out a book, and nearly come to blows; one
complains that the other reported him to the master for sleeping in
lecture. Both speak of the "lupi," the spies who reported students
using the vernacular or visiting the kitchen. The "wolves" were part
of the administrative machinery of a German University; a statute of
Leipsic in 1507 orders that, according to ancient custom, "lupi" or
"signatores" be appointed to note the names of any student who talked
German ("vulgarisantes") that they might be fined in due course, the
money being spent on feasts. One of the two Heidelberg students
complains of having been given a "signum" or bad mark "pro sermone
vulgariter prolato," and the other has been caught in the kitchen.
They discuss their teachers; one of them complains of a lecture
because "nimis alta gravisque materia est." The little book gives, in
some ways, a remarkable picture of German student life, with its
interests and its temptations; but it raises more problems than it
solves, and affords a fresh illustration of the difficulty of
attempting to recreate the life of the past.

CHAPTER VI (p. 109)

THE JOCUND ADVENT

The medieval student began his academic career with an initiation
ceremony which varied in different countries and at different dates,
but which, so far as we know, always involved feasting and generally
implied considerable personal discomfort. The designation, "bejaunus"
or bajan, which signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have
been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of
receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the
close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but
an acknowledged and admitted academic rite. The tradition, which dates
from very early times, and which has so many parallels outside
University history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have
deemed it wisest to accept it and to be content with trying to limit
the expense and the "ragging" which it entailed.

We have no detailed knowledge of the initiation of the Parisian
student, but a statute made by the University in 1342 proves that the
two elements of bullying the new-comer and feasting at his expense
were both involved in it. It relates that quarrels frequently (p. 110)
arise through the custom of seizing the goods of simple scholars on
the occasion of their "bejaunia," and compelling the