CHAPTER V (p. 094)

UNIVERSITY DISCIPLINE

The growing tradition of strict college discipline ultimately led to
disciplinary statutes in the universities. From very early times,
universities had, of course, made regulations about the curriculum,
and the border-line between a scholar's studies and his manners and
morals, could not be absolutely fixed. At Paris, indeed, it is not
until the fifteenth century that we find any detailed code of
disciplinary statutes; but fourteenth-century regulations about dress
were partly aimed at checking misdeeds of students disguised as
laymen, and in 1391 the English Nation prohibited an undue number of
"potationes et convivia," in celebration of the "jocund advent" of a
freshman or on other occasions. It was not till the middle of the
fifteenth century that the University of Paris, awoke to the
realisation of its own shortcomings in manners and morals; Cardinal
William de Estoutville was commissioned by Nicholas V. to reform it,
and internal reform, the necessity of which had been recognised for
some years, began about the same time with an edict of the Faculty of
Arts ordering a general improvement, and especially forbidding the (p. 095)
celebration of feasts "cum mimis seu instrumentis altis."
Estoutville's ordinances are largely concerned with the curriculum, he
was at least as anxious to reform the masters as the pupils, and his
exhortations are frequently in general or scriptural terms. The points
of undergraduate discipline on which he lays stress are feasting,
dressing improperly or wearing the clothes of laymen, quarrelling, and
games and dances "dissolutas et inhonestas." Four masters or doctors
are to inspect annually the colleges and pedagogies, in which the
students live, and are to see that proper discipline is maintained.
From time to time, similar regulations were made by the Faculty of
Arts, _e.g._ in 1469, it is ordered that no student is to wear the
habit of a fool, except for a farce or a morality (amusements
permitted at this period). Any one carrying arms or wearing fools'
dress is to be beaten in public and in his own hall. These last
regulations are doubtless connected with town and gown riots, for
which the Feast of Fools afforded a tempting opportunity.

The absence of disciplinary regulations in the records of the
University of Paris, is largely to be explained by the fact that
criminal c