Life in the Medieval UniversityRait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster)
History
Life in the Medieval University
Rait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster)
College students -- Europe -- History; Education, Medieval; Universities and colleges -- Europe -- History
student in Arts being a public flogging in his own college.
At Leipsic, the University was generally responsible for the
discipline, sometimes even when the offences had been committed in the
colleges; and a record of the proceedings of the Rector's Court from
1524 to 1588, which was published by Friedrich Zarncke, the learned
historian of Leipsic, gives us a large variety of incidents of
University life in sixteenth-century Germany. Leipsic possessed a
University prison, and we find, in 1524, two students, Philippus (p. 103)
Josman and Erasmus Empedophillus, who had quarrelled, and insulted
each other, sentenced to perform, in the prison, impositions for the
Rector. Six or eight days' imprisonment is a frequent penalty for a
drunken row. A college official brings to the Rector's Court in 1545
one of his pupils, John Ditz, who had lost much money by gambling.
Ditz and one of his friends, Caspar Winckler, who had won six florins
and some books from him, have already been flogged by their
preceptors; they are now sentenced to imprisonment, but as the weather
is very cold, they are to be released after one day's detention, and
sent back to their preceptors to be flogged again. Their companions
are sentenced to return any money, books or garments which they had
won in gambling games. A student of the name of Valentine Muff
complains to the Rector that his pedagogue has beaten and reproved him
undeservedly: after an inquiry he is condemned to the rods "once and
again." For throwing stones at windows a student is fined one florin
in addition to the cost of replacing them. For grave moral offences
fines of three florins are imposed, and the penalty is not
infrequently reduced. A month's imprisonment is the alternative of the
fine of three florins, but if the weather is cold, the culprit, who
has been guilty of gross immorality, is let off with two florins. A
drunken youth who meets some girls in the evening and tries to (p. 104)
compel them to enter his college, is sentenced to five days'
imprisonment, but is released on the intercession of the girls and
many others. An attack on a servant with a knife is punished by
forfeiture of the knife and a fine of half a florin, and a penalty of
a florin (divided among the four victims) is inflicted for entering a
house with arms and wounding the fingers of some of its inhabitants. A
ruffian of noble birth, who had been guilty of gross immorality and of
violence, declines to appear in the Rector's Court, and is duly
sentenced to expulsion. But his father promises to satisfy the
University and the injured party, and seven nobles write asking that
he should be pardoned, and a compromise is made, by which he appears
in court and pays a fine. For the University offence of having as an
attendant a boy who is not enrolled, Valentine Leo is fined three
florins, which were paid. "But since he appeared to be good and
learned, and produced an excellent specimen of his singular erudition,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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