Middle Ages and Renaissance 225
bec-jaune or “yellow-beak,” as he was called at Paris, came
up to the university between the ages of thirteen and six-
teen. If possible, he arrived in time for the opening of
Michaelmas term in late September or early October. Un-
less very poor, he joined a hall, an informal boarding and
rooming house, kept by older students or a Bachelor of Arts ;
and in the first week of term, he went “sight-seeing” (as
American students call the process), sampling lectures, until
he found a Master of Arts whom he liked, and who agreed
to take him as a pupil for a certain fee.
Before many days elapsed the freshman discovered some-
thing far more exciting than lectures. He must be initiated.
In vain did universities legislate against the “trials and tribu-
lations to which new students are subjected.” In vain did
masters denounce the “reception committees,” upper-class-
men who took from each freshman magnam partem suae
pecuniae. First the bejaunus is the victim of miscellaneous
japes and tricks. In Paris he must be paraded through the
streets on an ass ; in England the obvious antidote to fresh-
ness was salt, administered internally and externally. But
the really important part of the initiation was a feast at the
freshman’s expense to the comrades of his hall and to his
new master. The next thing on the programme, no doubt,
was to write home for more funds. “A student’s first song is
a demand for money,” writes an irate father of the thir-
teenth century, “and there will never be a letter which does
not ask for cash.”—“But this town is expensive and exact-
ing!” retorts an Oxford student to his parents about the year
1220. Both wails have sounded down the ages.
The medieval Arts course, which required six or seven
years to complete, consisted, in theory, of the Seven Arts and
the Three Philosophies. In practice it was very nearly equiva-
lent to a course on the works of Aristotle. Students heard