Notre Dame and Petit Pont.
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There was no discipline or college life among the earliest students. Each master, having obtained his license from the bishop's chancellor, rented a room at his own cost, and taught what he knew—even, it was sometimes complained, what he did not know. We read of one Adam du Petit Pont, who, in the twelfth century, expounded Aristotle in the back-room of a house on the bridge amid the cackle of cocks and hens, and whose clientèle had many a vituperative contest with the fish-fags of the neighbourhood. The students grouped themselves according to nationalities, and with their masters held meetings in any available cloister, refectory, or church. When funds were needed, a general levy was made and any balance that remained was spent in a festive gathering in the nearest tavern. The aggregation of thousands of young men, some of whom were cosmopolitan vagabonds, gave rise to many evils. Complaints are frequent among the citizens of the depredations and immoralities of riotous clercs, who lived by their wits or by their nimble fingers, or by reciting or singing licentious ballads:—the paouvres escolliers, whose miserable estate, temptations, debauchery, ignoble pleasures, remorse and degradation have been so pathetically sung by François Villon, master of arts, poet, bohemian, burglar and homicide. The richer scholars often indulged in excesses, and of the vast majority who were poor, some died of hunger. It was the spectacle of half-starving clercs begging for bread that evoked the compassion of pious founders of colleges, which originally were simply hostels for needy scholars. On the return of Louis VII. from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, his brother Robert founded about 1180 the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a hostel for fifteen students, who, in 1217, were endowed with a chapel of their own, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and were then known as the poor scholars of St. Nicholas.[67] In 1171 a London merchant (Jocius de Londonne), passing through Paris on his return from the Holy Land, touched by the sight of some starving students begging their bread, founded a hostel for eighteen poor scholars at the Hôtel Dieu, who in return for lodging and maintenance were to perform the last Christian rites to the friendless dead. This, known as the college of the Dix-huit, was afterwards absorbed in the Sorbonne. In 1200 Étienne Belot and his wife, burgesses of Paris, founded a hostel for thirteen poor scholars who were known as the bons enfants. In all, some dozen colleges were in being when St. Louis came to the throne. In 1253, St. Louis' almoner, Robert of Cerbon or Sorbon, a poor Picardy village, founded[68] a modest college of theology, and obtained from Blanche of Castile a small house above the palace of the Thermæ where he was able to maintain a few poor students of theology. Friends came to his aid and soon sixteen were accommodated, to whom others, able to maintain themselves, were added. In 1269 a papal bull confirmed the establishment of the pauvres maistres estudiants in the faculty of theology at Paris. Even when enriched by later founders it was still called la pauvre Sorbonne. By the renown of their erudition the doctors of the Sorbonne became the great court of appeal in the Middle Ages in matters of theology, and the Sorbonne synonymous with the university. Some of the hostels were on a larger scale. The college of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1302 by the papal legate, housed sixty students in arts and forty in theology. Most were paying residents, but a number of bursaries were provided for those whose incomes were below a certain amount. Each boursier was given daily two loaves of white bread of twelve ounces, "the common weight in the windows of Paris bakers."

In 1304, Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, left her mansion near the Tour de Nesle and 2000 livres annually to found the college of Navarre for seventy poor scholars, twenty in grammar, thirty in philosophy, and twenty in theology. The first were allowed four sous weekly; the second, six; the third, eight. If any were possessed of annual incomes respectively of thirty, forty and sixty livres, they ceased to hold bursaries. The maintenance fund seems, however, to have been mismanaged, for we soon read of the scholars of the college walking the streets of Paris every morning crying—"Bread, bread, good people, for the poor scholars of Madame of Navarre!"

Some forty colleges were in existence by the end of the fourteenth century and had increased to fifty by the end of the fifteenth; in the seventeenth, Evelyn gives their number as sixty-five. In Félibien's time some had disappeared, for in his map (1725) forty-four colleges only are marked. Nearly the whole of these colleges clustered around the slopes of Mont St. Genevieve, which at length became that Christian Athens that Charlemagne dreamt of. Each college had its own rules. Generally students were required to attend matins (in summer at 3 a.m., winter at 4), mass, vespers and compline. When the curfew of Notre Dame sounded, they retired to their dormitories. Leave to sleep out was granted only in very exceptional cases. Tennis was allowed, cards and dice were forbidden. The college of Montaigu, founded in 1314 by Archbishop Gilles de Montaigu, housed eighty-two poor scholars in memory of the twelve apostles and seventy disciples. There the rod was never spared to the fainéant; the discipline so severe, that the college became the terror of the youth of Paris, and fathers were wont to sober their libertine sons by threatening to make capetes[69] of them. This was the Collège de Pouillerye denounced by Rabelais and notorious to students as the Collège des Haricots, because they were fed there chiefly on beans. Erasmus was a poor boursier there, disgusted at its mean fare and squalor, and Calvin, known as the "accusative," from his austere piety. Desmoulins, the inaugurator of the Revolution, and St. Just, its fiery and immaculate apostle, sat on its benches. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the scholar must pass an entrance examination. He then spent two years at logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the day. If students evinced no aptitude for learning they were dismissed; if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of masters and scholars (universitates magistrorum et scholiarum) that gave the university its definite character.

Tower in Rue Valette in which Calvin is said to have lived.
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When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English. Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the Quatre Nations were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre to choose a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter; they ruled a population of ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts alone.

In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a scholar. The rector immediately closed all classes until reparation was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the curés of Paris assembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying, in a loud voice—"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened.

The famous Petit Pré aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Prés.[70] From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued, in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor troubles, Abbot Gerard in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected on the way to the meadow: the scholars met in force and demolished them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called his vassals to arms and sent a force to seize the gates of the city that gave on the suburb, to prevent reinforcements reaching the scholars; his retainers then attacked the rioters, killed several and wounded many. The rector complained to the papal legate and threatened to close the schools if reparation were not made and justice done within fifteen days, whereupon the legate ordered the provost of the monastery to be expelled for five years. The royal council forced the abbot to exile ten of his vassals, to endow two chantries for the repose of the souls of slain clercs and compensate their fathers by fines of two hundred and four hundred livres respectively, and to pay the rector two hundred livres to be distributed among poor scholars. In 1345 another bloody fight took place between the monks and the scholars over the right to fish there.