40. University of Paris Strike, Paris, France 1229

Here we have a quiet little moment; undergraduates at the University of Paris are studiously paying close attention to their philosophy teacher, whilst following along in the text books that they have copied out from rented texts. Right now, this minute, they are behaving. Later, when they are drunkenly demolishing the local tavern, the townspeople will know they are university students, because of their tonsures, their clerical robes, all that Latin, and the fact that they are about 15 years old. This illustration is from the late 14th century (Castres, bibliothèque municipale, ms. 3, f. 277r), but things were pretty much the same 200 years earlier.

First some undergraduates got drunk over in a tavern, and then they didn’t pay, and so the townspeople beat them up. That was Shrove Tuesday. Fair enough. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when they were supposed to be repenting and thinking about their sinful lives, the students got some buddies together and went and trashed the pub, beat up the taverner, and looted and trashed the nearby businesses. But the townspeople couldn’t do anything about it, cause the local law couldn’t do anything to the students, and the church wouldn’t. So the townspeople went to the Queen, who said the students should be punished. Which the town guards interpreted as a command to kill whatever random students they came across. Which they then did. And then the whole university got very mad and disbanded and everybody left town, and the townspeople had lots fewer customers than they had earlier. Well! That was Lent, 1229, Paris. A very holy time, as you can see. Oh, and by the way. The strike wasn’t the crime. All that Lenten hoohah was.

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