32 UNIVERSITIES, SCHOOLS, STUDENTS. 



condition, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the police, as an 

 institution, were hardly known, and when public morality still felt the 

 effects of long years of decadence, of a population of students penned up in 

 a territory which they looked upon as a freehold, consisting, as they did, of 

 youths on the verge of manhood and of full-grown men, belonging to various 

 nationalities, and left to their own passions. When it is further remembered 

 that a degree of arts could not be obtained before the age of one-and- 

 twenty, and one of theology till the age of thirty-five (after eight years' 

 study 'in the latter case), no wonder that this turbulent quarter was a 

 nuisance, and even a danger for the honest and peaceful inhabitants of Paris. 



The whole city was more than once disturbed, and public safety endan- 

 gered, by the aggressive and disorderly habits of the students. Not a day 

 passed without quarrels and fights, arising out of the most futile causes. 

 The insulting epithets which the students applied to each other show, more- 

 over, the antipathies which prevailed amongst them, and the coarseness which 

 was common to them all. The English had the reputation of being cowards 

 and drunkards ; the French were proud and effeminate ; the Germans dirty, 

 gluttonous, and ill-tempered ; the Normans boastful and deceitful ; the 

 Burgundiaus brutal and stupid ; the Flemish bloodthirsty, vagabond, and 

 house-burners ; and so forth for the rest. 



With all this, the person of a clerk (a title appertaining to every student 

 who had obtained his license) was, according to the canons of the Church, 

 inviolable ; to lay hands upon a student was to commit a crime which 

 entailed excommunication, and which the Pope alone could absolve (Fig. 26). 

 This will explain the audacity and arrogance of the students, and it is no 

 wonder that the civil authorities were, for all the most minute precautions, 

 continually at a loss how to repress the excesses of these riotous youths, 

 who, going about day and night in armed bands, indulged in every kind of 

 disorder, and did not stop at any crime. 



The establishment of the colleges led to a decided change for the better. 

 Previously to this happy innovation the students took advantage of the most 

 trifling religious or literary occurrence to increase the number of festivals, 

 which were celebrated with no lack of dancing, masquerades, banquets, &c. 

 All these scholastic rejoicings were afterwards reduced to two refreshment* 

 (days intended for a carousal), one at the beginning, the other at the end of 

 the public examinations, a period at which the candidates elected a captain 



