The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

by Roswell Park

Under the conditions existing during the Middle Ages, with relatively few institutions of advanced learning, and in the presence of that spirit which led men to travel long distances, and very widely out of the provinces, to the cities of the great scholia, or, as we call them now, universities, the most imperative common want was that of a common language; and so it happened that not only were the lectures all given in Latin, but that it was very commonly used for conversational purposes, and appears to have been almost a necessity of university life. Early in the history of the University of Paris a statute made the ability of the petitioner to state his case before the rector in Latin a test of his bona-fide studentship. This may perhaps, in some measure account for the barbarity of mediæval Latin. Still, as the listener said about Wagner's music, "it may not have been as bad as it sounded," since the period of greatest ignorance of construction and rhetoric had passed away before the university era began. John Stuart Mill even praised the schoolmen of the Middle Ages for their inventive capacity in the matter of technical terms. The Latin language, which was originally stiff and poor in vocabulary, became, in its employment by these mediæval thinkers, much more flexible and expressive. It was the Ciceronian pedantry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which killed off Latin as a living language. Felicity in Latin counted, then as now, as a mark of scholarship, and six hundred years ago a schoolmaster could come up to the university and, after performing some exercises and passing such an examination as the doctors of music do to-day, could write one hundred verses in Latin in praise of the university, and take his degree. The boys who went to the universities learned their Latin at inferior grammar schools, often in university towns. These schools were mainly connected with cathedrals or churches, although, in the later Middle Ages, even the smallest towns had schools where a boy might learn to read and write at least the rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin. In those days not only were the clergy Latin scholars, but the bailiff of every manor kept his accounts in Latin, and a tutor even formed part of the establishment of a great noble or prelate who had either a family or pages in his care.

In those good old days boys were accustomed to seek the university at the ages of thirteen to fifteen. A Paris statute required them to be at least fourteen, and naturally many were older. Many of these students were beneficed, and boys were canons or even rectors of parish churches. In this capacity they obtained leave of absence to study in the universities, and so it was quite common at one time for rectors and ecclesiastics of all ages to appear in the rôle of university students. At the close of the fourteenth century, in the University of Prague, in the law school alone there appeared on the list of students one bishop, one abbot, nine archdeacons, 290 canons, 187 rectors, and still other minor ecclesiastics. At one time in the University of Bologna, in the registry of German corps, more than half the students were church dignitaries. Sad to relate, many of these clerical students were among the most disorderly and troublesome of the academic population, the statutes vainly prescribing that they should sit "as quiet as girls;" while, as Rashdall says, "even spiritual thunders had at times to be invoked to prevent them from shouting, playing, and interrupting."

Considering the youthfulness of what we may call the freshmen, as many of them went up to the universities at the early age already mentioned, it is not strange that we hear of "fetchers" or "carriers" or "bryngers," who were detailed to escort them home; but we must remember that the roads were dangerous in those days, and that protection of some kind was necessary even for men. Proclamations against bearing arms usually made exceptions in favor of students travelling to or from the university. Students, many of them, lived in halls, or, as we would say now, dormitories, and one of them assumed the rôle of principal, or was delegated to exercise certain authority. Quite often this was the man who made himself responsible for the rent, whose authority came only from the voluntary consent of his fellow-students, or who was elected by them.

When it came to the matter of discipline, the good old-fashioned birchen rod was not an unknown factor in university government. There seems to have been always a certain relationship between classic studies and corporal punishment. In mediæval university records allusions to this relationship began about the fifteenth century. In Paris, about this time, when there were so many disgraceful factional fights, the rectors and proctors had occasionally to go to the colleges and halls and personally superintend the chastisement of the young rioters. We find also in the history of the University of Louvain that flogging was at one time ordered by the Faculty of Arts for homicide or other grave outrages. It is worth while to recall for a moment how grave offences were dealt with in those days. At the University of Ingolstadt one student killed another in a drunken quarrel, and was punished by the university by the confiscation of his scholastic effects and garments, but he was not even expelled. At Prague a certain Master of Arts assisted in cutting the throat of a friar bishop, and was actually expelled for the deed. In those days drunkenness was rarely treated as a university offence. The penalties which were inflicted for the gravest outrages and immoralities were for the greater part puerile in the extreme. In most serious cases excommunication or imprisonment were the penalties, while lesser offences were punished by postponement of degree, expulsion from the college, temporary banishment from a university town, or by fines.

In Leipzig, in 1439, the fine of ten new groschen was provided for the offense of lifting a stone or missile with a view of throwing it at a master, but not actually throwing it; whereas the act of throwing and missing increased the penalty to eight florins, while successful marksmanship was still more expensive. Later statutes made distinction between hitting without wounding and wounding without mutilation, expulsion being the penalty for actual mutilation. With the beginning of the sixteenth century the practice of flogging the very poorest students appears to have been introduced. During these Middle Ages they had a peculiar fashion of expiating even grave offences. For example, at the Sorbonne, if a fellow should assault or cruelly beat a servant he was fined a measure of good wine—not for the benefit of the servant, but for all the culprit's fellow-students. Those were the days, too, when trifling lapses incurred each its own penalty. A doctor of divinity was fined a quart of wine for picking a pear off a tree in the college garden or forgetting to shut the chapel door. Clerks were fined for being very drunk and committing insolences when in that condition. The head cook was fined for not putting salt in the soup. Most of these fines being in the shape of liquors or wines, I imagine that the practice was more general because the penalty was shared in by all who were near.

With lapse of time the statutes of the German universities gradually grew stricter until they became very minute and restrictive in the matter of unacademical pleasures. A visit to the tavern, or even to the kitchen of the college or hall, became a university offence. There were statutes against swearing, against games of chance, walking abroad without a companion, being out after eight in the winter or nine in the summer, making odious comparisons of country to country, etc. This was particularly true of the English universities, where a definite penalty was imposed for every offence, ranging from a quarter of a penny for not speaking Latin to six shillings eight pence for assault with effusion of blood.

The matter of constantly speaking Latin led to a system of espionage, by which a secret system of spies, called "lupi" or wolves, was arranged; these were to inform against the "vulgarisantes," or those offenders who persisted in speaking in their mother tongue.

It was the students of those days who set the example and the fashion of initiating, or, as we would say now, of hazing the newcomers. This custom of initiation, in one form or another, seems to have an almost hoary antiquity. As Rashdall puts it, three deeply rooted instincts of human nature combine to put the custom almost beyond suppression. It satisfies alike the bullying instinct, the social instinct, and the desire to find at once the excuse and the means for a carouse. In the days of which we are speaking the Bejaunus, which is a corruption of the old French Bec-jaune (or yellow bill), as the academic fledgling was called, had to be bullied and coaxed and teased in order to be welcomed as a comrade, and finally his "jocund advent" had to be celebrated by a feast furnished at his own expense. A history of the process of initiating would furnish one of the most singular chapters in university records. At first there were several prohibitions against all bejaunia, for the unfortunate youth's limited purse ill afforded even the first year's expenses. As the years went by certain restrictions were imposed, and by the sixteenth century the depositio cornuum had become in the German universities a ceremony almost equal in importance to matriculation. The callow country youth was supposed to be a wild beast who must be deprived of his horns before he could be received into refined society in his new home. This constituted the depositio for which he was supposed to arrange with his new masters, at the same time begging them to keep expenses as low as possible. Soon after he matriculated he was visited in his room by two of the students, who would pretend to be investigating the source of an abominable odor.

This would be subsequently discovered to be due to the newcomer himself, whom they would take at first to be a wild boar, but later discovery to be that rare creature known as a bejaunus, a creature of whom they had heard, but which they had never seen. After chaffing comments about his general ferocious aspect it would be suggested, with marked sympathy, that his horns might be removed by operation, the so-called depositio. The victim's face would then be smeared with some preparation, and certain formalities would be gone through with—clipping his ears, removal of his tusks, etc. Finally, in fear lest the mock operation should be fatal, the patient would be shriven; one of the students, feigning himself a priest, would put his ear to the dying man's mouth and then repeat his confession. The boy was made to accuse himself of all sorts of enormities, and finally it was exacted as penance that he should provide a sumptuous banquet for his new masters and comrades.