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.