Who were these Wandering Students, so often mentioned, and of whom nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men, and for the most part young men, travelling 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 women than upon a problem of divinity or logic. The conditions of medieval learning made it necessary to study different sciences in different parts of Europe; and a fixed habit of unrest, which seems to have pervaded society after the period of the Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation. "The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek liberal arts, in Orleans authors, at Salerno gallipots, at Toledo demons, and in no place decent manners."
These pilgrims to the shrines of knowledge formed a class apart. They were distinguished from the secular and religious clergy, inasmuch as they had taken no orders, or only minor orders, held no benefice or cure, and had entered into no conventual community. They were still more sharply distinguished from the laity, whom they scorned as brutes, and with whom they seem to have lived on terms of mutual hostility. One of these vagabond gownsmen would scarcely condescend to drink with a townsman:[6]—
"In aeterno igni
Cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni
Quod bibisse noverint bonum vinum vini."
"Aestimetur laicus ut brutus,
Nam ad artem surdus est et mutus."
"Litteratos convocat decus virginale,
Laicorum execrat pectus bestiale."
In a parody of the Mass, which is called Officium Lusorum, and in which the prayers are offered to Bacchus, we find this devout collect:[7]—"Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui inter rusticos et clericos magnam discordiam seminasti, praesta quaesumus de laboribus eorum vivere, de mulieribus ipsorum vero et de morte deciorum semper gaudere."
The English version of this ribald prayer is even more explicit. It runs thus:—"Deus qui multitudinem rusticorum ad servitium clericorum venire fecisti et militum et inter nos et ipsos discordiam seminasti."
It is open to doubt whether the milites or soldiers were included with the rustics in that laity, for which the students felt so bitter a contempt. But the tenor of some poems on love, especially the Dispute of Phyllis and Flora, shows that the student claimed a certain superiority over the soldier. This antagonism between clerk and rustic was heartily reciprocated. In a song on taverns the student is warned that he may meet with rough treatment from the clodhopper:[8]—
"O clerici dilecti,
Discite vitare
Tabernam horribilem,
Qui cupitis regnare;
Nec audeant vos rustici
Plagis verberare!
"Rusticus dum se
Sentit ebriatum,
Clericum non reputat
Militem armatum.
Vere plane consulo
Ut abstineatis,
Nec unquam cum rusticis
Tabernam ineatis."