a college. The Prior is
strictly questioned about the conduct of the students. He gives a good
character to most of them: but the little flock contained some black
sheep. Peter is somewhat light-headed ("aliquantulum est levis
capitis") but not incorrigible; he has been guilty of employing "verba
injuriosa et provocativa," but the Prior has corrected him, and he has
taken the correction patiently. Bertrand's life is "aliquantulum (p. 092)
dissoluta," and he has made a conspiracy to beat (and, as some think,
to kill) Dominus Savaricus, who had beaten him along with the rest,
when he did not know his lessons. (Bertrand says he is eighteen and
looks like twenty-one, but this is a monastic college and the beating
is monastic discipline.) The Prior further reports that Bertrand is
quarrelsome; he has had to make him change his bed and his chamber,
because the others could not stand him; he is idle and often says
openly, that he would rather be a "claustralis" than a student. Breso
is simple and easily led, and was one of Bertrand's conspirators.
William is "pessimae conversationis" and incorrigible, scandalous in
word and deed, idle and given to wandering about the town. Correction
is vain in his case. After the Prior has reported, the students are
examined _viva voce_ upon the portions of the decretals, which they
are studying, and the results of the examination bear out generally
the Prior's views. Bertrand, Breso and William, are found to know
nothing, and to have wasted their time. The others acquit themselves
well, and the examiners are merciful to a boy who is nervous in _viva
voce_, but of whose studies Dominus Savaricus, who has recovered from
the attack made upon him, gives a good account. Monks, and especially
novices, were human, and the experience of St Benedict's at
Montpellier was probably similar to that of secular colleges in (p. 093)
France and elsewhere. Even in democratic Bologna, it was found
necessary in the Spanish College (from the MS. statutes of which, Dr
Rashdall quotes) to establish a discipline which included a penalty of
five days in the stocks and a meal of bread and water, eaten sitting
on the floor of the Hall, for an assault upon a brother student; if
blood was shed, the penalty was double. The statutes of the Spanish
College were severe for the fourteenth century, and they penalise
absence from lecture, unpunctuality, nocturnal wanderings and so
forth, as strictly as any English founder.