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:—
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."