a tale from Leipsic.

The pages of the "Acta Rectorum" at Leipsic are full of illustrations
of the wilder side of student life, from which we extract the story of
one unhappy year. The year 1545 opened very badly, says the "Rector's
Chronicle," with three homicides. On Holy Innocents' Day, a bachelor
was murdered by a skinner in a street riot, and the murderer, though
he was seen by some respectable citizens, was allowed to escape. A
student who killed a man on the night of the Sunday after the (p. 129)
Epiphany was punished by the University in accordance with its
statutes (_i.e._ by imprisonment for life in the bishop's prison). The
third murder was that of a young bachelor who was walking outside the
city, when two sons of rustics in the neighbourhood fell on him and
killed him. Their names were known, but the city authorities refused
to take action, and the populace, believing that they would not be
punished, pursued the members of the University with continued insults
and threats. After an unusually serious attack _cum bombardis_, (in
which, "by the divine clemency," a young mechanic was wounded), the
University, failing to obtain redress, appealed to Prince Maurice of
Saxony, who promised to protect the University. A conference between
the University and the city authorities took place, and edicts against
carrying arms were published, but the skinners immediately indulged in
another outrage. One of them, Hans von Buntzell on Whitsunday,
attacked, with a drawn sword, the son of a doctor of medicine, "a
youth (as all agree) most guiltless," and wounded him in the arm, and
if another student had not unexpectedly appeared, "would without doubt
have killed this excellent boy." The criminal was pursued to the house
of a skinner called Meysen, where he took refuge. The city authorities,
inspired by the Prince's intervention, offered to impose three (p. 130)
alternative sentences, and the University was asked to say whether
Hans von Buntzell should lose one of his hands, or be publicly whipped
and banished for ten years, or should have a certain stigma ("quod
esset manus amittendae signum") burned in his hand and be banished.
The University replied that it was for the city to carry out the
commands of the Prince, and declined to select the penalty. On the
following Monday a scaffold was erected in the market-place, on which
were placed rods and a knife for cutting off the hand, "which
apparatus was thought by th