Life in the Medieval University

by Robert S. Rait

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.