nty shillings for utensils, and to provide a pint of good
wine for the fellows then present in hall. Dr Rashdall quotes from the
Register of the Sorbonne an instance in which the Abbot of the Bajans
was fined eight shillings (to be expended in wine) because he had (p. 112)
not fulfilled his duties in regard to the cleansing of the bajans
by an aspersion of water on Innocents' Day. The bajans were not only
washed, but carried in procession upon asses.

The statutes of the universities of Southern France, and especially of
Avignon and Aix, give us some further information, and we possess a
record of the proceedings at Avignon of the Court of the Abbot of the
Bajans, referred to in the passage we have quoted from the regulations
of the Cistercian College at Paris. Similar prohibitions occur in
other College statutes.

At Avignon, the Confraternity of St Sebastian existed largely for the
purgation of bajans and the control of the abuses which had grown up
in connection with the jocund advent. One of its statutes, dated about
1450, orders that no novice, commonly called a bajan, shall be
admitted to the purgation of his sins or take the honourable name of
student until he has paid the sum of six _grossi_ as entrance money to
the Confraternity. There is also an annual subscription of three
_grossi_, and the payment of these sums is to be enforced by the
seizure of books, unless the defaulter can prove that he is unable to
pay his entrance fee or subscription, as the case may be. The Prior
and Councillors of the Fraternity have power to grant a dispensation
on the ground of poverty. After providing his feast, and taking an (p. 113)
oath, the bajan is to be admitted "jocose et benigne," is to lose his
base name, and after a year is to bear the honourable title of
student. Noblemen and beneficed clergy are to pay double. The bajan is
implored to comply with these regulations "corde hilarissimo," and his
"socii" are adjured to remember that they should not seek their own
things but the things of Christ, and should therefore not spend on
feasts anything over six _grossi_ paid by a bajan, but devote it to
the honour of God and St Sebastian. The Court of the Abbot of the
Bajans, at the College of Annecy, in the same University, throws a
little more light on the actual ceremony of purgation. The bajans are
summoned into the Abbot's Court, where each of them receives, _pro
forma_, a blow from a ferule. They all stand in the Court, w