UNIVERSITY DISCIPLINE
The growing tradition of strict college discipline ultimately led to
disciplinary statutes in the universities. From very early times,
universities had, of course, made regulations about the curriculum,
and the border-line between a scholar's studies and his manners and
morals, could not be absolutely fixed. At Paris, indeed, it is not
until the fifteenth century that we find any detailed code of
disciplinary statutes; but fourteenth-century regulations about dress
were partly aimed at checking misdeeds of students disguised as
laymen, and in 1391 the English Nation prohibited an undue number of
"potationes et convivia," in celebration of the "jocund advent" of a
freshman or on other occasions. It was not till the middle of the
fifteenth century that the University of Paris, awoke to the
realisation of its own shortcomings in manners and morals; Cardinal
William de Estoutville was commissioned by Nicholas V. to reform it,
and internal reform, the necessity of which had been recognised for
some years, began about the same time with an edict of the Faculty of
Arts ordering a general improvement, and especially forbidding the (p. 095)
celebration of feasts "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 (p. 096)
the University, disciplinary statutes are much more numerous. We find,
from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards, a series of edicts
against scholars who break the peace or carry arms, who enter
citizens' houses to commit violence, who practise the art of sword and
buckler, or who are guilty of gross immorality. A statute of 1250
forbids scholars to celebrate their national feast days disguised with
masks or garlands, and one of 1313 restricts the carrying of arms to
students who are entering on, or returning from, long journeys.
Offenders who refuse to go to prison, or who escape from it, are to be
expelled. As early as the middle of the thirteenth century, it was the
duty of the proctors and of the 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 (p. 097)
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 (p. 098)
confiscated. In 1457, four scholars are caught entering with weapons
into a warren or park to hunt deer and rabbits; they are released on
taking an oath that, while they are students of the University, they
will not 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.
[Footnote 1: The prison was called "Bocardo"
because, like the mood known as "Bocardo" in the
syllogism, it was difficult to get out of.]
The increased stringency of disciplinary regulations at Oxford in the
end of the medieval period is best 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 (p. 099)
disappeared, and that the life of a resident in a Hall, in the end of
the fifteenth century, was almost as much governed by statute and
regulation as if he were the partaker of a founder's bounty. He must
hear 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 (p. 100)
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, (p. 101)
were so regardless of their oaths as to wear hoods not lined
throughout with fur. Penalties were prescribed for both kinds of
offenders; but though the Oxford undergraduate never succeeded in
annexing the hood, he gradually acquired the _biretta_, which his
successor of to-day is occasionally fined for not wearing. The modern
gown or toga is explained by Dr Rashdall as derived from the robe or
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. (p. 102)
Interviews with captives had to take place in his presence; male
visitors had to give up their knives or other weapons before being
admitted, and female visitors had to leave their cloaks behind them.
Students were forbidden to walk in the streets at night after the bell
of St Michael's Church had been rung at nine o'clock in winter, and
ten o'clock in summer, unless they were accompanied by a doctor or a
"gravis persona" and were bearing a torch or lantern. The list of
offences at Louvain are much the same as elsewhere, but an
eighteenth-century code of statutes specially prohibits bathing and
skating. The laws against borrowing and lending were unusually strict,
and no student under twenty-five years was allowed to sell books
without the consent of his regent, the penalty for a sixteenth-century
student in Arts being a public flogging in his own college.
At Leipsic, the University was generally responsible for the
discipline, sometimes even when the offences had been committed in the
colleges; and a record of the proceedings of the Rector's Court from
1524 to 1588, which was published by Friedrich Zarncke, the learned
historian of Leipsic, gives us a large variety of incidents of
University life in sixteenth-century Germany. Leipsic possessed a
University prison, and we find, in 1524, two students, Philippus (p. 103)
Josman and Erasmus Empedophillus, who had quarrelled, and insulted
each other, sentenced to perform, in the prison, impositions for the
Rector. Six or eight days' imprisonment is a frequent penalty for a
drunken row. A college official brings to the Rector's Court in 1545
one of his pupils, John Ditz, who had lost much money by gambling.
Ditz and one of his friends, Caspar Winckler, who had won six florins
and some books from him, have already been flogged by their
preceptors; they are now sentenced to imprisonment, but as the weather
is very cold, they are to be released after one day's detention, and
sent back to their preceptors to be flogged again. Their companions
are sentenced to return any money, books or garments which they had
won in gambling games. A student of the name of Valentine 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 (p. 104)
compel them to enter his college, is sentenced to five days'
imprisonment, but is released on the intercession of the girls and
many others. An attack on a servant with a knife is punished by
forfeiture of the knife and a fine of half a florin, and a penalty of
a florin (divided among the four victims) is inflicted for entering a
house with arms and wounding the fingers of some of its inhabitants. A
ruffian of 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 (p. 105)
contrasted with the strict insistence upon the lesser matters of the
law, cannot fail to impress modern readers, but this is not a
characteristic peculiar to Leipsic. Fines, and in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, whippings were frequently inflicted in all
universities for violent attacks upon the person. Dr Rashdall quotes a
case at Ingolstadt where a student who had killed another in a drunken
bout was let off with the confiscation of his goods, and the penalty
of expulsion was remitted; and the eighteenth-century history of
Corpus Christi College at Oxford supplies more recent instances of
punishments which could scarcely be said to fit the crime.
The statutes of the French universities outside Paris and of the three
medieval Scottish universities (St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen)
supply many 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 (p. 106)
he could, and he must not be found again in the streets without
special leave. The penalty was a public flogging. Similarly, even a
lawful game must not be played in the presence of a regent. Flogging
was a recognised penalty in all the Scottish universities; it found
its way into the system at St Andrews and Glasgow, and was introduced
at once at Aberdeen. The early statutes of Aberdeen University (King's
College) unfortunately exist only in the form in which they were
edited in the seventeenth century. They include a rhymed series of
rules for behaviour at table, which, though post-medieval in date,
give us some clue to the table manners of the medieval students:--
Majorem ne praevenia- }
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- } tis
Tribus cibos digitis prehenda- }
Cultro priusquam dente tera- }
. . . . . }
Ossa in orbem depona- }
Vel pavimentum jacia- }
Modeste omnia facia- }
Ossa si in convivas jacia- }
Nedum si illos vulnera- }
Ne queramini si vapula- }
. . . . . }
Post haustum labia deterga- } (p. 107)
Modicum, sed crebro biba- }
. . . . . }
Os ante haustum evacua- }
Ungues sordidulos fugia- } tis
. . . . . }
Ructantes terga reflecta- }
Ne scalpatis cavea- }
. . . . . }
Edere mementote ut viva- }
Non vivere ut comed- }
The Economist's accounts at Aberdeen have been preserved for part of
the year 1579, and show that the food of a Scottish student, just
after the medieval period, consisted of white bread, oat bread, beef,
mutton, 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 (p. 108)
and Glasgow). They quarrel about a book, and nearly come to blows; one
complains that the other reported him to the master for sleeping in
lecture. Both speak of the "lupi," the spies who reported students
using the vernacular or visiting the kitchen. The "wolves" were part
of the administrative machinery of a German University; a statute of
Leipsic in 1507 orders that, according to ancient custom, "lupi" or
"signatores" be appointed to note the names of any student who talked
German ("vulgarisantes") that they might be fined in due course, the
money being spent on feasts. One of the two Heidelberg students
complains of having been given a "signum" or bad mark "pro sermone
vulgariter prolato," and the other has been caught in the kitchen.
They discuss their teachers; one of them complains of a lecture
because "nimis alta gravisque materia est." The little book gives, in
some ways, a remarkable picture of German student life, with its
interests and its temptations; but it raises more problems than it
solves, and affords a fresh illustration of the difficulty of
attempting to recreate the life of the past.