In addition, we command our officials that, when the rector requires our and their aid and assistance for carrying out his sentences against scholars who try to rebel, they shall assist our clients and servants in this matter; first, however, obtaining lawful permission to proceed against clerks from the lord bishop of Worms, or from one deputed by him for this purpose.
62. Mediæval Students' Songs
"When we try to picture to ourselves," says Mr. Symonds in one of his felicitous passages, "the intellectual and moral state of Europe in the Middle Ages, some fixed and almost stereotyped ideas immediately suggest themselves. We think of the nations immersed in a gross mental lethargy; passively witnessing the gradual extinction of arts and sciences which Greece and Rome had splendidly inaugurated; allowing libraries and monuments of antique civilization to crumble into dust; while they trembled under a dull and brooding terror of coming judgment, shrank from natural enjoyment as from deadly sin, or yielded themselves with brutal eagerness to the satisfaction of vulgar appetites. Preoccupation with the other world in this long period weakens man's hold upon the things that make his life desirable.... Prolonged habits of extra-mundane contemplation, combined with the decay of real knowledge, volatilize the thoughts and aspirations of the best and wisest into dreamy unrealities, giving a false air of mysticism to love, shrouding art in allegory, reducing the interpretation of texts to an exercise of idle ingenuity, and the study of nature to an insane system of grotesque and pious quibbling. The conception of man's fall and of the incurable badness of this world bears poisonous fruit of cynicism and asceticism, that two-fold bitter almond hidden in the harsh monastic shell. Nature is regarded with suspicion and aversion; the flesh, with shame and loathing, broken by spasmodic outbursts of lawless self-indulgence."[511]
All of these ideas are properly to be associated with the Middle Ages, but it must be borne in mind that they represent only one side of the picture. They are drawn very largely from the study of monastic literature and produce a somewhat distorted impression. Though many conditions prevailing in mediæval times operated strongly to paralyze the intellects and consciences of men, the fundamental manifestations and expressions of human instinct and vitality were far from crushed out. The life of many people was full and varied and positive—not so different, after all, from that of men and women to-day. That this was true is demonstrated by a wealth of literature reflecting the jovial and exuberant aspects of mediæval life, which has come down to us chiefly in two great groups—the poetry of the troubadours and the songs of the wandering students. "That so bold, so fresh, so natural, so pagan a view of life," continues Mr. Symonds in the passage quoted, "as the Latin songs of the Wandering Students exhibit, should have found clear and artistic utterance in the epoch of the Crusades, is indeed enough to bid us pause and reconsider the justice of our stereotyped ideas about that period. This literature makes it manifest that the ineradicable appetites and natural instincts of men and women were no less vigorous in fact, though less articulate and self-assertive, than they had been in the age of Greece and Rome, and than they afterwards displayed themselves in what is known as the Renaissance. The songs of the Wandering Students were composed for the most part in the twelfth century. Uttering the unrestrained emotions of men attached by a slender tie to the dominant clerical class and diffused over all countries, they bring us face to face with a body of opinion which finds in studied chronicle or labored dissertation of the period no echo. On the one side, they express that delight in life and physical enjoyment which was a main characteristic of the Renaissance; on the other, they proclaim that revolt against the corruption of Papal Rome which was the motive force of the Reformation. Who were these Wandering Students? As their name implies, they were men, and for the most part young men, traveling from university to university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing judgment upon wine or woman than upon a problem of divinity or logic. These pilgrims to the shrines of knowledge formed a class apart. According to tendencies prevalent in the Middle Ages, they became a sort of guild, and with pride proclaimed themselves an Order."[512]
Our knowledge of the mediæval students' songs is derived from two principal sources: (1) a richly illuminated thirteenth-century manuscript now preserved at Munich and edited in 1847 under the title Carmina Burana; and (2) another thirteenth-century manuscript published (with other materials) in 1841 under the title Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes. Many songs occur in both collections. The half-dozen given in translation below very well illustrate the subjects, tone, and style of these interesting bits of literature.
Source—Texts in Edélestand du Méril, Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age ["Popular Latin Poetry of the Middle Ages">[, Paris, 1847, passim. Translated in John Addington Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song: Mediæval Latin Students' Songs (London, 1884), pp. 12-136, passim.
The first is a tenth century piece, marked by an element of tenderness in sentiment which is essentially modern. It is the invitation of a young man to his mistress, bidding her to a little supper at his home.
"Come therefore now, my gentle fere,
Whom as my heart I hold full dear;
Enter my little room, which is