Life in the Medieval University Part 3

"every freshman according to seniority, was to pluck off his gowne and band and if possible to make himself look like a scoundrell. This done, they conducted each other to the high table, and there made to stand on a forme placed thereon; from whence they were to speak their speech with an audible voice to the company; which if well done, the person that spoke it was to have a cup of cawdle and no salted drink; if indifferently, some cawdle and some salted drink; but if dull, nothing was given to him but salted drink or salt put in college beere, with tucks to boot. Afterwards when they were to be admitted into the fraternity, the senior cook was to administer to them an oath over an old shoe, part of which runs thus: 'Item tu jurabis quod penniless bench (a seat at Carfax) non visitabis' &c. The rest is forgotten, and none there are now remembers it. After which spoken with gravity, the Freshman kist the shoe, put on his gown and band and took his place among the seniors."

"This," says Wood, "was the way and custom that had been used in (p. 122) the college, time out of mind, to initiate the freshmen; but between that time and the restoration of K. Ch. 2 it was disused, and now such a thing is absolutely forgotten." His whole description, and especially the parody of the master's oath not to visit Stamford, goes to show that he was right in attributing the ceremonies to remote antiquity, and there are indications that the initiation of freshmen was practised elsewhere in Oxford. Hearne speaks of similar customs at Balliol and at Brasenose, and an eighteenth-century editor of Wood a.s.serts, that "striking traces" of the practice "may be found in many societies in this place, and in some a very near resemblance of it has been kept up till within these few years." Our quotation from Wood may therefore serve to ill.u.s.trate the treatment of the medieval freshman at Oxford. We possess no details of the jocund advent at Cambridge, but in the medieval Scottish universities, where the name of bajan still survives, there were relics of it within recent times. At St Andrews, a feast of raisins was the last survival of the bajan's "standing treat," and attacks made by "Semis" (second year men) upon a bajan cla.s.s emerging from a lecture-room were an enlivening feature of student life at Aberdeen up to the end of the nineteenth century. The weapons in use were notebooks, and the belabouring of Aberdeen (p. 123) bajans with these instruments may be historically connected with the chastis.e.m.e.nt which we have found in some of the medieval initiation ceremonies. It would be fanciful to connect the gown-tearing, which was also a feature of these attacks, with the a.s.saults upon the Rector's robe at Bologna.

CHAPTER VII (p. 124)

TOWN AND GOWN

The violence which marked medieval life as a whole was not likely to be absent in towns where numbers of young clerks were members of a corporation at variance with the authorities of the city. University records are full of injuries done to masters and students by the townsfolk, and of privileges and immunities obtained from Pope or King or Bishop at the expense of the burgesses. When a new University was founded, it was sometimes taken for granted that these conflicts must arise, and that the townsmen were certain to be in the wrong. Thus, when Duke Rudolf IV. founded the University of Vienna in 1365, he provided beforehand for such contingencies by ordaining that an attack on a student leading to the loss of a limb or other member of the body was to be punished by the removal of the same member from the body of the a.s.sailant, and that for a lesser injury the offender's hand was to be wounded ("debet ma.n.u.s pugione transfigi"). The criminal might redeem his person by a fine of a hundred silver marks for a serious injury and of forty marks for slighter damages, the victim to (p. 125) receive half of the fine. a.s.sailants of students were not to have benefit of sanctuary. Oxford history abounds in town and gown riots, the most famous of which is the battle of St Scholastica's Day (10th February) 1354. The riot originated in a tavern quarrel; some clerks disapproved of the wine at an inn near Carfax, and (in Antony Wood's words) "the vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they threw the wine and vessel at his head." His friends urged the inn-keeper "not to put up with the abuse," and rang the bell of St Martin's Church. A mob at once a.s.sembled, armed with bows and arrows and other weapons; they attacked every scholar who pa.s.sed, and even fired at the Chancellor when he attempted to allay the tumult. The justly indignant Chancellor retorted by ringing St Mary's bell and a mob of students a.s.sembled, also armed (in spite of many statutes to the contrary). A battle royal raged till nightfall, at which time the fray ceased, no one scholar or townsman being killed or mortally wounded or maimed. If the matter had ended then, little would have been heard of the story, but next day the townsmen stationed eighty armed men in St Giles's Church, who sallied out upon "certain scholars walking after dinner in Beaumont killed one of them, and wounded others." A second battle followed, in which the citizens, aided by some countrymen, defeated the scholars, and ravaged their halls, (p. 126) slaying and wounding. Night interrupted their operations, but on the following day, "with hideous noises and clamours they came and invaded the scholars' houses ... and those that resisted them and stood upon their defence (particularly some chaplains) they killed or else in a grievous sort wounded.... The crowns of some chaplains, that is, all the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off in scorn of their clergy."

The injured University was fully avenged. The King granted it jurisdiction over the city, and, especially, control of the market, and the Bishop of Lincoln placed the townsmen under an interdict which was removed only on condition that the Mayor and Bailiffs, for the time being, and "threescore of the chiefest Burghers, should personally appear" every St Scholastica's Day in St. Mary's Church, to attend a ma.s.s for the souls of the slain. The tradition that they were to wear halters or silken cords has no authority, but they were each "to offer at the altar one penny, of which oblation forty pence should be distributed to forty poor scholars of the University." The custom, with some modifications, survived the Reformation, and it was not till the nineteenth century that the Mayor of Oxford ceased to have cause to regret the battle of St Scholastica's Day.

The accounts of St Scholastica's Day and of most other riots which (p. 127) have come down to us are written from the standpoint of the scholars, but the records of the city of Oxford give less detailed but not less credible instances of a.s.saults by members of the University. On the eve of St John Baptist's Day in 1306, for example, the tailors of Oxford were celebrating Midsummer "c.u.m Cytharis Viellis et aliis diversis instrumentis." After midnight, they went out "de shoppis suis" and danced and sang in the streets. A clerk, irritated by the noise, attacked them with a drawn sword, wounded one of them, and was himself mortally wounded in the skirmish. Of twenty-nine coroners'

inquests which have been preserved for the period 1297-1322, thirteen are murders committed by scholars. Attacks on townsmen were not mere undergraduate follies, but were countenanced and even led by officials of the University, _e.g._ on a March night in 1526 one of the proctors "sate uppon a blocke in the streete afore the shoppe of one Robert Jermyns, a barber, havinge a pole axe in his hand, a black cloake on his backe, and a hatt on his head," and organised a riot in which many townsmen were "striken downe and sore beaten." Citizens' houses were attacked and "the saide Proctour and his company ... called for fire,"

threatening to burn the houses, and insulting the inmates with opprobrious names. When such an incident as this was possible, it (p. 128) was of little use for the University to issue regulations or even to punish less exalted sinners, and the town must have suffered much from the outrages of scholars and of the "chamber-dekens" or pretended scholars of the University, who were responsible for much of the mischief. At Paris things became so bad that the Parlement had to issue a series of police regulations to suppress the bands of scholars, or pretended scholars, who wandered about the streets at night, disguised and armed. They attacked pa.s.sers-by, and if they were wounded in the affray, their medical friends, we are told, dressed their wounds, so that they eluded discovery in the morning. The history of every University town provides instances of street conflicts--the records of Orleans and Toulouse abound in them--but we must be content with a tale from Leipsic.

The pages of the "Acta Rectorum" at Leipsic are full of ill.u.s.trations of the wilder side of student life, from which we extract the story of one unhappy year. The year 1545 opened very badly, says the "Rector's Chronicle," with three homicides. On Holy Innocents' Day, a bachelor was murdered by a skinner in a street riot, and the murderer, though he was seen by some respectable citizens, was allowed to escape. A student who killed a man on the night of the Sunday after the (p. 129) Epiphany was punished by the University in accordance with its statutes (_i.e._ by imprisonment for life in the bishop's prison). The third murder was that of a young bachelor who was walking outside the city, when two sons of rustics in the neighbourhood fell on him and killed him. Their names were known, but the city authorities refused to take action, and the populace, believing that they would not be punished, pursued the members of the University with continued insults and threats. After an unusually serious attack _c.u.m bombardis_, (in which, "by the divine clemency," a young mechanic was wounded), the University, failing to obtain redress, appealed to Prince Maurice of Saxony, who promised to protect the University. A conference between the University and the city authorities took place, and edicts against carrying arms were published, but the skinners immediately indulged in another outrage. One of them, Hans von Buntzell on Whitsunday, attacked, with a drawn sword, the son of a doctor of medicine, "a youth (as all agree) most guiltless," and wounded him in the arm, and if another student had not unexpectedly appeared, "would without doubt have killed this excellent boy." The criminal was pursued to the house of a skinner called Meysen, where he took refuge. The city authorities, inspired by the Prince's intervention, offered to impose three (p. 130) alternative sentences, and the University was asked to say whether Hans von Buntzell should lose one of his hands, or be publicly whipped and banished for ten years, or should have a certain stigma ("quod esset ma.n.u.s amittendae signum") burned in his hand and be banished.

The University replied that it was for the city to carry out the commands of the Prince, and declined to select the penalty. On the following Monday a scaffold was erected in the market-place, on which were placed rods and a knife for cutting off the hand, "which apparatus was thought by the skinners to be much too fierce and cruel, and a concourse began from all parts, composed not of skinners alone, but of mechanics of every kind, interceding with the Council for the criminal." The pleadings of the mult.i.tude gained the day, and all the preparations were removed from the market-place amid the murmurs of the students. After supper, three senior members of the skinners came to the Rector, begging for a commutation of the punishment, and offering to beat Hans themselves in presence of representatives of the University and the Town Council, with greater ferocity than the public executioner could do if he were to whip him three times in public. The Rector replied that he must consult the University, and the proposal was thrown out in Congregation. On the Sat.u.r.day after the Feast of (p. 131) Trinity, the stigma was burned on the criminal's hand, and as a necessary consequence he was banished.

Town riots do not complete the tale of violence. There were struggles with Jews, and a Jewish row at Oxford in 1268 resulted in the erection of a cross, with the following inscription:--

Quis meus auctor erat? Judaei. Quomodo? Sumptu Quis jussit?

Regnans. Quo procurante? Magistri. Cur? Cruce pro fracta ligni.

Quo tempore? Festo Ascensus Domini. Quis est locus? Hic ubi sisto.

Clerks' enemies were not always beyond their own household. The history of Paris, the earlier history of Oxford, and the record of many another University give us instances of mortal combats between the Nations. The scholars of Paris, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had to face the mortal enmity of the monks of the Abbey of St Germain, the meadow in front of which was claimed by the Faculty of Arts. The sight of Paris students walking or playing on the Pre-aux-clercs had much the same effect upon the Abbot and monks as the famous donkeys had upon the strong-minded aunt of David Copperfield, but the measures they took for suppressing the nuisance were less exactly proportioned to the offence. One summer day in 1278, masters and scholars went for recreation to the meadow, when the (p. 132) Abbot sent out armed servants and retainers of the monastery to attack them. They came shouting "Ad mortem clericorum," death to the clerks, "verbis crudelibus, _ad mortem ad mortem_, inhumaniter pluries repet.i.tis." A "famous Bachelor of Arts" and other clerks were seriously wounded and thrown into horrible dungeons; another victim lost an eye.

The retreat into the city was cut off, and fugitives were pursued far into the country. Blood flowed freely, and the scholars who escaped returned to their halls with broken heads and limbs and their clothes torn to fragments. Some of the victims died of their wounds, and the monks were punished by King and Pope, the Abbot being pensioned off and the Abbey compelled to endow two chaplains to say ma.s.ses for scholars. Forty years later the University had again to appeal to the Pope to avenge a.s.saults by retainers of the Abbey upon scholars who were fishing in the moat outside the Abbey walls. The monks, of course, may have given a different version of the incidents.

CHAPTER VIII (p. 133)

SUBJECTS OF STUDY, LECTURES AND EXAMINATIONS

The student of a medieval University was, as we have seen, expected to converse in Latin, and all instruction was given in that language. It was therefore essential that, before entering on the University curriculum, he should have a competent knowledge of Latin. College founders attempted to secure this in various ways, sometimes by an examination (_e.g._ at the College of Cornouaille, at Paris no one was admitted a bursar until he was examined and found to be able to read) and sometimes by making provision for young boys to be taught by a master of grammar. The Founder of New College met the difficulty by the foundation of Winchester College, at which all Wykehamists (except the earliest members of New College) were to be thoroughly grounded in Latin. It was more difficult for a University to insist upon such a test, but in 1328, the University of Paris had ordered that before a youth was admitted to the privileges of "scholarity" or studentship, he must appear before the Rector and make his own application in continuous Latin, without any French words. Formulae for this (p. 134) purpose would, doubtless, soon be invented and handed down by tradition, and the precaution cannot have been of much practical value. There were plenty of grammar schools in the Middle Ages, and a clever boy was likely to find a patron and a place of education in the neighbourhood of his home. The grammar schools in University towns had therefore originally no special importance, but many of the undergraduates who came up at thirteen or fourteen required some training such as William of Waynflete provided for his younger demies in connexion with the Grammar School which he attached to Magdalen, or such as Walter de Merton considered desirable when he ordained that there should be a Master of Grammar in his College to teach the poor boys, and that their seniors were to go to him in any difficulty without any false shame ("absque rubore"). Many universities extended certain privileges to boys studying grammar, by placing their names on matriculation rolls, though such matriculation was not part of the curriculum for a degree. Masters in Grammar were frequently, but not necessarily, University graduates; at Paris there were grammar mistresses as well as grammar masters. The connexion between the grammar schools and the University was exceptionally close at Oxford and Cambridge, where degrees in grammar came to be given. The (p. 135) University of Oxford early legislated for "inceptors" who were taking degrees in grammar, and ordered the grammar masters who were graduates to enrol, _pro forma_, the names of pupils of non-graduates, and to compel non-graduate masters to obey the regulations of the University.

A meeting of the grammar masters twice a term for discussions about their subject and the method of teaching it was also ordered by the University, which ultimately succeeded in wresting the right of licensing grammar masters from the Archdeacon or other official to whom it naturally belonged. A fourteenth-century code of statutes for the Oxford grammar schools orders the appointment of two Masters of Arts to superintend them, and gives some minute instructions about the teaching. Grammar masters are to set verses and compositions, to be brought next day for correction; and they are to be specially careful to see that the younger boys can recognise the different parts of speech and pa.r.s.e them accurately. In choosing books to read with their pupils, they are to avoid the books of Ovid "de Arte Amandi" and similar works. Boys are to be taught to construe in French as well as in English, lest they be ignorant of the French tongue. The study of French was not confined to the grammar boys: the University recognised the wisdom of learning a language necessary for composing (p. 136) charters, holding lay-courts, and pleading in the English fashion, and lectures in French were permitted at any hour that did not interfere with the regular teaching of Arts subjects. Such lectures were under the control of the superintendents of the grammar masters.

The degrees which Oxford and Cambridge conferred in Grammar did not involve residence or ent.i.tle the recipients to a vote in Convocation; but the conferment was accompanied by ceremonies which were almost parodies of the solemn proceedings of graduation or inception in a recognised Faculty, a birch taking the place of a book as a symbol of the power and authority entrusted to the graduand. A sixteenth-century Esquire Bedel of Cambridge left, for the benefit of his successors, details of the form for the "enteryng of a Master in Gramer." The "Father" of the Faculty of Grammar (at Cambridge the mysterious individual known as the "Master of Glomery") brought his "sons" to St Mary's Church for eight o'clock ma.s.s. "When ma.s.s is done, fyrst shall begynne the acte in Gramer. The Father shall have hys sete made before the Stage for Physyke (one of the platforms erected in the church for doctors of the different faculties, etc.) and shall sytte alofte under the stage for Physyke. The Proctour shall say, Incipiatis. When the Father hath argyude as shall plese the Proctour, the Bedeyll in (p. 137) Arte shall bring the Master of Gramer to the Vyce-chancelar, delyveryng hym a Palmer wyth a Rodde, whych the Vyce-chancelar shall gyve to the seyde Master in Gramer, and so create hym Master. Then shall the Bedell purvay for every master in Gramer a shrewde Boy, whom the master in Gramer shall bete openlye in the Scolys, and the master in Gramer shall give the Boy a Grote for Hys Labour, and another Grote to hym that provydeth the Rode and the Palmer &c. de singulis. And thus endythe the Acte in that Facultye." We know of the existence of similar ceremonies at Oxford. "Had the ambition to take these degrees in Grammar been widely diffused," says Dr Rashdall, "the demand for whipping boys might have pressed rather hardly upon the youth of Oxford; but very few of them are mentioned in the University Register."

The basis of the medieval curriculum in Arts is to be found in the Seven Liberal Arts of the Dark Ages, divided into the _Trivium_ (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic) and the _Quadrivium_ (Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy). The _Quadrivium_ was of comparatively little importance; Geometry and Music received small attention; and Arithmetic, and Astronomy were at first chiefly useful for finding the date of Easter; but the introduction of mathematical learning from Arabian sources in the thirteenth century greatly (p. 138) increased the scope of Geometry and Arithmetic, and added the study of Algebra.

The Grammar taught in the universities a.s.sumed a knowledge of such a text-book as that of Alexander de Villa Dei, and consisted of an a.n.a.lysis of the systems of popular grammarians, based on the section _De barbarismo_ in the _Ars Grammatica_ of aelius Donatus, a fourth-century grammarian, whose work became universally used throughout Europe. Latin poets were read in the grammar schools, and served for grammatical and philological expositions in the universities, and the study of Rhetoric depended largely on the treatises of Cicero. The "Dialectic" of the _Trivium_ was the real interest of the medieval student among the ancient seven subjects, but the curriculum in Arts came to include also the three Philosophies, Physical, Moral, and Metaphysical. The arms of the University of Oxford consist of a book with seven clasps surrounded by three crowns, the clasps representing the seven Liberal Arts and the crowns the three Philosophies. The universities were schools of philosophy, mental and physical, and the attention of students in Arts was chiefly directed to the logic, metaphysics, physics, and ethics of Aristotle.

Up to the twelfth century, Aristotle was known only through the translations into Latin of the sections of the _Organon_, (p. 139) ent.i.tled _De Interpretatione_ and _Categoriae_, and through the logical works of Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the range of medieval studies was greatly enlarged by the introduction of other works of Aristotle from translations partly from the Arabic and partly direct from the Greek. The conservatism of the University of Paris at first forbade the study of the new Aristotle, but it soon became universal in the medieval universities. In addition to the works of Aristotle, as they were known in the Middle Ages, medieval students read such books as Porphyry's _Isagoge_, or Introduction to Aristotle; the criticism of Aristotle's _Categories_, by Gilbert de la Porree, known as the _s.e.x Principia_; the _Summulae Logicales_, a semi-grammatical, semi-logical treatise by Petrus Hispa.n.u.s (Pope John XXI.); the _Parva Logicalia_ of Marsilius of Inghen; the _Labyrinthus_ and _Grecismus_ of Eberhard; the Scriptural commentaries of Nicolaus de Lyra; the _Tractatus de Sphaera_, an astronomical work by a thirteenth-century Scotsman, John Holywood (Joannes de Sacro Bosco); and they also studied Priscian, Donatus, Boethius, Euclid, and Ptolemy. In 1431 the _Nova Rhetorica_ of Cicero, the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, and the works of Virgil were prescribed at Oxford as alternatives to the fourth book of the _Topica_ of Boethius. By the end of the century Humanism had found a place in the universities, (p. 140) and sixteenth-century colleges at Oxford and Cambridge provided for the study of the literatures of Greece and Rome. In Scotland the medieval teaching of Aristotle reigned supreme in all its three universities until the appointment of Andrew Melville as Princ.i.p.al at Glasgow in 1574, and in 1580 he had some difficulty in persuading the masters at St Andrews to "peruse Aristotle in his ain language."

Lectures were either "ordinary" or "cursory," a distinction which, as Dr Rashdall has shown, corresponded to the "ordinary" and "extra-ordinary" lectures at Bologna. The ordinary lectures were the statutable exercises appointed by the Faculty, and delivered by its properly accredited teachers in the hours of the morning, which were sacred to the prelections of the masters. Cursory lectures were delivered in the afternoon, frequently by bachelors; but as College teaching became more important than the lectures given in the Schools, the distinction gradually disappeared. Ordinary lectures were delivered "solemniter" and involved a slow and methodical a.n.a.lysis of the book. The statutes of Vienna prescribe that no master shall read more than one chapter of the text "ante quaestionem vel etiam quaestione expedita." Various references in College and University statutes show that the cursory lecture was not regarded as the (p. 141) full equivalent of an ordinary lecture. At Oxford, attendance on a lecture on the books or any book of the Metaphysics, or on the Physics, or the Ethics, was not to count for a degree, except in the case of a book largely dealing with the opinions of the ancients. The third and fourth books of the Metaphysics were excepted from the rule, "they being usually read cursorily, that the ordinary reading of the other books might proceed more rapidly." The cursory lecture was clearly beloved of the pupil, for Oxford grammar masters are reproved for lecturing "cursorie" instead of "ordinarie" for the sake of gain; and at Vienna, the tariff for cursory lectures is double that for ordinary lectures. At Paris the books of Aristotle de Dialectica were to be read "ordinarie et non ad cursum," and students of medicine had to read certain books "semel ordinarie, bis cursorie." The statutes of Heidelberg contrast "cursorie" with "extense." In the Faculty of Canon Law there was an additional distinction, the ordinary lecture being generally restricted to the Decretum; at Oxford, the book of Decretals is to be read at the morning hours at which the doctors of law are wont to deliver ordinary lectures, and at Vienna the doctors are forbidden to read anything but the Decretals in the morning at ordinary lectures. The instructions given to the Vienna doctors of (p. 142) law ill.u.s.trate the thoroughness of the medieval lecture in all faculties. They are first to state the case carefully, then to read the text, then to restate the case, then to remark on "notabilia," and then to discuss questions arising out of the subject, and finally, to deal with the Glosses. So, at Oxford, the Masters in Arts are to read the books on logic and the philosophies "rite," with the necessary and adequate exposition of the text, and with questions and arguments pertinent to the subject-matter.

A problem, still unsolved, about the methods of lecturing disturbed the minds of the Parisian masters. Were they to dictate lectures or to speak so fast that their pupils could not commit their words to writing? From the standpoint of teachers who delivered frequent lectures, all of the same type, and on a few set books, it was probably desirable that there should not be opportunities of possessing such copies of a professor's lectures as used to circulate, not many years ago, in Scottish and in German universities. In 1229 the Faculty of Arts at Paris made a statute on the methods of lecturing. It explains that there are two ways of reading books in the liberal arts. The masters of philosophy may deliver their expositions from their chairs so rapidly that, although the minds of their audience may grasp their meaning, their hands cannot write it (p. 143) down. This, they say, was the custom in other faculties. The other way is to speak so slowly that their hearers can take down what they say.

On mature reflection, the Faculty has decided that the former is the better way, and henceforth in any lecture, ordinary or cursory, or in any disputation or other manner of teaching, the master is to speak as in delivering a speech, and as if no one were writing in his presence.

A lecturer who breaks the new rule is to be suspended for a year, and if the students showed their dislike to it, by shouting, hissing, groaning, or throwing stones, they were to be sent down for a year.

More than two hundred years later, in 1452, the statute was rescinded by Cardinal Estoutville, but it was probably never operative.

Estoutville permitted either method of lecturing, and contented himself with forbidding lecturers to use questions and lectures which were not of their own composition, or to deliver their lectures (however good) to be read by one of their scholars as a deputy. He instructs the masters to lecture regularly according to the statutes and to explain the text of Aristotle, "de puncto in punctum," and, holding that fear and reverence are the life-blood of scholastic discipline, he repeats an injunction which we find in 1336, that the students in Arts are to sit not on benches or raised seats, but on (p. 144) the floor, "ut occasio superbiae a juvenibus secludatur." The name of the street in which lectures were given, Vicus Stramineus, is said to have been derived from the straw on which the students sat. The question whether lectures should be committed to writing or not, troubled the masters of other universities besides Paris, and the statutes of the College de Verdale at Toulouse accept, in 1337, the view taken at Paris a hundred years earlier. Since study is a vehement application of the mind, and requires the whole man, the scholars are forbidden to fatigue themselves with too many lectures--not more than two or three a day--and in lecture they are not to take down the lecturer's words, nor, trusting in writings of this kind, to blunt their "proprium intellectum." In the Schools, they must not use "incausta" or pencils except for correcting a book, etc. And what they have been able to retain in their memory they must meditate on without delay.

The insistence on meditation was a useful educational method, but as teaching became more organised, the student was not left without guidance in his meditations. The help which he received outside lectures was given in Repet.i.tions or Resumptions. The procedure at Repet.i.tions may be ill.u.s.trated from the statutes of the College of Dainville at Paris: "We ordain that all bursars in grammar and (p. 145) philosophy speak the Latin tongue, and that those who hear the same book ordinarily and cursorily shall attend one and the same master (namely, one whom the master [of the College] a.s.signs to them), and after the lecture they shall return home and meet in one place to repeat the lecture. One after another shall repeat the whole lecture, so that each of them may know it well, and the less advanced shall be bound daily to repeat the lectures to the more proficient." A later code of the same College provides that "All who study humane letters shall, on every day of the schools read in the morning a composition, that is a speech in Latin, Greek or the vernacular, to their master, being prepared to expound the writer or historian who is being read in daily lecture in their schools. At the end of the week, that is on Friday or Sat.u.r.day, they shall show up to their master a resume of all the lectures they have learned that week, and every day before they go to the schools they shall be bound to make repet.i.tions to one of the philosophers or of the theologians whom the [College] master shall choose; for this work." At Louvain, the time between 5 A.M. and the first lecture (about seven) was spent in studying the lesson that the students might better understand the lecture; after hearing it, they returned to their own rooms to revise it and commit it to memory.

After dinner, their books were placed on a table, and all the (p. 146) scholars of one Faculty repeated their lesson and answered questions.

A similar performance took place in the two hours before supper. After supper, the tutor treated them for half an hour to a "joc.u.m honestum,"

and before sending them to bed gave them a light and pleasant disputation. The disputation was a preparation for the disputations which formed part of what we should now term the degree examinations.

A thesis was propounded, attacked, and defended ("impugned and propugned") with the proper forms of syllogistic reasoning.

The teaching, both in lectures and in disputations, was originally University teaching, and the younger Masters of Arts, the "necessary regents," were bound to stay up for some years and lecture in the Schools. They were paid by their scholars, and the original meaning of the word "Collections," still in frequent use at Oxford, is traditionally supposed to be found in the payments made for lectures at the end of each term. Thus, at Oxford, a student paid threepence a term (one shilling a year) to his regent for lectures in Logic, and fourpence a term for lectures in Natural Philosophy. The system was not a satisfactory one, and alike in Paris, in Oxford, and in Cambridge, it succ.u.mbed to the growth of College teaching. The Head of a Parisian College, from the first, superintended the studies of (p. 147) the scholars, and, although this duty was not required of an Oxford or Cambridge Head, provision was gradually made in the statutes of English colleges for the instruction of the junior members by their seniors. The first important step in this direction was taken by William of Wykeham, who ordered special payment to be made by the College to Fellows who undertook the tuition of the younger Fellows.

His example was followed in this, as in other matters, by subsequent founders both at Oxford and at Cambridge, and gradually University teaching was, in the Faculty of Arts, almost entirely superseded by College tuition. In other universities, lectures continued to be given by University officials.

The medieval undergraduates had a tendency to "rag" in lectures, a tradition which is almost unknown at Oxford and Cambridge, but which persisted till quite recent times in the Scottish universities.

Prohibitions of noise and disturbance in lecture-rooms abound in all statutes. At Vienna, students in Arts are exhorted to behave like young ladies (more virginum) and to refrain from laughter, murmurs, and hisses, and from tearing down the schedules in which the masters give notice of their lectures. At Prague, also, the conduct of young ladies was held up as a model for the student at lecture, and, at Angers, students who hissed in contempt of a doctor were to be expelled.

The career of a student was divided into two parts by his (p. 148) "Determination," a ceremony which is the origin of the Bachelor's degree. At Paris, where, at all events in the earlier period of its history, examinations were real, the "Determination" was preceded by "Responsions," and no candidate was admitted to determine until he had satisfied a Regent Master in the Schools, in public, "de Questione respondens." The determination itself was a public disputation, after which the determiner might wear the bachelor's "cappa" and lecture on the Organon. He continued his attendance on the lectures in the Schools up to the time of his "Inception" as a master. The Inception was preceded by an examination for licence and by a disputation known as the Quodlibetica, at which the subject was chosen by the candidate.

The bachelor who was successful in obtaining the Chancellor's licence proceeded to the ceremony of Inception, and received his master's _biretta_.

The stringency of examinations varied in different universities and at different times. The proportion of successful candidates seems to have been everywhere very large, and in some universities rejection must have been almost unknown. We do find references to disappointed candidates, _e.g._ at Caen, where medical students who have been "ploughed" have to take an oath not to bring "malum vel d.a.m.num" upon the examiners. But even at Louvain, where the examination system (p. 149) was fully developed in the Middle Ages, and where there were cla.s.s lists in the fifteenth century (the cla.s.ses being distinguished as _Rigorosi_, _Transibiles_, and _Gratiosi_), failure was regarded as an exceptional event ("si autem, quod absit, aliqui inveniantur simpliciter gratiosi seu refutabiles, erunt de quarto ordine"). The regulations for examinations at Louvain prescribe that the examiners are not to ask disturbing questions ("animo turbandi aut confundendi promovendos") and forbid unfair treatment of pupils of particular masters and frivolous or useless questions; although at his Quodlibetic.u.m, the bachelor might indulge in "jocosas questiones ad auditorii recreationem." The element of display implied in the last quotation was never absent from medieval examinations, and at Oxford, there seems to have been little besides this ceremonial element. A candidate had to prove that he had complied with the regulations about attendance at lectures, etc., and to obtain evidence of fitness from a number of masters. A bachelor had to dispute several times with a master, and these disputations, which were held at the Augustinian Convent, came to be known as "doing Austins." The medieval system, as it lingered at Oxford in the close of the eighteenth century, is thus described by Vicesimus Knox.

"The youth whose heart pants for the honour of a Bachelor of (p. 150) Arts degree must wait patiently till near four years have revolved.... He is obliged during this period, once to oppose and once to respond.... This opposing and responding is termed, in the cant of the place, _doing generals_. Two boys or men, as they call themselves, agree to _do generals_ together. The first step in this mighty work is to procure arguments. These are always handed down, from generation to generation, on long slips of paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on foolish subjects, of the foundation or significance of which the respondent and opponent seldom know more than an infant in swaddling cloaths.

The next step is to go for a _liceat_ to one of the petty officers, called the Regent-Master of the Schools, who subscribes his name to the questions and receives sixpence as his fee. When the important day arrives, the two doughty disputants go into a large dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs.... Here they sit in mean desks, opposite to each other from one o'clock till three.

Not once in a hundred times does any officer enter; and, if he does, he hears a syllogism or two, and then makes a bow, and departs, as he came and remained, in solemn silence. The disputants then return to the amus.e.m.e.nt of cutting the desks, carving their names, or reading Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or some other edifying novel. When the exercise is duly performed by both parties, they have a right to the t.i.tle and insignia of _Sophs_: but not before they have been formally _created_ (p. 151) by one of the regent-masters, before whom they kneel, while he lays a volume of Aristotle's works on their heads, and puts on a hood, a piece of black c.r.a.pe, hanging from their necks, and down to their heels.... There remain only one or two trifling forms, and another disputation almost exactly similar to _doing generals_, but called _answering under bachelor_ previous to the awful examination. Every candidate is obliged to be examined in the whole circle of the sciences by three masters of arts _of his own choice_.... _Schemes_, as they are called, or little books containing forty or fifty questions on each science, are handed down from age to age, from one to another. The candidate employs three or four days in learning these by heart, and the examiners, having done the same before him, know what questions to ask, and so all goes on smoothly. When the candidate has displayed his universal knowledge of the sciences, he is to display his skill in philology. One of the masters therefore asks him to construe a pa.s.sage in some Greek or Latin cla.s.sic, which he does with no interruption, just as he pleases, and as well as he can. The statutes next require that he should translate familiar English phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the masters show their wit and jocularity.... This familiarity, however, only takes place when the examiners are pot-companions of the candidate, which indeed is usually the case; for it is reckoned good management to get acquainted with two or three jolly (p. 152) young masters of arts, and supply them well with port previously to the examination. If the vice-chancellor and proctors happen to enter the school, a very uncommon event, then a little solemnity is put on.... As neither the officer, nor anyone else, usually enters the room (for it is reckoned very _ungenteel_), the examiners and the candidates often converse on the last drinking-bout, or on horses, or read the newspapers or a novel."

The supply of port was the eighteenth-century relic of the feasts which used to accompany Determination and Inception, and with which so many sumptuary regulations of colleges and universities are concerned.

There is a reference to a Determining Feast in the Paston Letters, in which the ill-fated Walter Paston, writing in the summer of 1479, a few weeks before his premature death, says to his brother: "And yf ye wyl know what day I was mead Baschyler, I was maad on Fryday was sevynyth, and I mad my fest on the Munday after. I was promysyd venyson ageyn my fest of my Lady Harcort, and of a noder man to, but I was desevyd of both; but my gestes hewld them plesyd with such mete as they had, blyssyd be G.o.d. Hoo have yeo in Hys keeping. Wretyn at Oxon, on the Wedenys day next after Seynt Peter."

A few glimpses of the life of this fifteenth-century Oxonian may (p. 153) conclude our survey. Walter Paston had been sent to Oxford in 1473, under the charge of a priest called James Gloys. His mother did not wish him to a.s.sociate too closely with the son of their neighbour, Thomas Holler. "I wold," she says, "Walter schuld be copilet with a better than Holler son is ... howe be it I wold not that he schuld make never the lesse of hym, by cause he is his contre man and neghbour." The boy was instructed to "doo welle, lerne well, and be of good rewle and disposycion," and Gloys was asked to "bydde hym that he be not to hasty of takyng of orderes that schuld bynd him." To take Orders under twenty-three years of age might lead, in Margaret Paston's opinion, to repentance at leisure, and "I will love hym better to be a good secular man than to be a lewit priest." We next hear of Walter in May 1478 when he writes to his mother recommending himself to her "good moderchypp," and asking for money. He has received 5, 16s. 6d., and his expenses amount to 6, 5s. 5d. "That comth over the reseytys in my exspenses I have borrowed of Master Edmund and yt draweth to 8 shillings." He might have applied for a loan to one of the "chests" which benevolent donors had founded for such emergencies, depositing some article of value, and receiving a temporary loan: but he preferred to borrow from his new tutor, (p. 154) Edmund Alyard. By March 1479, Alyard was able to rea.s.sure the anxious mother about her boy's choice of a career; he was to go to law, taking his Bachelor's degree in Arts at Midsummer. His brother, Sir John, who was staying at the George at Paul's Wharf in London, intended to be present at the ceremony, but his letter miscarried: "Martin Brown had that same tyme mysch mony in a bage, so that he durst not bryng yt with hym, and that same letter was in that same bage, and he had forgete to take owt the letter, and he sent all togeder by London, so that yt was the next day after that I was maad Bachyler or than the letter cam, and so the fawt was not in me." This is the last we hear of Walter Paston. On his way home, on the 18th August 1479, he died at Norwich, after a short illness. He left a number of "togae" to his Oxford friends, including Robert Holler, the son of his Norfolk neighbour, to whom he also bequeathed "unum pulvinar vocatum _le bolstar_." The rest of his Oxford goods he left to Alyard, but his sheep and his lands to his own family. The cost of his illness and funeral amounted to about thirty shillings. No books are mentioned in the will; possibly they were sold for his inception feast, or he may never have possessed any. As a junior student, he would not have been allowed to use the great library which Humphrey of Gloucester had (p. 155) presented to the University; but there were smaller libraries to which he might have access, for books were sometimes chained up in St Mary's Church that scholars might read them.

APPENDIX (p. 157)

My attention has been called (too late for a reference in the text) to a medieval Latin poem giving a gloomy account of student life in Paris in the twelfth century. The verses, which have been printed in the _American Journal of Philology_ (vol. xi. p. 80), insist upon the hardships of the student's life, and contrast his miserable condition with the happier lot of the citizens of Paris. For him there is no rejoicing in the days of his youth, and no hope even of a competence in the future. His lodgings are wretched and neglected; his dress is miserable, and his appearance slovenly. His food consists of peas, beans, and cabbage, and

"libido Mensae nulla venit nisi quod sale sparsa rigorem Esca parum flect.i.t."

His bed is a hard mattress stretched on the floor, and sleep brings him only a meagre respite from the toils of the day:--

"Sed in illa pace soporis Pacis eget studii labor insopitus, et ipso Cura vigil somno, libros operamque ministrat Excitae somnus animae, nec prima sopori Anxietas cedit, sed quae vigilaverat ante Sollicitudo redit, et major summa laboris Curarum studiis in somnibus obicit Hydram."

In the early hours of the morning he goes to his lectures, and the (p. 158) whole of his day is given to study. The description of the student at lecture is interesting:--