UNIVERSITIES, SCHOOLS, STUDENTS. 



lead a life as full of privations ' as his own had been. Arduous study, 

 frequent fasts, a meagre pittance, .and a rigid discipline, such became the 

 proverbial condition of the Montaigu students a condition wittily expressed 

 in their Latin motto : MOM acutus, ingenium acutttm, drntrs acttti (a sharp- 

 pointed mountain, a sharp-pointed mind, and sharp-pointed teeth). Attired 

 in a cape of coarse cloth, closed in front, and surmounted by a hood fastening 

 at the back, they were called the pattrren capettcs of Montaigu, and they 

 were to be seen daily fetching their share, conformably with their statutes, of 

 the bread which the Carthusians of the Rue d'Enfer distributed to the poor. 

 Erasmus and Rabelais, both of whom learnt by personal experience, at a few 

 years' interval, the hardships of the Montaigu regime, have immortalised, each 

 after his own fashion, their melancholy college recollections ; the first in one 

 of his ingenious colloquies, by pouring his maledictions on the inhuman 

 treatment, the unhealthy lodging, the unwholesome and insufficient food 

 which had seriously injured his health while a student there ; the second by 

 putting in the mouth of his mock heroes many a stinging epigram about the 

 rolltge de pouillcric. 



Independently of the University and of the colleges, there also existed in 

 France, as in all Christendom during the Middle Ages, several kinds of 

 schools, some elementary, open to both sexes, and generally termed little 

 xrhools, or French schools, . as all that was taught in them was reading and 

 writing, with a few rudiments of the vulgar tongue and sacred music ; the 

 others, reserved for boys, and called the great school*, or the Latin schools 

 (Fig. 24). Both of these schools, generally attached to the churches, were 

 in most cases under the control of a single superintendent responsible to the 

 bishop of the diocese. This superintendent, called either rector or head- 

 master of schools, received from each scholar a fixed annual fee, payable in 

 two instalments, and a supplementary sum, also divided into two parts, one 

 of which was set apart for the repair of the building, and placed in the 

 hands of the provost, while the other was used for the purchase of birches, 

 which were kept in hand by the head-porter or bircher (Fig. 25). These 

 schools only received free scholars whom their parents or relatives under- 

 took to board. They had at their disposal, most of them under the patronage 

 of some private founder, if not under the auspices of the parochial chapter, 

 a certain number of purses or grfidn'fii'x, which were given to the needy 

 students in return for some small services which they were required to render. 



