Life in the Medieval University

by Robert S. Rait

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.