A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



of Lollardism in the form of Lutheranism, which 

 had already undermined Romanism in England. 

 Despauterius, or Despautier, calls himself Nini- 

 vita, and was master of the school of St. Ginnocus 

 at Bergis or Bergen-op-Zoom ; he published the 

 first edition of his An Ephtollca at Argentora 

 (i.e. Strasburg) in 1512, and a second at Antwerp 

 in 1529. The over-refining classification of the 

 schoolmen still prevails in it, letters being divided 

 into three classes the descriptive, the political, 

 and the familiar ; while each letter is made to 

 comprise a salutation, a statement, a petition, and 

 a valediction, as if all letters were begging 

 letters. Mosellanus, so called because born on 

 the Moselle, was Peter Schade, a schoolmaster of 

 Leipzig. His Paedologia, Latin dialogues be- 

 tween schoolboys and students on their work, 

 their play, their poverty, and their religion, was 

 written when, though only twenty-five years old, 

 he had already been master of the school for 

 eight years. They are extremely entertaining, 

 and though only published in 1521, three years 

 after Luther's theses, scoff at such ceremonials as 

 that of Candlemas Day and the boy-bishop. On 

 the former Valerius asks Nicholas : ' Why have 

 you not a candle ? ' To which Nicholas an- 

 swers : ' How could I, when I have not enough 

 money to buy food ? If I were at home my 

 mother would have bought me these baubles 

 soon enough ! ' Valerius : ' How dare you 

 laugh at sacred things ? ' Nicholas : ' Why 

 not ? I shall not be a heretic even if I don't 

 carry a candle ... it would be more pleasing 

 to Christ if the money wasted on candles were 

 spent on poor relief.' As to the boy-bishop, 

 ' What's the good of it ' says one boy ; ' Why 

 none, except that you get an uncommonly good 

 dinner,' replies the other. Mosellanus's Flgurae 

 are terribly detailed excursuses on the figures of 

 speech written in Latin hexameters. The book 

 begins : 



' Arte novata aliqua dicendi forma figura est. 

 Sunt ejus species metaplasmus, schema, tro- 



pusque ; 

 Schemata dant species tibi lexeos et dianeas.' 



Mosellanus goes on to express scorn for his pre- 

 decessors who sacrificed metre to sense, but as he 

 only avoided the fault by interlarding his dis- 

 course with Romanized Grecisms, of which, 

 being a novelty, he was excessively proud, the 

 learner might perhaps think that in the new 

 writer he had fallen out of the frying pan into 

 the fire. The use of the words schema, lexeos, 

 and dianeas shows how Greek had already made 

 its way in schools. It may be noted that Mosel- 

 lanus's predecessor, as teacher of Greek at Leipzig, 

 was an Englishman and an Etonian, Richard 

 Crook. 



The Quos decet in mensa, out of which the 

 boys learnt at the same time manners, morals, 

 and verse, was the work of Sulpicius, a grammar 



schoolmaster at Rome in the 1 5th century. It 

 got its name from its beginning : 



' Quos decet in mensa mores servare docemus, 

 Virtuti ut studeas litterulisque simul.' 



Good manners for the table here we tell, 

 To make our scholars gentlemen as well. 



In elegant elegiacs are set out all the good old 

 nursery rules as to behaviour. Before meals you 

 are to wash your hands and face and clean your 

 teeth. At meals do not rush to your place ; 

 when you cough, spit or blow your nose, turn 

 your head away. Don't put your elbows on the 

 table, don't champ your jaws when eating, don't 

 take large mouthfuls, don't bite your bread but 

 cut it, don't gnaw your bones. Remember that 

 you eat to live and do not live to eat (' Esse 

 decet vivas, vivere non ut edas '). Did Sulpicius 

 invent this famous epigram ? In drinking, only 

 lift the cup with one hand, unless it is of the 

 kind that Theseus or Bel used to hurl at an 

 enemy ; don't look over it while you drink, don't 

 swallow too fast, or drain the pot, or whistle in 

 drinking. Wipe the cup. When you leave the 

 table, bend your knee, join your hands and say 

 ' Prosit' for grace. There are other com- 

 monplaces of the manners that make man. 

 There was nothing new in all this except the 

 setting. It is found in Facetus, a pseudonym of 

 Johannes de Garlandia, a 13th-century writer of 

 a Latin-English vocabulary and a treatise on 

 manners, a copy of which was presented by Wil- 

 liam of Wykeham to Winchester College. He 

 is said to have been an Englishman, and his book 

 was frequently printed in England from 1500 

 onwards. No doubt it, too, descended from 

 immemorial antiquity. 



Not the least interesting part of Richard Cox's 

 memorandum is that setting out the disciplinary 

 and domestic arrangements. Herman's Bulgaria 

 showed that the prefect system, the system of 

 self-government of boys by boys was in full 

 operation, the prefects being called prepostors. 

 There were two school prepostors ; four prepos- 

 tors of chapel, two in the choir, two in the body 

 of the church ; prepostors in the playing-fields, 

 to put down fighting, tearing of clothes and 

 giving of blue, or, as we say, black eyes ; prepos- 

 tors to look after dirty boys. Then there were 

 two prepostors in each form to give in a scroll of 

 those absent, and a custos in every form above 

 the third to see that they talked nothing but 

 Latin. There were separate houses, dames or 

 ' hostise's ' houses, to which the boys had to 

 march two and two under a monitor ; and in 

 every house having more than four or five in it, 

 a monitor to stop chiding or wrangling and to 

 enforce talking Latin. Finally there were ' privy 

 monitors,' a sort of delators or spies, a most un- 

 pleasing institution in mediaeval schools, much 

 attacked in Mosellanus's dialogues, to report secretly 

 misbehaviour to the master. It would appear 



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