a small
part in the election. As a member of the English nation, he would help
to choose a Consiliarius, who had a vote in the election, and who
became one of the Rector's permanent Council. The dignity of the
Rector's position would be impressed upon our novice by his senior
contemporaries, who could boast that, if a Cardinal came to Bologna,
he must yield precedence to the Rector, and the lesson would be
emphasised by a great feast on the occasion of the solemn installation
and possibly by a tournament and a dance, certainly by some more
magnificent banquet than that given by a Rector of the University of
Arts and Medicine. After our student's day there grew up a strange
ceremony of tearing the robe of the new Rector and selling back the
pieces to him, and statutes had to be passed prohibiting the
acceptance of money for the fragments, although if any student
succeeded in capturing the robe without injuring it, he might (p. 022)
claim its redemption. The state and hospitality which the office
entailed led to its being made compulsory to accept the offer of it,
but this arrangement failed to maintain the ancient prestige of the
Rectorship which, after the decline of the Universitates themselves,
had outlived its usefulness.

Magnificent as was the position of the Rector of a Universitas, our
young Englishman would soon discover that his Rector was only a
constitutional sovereign. He had to observe the statutes and to
consult his Council upon important questions. He had no power to
dispense with the penalties imposed by the regulations, and for any
mismanagement of the pecuniary affairs of the Universitas he was
personally liable, when at the end of his period of office he had to
meet a Committee and to render an account of his stewardship. He could
sentence offending students to money fines, but he must have the
consent of his Council before expelling them or declaring them subject
to the ecclesiastical and social penalties of the perjured man. He
claimed to try cases brought by students against townsmen, and about
the time of our scholar's arrival, the town had admitted that he might
try students accused of criminal offences forbidden by the University
statutes, and had agreed to carry out his sentences. Too free a use of
the secular arm would naturally lead to unpopularity and trouble; (p. 023)
the spectacle of a student being handed over to the gaolers of the
Podesta or of the Bishop can never have been pleas