They discuss their teachers; one of them complains of a lecture because "nimis alta gravisque materia est." The little book gives, in some ways, a remarkable picture of German student life, with its interests and its temptations; but it raises more problems than it solves, and affords a fresh illustration of the difficulty of attempting to recreate the life of the past. CHAPTER VI (p. 109) THE JOCUND ADVENT The medieval student began his academic career with an initiation ceremony which varied in different countries and at different dates, but which, so far as we know, always involved feasting and generally 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 the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite. The tradition, which dates from very early times, and which has so many parallels outside University history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have deemed it wisest to accept it and to be content with trying to limit the expense and the "ragging" which it entailed. We have no detailed knowledge of the initiation of the Parisian student, but a statute made by the University in 1342 proves that the two elements of bullying the new-comer and feasting at his expense were both involved in it. It relates that quarrels frequently (p. 110) arise through the custom of seizing the goods of 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 "socii" with whom they live, and they may take only a free-will offering. Bajans are to reveal, under heavy penalties, the names of any who molest them by word or blow, threatening them or offering them insults. Offenders are to be handed over to the Provost of Paris to be punished, but not "ad penam sanguinis."