rried into execution; but so great was the uproar
occasioned in the university by this violation of its immunities that
the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, was compelled to take
down their bodies from Montfaucon and see them honorably and
ceremoniously interred. This recognition of their rights only served to
make matters worse, and for a series of years the nuisance
continued unabated.

It is not our purpose to record all the excesses of the university, nor
the means taken for their suppression. Vainly were the civil authorities
arrayed against them. Vainly were bulls thundered from the Vatican. No
amendment was effected. The weed might be cut down, but was never
entirely extirpated. Their feuds were transmitted from generation to
generation, and their old bone of contention with the abbot of
Saint-Germain (the Pre-aux-Clercs) was, after an uninterrupted strife
for thirty years, submitted to the arbitration of the Pope, who very
equitably refused to pronounce judgment in favor of either party.

Such were the scholars of Paris in the sixteenth century--such the
character of the clamorous crew who besieged the portals of the College
of Navarre.

The object that summoned together this unruly multitude was, it appears,
a desire on the part of the scholars to be present at a public
controversy or learned disputation, then occurring within the great hall
of the college before which they were congregated; and the
disappointment caused by their finding the gates closed, and all
entrance denied to them, occasioned their present disposition to riot.

It was in vain they were assured by the halberdiers stationed at the
gates, and who, with crossed pikes, strove to resist the onward pressure
of the mob, that the hall and court were already crammed to
overflowing, that there was not room even for the sole of a foot of a
doctor of the faculties, and that their orders were positive and
imperative that none beneath the degree of a bachelor or licentiate
should be admitted, and that a troop of martinets and new-comers could
have no possible claim to admission.

In vain they were told this was no ordinary disputation, no common
controversy, where all were alike entitled to license of ingress; that
the disputant was no undistinguished scholar, whose renown did not
extend beyond his own trifling sphere, and whose opinions, therefore,
few would care to hear and still fewer to oppugn, but a foreigner of
high rank, in high