3 6 UNIVERSITIES, SCHOOLS, STUDENTS. 



mule or hackney, and accompanied by the deans, proctors, and myrmidons, 

 to the plain of St. Denis, where the market for the sale of parchment was 

 already opened. The rector, upon reaching the fair, caused to be put 

 aside as much parchment as would be required by the University for the 

 coming year, and received from the sellers a donation equivalent to 100 

 in the present day. After this the students alighted from their horses, 

 and, instead of forming part of the procession back to Paris, amused them- 

 selves at the -fair. This invariably led to riot and disorder, and not a 

 year passed without blood being spilt. Thus, from the fifteenth to the six- 

 teenth century, the decrees of Parliament against the carrying of arms or 

 sticks, decrees which were continually being renewed and always neglected, 

 testify to the gravity of the evil and to the obstacles in the way of putting 

 a stop to it. At last, in 1566, the fair was transferred from the plain to the 

 town of St. Denis, and at about the same period paper began to supersede 

 parchment even in public documents. The rector, therefore, ceased getting 

 a supply of it at the Lendit fair, and the students had no further pretext to 

 attend this fair, which soon fell into disuse. By the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century the only vestige left of it was the general holdiday which 

 the rector granted to the students of the University upon the first Monday 

 after the feast of St. Barnabas. 



The clerks and students of Paris were also the principal actors in, if not the 

 inventors of, certain ridiculous and burlesque ceremonies which, commenced 

 in the Church, and, after having been tolerated by it, under the name of the 

 Feasts of the Fusans, of the Ass, and of the Innocents, were only suppressed 

 by the action of the Church itself (see in this volume the chapter on Popular 

 Superstitions). These singular and absurd buffooneries, which were so 

 popular amongst the students, were, in course of time, succeeded by more 

 sober recreations, such as theatrical representations within the colleges, open- 

 air games, periodical excursions to the country, as, for instance, those to Our 

 Lady of the Vines and Our Lady of the Fields, or the Mai/ excursion, which 

 terminated in the planting of a tree in full bloom before the rector's gate. 

 But, as Vallet de Viriville remarks, it took many years to efface the old 

 traditions of violence and insubordination, for the French chroniclers of the 

 sixteenth century represent the students of their time as amusing themselves 

 in a manner that generally exceeded the limits of propriety. To pace the 

 streets at night, without regard for the tranquillity of the citizens or for the 



