not scholastic. They were,
however, composed by men of culture, imbued with classical learning of
some sort, and prepared by scholarship for the deftest and most
delicate manipulation of the Latin language.

Who were these Wandering Students, so often mentioned, and of whom
nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men,
and for the most part young men, travelling from university to
university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without
responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and
pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting
taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable of pronouncing
judgment upon wine or women than upon a problem of divinity or logic.
The conditions of medieval learning made it necessary to study
different sciences in different parts of Europe; and a fixed habit of
unrest, which seems to have pervaded society after the period of the
Crusades, encouraged vagabondage in all classes. The extent to which
travelling was carried in the Middle Ages for purposes of pilgrimage
and commerce, out of pure curiosity or love of knowledge, for the
bettering of trade in handicrafts or for self-improvement in the
sciences, has only of late years been estimated at a just calculation.
"The scholars," wrote a monk of Froidmont in the twelfth century, "are
wont to roam around the world and visit all its cities, till much
learning makes them mad; for in Paris they seek liberal arts, in
Orleans authors, at Salerno gallipots, at Toledo demons, and in no
place decent manners."

These pilgrims to the shrines of knowledge formed a class apart. They
were distinguished from the secular and religious clergy, inasmuch as
they had taken no orders, or only minor orders, held no benefice or
cure, and had entered into no conventual community. They were still
more sharply distinguished from the laity, whom they scorned as
brutes, and with whom they seem to have lived on terms of mutual
hostility. One of these vagabond gownsmen would scarcely condescend to
drink with a townsman:[6]--

"In aeterno igni
Cruciantur rustici, qui non sunt tam digni
Quod bibisse noverint bonum vinum vini."

"Aestimetur laicus ut brutus,
Nam ad artem surdus est et mutus."

"Litteratos convocat decus virginale,
Laicorum execrat pectus bestiale."

In a parody of the Mass, which is called _Officium Lusorum,_ and in
whic