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Title: Life in the Medieval University

Author: Robert S. Rait

Release date: April 2, 2007 [eBook #20958]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN THE
MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY ***

The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature

LIFE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4
C. F. CLAY, Manager

New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
Toronto: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

All rights reserved

The Student's Progress
(From Gregor Reisch's Margarita philosophica, Edition of 1504,
Strassburg)

First Edition, 1912
Reprinted 1918

With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title
page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer,

John Siberch, 1521

NOTE ON THE FRONTISPIECE

In this picture the schoolboy is seen arriving with his satchel and being
presented with a hornbook by Nicostrata, the Latin muse Carmentis, who
changed the Greek alphabet into the Latin. She admits him by the key of
congruitas to the House of Wisdom ("Wisdom hath builded her house, she
hath hewn out her seven pillars," Proverbs ix. 1). In the lowest story he
begins his course in Donatus under a Bachelor of Arts armed with the birch;
in the next he is promoted to Priscian. Then follow the other subjects of the
Trivium and the Quadrivium each subject being represented by its chief
exponent—logic by Aristotle, arithmetic by Boethius, geometry by Euclid,
etc. Ptolemy, the philosopher, who represents astronomy, is confused with
the kings of the same name. Pliny and Seneca represent the more advanced
study of physical and of moral science respectively, and the edifice is
crowned by Theology, the long and arduous course for which followed that
of the Arts. Its representative in a medieval treatise is naturally Peter
Lombard.

NOTE

I wish to express my obligations to many recent writers on University
history, and to the editors of University Statutes and other records, from
which my illustrations of medieval student life have been derived. I owe
special gratitude to Dr Hastings Rashdall, Fellow of New College and
Canon of Hereford, my indebtedness to whose great work, The Universities
of Europe in the Middle Ages, is apparent throughout the following pages.
Dr Rashdall has been good enough to read my proof-sheets, and to make
valuable criticisms and suggestions, and the Master of Emmanuel has
rendered me a similar service.

R. S. R.

23rd January 1912.

CONTENTS

Chapter I—Introductory

Chaucer and the Medieval Student — The Great Period of University-
Founding — The words "Universitas," "Collegium," "Studium
Generale" — Bologna — Growth of Studia Generalia — Paris,
Oxford, Cambridge — Definition of "Universitas"

Chapter II—Life in the Student-Universities

Student-Guilds at Bologna — "Nations" — The College of Doctors —
Relations with the City — Position of an English Law Student at
Bologna, and his relations to his Nation and his Universitas — The
Office of Rector — Powers of the University over Citizens — The
Degradation of the Bologna Masters — Examinations — The
Doctorate — Regulations — Padua — Limitations of the Rector's
Powers at Florence — Spanish Universities — Married Dons

Chapter III—The Universities of Masters

Early History of the University of Paris — Faculties — "Nations" —
Struggle with the Chancellor — Position of the Rector — Oxford —
"Nations" — The Proctors — University Jurisdiction — Germany —
Scotland

Chapter IV—College Discipline

Origin of the College System — Merton — Imitations of the Merton
Rule — New College — Increase in Number of Regulations — Latin-

Speaking — Conversation in Hall — Meals — College Rooms —
Amusements — Penalties — Introduction of Corporal Punishment —
The Tonsure — Attendance at Chapel — Vacations — Hospitality —
The Career of an English Student — Meaning of "Poor and Indigent
Scholars" — The College System at Paris — Sconcing — Other
French Universities — A Visitation of a Medieval College

Chapter V—University Discipline

Growth of Disciplinary Regulations at Paris and Oxford — Records of
the Chancellor's Court — Discipline in Unendowed Halls — Academic
Dress restricted to Graduates — Louvain — Leipsic — Leniency of
Punishments — The Scottish Universities — Table Manners at
Aberdeen — Life at Heidelberg

Chapter VI—The "Jocund Advent"

Admission of the Bajan at Paris — The Universities of Southern
France — The Abbas Bejanorum — The "Jocund Advent" in Germany
— the "Depositio" — Oxford — Scotland

Chapter VII—Town and Gown

Vienna — St Scholastica's Day at Oxford — Assaults by Members of
the University — Records of the "Acta Rectorum" at Leipsic —
Parisian Scholars and the Monks of St Germain

Chapter VIII—Subjects of Study, Lectures, Examinations

Instruction given in Latin — Preparation for the University —
Grammar Masters — French taught at Oxford — The "Act" in
Grammar — The Seven Liberal Arts and the Three Philosophies —
Text-books — Ordinary and Cursory Lectures — Methods of
Lecturing — Repetitions and Disputations — University and College
Teaching — Examinations at Paris, Louvain, and Oxford — The
Determining Feast — Walter Paston at Oxford

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

LIFE IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

"A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logik hadde longe y-go
As lene was his hors as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But loked holwe, and therto soberly,
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy,
For he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce.
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he might of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye,
Of studie took he most cure and most hede,
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,

And that was seyd in forme and reverence
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche.
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche."

An account of life in the medieval University might well take the form of a
commentary upon the classical description of a medieval English student.
His dress, the character of his studies and the nature of his materials, the
hardships and the natural ambitions of his scholar's life, his obligations to
founders and benefactors, suggest learned expositions which might

in judicious hands
Extend from here to Mesopotamy,

and will serve for a modest attempt to picture the environment of one of the
Canterbury pilgrims.

Chaucer's famous lines do more than afford opportunities of explanation
and comment; they give us an indication of the place assigned to
universities and their students by English public opinion in the later Middle
Ages. The monk of the "Prologue" is simply a country gentleman. No
accusation of immorality is brought against him, but he is a jovial huntsman
who likes the sound of the bridle jingling in the wind better than the call of
the church bells, a lover of dogs and horses, of rich clothes and great feasts.
The portrait of the friar is still less sympathetic; he is a frequenter of
taverns, a devourer of widows' houses, a man of gross, perhaps of evil, life.
The monk abandons his cloister and its rules, the friar despises the poor and
the leper. The poet is making no socialistic attack upon the foundations of
society, and no heretical onslaught upon the Church; he draws a portrait of
two types of the English regular clergy. His description of two types of the
English secular clergy forms an illuminating contrast. The noble verses, in
which he tells of the virtues of the parish priest, certainly imply that the
seculars also had their temptations and that they did not always resist them;
but the fact remains that Chaucer chose as the representative of the
parochial clergy one who

"wayted after no pompe and reverence,
Ne maked him a spyced conscience,

But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve."

The history of pious and charitable foundations is a vindication of the truth
of the portraiture of the "Prologue." The foundation of a new monastery and
the endowment of the friars had alike ceased to attract the benevolent donor,
who was turning his attention to the universities, where secular clergy were
numerous. The clerks of Oxford and Cambridge had succeeded to the place
held by the monks, and, after them, by the friars, in the affection and the
respect of the nation.

Outside the kingdom of England the fourteenth century was also a great
period in the growth of universities and colleges, to which, all over Europe,
privileges and endowments were granted by popes, emperors, kings,
princes, bishops and municipalities. To attempt to indicate the various
causes and conditions which, in different countries, led to the growth, in
numbers and in wealth, of institutions for the pursuit of learning would be
to wander from our special topic; but we may take the period from the
middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century as that in
which the medieval University made its greatest appeal to the imagination
of the peoples of Europe. Its institutional forms had become definite, its
terminology fixed, and the materials for a study of the life of the fourteenth
century student are abundant. The conditions of student life varied, of
course, with country and climate, and with the differences in the
constitutions of individual universities and in their relations to Church and
State. No single picture of the medieval student can be drawn, but it will be
convenient to choose the second half of the fourteenth century, or the first
half of the fifteenth, as the central point of our investigation.

We have already used technical terms, "University," "College," "Student,"
which require elucidation, and others will arise in the course of our inquiry.
What is a University? At the present day a University is, in England, a
corporation whose power of granting certain degrees is recognised by the
State; but nothing of this is implied in the word "University." Its literal
meaning is simply an association. Recent writers on University history have
pointed out that Universitas vestra, in a letter addressed to a body of
persons, means merely "the whole of you" and that the term was by no

means restricted to learned bodies. It was frequently applied to municipal
corporations; Dr Rashdall, in his learned work, tells us that it is used by
medieval writers in addressing "all faithful Christian people," and he quotes
an instance in which Pisan captives at Genoa in the end of the thirteenth
century formed themselves into a "Universitas carceratorum." The word
"College" affords us no further enlightenment. It, too, means literally a
community or association, and, unlike the sister term University, it has
never become restricted to a scholastic association. The Senators of the
"College of Justice" are the judges of the Supreme Court in Scotland.

We must call in a third term to help us. In what we should describe as the
early days of European universities, there came into use a phrase sometimes
written as Studium Universale or Studium Commune, but more usually
Studium Generale. It was used in much the same sense in which we speak
of a University to-day, and a short sketch of its history is necessary for the
solution of our problem.

The twelfth century produced in Europe a renewal of interest and a revival
of learning, brought about partly by the influence of great thinkers like St
Anselm and Abelard, and partly by the discovery of lost works of Aristotle.
The impulse thus given to study resulted in an increase in the numbers of
students, and students were naturally attracted to schools where masters and
teachers possessed, or had left behind them, great names. At Bologna there
was a great teacher of the Civil Law in the first quarter of the twelfth
century, and a great writer on Canon Law lived there in the middle of the
same century. To Bologna, therefore, there flocked students of law, though
not of law alone. In the schools of Paris there were great masters of
philosophy and theology to whom students crowded from all parts of
Europe. Many of the foreign students at Paris were Englishmen, and when,
at the time of Becket's quarrel with Henry II., the disputes between the
sovereigns of England and France led to the recall of English students from
the domain of their King's enemy, there grew up at Oxford a great school or
Studium, which acquired something of the fame of Paris and Bologna. A
struggle between the clerks who studied at Oxford and the people of the
town broke out at the time of John's defiance of the Papacy, when the King
outlawed the clergy of England, and this struggle led to the rise of a school
at Cambridge. In Italy the institutions of the Studium at Bologna were

copied at Modena, at Reggio, at Vicenza, at Arezzo, at Padua, and
elsewhere, and in 1244 or 1245 Pope Innocent IV. founded a Studium of a
different constitution, in dependence upon the Papal Court. In Spain great
schools grew up at Palencia, Salamanca, and Valladolid; in France at
Montpellier, Orleans, Angers, and Toulouse, and at Lyons and Reims. The
impulse given by Bologna and Paris was thus leading to the foundation of
new Studia or the development of old ones, for there were schools of repute
at many of the places we have mentioned before the period with which we
are now dealing (c. 1170-1250). It was inevitable that there should be a
rivalry among these numerous schools, a rivalry which was accentuated as
small and insignificant Studia came to claim for themselves equality of
status with their older and greater contemporaries. Thus, in the latter half of
the thirteenth century, there arose a necessity for a definition and a
restriction of the term Studium Generale. The desirability of a definition
was enhanced by the practice of granting to ecclesiastics dispensations from
residence in their benefices for purposes of study; to prevent abuses it was
essential that such permission should be limited to a number of recognised
Studia Generalia.

The difficulty of enforcing such a definition throughout almost the whole of
Europe might seem likely to be great, but in point of fact it was
inconsiderable. In the first half of the thirteenth century, the term Studium
Generale was assuming recognised significance; a school which aspired to
the name must not be restricted to natives of a particular town or country, it
must have a number of masters, and it must teach not only the Seven
Liberal Arts (of which we shall have to speak later), but also one or more of
the higher studies of Theology, Law and Medicine (cf. Rashdall, vol. i. p.
9). But the title might still be adopted at will by ambitious schools, and the
intervention of the great potentates of Europe was required to provide a
mechanism for the differentiation of General from Particular Studia.
Already, in the twelfth century, an Emperor and a Pope had given special
privileges to students at Bologna and other Lombard towns, and a King of
France had conferred privileges upon the scholars of Paris. In 1224 the
Studium Generale of Naples was founded by the Emperor Frederick II., and
in 1231 he gave a great privilege to the School of Medicine at Salerno, a
Studium which was much more ancient than Bologna, but which existed
solely for the study of Medicine and exerted no influence upon the growth

of the European universities. Pope Gregory IX. founded the Studium at
Toulouse some fifteen years before Innocent IV. established the Studium of
the Roman Court. In 1254 Alfonso the Wise of Castile founded the Studium
Generale of Salamanca. Thus it became usual for a school which claimed
the status of a Studium Generale to possess the authority of Pope or
Emperor or King.

A distinction gradually arose between a Studium Generale under the
authority of a Pope or an Emperor and one which was founded by a King or
a City Republic, and which was known as a Studium Generale respectu
regni. The distinction was founded upon the power of the Emperor or the
Pope to grant the jus ubique docendi. This privilege, which could be
conferred by no lesser potentate, gave a master in one Studium Generale the
right of teaching in any other; it was more valuable in theory than in
practice, but it was held in such esteem that in 1292 Bologna and Paris
accepted the privilege from Pope Nicholas IV. Some of the Studia which we
have mentioned as existing in the first half of the thirteenth century—
Modena in Italy, and Lyons and Reims in France—never obtained this
privilege, and as their organisation and their importance did not justify their
inclusion among Studia Generalia, they never took rank among the
universities of Europe. The status of Bologna and of Paris was, of course,
universally recognised before and apart from the Bulls of Nicholas IV.;
Padua did not accept a Papal grant until 1346 and then merely as a
confirmation, not a creation, of its privileges as a Studium Generale; Oxford
never received, though it twice asked for, a declaratory or confirmatory
Bull, and based its claim upon immemorial custom and its own great
position. Cambridge, which in the thirteenth century was a much less
important seat of learning than Oxford, was formally recognised as a
Studium Generale by Pope John XXII. in 1318; but its claim to the title had
long been admitted, at all events within the realm of England. After 1318
Cambridge could grant the licentia ubique docendi, which Oxford did not
formally confer, although Oxford men, as the graduates of a Studium
Generale, certainly possessed the privilege.

Long before the definition of a Studium Generale as a school possessing, by
the gift of Pope or Emperor, the jus ubique docendi, was generally accepted

throughout Europe, we find the occurrence of the more familiar term,
"Universitas," which we are now in a position to understand.

A Universitas was an association in the world of learning which
corresponded to a Guild in the world of commerce, a union among men
living in a Studium and possessing some common interests to protect and
advance. Originally, a Universitas could exist in a less important school
than a Studium Generale, but with exceptional instances of this kind we are
not concerned. By the time which we have chosen for the central point of
our survey, the importance of these guilds or Universitates had so greatly
increased that the word "Universitas" was coming to be equivalent to
"Studium Generale." In the fifteenth century, Dr Rashdall tells us, the two
terms were synonymous. The Universitas Studii, the guild of the School,
became, technically and officially, the Studium Generale itself, and Studia
Generalia were distinguished by the kind of Universitates or guilds which
they possessed. It is usual to speak of Bologna and Paris as the two great
archetypal universities, and this description does not depend upon mere
priority of date or upon the impetus given to thought and interest in Europe
by their teachers or their methods. Bologna and Paris were two Studia
Generalia with two different and irreconcilable types of Universitas. The
Universitates of the Studium of Bologna were guilds of students; the
Universitas of the Studium of Paris was a guild of masters. The great seats
of learning in Medieval Europe were either universities of students or
universities of masters, imitations of Bologna or of Paris, or modifications
of one or the other or of both. It would be impossible to draw up a list and
divide medieval universities into compartments. Nothing is more difficult to
classify than the constitutions of living societies; a constitution which one
man might regard as a modification of the constitution of Bologna would be
in the opinion of another more correctly described as a modification of the
constitution of Paris, and a development in the constitution of a University
might be held to have altered its fundamental position and to transfer it
from one class to another.

Where students legislated for themselves, their rules were neither numerous
nor detailed. Our information about life in the student-universities is,
therefore, comparatively small, and it is with the universities of masters that
we shall be chiefly concerned. It is, however, essential to understand the

powers acquired by the student-guilds at Bologna, the institutions of which
were reproduced by most of the Italian universities, by those of Spain and
Portugal, and, much less accurately, by the smaller universities of France.

CHAPTER II
LIFE IN THE STUDENT-UNIVERSITIES

The Universitates or guilds which were formed in the Studium Generale of
Bologna were associations of foreign students. The lack of political unity in
the Italian peninsula was one of the circumstances that led to the peculiar
and characteristic constitution evolved by the Italian universities. A famous
Studium in an Italian city state must of necessity attract a large proportion
of foreign students. These foreign students had neither civil nor political
rights; they were men "out of their own law," for whom the government
under which they lived made small and uncertain provision. Their strength
lay in their numbers, and in the effect which their presence produced upon
the prosperity and the reputation of the town. They early recognised the
necessity of union if full use was to be made of the offensive and defensive
weapons they possessed. The men who came to study law at Bologna were
not schoolboys; some of them were beneficed ecclesiastics, others were
lawyers, and most of them were possessed of adequate means of living. The
provisions of Roman Law favoured the creation of such protective guilds;
the privileges and immunities of the clergy afforded an analogy for the
claim of foreign students to possess laws of their own; and the threat of the
secession of a large community was likely to render a city state amenable to
argument. The growth of guilds or communities held together by common
interests and safeguarded by solemn oaths is one of the features of
European history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the students of
Bologna took no unusual or extra-ordinary step when they formed their
Universitates.

The distinction of students into "Nations," which is still preserved in some
of the Scottish universities, is derived from this guild-forming movement at
Bologna at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth
century. No citizen of Bologna was permitted to be a member of a guild, the
protection of which he did not require. The tendency at first was towards
the formation of a number of Universitates, membership of which was
decided by considerations of nationality. But the conditions which had led
to the formation of these Universitates were also likely to produce some
measure of unification, and the law-students at Bologna soon ceased to
have more than two great guilds, distinguished on geographical principles
as the Universitas Citramontanorum and the Universitas Ultramontanorum.
Each was sub-divided into nations; the cis-Alpine University consisting of
Lombards, Tuscans, and Romans, and the trans-Alpine University of a
varying number, including a Spanish, a Gascon, a Provençal, a Norman, and
an English nation. The three cis-Alpine nations were, of course, much more
populous at Bologna than the dozen or more trans-Alpine nations, and they
were therefore sub-divided into sections known as Consiliariae. The
students of Arts and Medicine, who at first possessed no organisation of
their own and were under the control of the great law-guilds, succeeded in
the fourteenth century in establishing a new Universitas within the Studium.
The influence of Medicine predominated, for the Arts course was, at
Bologna, regarded as merely a preparation for the study of Law and,
especially, of Medicine; but this third Universitas gave a definite status and
definite rights to the students of Arts. In the same century the two jurist
universities came to act together so constantly that they were, for practical
purposes, united, so that, by the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
Studium Generale of Bologna contained virtually two universities, one of
Law, and the other of Arts and Medicine, governed by freely-elected
rectors. The peculiar relations of Theology to the Studium and to the
universities is a topic which belongs to constitutional history, and not to our
special subject.

The universities of Bologna had to maintain a struggle with two other
organisations, the guilds of masters and the authorities of this city state.
They kept the first in subjection; they ultimately succumbed to the second.
A guild of masters, doctors, or professors had existed in the Studium before
the rise of the Universitates, and it survived with limited, but clearly

defined, powers. The words "Doctor," "Professor," and "Magister" or
"Dominus" were at first used indifferently, and a Master of Arts of a
Scottish or a German University is still described on his diploma as a
Doctor of Philosophy. The term "Master" was little used at Bologna, but it
is convenient to employ "master" and "student" as the general terms for
teacher and taught. The masters were the teachers of the Studium, and they
protected their own interests by forming a guild the members of which, and
they alone, had the right to teach. Graduation was originally admission into
the guild of masters, and the chief privilege attached to it was the right to
teach. This privilege ultimately became merely a theoretical right at
Bologna, where the teachers tended to become a close corporation of
professors, like the Senatus of a Scottish University.

The Guild or College of Masters who taught law in the Studium of Bologna
naturally resented the rise of the universities of students. The doctors, they
said, should elect the rectors, as they do at Paris. The scholars follow no
trade, they are merely the pupils of those who do practise a profession, and
they have no right to choose rulers for themselves any more than the
apprentices of the skinners. The masters were citizens of Bologna, and it
might be expected that the State would assist them in their struggle with a
body of foreign apprentices; but the threat of migration turned the scales in
favour of the students. There were no buildings and no endowments to
render a migration difficult, and migration did from time to time take place.
The masters themselves were dependent upon fees for their livelihood; they
were, at Bologna, frequently laymen with no benefice to fall back upon, and
with wives and children to maintain. As time went on and the teaching
masters became a limited number of professors, they were given salaries, at
first by the student-universities themselves and afterwards by the city,
which feared to offend the student-universities. They thus passed, to a large
extent, under the control of the universities; how far, we shall see as our
story progresses. The city authorities tried ineffectually to curb the
universities and to prevent migrations, but the students, with the support of
the Papacy, succeeded in maintaining the strength of their organisations,
and when, in the middle of the fourteenth century, secessions from Bologna
came to an end, the students had obtained the recognition and most of the
privileges they desired. In course of time the authority of the State increased
at Bologna and elsewhere, bodies of Reformatores Studii came to be

appointed by republics or tyrants in Italian university cities, and these
boards gradually absorbed the government of the universities. The
foundation of residential colleges, and the erection of buildings by the
universities themselves, deprived the students of the possibility of reviving
the long disused weapon of a migration, and when the power of the Papacy
became supreme in Bologna, the freedom of its student-universities came to
an end. This, however, belongs to a later age. We must now attempt to
obtain some picture of the life of a medieval student at Bologna during the
greatness of the Universitates.

We will choose an Englishman who arrives at Bologna early in the fifteenth
century to study law. He finds himself at once a member of the English
nation of the Trans-montane University; he pays his fee, takes the oath of
obedience to the Rector, and his name is placed upon the "matricula" or roll
of members of the University. He does not look about for a lodging-house,
like a modern student in a Scottish University, but joins with some
companions (socii) probably of his own nation, to take a house. If our new-
comer had been a Spaniard, he might have been fortunate enough to find a
place in the great Spanish College which had been founded in the latter half
of the fourteenth century; as it is, he and his friends settle down almost as
citizens of Bologna. The success of the universities in their attempt to form
a citizenship outside the state had long ago resulted in the creation also of a
semi-citizenship within the state. The laws of the city of Bologna allowed
the students to be regarded as citizens so long as they were members of a
University. Our young Englishman has, of course, no share in the
government of the town, but he possesses all rights necessary for the
protection of his person and property; he can make a legal will and bring an
action against a citizen. The existence of these privileges, unusual and
remarkable in a medieval state, may excite his curiosity about the method
by which they were acquired, and he will probably be told strange and
terrible tales of the bad old times when a foreign student was as helpless as
any other foreigner in a strange town, and might be tortured by unfair and
tyrannous judges. If he is historically minded, he will learn about the rise of
the smaller guilds which are now amalgamated in his Universitas; how, like
other guilds, they were benefit societies caring for the sick and the poor,
burying the dead, and providing for common religious services and
common feasts. He will be told (in language unfamiliar at Oxford) how the

proctors or representatives of the guild were sent to cheer up the sick and, if
necessary, to relieve their necessities, and to reconcile members who had
quarrelled. The corporate payment for feasts included the cost of replacing
broken windows, which (at all events among the German students at
Bologna) seem to have been associated with occasions of rejoicing. The
guild would pay for the release of one of its members who was in prison,
but it would also insist upon the payment of the debts, even of those who
had "gone down." It was essential that the credit of the guild with the
citizens of Bologna should be maintained.

Many of these purposes were still served by the "nation" to which our
Bologna freshman belonged: but the really important organisation was that
of his Universitas. One of his first duties might happen to be connected with
the election of a new Rector. The title of the office was common in Italy and
was the equivalent of the Podesta, or chief magistrate, of an Italian town.
The choice of a new Rector would probably be limited, for the honour was
costly, and the share of the fines which the Rector received could not nearly
meet his expenses. As his jurisdiction included clerks, it was necessary, by
the Canon Law, that he should have the tonsure, and be, at all events
technically, a clerk. He could not belong to any religious order, his
obligations to which might conflict with his duty to the Universitas, and the
expense of the office made it desirable that he should be a beneficed
clergyman who was dispensed from residence in his benefice; he could
enter upon his duties at the age of twenty-four, and he was not necessarily a
priest or even a deacon. Our freshman played a small part in the election.
As a member of the English nation, he would help to choose a Consiliarius,
who had a vote in the election, and who became one of the Rector's
permanent Council. The dignity of the Rector's position would be impressed
upon our novice by his senior contemporaries, who could boast that, if a
Cardinal came to Bologna, he must yield precedence to the Rector, and the
lesson would be emphasised by a great feast on the occasion of the solemn
installation and possibly by a tournament and a dance, certainly by some
more magnificent banquet than that given by a Rector of the University of
Arts and Medicine. After our student's day there grew up a strange
ceremony of tearing the robe of the new Rector and selling back the pieces
to him, and statutes had to be passed prohibiting the acceptance of money
for the fragments, although if any student succeeded in capturing the robe

without injuring it, he might claim its redemption. The state and hospitality
which the office entailed led to its being made compulsory to accept the
offer of it, but this arrangement failed to maintain the ancient prestige of the
Rectorship which, after the decline of the Universitates themselves, had
outlived its usefulness.

Magnificent as was the position of the Rector of a Universitas, our young
Englishman would soon discover that his Rector was only a constitutional
sovereign. He had to observe the statutes and to consult his Council upon
important questions. He had no power to dispense with the penalties
imposed by the regulations, and for any mismanagement of the pecuniary
affairs of the Universitas he was personally liable, when at the end of his
period of office he had to meet a Committee and to render an account of his
stewardship. He could sentence offending students to money fines, but he
must have the consent of his Council before expelling them or declaring
them subject to the ecclesiastical and social penalties of the perjured man.
He claimed to try cases brought by students against townsmen, and about
the time of our scholar's arrival, the town had admitted that he might try
students accused of criminal offences forbidden by the University statutes,
and had agreed to carry out his sentences. Too free a use of the secular arm
would naturally lead to unpopularity and trouble; the spectacle of a student
being handed over to the gaolers of the Podesta or of the Bishop can never
have been pleasant in the eyes of a Universitas. Changes in the statutes of
the University could not be made by the Rector; every twenty years eight
"Statutarii" were appointed to revise the code, and alterations made at other
times required the consent of the Congregation, which consisted of all
students except citizens of Bologna and a few poor scholars who did not
subscribe to the funds of the Universitas. By the time of which we are
speaking, the two jurist-universities at Bologna met together in one
Congregation, and if a Congregation happens to be held during our
Englishman's residence at Bologna, he will find himself bound under
serious penalties to attend its session, where he will mix on equal, terms
with members of the Cismontane University, listening to, or taking part in,
the debates (conducted in Latin) and throwing his black or white bean into
the ballot box when a vote is necessary.

Although the city of Bologna never admitted the jurisdiction of a
Universitas over citizens of the town, there were some classes of citizens
whose trade or profession made them virtually its subjects. Landlords,
stationers, and masters or doctors were in a peculiar relation to the
universities, which did not fail to use their advantage to the uttermost. If our
English student and his socii had any dispute about the rent of their house,
there was a compulsory system of arbitration; if he found an error in a MS.
which he had hired or purchased from a Bologna bookseller he was bound
to report it to a University Board whose duty it was to inspect MSS. offered
for sale or hire, and the bookseller would be ordered to pay a fine; he was
protected from extortionate prices by a system which allowed the
bookseller a fixed profit on a second-hand book. MSS. were freely
reproduced by the booksellers' clerks, and were neither scarce nor unduly
expensive, although elaborately illuminated MSS. were naturally very
valuable. The landlords and the booksellers were kept in proper submission
by threats of interdictio or privatio. A citizen who offended the University
was debarred from all intercourse with students, who were strictly
forbidden to hire his house or his books; if a townsman brought a
"calumnious accusation" against a student, and disobeyed a rectorial
command to desist, he and his children, to the third generation, and all their
goods, were to lie under an interdict, "sine spe restitutionis."

Interdictio, or discommuning, was also the great weapon which might be
employed against the masters of the Studium. The degradation of the
masters was a gradual process, and it was never complete. The privileges
given by Frederick Barbarossa to Lombard scholars in the middle of the
twelfth century included a right of jurisdiction over their pupils, and a Papal
Bull of the end of the century speaks of masters and scholars meeting
together in congregations. The organisation of the Universitas ultimately
confined membership of congregation to students, and the powers of the
Rector rendered the magisterial jurisdiction merely nominal. The loss of
their privileges is attributed by Canon Rashdall to the attitude they adopted
in the early struggles between the municipality and the student-guilds. The
doctors, who were citizens of Bologna, allied themselves, he says, "with the
City against the students in the selfish effort to exclude from the substantial
privileges of the Doctorate all but their own fellow-citizens.... It was
through identifying themselves with the City rather than with the scholars

that the Doctors of Bologna sank into their strange and undignified
servitude to their own pupils." They made a further mistake in quarrelling
with the town—the earliest migrations were migrations of professors—and
when, in the middle of the thirteenth century, a permanent modus vivendi
was arrived at between the city and the universities, the rights of the doctors
received no consideration. Other citizens of Bologna were forbidden to take
an oath of obedience to the rectors, but the masters, who, in theory,
possessed rights of jurisdiction over their pupils, were, in fact, compelled
by the universities to take this oath. Even those of them who received
salaries from the town were not exempted. A doctor who refused to take a
vow of obedience to the representative of his pupils had no means of
collecting his lecture-fees, which remained of some importance even after
the introduction of salaries, and he was liable to further punishment at the
will of the Rector. The ultimate penalty was deprivatio, and when this
sentence was pronounced, not only were the lectures of the offending doctor
boycotted, but all social intercourse with him was forbidden; students must
avoid his company in private as well as decline his ministrations in the
Studium. His restoration could only be accomplished by a vote of the whole
University solemnly assembled in Congregation.

The oath of obedience was not merely a constitutional weapon kept in
reserve for occasional serious disputes; it affected the daily life of the
Studium, and the masters were subject to numerous petty indignities, which
could not fail to impress our English student if he was familiar with
University life in his own country. He would see, with surprise, a doctor's
lecture interrupted by the arrival of a University Bedel, as the debates of the
House of Commons are interrupted by the arrival of Black Rod, and his
instructor would maintain a reverent silence while the Rector's officer
delivered some message from the University, or informed the professor of
some new regulation. If the learned doctor "cut" a lecture, our student
would find himself compelled to inform the authorities of the University,
and he would hear of fines inflicted upon the doctors for absence, for
lateness, for attracting too small an audience, for omitting portions of a
subject or avoiding the elucidation of its difficulties, and for inattention
while the "precepta" or "mandata" of the Rector were being read in the
schools. He and his fellow-students might graciously grant their master a
holiday, but the permission had to be confirmed by the Rector; if a lecture

was prolonged a minute after the appointed time, the doctor found himself
addressing empty benches. The humiliation of the master's position was
increased by the fact that his pupils were always acting as spies upon him,
and they were themselves liable to penalties for conniving at any
infringement of the regulations on his part. At Bologna, even the privilege
of teaching was, to a slight extent, shared by the doctors with their pupils.
Lectures were divided into two classes, ordinary and extra-ordinary; the
ordinary lectures were the duty of the doctors, but senior students
(bachelors) were authorised by the Rector to share with the doctors the duty
of giving extra-ordinary lectures. There were six chairs, endowed by the
city, which were held by students, and the occupant of one of these was
entitled to deliver ordinary lectures. Dr Rashdall finds the explanation of
this anomaly in an incident in the fourteenth century history of Bologna,
when the Tyrant of the City forbade the professors to teach. The student-
chairs were rather endowments for the Rectorship or for poor scholars than
serious rivals to the ordinary professorships, and the extra-ordinary lectures
delivered by students or bachelors may be regarded as a kind of
apprenticeship for future doctors.

There remained one department of the work of the Studium in which our
Bologna student would find his masters supreme. The sacred right of
examining still belonged to the teachers, even though the essential purpose
of the examination was changed. The doctors of Bologna had succeeded in
preserving the right to teach as a privilege of Bolognese citizens and even
of restricting it, to some extent, to certain families, and the foreign student
could not hope to become a professor of his own studium. But the prestige
of the University rendered Bolognese students ambitious of the doctorate,
and the doctorate had come to mean more than a mere licence to teach. This
licence, which had originally been conferred by the doctors themselves,
required, after the issue of a Papal Bull in 1219, the consent of the
Archdeacon of Bologna, and the Papal grant of the jus ubique docendi in
1292 increased at once the importance of the mastership and of the
authority of the Archdeacon, who came to be described as the Chancellor
and Head of the Studium. "Graduation," in Dr Rashdall's words, "ceased to
imply the mere admission into a private Society of teachers, and bestowed a
definite legal status in the eyes of Church and State alike.... The
Universities passed from merely local into ecumenical organisations; the

Doctorate became an order of intellectual nobility with as distinct and
definite a place in the hierarchical system of medieval Christendom as the
Priesthood or the Knighthood." The Archdeacon of Bologna, even when he
was regarded as the Chancellor, did not wrest from the college of doctors
the right to decide who should be deemed worthy of a title which Cardinals
were pleased to possess. The licence which he required before admitting a
student to the doctorate continued to be conferred by the Bologna doctors
after due examination.

We will assume that our English student has now completed his course of
study. He has duly attended the prescribed lectures—not less than three a
week. He has gone in the early mornings, when the bell at St Peter's Church
was ringing for mass, to spend some two hours listening to the "ordinary"
lecture delivered by a doctor in his own house or in a hired room; his
successors a generation or two later would find buildings erected by the
University for the purpose. The rest of his morning and an hour or two in
the afternoon have also, if he is an industrious student, been devoted to
lectures, and he has not been neglectful of private study. He has enjoyed the
numerous holidays afforded by the Feasts of the Church, and several
vacations in the course of the year, including ten days at Christmas, a
fortnight at Easter, and about six weeks in the autumn. After five years of
study, if he is a civilian, and four if he is a canonist, the Rector has raised
him to the dignity of a Bachelor by permitting him to give "extra-ordinary"
lectures—and after two more years spent in this capacity he is ready to
proceed to the doctorate. The Rector, having been satisfied by the English
representative in his Council that the "doctorand" has performed the whole
duty of the Bolognese student, gives him permission to enter for the first or
Private Examination, and he again takes the oath of obedience to that
dignitary. The doctor under whom he has studied vouches for his
competence, and presents him first to the Archdeacon and some days
afterwards to the College of Doctors, before whom he takes a solemn oath
never to seek admittance into the Bolognese College of Doctors, or to teach,
or attempt to perform any of the functions of a doctor, at Bologna. They
then give him a passage for exposition and send him home. He is followed
to his house by his own doctor who hears his exposition in private, and
brings him back to the august presence of the College of Doctors and the
Archdeacon. Here he treats his thesis and is examined upon it by two or

more doctors, who are ordered by the University statutes not to treat any
victim of this rigorous and tremendous examination otherwise than if he
were their own son, and are threatened with grave penalties, including
suspension for a year. The College then votes upon his case, each doctor
saying openly and clearly, and without any qualification, "Approbo" or
"Reprobo," and if the decision is favourable he is now a Licentiate and has
to face only the expensive but not otherwise formidable ordeal of the
second or Public Examination. As a newly appointed Scottish judge is, to
this day, admitted to his office by trying cases, so the Bologna doctor was
admitted to his new dignity by an exercise in lecturing. The idea is common
to many medieval institutions, and it survived at Bologna, even though the
licentiate had, at his private examination, renounced the right of teaching.
Our Englishman and his socii go together to the Cathedral, where he states
a thesis and defends it against the attacks of other licentiates. His own
doctor, known in Bologna (and elsewhere) as the Promoter, presents him to
the Chancellor, who confers upon him the jus ubique docendi. He is then
seated in a master's chair, and the Promotor gives him an open book and a
gold ring and (in the terminology of a modern Scottish University) "caps"
him with the biretta. He is dismissed with a benediction and the kiss of
peace, and is conducted through the town, in triumphal procession, by his
friends, to whom he gives a feast.

The feast adds very considerably to the expenses of the doctorate, for which
fees are, of course, exacted by the authorities of the University, the College
of Doctors, and the Archdeacon. A considerable proportion of the
disciplinary regulations, made by the student-universities, aimed at
restricting the expenditure on feasting at the inception of a new doctor and
on other occasions. When our young English Doctorand received the
permission of his Rector to proceed to his degree, he was made to promise
not to exceed the proper expenditure on fees and feasts, and he was
expressly forbidden to organise a tournament. The spending of money on
extravagant costume was also prohibited by the statutes of the University,
which forbade a student to purchase, either directly or through an agent, any
costume other than the ordinary black garment, or any outer covering other
than the black cappa or gabard. Other disciplinary restrictions at Bologna
dealt with quarrelling and gambling. The debates of Congregation were not
to be liable to interruption by one student stabbing his opponent in Italian

fashion, and no one was allowed to carry arms to a meeting of
Congregation; if a student had reason to apprehend personal violence from
another, the Rector could give him a dispensation from the necessity of
attendance. Gaming and borrowing from unauthorised money-lenders were
strictly forbidden; to enter a gaming-house, or to keep one, or to watch a
game of dice was strictly forbidden. The University of Arts and Medicine
granted a dispensation for three days at Christmas, and a Rector might use
his own discretion in the matter. The penalties were fines, and for
contumacy or grave offences, suspension or expulsion.

There are indications that the conduct of the doctors in these respects was
not above suspicion; they were expressly prohibited from keeping gaming-
houses; and the appointment of four merchants of the town, who alone were
empowered to lend money to students, was a protection not only against
ordinary usurers, but also against doctors who lent money to students in
order to attract them to their lectures. That the ignominious position of the
Bologna doctors had an evil effect upon their morals, is evident not only
from this, but also from the existence of bribery, in connection with
examinations for the doctorate, although corruption of this kind was not
confined to the student-universities.

The regulations of the greatest of the residential colleges of Bologna, the
College of Spain, naturally interfere much more with individual liberty than
do the statutes of the student-universities, even though the government of
the College was a democracy, based upon the democratic constitution of the
University. We shall have an opportunity of referring to the discipline of the
Spanish College when we deal with the College system in the northern
universities, and meanwhile we pass to some illustrations of life in student-
universities elsewhere than at Bologna.

At Padua we find a "Schools-peace" like the special peace of the highway
or the market in medieval England; special penalties were prescribed for
attacks on scholars in the Schools, or going to or returning from the Schools
at the accustomed hours. The presence of the Rector also made a slight
attack count as an "atrocious injury." The University threatened to interdict,
for ten years, the ten houses nearest to the place where a scholar was killed;
if he was wounded the period was four or six years. At Florence, where the

Faculty of Medicine was very important, there is an interesting provision
for the study of anatomy. An agreement was made with the town, by which
the students of Medicine were to have two corpses every year, one male and
one female. The bodies were to be those of malefactors, who gained, to
some extent, by the arrangement, for the woman's penalty was to be
changed from burning, and the man's from decapitation, to hanging. A
pathetic clause provides that the criminals are not to be natives of Florence,
but of captive race, with few friends or relations. If the number of medical
students increased, they were to have two male bodies. At Florence, as
almost everywhere, we find regulations against gambling, but an exception
was made for the Kalends of May and the days immediately before and
after, and no penalty could be inflicted for gambling in the house of the
Rector. The records, of Florence afford an illustration of the checks upon
the rectorial power, to which we have referred in speaking of the typical
Student-University at Bologna. In 1433, a series of complaints were
brought against a certain Hieronimus who had just completed his year of
office as Rector, and a Syndicate, consisting of a Doctor of Decrees (who
was also a scholar in civil law), a scholar in Canon Law, and a scholar in
Medicine, was appointed to inquire into the conduct of the late Rector and
of his two Camerarii. The accusations were both general and personal, and
the Syndics, after deciding that Hieronimus must restore eight silver grossi
of University money which he had appropriated, proceeded to hear the
charges brought by individuals. A lecturer in the University complained that
the Rector had unjustly and maliciously given a sentence against him and in
favour of a Greek residing at Florence, and that he had unjustly declared
him perjured; fifty gold florins were awarded as damages for this and some
other injuries. A doctor of Arts and Medicine obtained a judgment for two
florins for expenses incurred when the Rector was in his house. A student
complained that he had been denounced as "infamis" in all the Schools for
not paying his matriculation-fee, and that his name had been entered in the
book called the "Speculum." The Syndics ordered the record of his
punishment to be erased. The most interesting case is that of student of
Civil Law, called Andreas Romuli de Lancisca. He averred that he had sold
Hieronimus six measures of grain, to be paid for at the customary price.
After four months' delay, the Rector paid seven pounds, and when asked to
complete the payment, gave Andreas a book of medicine, "for which I got
five florins." Some days later he demanded the return of the book, to which

Andreas replied: "Date mihi residuum et libenter restituam librum." To this
request the Rector, "in superbiam elevatus," answered, "Tu reddes librum et
non solvam tibi." The quarrel continued, and one morning, when Andreas
was in the Schools at a lecture, Hieronimus sent the servant of the Podesta,
who seized him "ignominiose et vituperose" in the Schools and conducted
him to the town prison like a common thief. For all these injuries Andreas
craved redress and a sum of forty florins. The damages, he thought, should
be high, not merely for his personal wrongs, but also for the insult to the
scholar's dress which he wore, and, indeed, to the whole University. He was
allowed twenty pounds in addition to the sum due for the grain. The
Syndicate of 1433 must have been an extreme case; matters were
complicated by the fact that the Rector's brother was "Executor
Ordinamentorum Justitiæ Civitatis Florentiæ," and he was therefore
suspected of playing into the hands of the city. But the knowledge that such
an investigation was possible must have restrained the arbitrary tendencies
of a Rector.

A reference to the imitation of the Bolognese constitution in Spain must
close this portion of our survey. At Lerida, in the earliest code of statutes
(about 1300), we find the doctors and master sworn to obey the Rector, who
can fine them, though he must not expel them without the consent of the
whole University. Any improper criticisms of the Rector ("verba injuriosa
vel contumeliosa") by anyone, of whatsoever dignity, are to be punished by
suspension until satisfaction is made, and so great is the glory of the office
("Rectoris officium tanta [excellentia] præfulget") that an ex-Rector is not
bound to take the oath to his successor. The regulations affecting
undergraduates are more detailed than at Bologna, and indicate a stricter
discipline. After eight days' attendance at a doctor's lecture, a student must
not forsake it to go to another doctor; no scholar is to go to the School on
horseback unless for some urgent cause; scholars are not to give anything to
actors or jesters or other "truffatores" (troubadours), nor to invite them to
meals, except on the feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, or at the
election of a Rector, or when doctors or masters are created. Even on these
occasions only food may be given, although an ordinance of the second
Rector allows doctors and masters to give them money. No students, except
boys under fourteen, are to be allowed to play at ball in the city on St
Nicholas' day or St Katherine's day, and none are to indulge in unbecoming

amusements, or to walk about dressed up as Jews or Saracens—a rule
which is also found in the statutes of the University of Perpignan. If
scholars are found bearing arms by day in the students' quarter of the town,
they are to forfeit their arms, and if they are found at night with either arms
or musical instruments in the students' quarter, they are to forfeit arms or
instruments. If they are found outside their own quarters, by night or by
day, with arms or musical instruments, the town officials will deal with
laymen, and the Bishop or the Rector with clerks. Laymen might be either
students or doctors in Spain as in Italy; at Salamanca, a lecturer's marriage
was included among the necessary causes which excused a temporary
absence from his duties. In the universities of Southern France, the marriage
of resident doctors and students was also contemplated, and the statutes of
the University of Aix contain a table of charges payable as "charivari" by a
rector, a doctor, a licentiate, a bachelor, a student, and a bedel. In each case
the amount payable for marrying a widow was double the ordinary fee. If
the bridegroom declined to pay, the "dominus promotor," accompanied by
"dominis studentibus," was, by permission of the Rector, to go to his house
armed with frying-pans, bassoons, and horns, and to make a great tumult,
without, however, doing any injury to his neighbours. Continued recusancy
was to be punished by placing filth outside the culprit's door on feast-days.
In the University of Dôle, there was a married Rector in 1485, but this was
by a special dispensation. There are traces of the existence of married
undergraduates at Oxford in the fifteenth century, and, in the same century,
marriage was permitted in the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, but the
insistence upon celibacy in the northern universities is one of the
characteristic differences between them and the universities of Southern
Europe.

CHAPTER III
THE UNIVERSITIES OF MASTERS

The Guild or Universitas which grew up in the Studium Generale of Paris
was a Society of masters, not of students. The Studium Generale was, in
origin, connected with the Cathedral Schools, and recognition as a Master
was granted by the Chancellor of the Cathedral, whose duty it was to confer
it upon every competent scholar who asked for it. The successful applicant
was admitted by the existing masters into their Society, and this admission
or inception was the origin of degrees in the University of Paris. The date of
the growth of an organised Guild is uncertain; Dr Rashdall, after a survey of
the evidence, concludes that "it is a fairly safe inference that the period
1150-1170—probably the latter years of that period—saw the birth of the
University of Paris." Such organisation as existed in the twelfth century was
slight and customary, depending, as the student-universities of Bologna and
in other medieval guilds, upon no external authority. The successors of
these early masters, writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, relate
how their predecessors, men reverend in character and famous for learning,
decided, as the number of their pupils increased, that they could do their
work better if they became a united body, and that they therefore formed
themselves into a College or University, on which Church and State
conferred many privileges. The bond of union they describe as a "jus
speciale" ("si quodam essent juris specialis vinculo sociati"), and this
conception explains the appearance of their earliest code of statutes in the
first decade of the thirteenth century. The Guild of masters, at Paris, like the
Guild of students at Bologna, could use with advantage the threat of a
migration, and, after a violent quarrel with the town in the year 1200, they
received special privileges from Philip Augustus. Some years later, Pope
Innocent III. permitted the "scholars of Paris" to elect a procurator or
proctor to represent their interests in law-suits at Rome. Litigation at Rome
was connected with disputes with the Chancellor of the Cathedral. Already
the scholars of Paris had complained to the Pope about the tyranny of the
Chancellor, and Innocent had supported their cause, remarking that when he
himself studied at Paris he had never heard of scholars being treated in this
fashion. It moved and astonished the Pope not a little that the Chancellor
should attempt to exact an oath of obedience and payment of money from
the masters, and, in the end, that official was compelled to give up his claim
to demand fees or oaths of fealty or obedience for a licence to teach, and to
relax any oaths that had already been taken. The masters, as Dr Rashdall
points out, already possessed the weapon of boycotting, and ordering their

students to boycott, a teacher upon whom the Chancellor conferred a
licence against the wish of their guild, but they could not at first compel
him to grant a licence to anyone whom they desired to admit. After the
Papal intervention of 1212, the Chancellor was bound to licence a candidate
recommended by the masters.

In the account of their own history, from which we have already quoted, the
Parisian masters speak of their venerable "gignasium litterarum" as divided
into four faculties, Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy, and they
compare the four streams of learning to the four rivers of Paradise. The
largest and most important was the Faculty of Arts, and the masters of that
Faculty were the protagonists in the struggle with the Chancellor, a struggle
which continued long after the intervention of Innocent III. In the course of
this long and successful conflict, the Faculty of Arts developed an internal
organisation, consisting of four nations, distinguished as the French, the
Normans, the Picards, and the English. Each nation elected a proctor, and
the four proctors or other representatives of the nations elected a Rector,
who was the Head of the Faculty of Arts. The division into nations and the
title of Rector may have been copied from Bologna, but the organisation at
Paris was essentially different. The Parisian nations were governed by
masters, not by students, and whereas, at Bologna, the artists were an
insignificant minority, at Paris, the Rector became, by the end of the
thirteenth century, the most powerful official of the University, and, by the
middle of the fourteenth, was recognised as its Head. The superior Faculties
of Theology, Canon Law, and Medicine, though they possessed independent
constitutions under their own Deans, consisted largely of men who had
taken a Master's or a Bachelor's degree in Arts, and, from the middle of the
thirteenth century, they took an oath to the Rector, which was held to be
binding even after they became doctors. The non-artist members of these
Faculties were not likely to be able to resist an authority whose existence
was generally welcomed as the centre of the opposition to the Chancellor.
Ultimately, the whole University passed under the sway of the Rector, and
the power of the Chancellor was restricted to granting the jus ubique
docendi as the representative of the Pope. Even this was little more than a
formality, for the Chancellor "ceased," says Dr Rashdall, "to have any real
control over the grant or refusal of Licences, except in so far as he retained
the nomination of the Examiners in Arts."

At Oxford, the University was also a Guild of masters, but Oxford was not
a cathedral city, and there was no conflict with the Bishop or the
Chancellor. In the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the masters of the Studium probably elected a Rector or Head in
imitation of the Parisian Chancellor. After the quarrel with the citizens,
which led to the migration to Cambridge, and when King John had
submitted to the Pope, the masters were able to obtain an ordinance from
the Papal legate determining the punishment of the offenders, and providing
against the recurrence of such incidents. The legate ordered that if the
citizens should seize the person of a clerk, his surrender might be demanded
by "the Bishop of Lincoln, or the Archdeacon of the place or his Official, or
the Chancellor, or whomsoever the Bishop of Lincoln shall depute to this
office." The clause lays stress upon the authority of the Bishop of Lincoln,
which must in no way be diminished by any action of the townsmen. The
ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop was welcomed by the University as a
protection against the town, and the Chancellor was too far away from
Lincoln to press the privileges of the Diocese or the Cathedral against the
clerks who were under his special care. The Oxford Chancellor was a
master of the Studium, and, though he was the representative of the Bishop,
he was also the Head of the masters guild, and from very early times was
elected by the masters. Thus he came to identify himself with the
University, and his office increased in importance as privileges were
conferred upon the University by kings and popes. No Rectorship grew up
as a rival to the Chancellorship, though some of the functions of the
Parisian Rector were performed at Oxford by the Proctors. There were only
two "Nations" at Oxford, for the Oxford masters were, as a rule,
Englishmen; men from north of the Trent formed the Northern Nation, and
the rest of England the Southern Nation. Scotsmen were classed as
Northerners, and Welshmen and Irishmen as Southerners. The division into
Nations was short-lived, and the two Rectors or Proctors, though still
distinguished as Northern and Southern, soon became representatives
elected by the whole Faculty of Arts. As at Paris, the Faculty of Arts was the
moving spirit in the University, and Theology, Law, and Medicine never
developed at Oxford any independent organisation. The proctors, as Dr
Rashdall has shown, thus became the Executive of the University as a
whole, and not merely of the Faculty of Arts.

An essential difference between Bologna and its two great northern sisters
lies in the fact that, at Paris and at Oxford, masters and scholars alike were
all clerks, possessing the tonsure and wearing the clerical garb, though not
necessarily even in minor orders. They could thus claim the privileges of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and at Oxford this jurisdiction was exercised by
the Chancellor, who also, along with the proctors, was responsible for
academic discipline and could settle disputes between members of the
University. In this, the University of Oxford had a position of independence
which Paris never achieved, for though the Parisian Rector's court dealt
with cases of discipline and with internal disputes, criminal jurisdiction
remained the prerogative of the Bishop. In the middle of the fourteenth
century, royal grants of privileges to the University of Oxford culminated in
the subjection of the city, and from the middle of the fifteenth "the burghers
lived in their own town almost as the helots or subjects of a conquering
people." (Cf. Rashdall, vol. ii. chap. 12, sec. 3). The constitution of Oxford
was closely imitated at Cambridge, where the Head of the University was
also the Chancellor, and the executive consisted of two rectors or proctors.
In the fifteenth century the University freed itself from the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Ely.

Germany possessed no universities before the fourteenth century. Prague
was founded in 1347-8, and was followed before 1400 by Vienna, Erfurt,
Heidelberg, and Cologne, and in the first quarter of the next century by
Würzburg, Leipsic, Rostock, and in the Low Countries by Louvain. The
first Scottish University dates from the early years of the fifteenth century.
While the provincial universities of France tended to follow Bologna rather
than Paris as their model, the German universities approximated to the
Parisian type, and although the founders of the Scottish universities were
impressed by some of the conditions of the student-universities, and
provided for them a theoretical place in their constitutions, yet the three
medieval Scottish universities of Scotland, in their actual working, more
nearly resembled the master type.

CHAPTER IV
COLLEGE DISCIPLINE

We are now in a position to approach the main part of our subject—life in a
medieval University of masters—and we propose to proceed at once to its
most characteristic feature, life in a medieval College. The system
originated in Paris. In the early days of the University, students at Paris
lived freely in private houses, which a number of "socii" hired for
themselves. A record of a dispute which occurred in 1336 shows that it was
usual for one member of such a community to be responsible for the rent,
"tanquam principalis dictae domus," and the member who was held to be
responsible in the particular case is described as a "magister." At first it was
not necessary that he should be a master, but this soon became usual, and
ultimately (though not till the close of the Middle Ages) it was made
compulsory by the University. Dr Rashdall has drawn attention to the
democratic character of these Hospicia or Halls, the members of which
elected their own principal and made the regulations which he enforced.
This democratic constitution is found at Oxford as well as at Paris, and was,
indeed, common to all the early universities. When a benevolent donor
endowed one of these halls, he invariably gave it not only money, but
regulations, and it was the existence of an endowment and of statutes
imposed by an external authority that differentiated the College from the
Hall. The earliest College founders did not necessarily erect any buildings
for the scholars for whose welfare they provided; a College is essentially a
society, and not a building. The quadrangular shape which is now
associated with the buildings of a College was probably suggested
accidentally by the development of Walter de Merton's College at Oxford;
but, long after the foundation of Merton College in 1263 or 1264, it was not
considered necessary by a founder to build a home for his scholars, who
secured a suitable lodging-house (or houses) and were prepared to migrate
should such a step become desirable in the interest of the University.

The statutes of Merton provide us with a picture of an endowed Hall at the
period when such endowments were beginning to change the character of
University life. The conception of a College, as distinguished from the older

Halls, developed very rapidly, and the Founder's provisions for the
organisation of his society were altered three times within ten years. In
1264, Walter de Merton, sometime Chancellor of England, drew up a code
of statutes for the foundation of a house, to be called the House of the
Scholars of Merton. His motive was the good of Holy Church and the safety
of the souls of his benefactors and relations, and these objects were to be
served by providing for the maintenance of twenty poor scholars and two or
three priests in the schools of Oxford, or elsewhere, if learning should, in
these days of civil war, flourish elsewhere than at Oxford. The endowment
which he provided was to consist of his manors of Maldon and Farleigh, in
Surrey, to which was added the Merton estate, at the end of what are now
the "Backs" in Cambridge. This was purchased in 1269-70. The lands were
given to his scholars, to be held under certain conditions, in their own
name. His own kindred were to have the first claim upon places in the new
Society, and, after them, natives of the diocese of Winchester; they were to
have allowances of forty shillings each per annum, to live together in a
Hall, and to wear uniform garb in token of unity and mutual love. As
vacancies arose, by death, by admission into a religious order, by the
acceptance of livings in the Church, or by appointments in other callings,
they were to be filled up, and if the funds of the society permitted, the
numbers, both of scholars and of priests, were to be increased. Scholars
who proved to be incorrigibly idle, or who led evil lives, were to be
deprived; but the sick and infirm were to be treated generously, and any of
the Founder's kin who suffered from an incurable malady, and were
incapable of earning an honest living in the Studium or elsewhere, were to
be maintained till their death. It was assumed that the scholars had already
received the preliminary training in Latin which was necessary for their
studies, but provision was made for the elementary instruction of poor or
orphan boys of the Founder's kin, until they were ready to enter the
University. Once or twice a year all the members of the foundation were to
meet and say mass for their Founder and his benefactors, living and dead.
The management of the property was entrusted to a Warden, who was to
reside not at Oxford or any other Studium where the Hall might happen to
be, but at Maldon or Farleigh. The Warden was a member of the Society,
but had no authority over the scholars, except that, in cases of disputed
elections, he, or the Chancellor or Rector of the University where the Hall
happened to be at the time, was to act on the advice of six or seven of the

senior scholars, and the senior scholars, rather than the Warden, were
looked upon by the founder as the natural leaders of his Society. Every year,
eight or ten of the seniors were to go to Surrey to stay for eight days to
inquire into the management of their property, and, if at any other time, evil
rumours about the conduct of the Warden reached the Hall, two or three of
them were to go to investigate. The scholars could, with the consent of the
Patron, the Bishop of Winchester, bring about the deposition of the Warden,
and elections to the Wardenship were entrusted to the twelve seniors. They
were to consult the "brothers" who assisted the Warden at Merton, and were
also to obtain the sanction of the Bishop of Winchester.

These first Merton statutes clearly contemplate an endowed Hall, differing
from other Halls only in the existence of the endowment. Some regulations
are necessary in order that the tenure of the property of the Society may be
secure and that its funds may not be misapplied, and the brief code of
statutes is directed to these ends. Walter de Merton's earliest rules make the
minimum of change in existing conditions. But the preparation of this code
of statutes must have suggested to the Founder that his generosity gave him
the power of making more elaborate provisions. The Mendicant Orders had
already established at Oxford and at Paris houses for their own members,
and the Monastic Orders in France were following the example of the
Friars. These houses were, of course, governed by minute and detailed
regulations, and it may have seemed desirable to introduce some stricter
discipline into the secular halls. At all events, in 1270, Walter de Merton
took the opportunity of an increase in his endowments to issue a code of
statutes more than twice as long as that of 1264. These new statutes mark a
distinct advance in the Founder's ideal of College life. The Warden becomes
a much more important factor in the conduct of the Hall as well as in the
management of the property; in the election and in the expulsion of scholars
he is given a greater place; his allowances are increased, and his presence at
Oxford seems to be implied. The scholars are to proceed from Arts to
Theology; four or five of them may be permitted to study the Canon Law,
and the Warden may allow some of them to devote some time to the Civil
Law. Two Sub-Wardens are to be appointed, one at Maldon and one in
Oxford; Deans are to watch over the morals of the scholars, and senior
students are to preside over the studies of the freshmen. The scholars are to
be silent at meals and to listen to a reader; there must be no noise in their

chambers, and a senior is to be in authority in each chamber, and to report
breaches of regulations. Conversation is to be conducted in Latin.

We have here the beginnings of a new system of University life, and we can
trace the tendency towards collegiate discipline still more clearly in the
Founder's statutes of 1274, which are much longer and more elaborate than
in 1270. The scholars or Fellows are now to obey the Warden, as their
Superior; the Deans and the seniors in chambers are to bear rule under him
and, in the first instance, to report to him; the Sub-Warden is to take his
place in his absence and to assist him at other times; three Bursars are to
help him in the management, of the property. The Patron or Visitor, may
inquire into the conduct of the Warden or into any accusations brought
against him, and has the power of depriving him of his office. The Warden
is not an absolute sovereign; the thirteen seniors are associated with him in
the government of the College, and the Sub-Warden and five seniors are to
inspect his accounts once a year. At the periodical scrutinies, when the
conduct of all the members of the College is to be examined, accusations
can be brought against him and duly investigated. This custom, and others
of Walter de Merton's regulations, were clearly borrowed from the rules of
monastic houses, and a company of secular clerks seems to have had
difficulty in realising that they were bound by them, for as early as 1284 the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had become the Visitor of the College, had
to issue a series of orders for the observances of the statutes. The Warden
and Fellows of Merton had permitted the study of medicine: they had
interpreted too liberally the permission to study law; they had increased
their own allowances and the salaries of their brewer and their cook; the
Fellows had resisted the authority of the Warden; they had neglected the
attendances at divine service enjoined by the Founder, and they had been
lax about expulsions. The change which Walter de Merton had made in a
scholar's life was so far-reaching that a secular would probably not have
shared the astonishment of Archbishop Peckham (himself a friar) at the
unwillingness of the Merton scholars to recognise the loss of their
traditional freedom.

The system inaugurated by Walter de Merton was destined to have a great
development. In the document of 1284, Peckham speaks of Merton as a
"College," and its Founder was the founder of the Oxford College system.

Although he repeated in his last statutes his permission to move his Society
from Oxford, he regarded Oxford as its permanent home. Now that the civil
war was over and England at peace, he had, he says, purchased a place of
habitation and a house at Oxford, "where a University of students is
flourishing." Not only had he provided a dwelling-place, he had also
magnificently rebuilt a parish church to serve as a College-Chapel. The
example he set was followed both at Oxford and at Cambridge, and the rule
of Merton became the model on which College founders based elaborate
codes of statutes. English founders generally followed Walter de Merton in
making their societies self-governing communities, with an external Visitor
as the ultimate court of appeal. There were in many colleges "poor boys"
who were taught grammar, performed menial offices, and were not
members, nor always eligible for election as members, of the Society; but
as a general rule the Fellows or Socii all had a share in the management of
the affairs of the House. Routine business was frequently managed by the
Head, the officers, and a limited number of the Senior Fellows, but the
whole body of Fellows took part in the election of a new Head. A period of
probation, varying from one year to three, was generally prescribed before
an entrant was admitted a "full and perpetual" Fellow, and during this
period of probation he had no right of voting. This restriction was
sometimes dispensed with in the case of "Founder's kin," who became full
Fellows at once, and the late Sir Edward Wingfield used to boast that in his
Freshman term (1850) he had twice voted in opposition to the Warden of
New College in a College meeting. As in a monastic house, this freedom
was combined with a strict rule of obedience, and though the Head of a
medieval College might be irritated by incidents of this kind, he possessed
great dignity and high authority within his domain. As founders did more
for their students, they expected a larger obedience from them, and
attempted to secure it by minute regulations; and the authority of the Head
of the College increased with the number of rules which he was to enforce.
The foundation of New College at Oxford in 1379 marks the completion of
the collegiate ideal which had advanced so rapidly under the successive
constitutions of Merton College a hundred years before. William of
Wykeham, in providing for the needs of his scholars, availed himself of the
experience of the past and created a new model for the future. The Fellows
of New College were to be efficiently equipped at Winchester for the
studies of the University, and, as we shall see, they were to receive in

College special instruction in addition to the teaching of the University.
Their magnificent home included, besides their living-rooms, a noble
chapel and hall, a library, a garden, and a beautiful cloister for religious
processions and for the burial of the dead. King Henry VI. built a still more
magnificent house for his Cambridge scholars, and his example was
followed by Henry VIII. The later College-founders, as we have said,
expected obedience in proportion to their munificence, and the simpler
statutes of earlier colleges were frequently revised and assimilated to those
of later foundations. We reserve for a later section what we have to say
about education, and deal here with habits and customs.

The Merton rule that conversation must be in Latin is generally found in
College statutes. At Peterhouse, French might occasionally be spoken,
should just and reasonable cause arise, but English very rarely. At New
College, Latin was to be spoken even in the garden, though English might
be used in addressing a layman. At Queen's College, Oxford, which was
founded by a courtier, French was allowed as a regular alternative for Latin,
and at Jesus College, Oxford, conversation might be in Greek, Latin, or
Hebrew. In spite of the influence of the Renaissance, it seems unlikely that
either Greek or Hebrew was much used as an alternative to Latin, but the
Latin-speaking rule had become less rigid and in sixteenth-century statutes
more generous provision is made for dispensations from it. The Latin rule
was not merely an educational method; it was deliberately intended to be a
check upon conversation. College founders accepted the apostolic maxim
that the tongue worketh great evil, and they were convinced that a golden
rule of silence was a protection against both ribaldry and quarrels. In the
later statutes of Clare, the legislator recognises that not merely loss of time,
but the creation of a disposition to be interested in trifles can be traced to
"frequentes collocutiones," and he forbids any meetings in bedrooms (even
meetings of Masters of Arts) for the purpose of feasting or of talking. If
anyone wishes to receive a friend at dinner or supper, he must apply to the
Master for leave, and such leave is to be very rarely given. Conversation in
Hall was prohibited by the rule of silence and by the provision of a reader,
which we have already found at Merton. The book read was almost
invariably the Bible. William of Wykeham, who was followed in this, as in
other respects, by later College founders, forbade his scholars to remain in
Hall after dinner or supper, on the ground that they were likely to talk

scandal and quarrel; but on great Feast days, when a fire was allowed in the
Hall, they might sit round and indulge in canticles and in listening to poems
and chronicles and "mundi hujus mirabilia." The words, of the statute
(which reappear in those of later colleges) seem to imply that even on
winter evenings a fire burned in the Hall only on Feast days, and the
medieval student must have suffered severely from cold. There were, as a
rule, no fireplaces in private rooms until the sixteenth century, when we
find references to them, e.g. in the statutes of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford; and the wooden shutters which took the place of windows shut out
the scanty light of a winter day. When a Disputation (cf. p. 146) was held in
Hall at night, a fire was lit, but we are not told how, when there was no
Disputation or Colleges meeting, the medieval student spent the time
between supper and the "nightcap" which accompanied Compline. Dinner
was at ten in the morning and supper at six in the evening. Dr Caius, in the
middle of the sixteenth century, ordered his students to be in bed by eight
o'clock in the evening, and "early to bed" must have been the custom on
winter nights in a medieval College. "Early to rise" was the stern law, even
in the dark mornings, for the student's day began at six o'clock, and he must
often have listened to lectures which commenced in the dark, although
dawn overtook the lecturer before he finished his long exposition. In early
times there was no provision for breakfast, and, though the existence of
such a meal is distinctly contemplated in the statutes of Queen's College,
Oxford, there is no hint of it in those of New College. Probably some
informal meal was usual everywhere, and was either paid for privately or
winked at by the authorities. The absence of any general provision for
breakfast led to its being taken in private rooms and not in Hall, and this is
the humble origin of the College breakfast party.

The number of occupants of a single room varied in different colleges.
Special provision was made in later College statutes for the Head of the
College; at New College he was given (for the first time) a separate
establishment and an allowance of plate and kitchen utensils; he was to dine
in Hall only on some twenty great Feasts of the Church, and to sit at a
separate table on these occasions. Henry VI. followed this precedent at
King's, and elsewhere we find that the Head of a College is to have
"principalem mansionem" with garden and stabling for the horses, without
which it was not becoming that he should travel on College business. It was

generally the duty of the Head to apportion the rooms among other
members of the College, and to see that the juniors were under proper
supervision. At Peterhouse, and in many other colleges, there were to be
two in each chamber. When William of Wykeham built on a large scale, he
ordered that there should be four occupants in the ground-floor rooms and
three in the first-floor rooms. At King's, the numbers were three in ground-
floor rooms and two in first-floor rooms. At Magdalen, the numbers were
the same as at New College, but two of the beds in the upper rooms and one
in the lower were to be "lectuli rotales, Trookyll beddys vulgariter
appellati." Separate beds were usually provided, though sometimes boys
under fourteen or fifteen years of age were denied this luxury. The
bedrooms were also studies; at Oxford there was no general sitting-room,
except in monastic colleges, though Cambridge College statutes speak of a
"parlura," corresponding to the modern parlour or combination room. Each
of the occupants of a room in New College was the proprietor of a small
window, at which he worked, probably at some "study" or desk like the old
Winchester "toys." The rooms had four windows and four "studiorum loca,"
and the general type of a College chamber, after the foundation of New
College, was a room with one large window, and two, three, or four small
windows for "studies."

A large proportion of the care of statute-makers was devoted to the
prohibition of amusements. The statutes of Peterhouse forbade dogs or
falcons, "for if one can have them in the House, all will want them, and so
there will arise a constant howling" to disturb the studious. Dice and chess,
being forbidden games to clerks, were also prohibited, and the scholars of
Peterhouse were forbidden to frequent taverns, to engage in trade, to mix
with actors, or to attend theatrical performances. These enactments are
repeated in later College statutes, with such additions as the legislator's
knowledge of human nature dictated and with occasional explanations of
some interest in themselves. The keeping of dogs is often described as
"taking the children's bread and giving it to dogs," and the Founder of
Queen's College, Oxford, ordered that no animals were to be kept under the
Fellows' rooms, since purity of air is essential for study. William of
Wykeham expressly forbade chess, which he classed with games leading to
the loss of money or estate, but King Henry VI., who made large use of the
statutes of New College, omitted the mention of chess from his King's

College statutes, while he added to Wykeham's denunciation of ferrets and
hawks, an index expurgatorius of animals which included monkeys, bears,
wolves, and stage, and he expressly forbade nets for hunting or fishing. The
principle on which modern Deans of colleges have sometimes decided that
"gramophones are dogs" and therefore to be excluded from College, can be
traced in numerous regulations against musical instruments, which disturb
the peace essential to learning. That the medieval student felt the
temptations of "ragging" in much the same way as his modern successors,
appears from many threats directed against those who throw stones and
other missiles to the danger of the buildings. Wykeham thought it necessary
to forbid the throwing of stones in Chapel, to the danger of the windows
and reredos, and for the safety of the reredos he prohibited dancing or
jumping in the Hall, which is contiguous to the Chapel. Games in the Hall
were also forbidden for the comfort of the chaplains who lived in the rooms
underneath. King Henry VI. forbade dancing or jumping, or other
dangerous and improper games in the Chapel, cloister, stalls, and Hall of
King's College.

Other disciplinary regulations common to all colleges deal with carrying
arms, unpunctuality, talking during the reading in Hall or disturbing the
Chapel services, bringing strangers into College, sleeping out of College,
absence without leave, negligence and idleness, scurrilous or offensive
language, spilling water in upper rooms to the detriment of the inhabitants
of the lower rooms, and failure to attend the regular "scrutinies" or the
stated general meetings for College business. At these scrutinies, any
serious charges against members of the Society were considered, and it is in
keeping with some of the judicial ideas of the time that some statutes forbid
the accused person to have a copy of the indictment against him. For
contumacy, for grave moral offences, for crimes of violence, and for heresy,
the penalty was expulsion. Less serious offences were punished by
subtraction of "commons," i.e. deprivation of allowances for a day or a
week (or longer), or by pecuniary fines. When College founders provided
clothes as well as board and lodging for their scholars, the forfeiture of a
robe took its place among the penalties with which offenders were
threatened. The "poor boys" who sang in Chapel and waited on the Fellows
were whipped like boys elsewhere, who were being taught grammar, but the
birch was unknown as a punishment for undergraduates till late in the

middle ages. The introduction of corporal punishment into college life in
England may be traced by a comparison of William of Wykeham's statutes
with those of Henry VI. The King's College statute "De correctionibus
faciendis circa delicta leviora" is largely a transcript of a New College
statute, with the same title, and both contemplate subtraction of commons
as the regular penalty. But the King's College statute contains an additional
clause, to the effect that scholars and younger Fellows may be punished
with stripes. In the statutes of Magdalen, dated some seventeen years later,
William of Waynflete returned to the New College form of the statute, but
he provided that his demys (i.e. scholars who received half the commons of
a Fellow) should be subject to the penalty of whipping in the Grammar
School. The statutes of Christ's College prescribe a fine of a farthing for
unpunctuality on the part of the scholars, studying in the Faculty of Arts,
and heavier fines for absence, and it is added that if the offender be not an
adult, a whipping is to be substituted for the pecuniary penalty. At
Brasenose, where the Fellows were all of the standing of at least a Bachelor
of Arts, the undergraduate scholars were subjected to an unusually strict
discipline, and offenders were to be punished either by fines or by the rod,
the Principal deciding the appropriate punishment in each case. For
unpunctuality, for negligence and idleness, for playing, laughing, talking,
making a noise or speaking English in, a lecture-room, for insulting fellow-
students, or for disobedience to his pastors and masters, the Brasenose
undergraduate was to be promptly flogged. Among the crimes for which the
birch is ordered we find "making odious comparisons," a phrase which
throws some light on the conversational subjects of sixteenth-century
undergraduates. The kind of comparison is indicated in the statute; remarks
about the country, the family, the manners, the studies, and the ability, or the
person, of a fellow-student must be avoided. Similarly, at Jesus College,
Cambridge, it is forbidden to compare country to country, race to race, or
science to science, and William of Wykeham and other founders had to
make similar injunctions. The medieval student was distinctly quarrelsome,
and such records as the famous Merton "scrutiny" of 1339, and
investigations by College Visitors, show that the seniors set the
undergraduates a bad example. The statutes of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, provide for two new penalties. An offending undergraduate might
be sentenced to feed by himself, at a small table in the middle of the Hall,
and in aggravated cases to the monastic penalty of bread and water. An

alternative penalty was detention in the library at the most inconvenient
time ("per horam vel horas cum minime vellet"), and the performance of an
imposition to be shown up in due course. The rough and ready penalty of
the birch is, however, frequently mentioned in the statutes of Corpus and of
other sixteenth-century Colleges. Cardinal Wolsey thought it proper that an
undergraduate should be whipped until he had completed his twentieth year.
At Trinity, Cambridge (where offenders were sociably flogged before the
assembled College on Friday evenings) the age was eighteen. Dr Caius
restricted the rod to scholars who were not adult. "We call those adults," he
says, "who have completed their eighteenth year. For before that age, both
in ancient times and in our own memory, youth was not accustomed to wear
brâccas, being content with tibialia reaching to the knees." The stern
disciplinarian might find an excuse for prolonging the whipping age in the
Founder's wish that, "years alone should not make an adult, but along with
years, gravity of deportment and good character." As late as the foundation
of Pembroke College at Oxford (1624) whipping is the penalty
contemplated for undergraduates under eighteen. But when we come to the
statutes which were drawn up in 1698 with a view to the foundation of
Worcester College, not only is there no mention of the birch, but even
pecuniary penalties are deprecated for minor offences, for which
impositions and gating are suggested.

Minor penalties were enforced by the Head of a college, the Vice-Head, the
Deans, and, in sixteenth-century colleges, by the tutors. By later college
statutes, these officers received for their personal use a portion of the fines
they inflicted, and appeals were sometimes permitted from an officer to the
Head, and even to the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor of the University. The
oath taken by scholars frequently bound them to reveal to the authorities,
any breach of the statutes, and there are indications that members of the
College were encouraged to report each other's misdeeds. Thus the Master
of Christ's is to fine anyone whom he hears speaking one complete sentence
in English, or anyone whom he may know to have been guilty of this
offence, except in sleeping-rooms or at times when permission had been
given.

Oxford and Cambridge Colleges were, as we have seen, endowed homes for
the education of secular clerks. All of them, on entrance, had to have the

tonsure, and provision was often made for the cutting of their hair and
beard. At Christ's College, there was a regular College barber "qui ... caput
et barbam radet ac tondebit hebdomadis singulis." They wore ordinary
clerical dress, and undue expenditure on clothes and ornaments was strictly
prohibited, e.g. the Fellows of Peterhouse were forbidden to wear rings on
their fingers "ad inanem gloriam et jactantiam." The early founders did not
insist upon Holy Orders for the Heads or Fellows of their colleges, though
many of them would naturally proceed to the priesthood, but in later college
statutes all the Fellows were ultimately to proceed, at stated times, to Holy
Orders and to the priesthood, though dispensations for delay might be
granted, and students of Medicine were sometimes excused from the
priesthood. When they became priests they were, like other priests, to
celebrate mass regularly in the Chapel, but were not to receive payment for
celebrations outside the College. As mere tonsured undergraduates, they
were not, at first, subject to regulations for daily attendance at divine
service; but later founders were stricter in this, as in other matters. Bishop
Bateman, who, in the middle of the fourteenth century, legislated for the
infant Gonville College, ordered that every Fellow should hear one mass
daily and say certain prayers, and in his own foundation of Trinity Hall, he
repeated the injunction. The prescribed prayers included petitions for the
Founder, or for the repose of his soul; every Fellow of Trinity Hall was to
say, immediately upon rising in the morning and before going to bed at
night, the prayer "Rege quaesumus Domine," during the Bishop's lifetime,
and after his death, "Deus qui inter Apostolicos Sacerdotes," and to say the
psalm "De profundis clamavi" and a "Kurie eleeson" for the repose of the
soul of the Founder's father and mother, his predecessors in the see of
Norwich, and after his death for his own soul. The ten priests, who served
the Chapel at New College, said masses for the Founder and his
benefactors, but every Fellow was to attend mass every day and to say
prayers in his own room, morning and evening, including "Rege,
quaesumus, Domine, Willielmum Pontificem Fundatorem nostrum" or, after
his death, "Deus qui inter Apostolicos sacredotes famulum tuum
Fundatorem nostrum pontificali dignitate"; and every day, both after High
Mass in Chapel, and after dinner and supper in Hall, the psalm "De
profundis" was said. Penalties were prescribed for negligence, and as time
went on, a whipping was inflicted for absence from Chapel, e.g. at Christ's
College, and at Balliol, for which new statutes were drawn up in 1507.

Residence in College was continuous throughout the year, even during the
University vacation, which lasted from early in July to the beginning of
October. Leave of absence might be granted at any time in the year, on
reasonable grounds, but was to be given generally in vacations. General
rules were laid down for behaviour in keeping with the clerical profession
during absence, and students on leave were forbidden to frequent taverns or
otherwise transgress the rules which were binding upon them in the
University. Occasionally we find some relaxation in these strict regulations,
as when the Founder of Corpus Christi at Oxford allows "moderate hunting
or hawking" when one of his scholars is on holiday away from Oxford. The
same indulgent Founder, after the usual prohibition of games in College,
allows a game of ball in the garden for the sake of healthy exercise. ("Non
prohibemus tamen lusum pilae ad murum, tabulata, aut tegulas, in horto,
causa solum modo exercendi corporis et sanitatis.") Associations with home
life were maintained by vacation visits, but the influx of "people" to the
University was, of course, unknown. The ancient statutes of Peterhouse
permit a woman (even if she be not a relation) to talk with a Fellow in the
Hall, preferably in the presence of another Fellow, or at least, a servant; but
the legislator had grave fears of the results of such "confabulationes," and
the precedent he set was not followed. A Fellow or scholar is frequently
permitted by College statutes to entertain his father, brother, nephew, or a
friend, obtaining first the consent of the Head of the College, and paying
privately for the entertainment, but no such guest might sleep in College,
and the permission is carefully restricted to the male sex. Women were, as a
rule, not allowed within a College gate; if it was impossible to find a man to
wash clothes, a laundress might be employed, but she must be old and of
unprepossessing appearance. A scholar or Fellow of a college had not,
however, committed himself irrevocably to a celibate life, for marriage is
included among the "causas rationabiles et honestas" which vacated a
fellowship. It was possible, though probably infrequent, for a Fellow who
had not proceeded to Holy Orders to leave the College "uxore ducta,"
giving up his emolument, his clerical dress, and the tonsure. Even if a
Fellow enjoyed the Founder's provision for the long period of his course in
Arts and Theology, and proceeded in due time to Holy Orders, it was not
contemplated that he should remain a Fellow till his death.

"... he had geten him yet no benefyce,
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce,"

says Chaucer, indicating the natural end of a scholar's career. He might
betake himself to some "obsequium," and rise high in the service of the
king, or of some great baron or bishop, and become, like one of Wykeham's
first New College scholars, Henry Chichele, an archbishop and a College
founder himself. Should no such great career open up for him, he can, at the
least, succeed to one of the livings which the founders of English colleges
purchased for this purpose. His "obsequium" would naturally lead to his
ceasing to reside, and so vacate his fellowship, and his acceptance of a
benefice over a certain value brought about the same result. Some such
event was expected to happen to every Fellow; unless he happened to be
elected to the Headship, it was not intended that he should grow old in the
College, and at Queen's College, Oxford, the arbitrary or unreasonable
refusal of a benefice vacated a Fellowship. The object of the College
Founder was, that there should never be wanting a succession of men
qualified to serve God in Church and State, and to Chaucer's unworldly
clerk, if he was a member of a College, there would come, in due course,
the country living and goodbye to the University. But statutes were not
always strictly observed and the idle life-Fellow, who survived to be the
scandal of early Victorian days, was not unknown in the end of the Middle
Ages.

One of the causes of vacating a fellowship throws some light upon the class
of men who became members of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The
opening sentences of founders' statutes usually contain some such phrase as
"collegium pauperum et indigentium scholarium"; but later sections of the
statutes contemplate the possibility of their succeeding to property
—"patrimonium, haereditatem, feudumve saeculare, vel pensionem
annuam"—and if such property exceeded the annual value of a hundred
shillings, a Fellowship was ipso facto vacated. The "pauperes et indigentes"
expressions must not be construed too literally; the Founder was
establishing a claim to the merits of him that considereth the poor, and the
language he used was part of the ordinary formulas of the time, and ought
not to be interpreted more strictly than the ordinary phrases of legal and
Diplomatic documents or than the conventional terms of courtesy, which

begin and conclude a modern letter. That an English College Founder
wished to give help where help was required, is undeniable, but help was
required by others than the poorest. The advancement of the study of
theology was near the heart of every medieval founder, and the study of
theology demanded the surrender of the best years of a man's life, and the
extension of the period of education long after he might be expected to be
earning his own living. A curriculum in the University which covered at
least sixteen years, and might be followed by nothing more remunerative
than the cure of Chaucer's poor priest, required some substantial
inducement if it was to attract the best men. Canon Law, Civil Law and
Medicine, if they offered more opportunity of attaining a competency,
required also a very long period of apprenticeship in the University. There
were many youths in the Middle Ages (as there are to-day) neither
"pauperes" nor "indigentes" in the strict sense of the word, but too poor to
be able to afford sixteen years of study in the University. The length of the
medieval curriculum produced some of the necessities which colleges were
established to meet.

That the founders were not thinking of the poorest classes of the
community, is evident from many provisions of their statutes. They
frequently provided only board and lodging, and left their beneficiaries to
find elsewhere the other necessities of life; they appointed penalties (such
as the subtraction of commons for a month) which would have meant
starvation to the penniless; they contemplated entertainments and journeys,
and in the case of a New College Doctor, even the maintenance of a private
servant, at the personal expense of their scholars and Fellows; they
prohibited the expenditure of money on extravagant dress and amusements.
William of Wykeham made allowances for the expense of proceeding to
degrees in the University when one of his Fellows had no private means and
no friends to assist him ("propter paupertatem, inopiam, et penuriam,
carentiamque amicorum"); but the sum to be thus administered was strictly
limited and the recipient had to prove his poverty, and to swear to the truth
of his statement. The very frequent insistence upon provisions for a
Founder's kin, suggests that the society, to which he wished a large number
of his relations to belong, was of higher social standing than an almshouse;
and the liberal allowances for the food of the Fellows, as contrasted with
the sums allotted to servants and choristers, show that life in College was

intended to be easy and comfortable. The fact that menial work was to be
done by servants and that Fellows were to be waited on at table by the
"poor boys" is a further indication of the dignity of the Society. At New
College, it was the special duty of one servant to carry to the schools, the
books of the Fellows and scholars. The possession of considerable means
by a medieval Fellow, is illustrated by two wills, printed in "Munimenta
Academica." Henry Scayfe, Fellow of Queen's College, left in 1449, seven
pounds to his father, smaller sums to a large number of friends, including
sixpence to every scholar of the College, and also disposed by will of sheep,
cattle and horses. In 1457, John Seggefyld, Fellow of Lincoln College,
bequeathed to his brother tenements in Kingston by Hull, which had been
left him by his father, twelve pence to each of his colleagues, and thirteen
shillings and four pence to his executor. Whether the possessions of these
men ought to have led to the resignation of their Fellowships, is a question
which may have interested their colleagues at the time; to us the facts are
important, as illustrating the private means of members of a society of
"poor and indigent" scholars, and as indicating the class from which such
scholars were drawn.

College regulations in other countries add considerably to our knowledge of
medieval student-life. In Paris, where the system had its humble beginning
in the hire of a room for eighteen poor scholars, by a benevolent
Englishman returning from a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1180, the college
ideal progressed slowly and never reached its highest development. Even
when most of the students of Paris came to live in colleges, the college was
not the real unit of university life, nor was a Parisian college a self-
governing community like Merton or Peterhouse. The division of the
University of Paris into Nations affected its social life, and the Faculties
were separated at Paris in a manner unknown in England. A college at Paris
was organised in accordance with Faculty divisions, an arrangement so little
in harmony with the ideas of English founders, that William of Wykeham
provided that Canonists and Civilists, should be mixed in chambers with
students of other Faculties "ad nutriendam et conservandam majorem
dilectionem, amicitiam et charitatem inter eosdem." As colleges at Paris
were frequently confined to natives of a particular district, they tended to
become sub-divisions of the Nations. The disadvantages of restricting
membership of a college to a diocese or locality, were seen and avoided by

the founder of the College of Sorbonne, in the middle of the thirteenth
century, and the founder of the sixteenth century College of Mans protested
against the custom, by instructing his executors to open his foundation to
men, from every nation and province, insisting that association with
companions of different languages and customs, would make the scholars
"civiliores, eloquentiores, et doctiores," and that the friendships thus formed
would enable them to render better service to the State. The tenure of his
bursa or emolument, by a member of a Paris college, was so precarious that
he could not count upon proceeding to a higher Faculty in his own college,
and the existence of an outside body of governors and of Patrons or
Visitors, who had the power of filling up vacancies further checked the
growth of corporate feeling and college patriotism. The large powers
entrusted to an external authority made the position of the Head of a college
at Paris, much less important than at Oxford or Cambridge.

The differences between English and Parisian colleges may best be realised
by a reference to the statutes of some early Paris founders. About 1268,
Guillaume de Saone, Treasurer of Rouen, founded at Paris, the "Treasurer's
College" for natives of his own diocese. It was 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 Petit-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 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. 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 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 cum 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 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 quantity to be drunk by the
members who were present at the time; if anyone walks through the
confines or chambers in pattens ("cum calepodiis, id est cum 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 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 illustration 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 assault 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 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 "cum 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 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 mass 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 mass, 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 passage 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 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 Pitié, 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, 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 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
mass, provided that they did not enter the choir. The monastic institution of
Our Lady of Pity at Avignon, went so far as to have a matron for the young
boys, an old woman, entitled "Mater Novitiorum Collegiatorum." At the
College of Breuil at Angers, a woman might visit the College by day if the

Principal 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 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
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 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 assault 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
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 celebration of feasts "cum
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 (amusements 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 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
principals 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 assembly 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 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 trespass
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.

The increased stringency of disciplinary regulations at Oxford in the end of
the medieval period is best illustrated 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 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
mass 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
Principal, 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
appointed penalties varying with the severity of the assault, and for a
second offence he must be expelled. He has to obey his Principal much as
members of a College obey their Head, and, in lieu of the pecuniary
penalties, the Principal may flog him publicly on Saturday 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 damnation and the ruin of the University,
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 cassock 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 personæ"
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. 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 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 Muff 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 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 noble
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
nobles 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 assessors,
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 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 illustrations 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 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-
Locum assignatum tenea-
Mensae assignatae accumba-
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-
Tribus cibos digitis prehenda-
Cultro priusquam dente tera-
.....
Ossa in orbem depona-
Vel pavimentum jacia-
Modeste omnia facia- — tis
Ossa si in convivas jacia-
Nedum si illos vulnera-
Ne queramini si vapula-
.....
Post haustum labia deterga-
Modicum, sed crebro biba-
.....
Os ante haustum evacua-
Ungues sordidulos fugia-
.....
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, butter,
small fish, partans (crabs), eggs, a bill of fare certainly above the food of

the lower classes 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 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
illustration of the difficulty of attempting to recreate the life of the past.

CHAPTER VI
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 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, cum 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 "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 constitution, 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 sextarium 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 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 asses.

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 passage 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 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 title of student. Noblemen 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 God 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 passage in the Institutes 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 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,
"cum 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 noble or honourable ladies who happen to be present, 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 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
assumed 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 Universitäten im Mittelalter, is
(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 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 ass? 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, 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 illustration 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 institution
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, 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 à 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
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 brass pot "full of cawdel." Wood, who was a freshman,
describes how

"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 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 asserts, 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 illustrate 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 class 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 bajans with these instruments may be historically
connected with the chastisement 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 assaults upon the
Rector's robe at Bologna.

CHAPTER VII
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 assailant, and that for a lesser injury
the offender's hand was to be wounded ("debet manus 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
receive half of the fine. Assailants 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 assembled, armed with bows
and arrows and other weapons; they attacked every scholar who passed, 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 assembled, 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, 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 mass 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 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 assaults 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 "cum 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 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 passers-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 illustrations 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 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 cum 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 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 manus
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 multitude 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 Saturday after the Feast of 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 Pré-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 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 repetitis." 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 masses for scholars. Forty years
later the University had again to appeal to the Pope to avenge assaults 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
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 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 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 parse 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
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 entitle 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 mass. "When mass
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 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 increased the scope of Geometry and Arithmetic,
and added the study of Algebra.

The Grammar taught in the universities assumed a knowledge of such a
text-book as that of Alexander de Villa Dei, and consisted of an analysis of
the systems of popular grammarians, based on the section De barbarismo in
the Ars Grammatica of Ælius 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, entitled 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 Porrée, known as the Sex Principia; the Summulae Logicales, a semi-
grammatical, semi-logical treatise by Petrus Hispanus (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, 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 Principal 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
analysis 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 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 law
illustrate 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 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 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
Repetitions or Resumptions. The procedure at Repetitions may be
illustrated from the statutes of the College of Dainville at Paris: "We ordain
that all bursars in grammar and 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] assigns 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 Saturday, they shall show up to their

master a résumé of all the lectures they have learned that week, and every
day before they go to the schools they shall be bound to make repetitions 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 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 "jocum 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 succumbed to the growth of College teaching. The Head of a
Parisian College, from the first, superintended the studies of 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 "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 damnum" upon the examiners. But even at
Louvain, where the examination system was fully developed in the Middle
Ages, and where there were class lists in the fifteenth century (the classes
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 Quodlibeticum, 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 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 amusement 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 title and insignia of Sophs: but not
before they have been formally created 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 crape, 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 passage in some Greek or Latin classic, 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
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 God. 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 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 associate 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, Edmund Alyard. By March 1479, Alyard was able to
reassure 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 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

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
Mensæ nulla venit nisi quod sale sparsa rigorem
Esca parum flectit."

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
Excitæ somnus animæ, nec prima sopori
Anxietas cedit, sed quæ 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 whole of
his day is given to study. The description of the student at lecture is

interesting:--

"Aure et mente bibit et verba cadentia promo
Promptus utroque levat, oculique et mentis in illo
Fixa vigilque manet acies aurisque maritat
Pronuba dilectam cupida cum meute Minervam."

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Savigny: Geschichte der römischen Rechts im Mittelalter. (Heidelberg,
1834.)

Sir William Hamilton: Discussions on Philosophy and Literature,
Education, and University Reform. (London, 1852.)

Denifle: Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400.
(Berlin, 1885.)

Rashdall: The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. (Oxford,
1895.)

Kaufmann: Geschichte der Deutschen Universitäten. (Stuttgart, 1888.)

Article on Universities in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters. Jurist Statutes of
Padua (1331) in vol. vi.; Salamanca documents in vol. v.

Malagola: Statuti della università e dei collegi dello studio bolognese.
(Bologna, 1888.)

Denifle and Chatelain: Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. (Paris,
1889-1897.)

(Many of the statutes of the Colleges of Paris will be found scattered
through Felibien: Histoire de la Ville de Paris. Paris, 1725.)

Antony Wood: History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford.
(Ed. Gutch. Oxford, 1792-6.)

—— History and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the
University of Oxford. (Ed. Gutch. Oxford, 1786.)

Anstey: Munimenta Academica. (Rolls Series, 1868.)

Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford. (London, 1853.)

Clark: The Colleges of Oxford. (London, 1892.)

(The best account of Oxford will be found in vol. ii., Part ii., of Dr
Rashdall's "Universities of Europe." There are two short histories of
the University by Maxwell Lyte (London, 1886) and Brodrick
(London, 1886.).)

Documents relating to the University and Colleges of Cambridge.
(London, 1852.)

Mullinger: The University of Cambridge from the Earliest Times to the
Royal Injunctions of 1535. (Cambridge, 1873.)

In two subsequent volumes Mr Mullinger has continued the narrative
to the latter half of the seventeenth century, and he has also written a
short "History of the University of Cambridge." (Epochs of Church
History. London, 1888.)

Gherardi: Statuti della università e studio Fiorentino. (Florence, 1881.)

Villanueva: Statutes of the University of Lerida in "Viage Literario á
las Iglesias de España." T. xvi. (Madrid, 1851.)

Marcel Fournier: Les Statuts et Privilèges des Universités françaises
depuis leur fondation jusqu'en 1789. (Paris, 1890-92.)

Dittrich und Spirk: Monumenta Historica Universitatis Pragensis.
(Prague, 1830.)

Kink: Geschichte der Kaiserl. Univ. zu Wien. (Vienna, 1854.)

Hautz: Geschichte der Universität Heidelberg. (Mannheim, 1862.)

Vernulæus: Academia Lovaniensis. (Louvain, 1667.)

Molanus: Historiæ Lovaniensium, ed. De Ram. (Brussels, 1861.)

Zarncke: Die Statutenbücher der Univ. Leipzig. (Leipzig, 1861.)

—— Acta Rectorum Univ. Lipsiensis. (Leipzig, 1858.)

Evidence taken and received by the Scottish Universities
Commissioners of 1826. (London, 1837.)

Innes: Fasti Aberdonenses. Spalding Club. (Aberdeen, 1854.)

INDEX

Abelard, 6.
Aberdeen, Univ. of, 105, 106, 107, 122-3.
Ælius Donatus, 138.
Aix, Univ. of, 39, 112, 114.
Alexander de Villa Dei, 138.
Alfonso the Wise, 9.
Alyard, Edmund, 153-4.
Angers, Univ. of, 7, 147.
—— Coll. of Breuil at, 90.
Anselm, St, 6.
Arezzo, Studium at, 7.
Aristotle, 138-143.
Arts, The Seven Liberal, 137-9.
Avignon, Univ. of, 88, 112.
—— College of Annecy at, 113.
—— College of Notre Dame de Pitié at, 88, 90.
—— Confraternity of St Sebastian at, 112.

Bagley Wood, 97.
Bateman, Bishop, 70.
Boethius, 139.
Bologna, Spanish College at, 19, 34, 93.
—— Studium Generale at, 6, 8, 9.
—— Universities of, 11-34, 44, 46-7, 48, 140.

Caen, Univ. of, 148.
Cahors, College of St Nicholas de Pelegry at, 89, 91.
Caius, Dr, 61, 68.
Cambridge, Univ. of, 3, 7, 10, 120, 136-7, 146-7.
—— College discipline at, 49-78.
—— Colleges of—
Caius, 61, 68, 70;
Christ's, 66, 69, 71;
Clare, 59;
Jesus, 67;
King's, 62, 64, 66;
Peterhouse, 58, 62, 63, 69, 72;
Trinity, 68;
Trinity Hall, 70.
Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales, 1-3, 73, 74, 75.
Chichele, Archbishop, 73.
Cicero, 138, 139.
College, meaning of word, 5.
Cologne, Univ. of, 48.

Dôle, Univ. of, 39.

Eberhard, 139.
Ely, Bishop of, 47.
Erfurt, Univ. of, 48.
Estoutville, Cardinal, 94-5, 143-4.
Euclid, 139.

Farleigh, 51, 52.
Florence, Univ. of, 34-7.
France, Universities of, 12.
Frederick Barbarossa, 24-5.
Frederick II., 8.

Germany, Universities of, 47-8, 142.
Gilbert de la Porrée, 139.
Glasgow, Univ. of, 105, 106, 140.
Gloys, James, 153.
Gregory IX., 9.

Hearne, Thomas, 122.
Heidelberg, Univ. of, 48, 107-8, 117, 141.
Henry II., 6.
Henry VI., 58, 61, 63, 66.
Henry VIII., 58.
Holler, Thomas, 153.
—— Robert, 154.
Holywood, John, 139.

Ingolstadt, Univ. of, 105.
Innocent III., 42, 43.
—— IV., 7, 9.

John XXI., 139.
—— XXII., 10.
—— King, 7, 45.

Knox, Vicesimus, 149.

Leipsic, Univ. of, 48.
—— Collegium Maius at, 89.
—— Collegium Minus at, 90.
—— University discipline at, 102-5, 108.
—— "Town and Gown" at, 128-131.
Lerida, Univ. of, 37-8.
Lincoln, See of, 45, 46.
Louvain, Univ. of, 48, 145-6, 149.

—— University, discipline at, 101-2, 116.
Lyons, Studium at, 7, 9.
Lyra, Nicolaus de, 139.

Maldon, 51, 52, 54.
Marsilius, 139.
Melville, Andrew, 140.
Modena, Studium at, 7, 9.
Merton, Walter de, 50-6, 134.
Montpellier, Univ. of, 7.
—— College of Douze Medecins at, 89.
—— College of St Benedict at, 91-3.
—— College of Saint Ruf at, 89, 90.

Naples, Univ. of, 8.
"Nations," 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 43, 44, 46, 78, 79, 131.
Nicholas IV., 9, 10.
Orleans, Univ. of, 7, 115, 128.
Ovid, 139.
Oxford, Univ. of, 6, 10, 39, 45, 47, 49, 120, 133-142, 146, 147, 149-155.
—— College discipline at, 49-78.
—— University discipline at, 095-101.
—— "Town and Gown" at, 124-128.
Oxford, Colleges of—
Balliol, 71, 122;
Brasenose, 66, 67, 122;
Christ Church, 68;
Corpus Christi, 60, 67, 68, 72, 105;
Jesus, 59;
Lincoln, 77;
Magdalen, 62, 66, 134;
Merton, 50-6, 60, 67, 120, 121, 122, 134;
New College, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71, 76, 77, 120,
133, 147;
Pembroke, 68;
Queen's, 59, 61, 63, 74, 77;

Worcester, 68.
Oxford, Halls of—
Haburdaysh Hall, 98;
Pauline Hall, 97;
Peckwater Inn, 97.

Padua, Univ. of, 7, 10, 34.
Palencia, Studium at, 7.
Paris, Univ. of, 6, 7, 9, 11, 40, 41-5, 49, 128, 133, 134, 139, 141, 142-6,
148, 157-8.
—— College discipline at, 78-88.
—— "Jocund Advent" at, 109-112.
—— Univ. discipline at, 94-5.
Paris, Colleges of—
Cambray, 111;
Clugny, 88;
Cornouaille, 83, 84, 85, 86, 111, 133;
Dainville, 87, 111, 144-6;
Le Mans, 79, 84;
Marmoutier, 86;
Plessis, 82;
St Bernard, 83, 85, 86, 110;
Sorbonne, 81, 85, 86, 111, 112;
Tours, 83;
Treasurer's, 79, 80, 87, 111.
Paston, John, 154.
—— Margaret, 153.
—— Walter, 152-5.
Peckham, Archbishop, 55-6.
Perpignan, Univ. of, 38.
Petrus Hispanus, 139.
Philip Augustus, 42.
Plessis, Geoffrey du, 82.
Porphyry, 139.
Prague, Univ. of, 48, 116, 147.

Priscian, 139.
Ptolemy, 139.

Reggio, Studium at, 7.
Reims, Studium at, 7.
Rostock, Univ. of, 48.
Rouen, 79, 80, 81.
Rudolf IV., 124.

St Andrews, Univ. of, 105, 106, 122.
St Scholastica's Day, 125-6.
Salamanca, Studium at, 7, 9, 39.
Salerno, Univ. of, 9.
Saone, Guillaume de, 79.
Scayfe, Henry, 77.
Scotland, Universities of, 48, 105, 140, 142.
Seggefyld, John, 77.
Studium Generale, meaning of, 5-12.

Toulouse, Univ. of, 7, 9, 128.
—— College de Foix at, 89.
—— College de Verdale at, 91, 144.

Universitas, meaning of, 4, 5, 10, 11.

Valladolid, Studium at, 7.
Vicenza, Studium at, 7.
Vienna, Univ. of, 48, 124, 140, 141, 142, 147.
Virgil, 139.

Waynflete, William of, 66, 134.
Wingfield, Sir E., 57.
Wood, Antony à, 120-2, 125-126.

Wolsey, Cardinal, 68.
Würzburg, Univ. of, 48.
Wykeham, William of, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 67, 76, 147.

Zarncke, Friedrich, 102.

TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS,
EDINBURGH
Footnote 1: The prison was called "Bocardo" because, like the mood
known as "Bocardo" in the syllogism, it was difficult to get out of.(Back)

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