But the Prague statute contemplates a Deposition ceremony in which the freshman is a.s.sumed to be a goat with horns to be removed. A black-letter handbook or manual for German students, consisting of dialogues or conversational Latin (much on the principle of tourists' conversational dictionaries), opens with a description of the preparations for a Deposition. The book, which has been reprinted in Zarncke's _Die Deutschen Universitaten im Mittelalter_, is (p. 117) (from internal evidence) a picture of life at Heidelberg, but it is written in general terms.

The new-comer seeks out a master that he may be entered on the roll of the University and be absolved from his bajan-ship. "Are your parents rich?" is one of the master's first questions, and he is told that they are moderately prosperous mechanics who are prepared to do the best for their son. The master takes him to the Rector to be admitted, and then asks him, "Where do you intend to have your 'deposition' as a bajan?" The boy leaves all arrangements in the master's hands, reminding him of his poverty, and it is agreed to invite three masters, two bachelors, and some friends of the master to the ceremony. With a warning that he must not be afraid if strangers come and insult him, for it is all part of the tradition of a bajan's advent, the master goes to make arrangements for the feast. Two youths, Camillus and Bartoldus, then arrive, and pretend to be greatly disturbed by a foul smell, so strong that it almost drives them from the room. Camillus prepares to go, but Bartoldus insists upon an investigation of the cause. Camillus then sees a monster of terrible aspect, with huge horns and teeth, a nose curved like the beak of an owl, wild eyes and threatening lips. "Let us flee," he says, "lest it attack us." Bartoldus then guesses that it is a bajan, a creature (p. 118) which Camillus has never seen, but of whose ferocity he has heard. The bold Bartoldus then addresses the bajan. "Domine Joannes," he says, "whence do you come? Certainly you are a compatriot of mine, give me your hand." Joannes stretches out his hand, but is met with the indignant question, "Do you come to attack me with your nails? Why do you sit down, wild a.s.s? Do you not see that masters are present, venerable men, in whose presence it becomes you to stand?" Joannes stands, and is further insulted. His tormentors then affect to be sorry for him and make touching references to his mother's feelings ("Quid, si mater sciret, quae unice eum amat?"), but relapse into abuse (O beane, O asine, O foetide hirce, O olens capra, O bufo, O cifra, O figura nihili, O tu omnino nihil). "What are we to do with him?" says Camillus, and Bartoldus suggests the possibility of his reformation and admission into their society. But they must have a doctor. Camillus is famous and learned in the science of medicine, and can remove his horns, file down his teeth, cure his blindness, and shave his long and horrible beard. While he goes for the necessary instruments, Bartoldus tells the victim to cheer up, for he is about to be cured from every evil of mind and body, and to be admitted to the privileges of the University. Camillus returns with ointment, (p. 119) and they proceed to some horseplay which Joannes resists (Compesce eius impetus et ut equum intractatum ipsum illum constringe). Tusks and teeth having been removed, the victim is supposed to be dying, and is made to confess to Bartoldus a list of crimes. His penance is to entertain his masters "largissima coena," not forgetting the doctor who has just healed him, and the confessor who has just heard his confession, for they also must be entertained "pingui refectione." But this confessor can only define the penance, he cannot give absolution, a right which belongs to the masters. Joannes is then taken to his master for the Deposition proper. Dr Rashdall describes the scene, from a rare sixteenth-century tract, which contains an ill.u.s.tration of a Deposition, and a defence of it by Luther, who justified his taking part in one of these ceremonies by giving it a moral and symbolical meaning. The bajan lies upon a table, undergoing the planing of his tusks, "while a saw lies upon the ground, suggestive of the actual de-horning of the beast. The work itself and later apologies for the inst.i.tution mention among the instruments of torture a comb and scissors for cutting the victim's hair, an _auriscalpium_ for his ears, a knife for cutting his nails; while the ceremony further appears to include the adornment of the youth's chin with a beard by means of burned cork or other pigment, and the administration, (p. 120) internal or external, of salt and wine."

In the English universities we have no trace of the "jocund advent"

during the medieval period, but it is impossible to doubt that this kind of horseplay existed at Oxford and Cambridge. The statutes of New College refer to "that most vile and horrid sport of shaving beards"; it was "wont to be practised on the night preceding the Inception of a Master of Arts," but the freshmen may have been the victims, as they were in similar ceremonies at the Feast of Fools in France. Antony a Wood, writing of his own undergraduate days in the middle of the seventeenth century, tells that charcoal fires were made in the Hall at Merton on Holy Days, from All Saints' Eve to Candlemas, and that

"at all these fires every night, which began to be made a little after five of the clock, the senior undergraduates would bring into the hall the juniors or freshmen between that time and six of the clock, there make them sit downe on a forme in the middle of the hall, joyning to the declaiming desk; which done, every one in order was to speake some pretty apothegme, or make a jest or bull, or speake some eloquent nonsense, to make the company laugh. But if any of the freshmen came off dull, or not cleverly, some of the forward or pragmatised seniors would "tuck" them, that is, set the nail of their thumb to their chin, just (p. 121) under the lower lipp, and by the help of their other fingers under the chin, they would give him a mark, which sometimes would produce blood."

On Shrove Tuesday, 1648, Merton freshmen entertained the other undergraduates to a bra.s.s pot "full of cawdel." Wood, who was a freshman, describes how