des Pres, whose monastic domains adjoined their territories, and whose meadows were the constant battleground of their skirmishes; according to Dulaure—­“presque toujours un theatre de tumulte, de galanterie, de combats, de duels, de debauches et de sedition.”  Hence their sanguinary conflicts with the good citizens of Paris, to whom they were wholly obnoxious, and who occasionally repaid their aggressions with interest.  In 1407 two of their number, convicted of assassination and robbery, were condemned to the gibbet, and the sentence was carried into execution; but so great was the uproar occasioned in the university by this violation of its immunities that the Provost of Paris, Guillaume de Tignonville, was compelled to take down their bodies from Montfaucon and see them honorably and ceremoniously interred.  This recognition of their rights only served to make matters worse, and for a series of years the nuisance continued unabated.

It is not our purpose to record all the excesses of the university, nor the means taken for their suppression.  Vainly were the civil authorities arrayed against them.  Vainly were bulls thundered from the Vatican.  No amendment was effected.  The weed might be cut down, but was never entirely extirpated.  Their feuds were transmitted from generation to generation, and their old bone of contention with the abbot of Saint-Germain (the Pre-aux-Clercs) was, after an uninterrupted strife for thirty years, submitted to the arbitration of the Pope, who very equitably refused to pronounce judgment in favor of either party.

Such were the scholars of Paris in the sixteenth century—­such the character of the clamorous crew who besieged the portals of the College of Navarre.

The object that summoned together this unruly multitude was, it appears, a desire on the part of the scholars to be present at a public controversy or learned disputation, then occurring within the great hall of the college before which they were congregated; and the disappointment caused by their finding the gates closed, and all entrance denied to them, occasioned their present disposition to riot.

It was in vain they were assured by the halberdiers stationed at the gates, and who, with crossed pikes, strove to resist the onward pressure of the mob, that the hall and court were already crammed to overflowing, that there was not room even for the sole of a foot of a doctor of the faculties, and that their orders were positive and imperative that none beneath the degree of a bachelor or licentiate should be admitted, and that a troop of martinets and new-comers could have no possible claim to admission.

In vain they were told this was no ordinary disputation, no common controversy, where all were alike entitled to license of ingress; that the disputant was no undistinguished scholar, whose renown did not extend beyond his own trifling sphere, and whose opinions, therefore, few would care to hear and still fewer to oppugn, but a foreigner of high rank, in high favor and fashion, and not more remarkable for his extraordinary intellectual endowments than for his brilliant personal accomplishments.