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
The violence which marked medieval life as a whole was not likely to
be absent in towns where numbers of young clerks were members of a
corporation at variance with the authorities of the city. University
records are full of injuries done to masters and students by the
townsfolk, and of privileges and immunities obtained from Pope or King
or Bishop at the expense of the burgesses. When a new University was
founded, it was sometimes taken for granted that these conflicts must
arise, and that the townsmen were certain to be in the wrong. Thus,
when Duke Rudolf IV. founded the University of Vienna in 1365, he
provided beforehand for such contingencies by ordaining that an attack
on a student leading to the loss of a limb or other member of the body
was to be punished by the removal of the same member from the body of
the assailant, and that for a lesser injury the offender's hand was to
be wounded ("debet manus pugione transfigi"). The criminal might
redeem his person by a fine of a hundred silver marks for a serious
injury and of forty marks for slighter damages, the victim to (p. 125)
receive half of the fine. Assailants of students were not to have
benefit of sanctuary. Oxford history abounds in town and gown riots,
the most famous of which is the battle of St Scholastica's Day (10th
February) 1354. The riot originated in a tavern quarrel; some clerks
disapproved of the wine at an inn near Carfax, and (in Antony Wood's
words) "the vintner giving them stubborn and saucy language, they
threw the wine and vessel at his head." His friends urged the
inn-keeper "not to put up with the abuse," and rang the bell of St
Martin's Church. A mob at once assembled, armed with bows and arrows
and other weapons; they attacked every scholar who passed, and even
fired at the Chancellor when he attempted to allay the tumult. The
justly indignant Chancellor retorted by ringing St Mary's bell and a
mob of students assembled, also armed (in spite of many statutes to
the contrary). A battle royal raged till nightfall, at which time the
fray ceased, no one scholar or townsman being killed or mortally
wounded or maimed. If the matter had ended then, little would have
been heard of the story, but next day the townsmen stationed eighty
armed men in St Giles's Church, who sallied out upon "certain scholars
walking after dinner in Beaumont killed one of them, and wounded
others." A second battle followed, in which the citizens, aided by some
countrymen, defeated the scholars, and ravaged their halls, (p. 126)
slaying and wounding. Night interrupted their operations, but on the
following day, "with hideous noises and clamours they came and invaded
the scholars' houses ... and those that resisted them and stood upon
their defence (particularly some chaplains) they killed or else in a
grievous sort wounded.... The crowns of some chaplains, that is, all
the skin so far as the tonsure went, these diabolical imps flayed off
in scorn of their clergy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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