Life in the Medieval University

enerally implied considerable personal discomfort. The designation, "bejaunus" or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and

niversity history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have deemed it wisest to acce

f simple scholars on the occasion of their "bejaunia," and compelling them to expend on feasting the money on which they intended to live. Insults, blows, and other dangers are the general results of the system, and the University orders that no one shall exact money or anything else from bajans except the "s

eremonies are to be given up. New-comers in future are to be entrusted to the care of discreet seniors, who will instruct them in the honourable customs of the College, report their shortcomings in church, in walks, and in games, supervise their expenditure, and prevent their being overcharged "pro jocundo adventu" or in other ways. So strong was the tradition of the "jocund advent" that it thus finds a place even in a reformer's constitution, and we find references to it elsewhere in the statutes of Parisian colleges. An undated early code, drawn up for the Treasurer's College, orders the members to fulfil honestly their jocund advent in accordance with the advice of their fellow students. At Cornouaille, the new-comer is instructed to pay for his jocund advent neither

nd we possess a record of the proceedings at Avignon of the Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, referred to in the passage we

year is to bear the honourable title of student. Noblemen and beneficed clergy are to pay double. The bajan is implored to comply with these regulations "corde hilarissimo," and his "socii" are adjured to remember that they should not seek their own things but the things of Christ, and should therefore not spend on feasts anything over six grossi paid by a bajan, but devote it to the honour of God and St Sebastian. The Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, at the College of Annecy, in the same University, throws a little more light on the actual ceremony of purgation. The bajans are summoned into the Abbot's Court, where each of them receives, pro forma, a blow from a ferule. They all stand in the Court, with uncovered heads and by themselves ("Mundus ab immundo venit separandus"); under the penalty of two blows they are required to keep silence ("quia vox funesta in judiciis audiri non debet.") T

infinity of blows is also to be avoided. The Rector may remit a portion of the penalty at the request of noble or honourable ladies who happen to be present, for it is useless to invite ladies if no remission is to be obtained. If the bajan is proud or troublesome, the pleas of the ladies whom he has invited will not avail; he must have his three blows from each of his purgators, without any mercy. If a freshman failed to make his purgation within a month, it was to take place "in studio sub libro super anum"; the choice between a book and a frying-pan as a weapon of castigation is characteristic of the solemn fooling of the jocund advent. The seizure of goo

lunt," became a recognised University ceremony. The statutes attempt to check it, e.g. at Vienna the bajan is not to be oppressed with undue exactions or otherwise molested or insulted, and at Leipsic the insults are not to take the form of blows, stones, or water. At Prague, "those who lay down (deponent) their rustic manners and ignorance are to be treated more mildly and moderately than in recent years (1544), and their lips or other parts of their bodies are not to be defiled with filth or putrid and impure substances which produce sickness.

ldus then addresses the bajan. "Domine Joannes," he says, "whence do you come? Certainly you are a compatriot of mine, give me your hand." Joannes stretches out his hand, but is met with the indignant question, "Do you come to attack me with your nails? Why do you sit down, wild ass? Do you not see that masters are present, venerable men, in whose presence it becomes you to stand?" Joannes stands, and is further insulted. His tormentors then affect to be sorry for him and make touching references to his mother's feelings ("Quid, si mater sciret, quae unice eum amat?"), but relapse into abuse (O beane, O asine, O foetide hirce, O olens capra, O bufo, O cifra, O figura nihili, O tu omnino nihil). "What are we to do with him?" says Camillus, and Bartoldus suggests the possibility of his reformation and admission into their society. But they must have a doctor. Camillus is famous and learned in the science of medicine, and can remove his horns, file down his teeth, cure his blindness, and shave his long and horrible beard. While he goes for the necessary instruments, Bartoldus tells the victim to cheer up, for he is about to be cured from every evil of mind and body, and to be admitted to the privileges of the University. Camillus returns with ointment, and they proceed to some horseplay which Joannes resists (Compesce eius impetus et ut equum int

most vile and horrid sport of shaving beards"; it was "wont to be practised on the night preceding the Inception of a Master of Arts," but the freshmen may have been the victims, as they were in similar ceremonies at the Feast o

f the hall, joyning to the declaiming desk; which done, every one in order was to speake some pretty apothegme, or make a jest or bull, or speake some eloquent nonsense, to make the company laugh. But if any of the freshmen came off dull, or not cleverly, so

ed the other undergraduates to a brass pot "full o

well done, the person that spoke it was to have a cup of cawdle and no salted drink; if indifferently, some cawdle and some salted drink; but if dull, nothing was given to him but salted drink or salt put in college beere, with tucks to boot. Afterwards when they were to be admitted into the fraternity, the senior cook was to

eighteenth-century editor of Wood asserts, that "striking traces" of the practice "may be found in many societies in this place, and in some a very near resemblance of it has been kept up till within these few years." Our quotation from Wood may therefore serve to illustrate the treatment of the medieval freshman at Oxford. We possess no details of the jocund advent at Cambridge, but in the medieval Scottish universities, where the name of bajan still survives, there were relics of it within recent times. At St Andrews, a feast of raisins was the last survival of the