"Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation."
What made this statute necessary at Leipzig University? Was hazing freshman common across other Universities in the medieval and early modern periods?
Does it relate at all to more modern collegiate fraternity & athletics hazing?
I followed a seminar on the development of universities in the medieval era and I remember reading about this topic.
One of the sources we have of student life in Germany from this period is the Heidelberg Manuale Scholarium (Scholar’s Manual), which is a handbook on student life in Germany around 1480. Hazing is here presented as an act of transforming the newly arrived students, called beanus or bejaunus, into proper members of the university society. The young students were viewed as wild beasts that had to be civilized before they could become proper students at the university, which was done through a hazing ceremony called the depositio. These new students would be much younger than the ones that start college today, usually being 14-16 years old when they first came to a university. If this was the case at other universities in Germany, or the rest of Europe, I do not know. Though this was the case at Heidelberg.
Hunt Janin describes this ritual as such:
“In the Manuale Scholarium the new student is first depicted as meeting with his professor, whom he asks to arrange for his depositio and begs that its expenses be held to a minimum. Then, after appearing before the rector for the ceremony of matriculation, he is visited in his room by two of the other students…who pretend to be investigating the source of an abominable smell that has assailed their nostrils. They discover to their mock horror that the cause of the odor is a bejaunus – a creature they have heard about but never seen…They go on to remark about the wild glare in this creature’s eye, the length of his ears, and his long fearsome tusks. They suggest that the tusks and other abnormalities can be removed only by the depositio. The young student’s face is then smeared with soap; the other students pretend to trim his ears and saw off his tusks. The students explain that since this operation may well prove fatal, the young student must immediately have his confession heard – by a student feigning to be a priest. The young student is then forced to confess, very quietly, to all kinds of imaginary faults; the “priest” then repeats them in a loud voice for the benefit of all the other students. Finally, as his penance for such grievous sins, the young student is ordered to arrange – and pay for – a sumptuous banquet for his new comrades.”
Another source we have about the conduct, or expected conduct, of students comes from John of Garland (1195-1272) who wrote the Morale scolarium (Morality of Students) in 1241. Advice for younger students on how to behave in the streets of Paris.
“Be not a fornicator, O student, a robber, a murderer, a deceitful merchant, a champion at dice…”
The medieval universities and university cities could be wild places.
As for if this relates to the modern collegiate fraternity and athletics hazing, I am not sure, I do not know that much about modern American higher education. Though it should be noted that the modern research universities were inspired by developments in Germany in the late 18th and 19th century, and a quite a number of Americans studied in Germany at this time, so it is not unlikely that some German university traditions were brought over as well.
Sources:
Janin, Hunt. (2008). The University in Medieval Life: 1179-1499. A good source on medieval universities; it also contains a few primary sources. Recomended reading, though it does not include that much about German universities.
Seybolt, Robert F. (1921). The Manuale Scholarium: An Original Account of Life in the Medieval University. This is the book Janin lists as having used for the description of the depositio.