University students complaining about money is hardly a modern phenomenon. Medieval letters reveal young scholars writing home with familiar requests: send money, send clothes, and please understand just how expensive student life has become.
For parents who have sent their children off to university, the complaints found in these medieval letters may sound surprisingly familiar. Students needed money for books, accommodation, clothing and food, and when their funds ran low, they knew exactly whom to ask for help.
Several surviving letters from the Middle Ages offer a glimpse into student life, including the financial pressures faced by young people studying far from home. Some are polite and carefully reasoned. Others suggest that medieval students could be just as creative as their modern counterparts when explaining why they desperately needed more money.
A medieval student asks for money
Detail of a historiated initial of a teacher and students, British Library, Harley 3140, f. 137.
One example comes from the 1220s and concerns a student studying at Oxford. His request was preserved in a collection of model letters:
B. to his venerable master A., greeting. This is to inform you that I am studying at Oxford with the greatest diligence, but the matter of money stands greatly in the way of my promotion, as it is now two months since I spent the last of what you sent me. The city is expensive and makes many demands; I have to rent lodgings, buy necessaries, and provide for many other things which I cannot now specify. Wherefore I respectfully beg your paternity that by the promptings of divine pity you may assist me, so that I may be able to complete what I have well begun. For you must know that without Ceres and Bacchus Apollo grows cold.
The final line draws upon classical mythology: Ceres was associated with agriculture and food, Bacchus with wine, and Apollo with knowledge and learning. In other words, studying becomes considerably more difficult when a student has nothing to eat or drink. Our writer is already showing off his learning as he begs for money!
The letter is particularly interesting because it comes from a collection of model correspondence. Rather than necessarily representing one individual’s plea to his father, it shows that requests for money were common enough among medieval students to become a recognisable type of letter.
Medieval students also had plenty of explanations ready if their parents were reluctant to send more money. They might complain that their university town was particularly expensive, or blame rising living costs on a harsh winter, a siege, a poor harvest or an unusually large influx of students. Other excuses were more personal: the messenger carrying their last payment had been robbed or had disappeared with the money, while some students claimed they had already borrowed as much as they could from fellow scholars. Whatever the circumstances, there always seemed to be a good reason why more money was urgently needed.
Two brothers studying in France
A letter on this folio tells of a student who did not get his money – BnF, MS Latin 14069 fol. 194v
Another example comes from two brothers studying at a university in France during the thirteenth century. They wrote to their father to report that things were going well academically. Unfortunately, their finances were another matter:
To their very dear and respectable parents M. Matre, knight, and M. his wife, M. and S., their sons, send greetings and filial obedience. This is to inform you that, by divine mercy, we are living in good health in the City of Orleans, an are devoting ourselves wholly to study, mindful of the words of Cato, ‘To know anything is praiseworthy.’ We occupy a good dwelling, next door but one to the schools and market-place, so that we can go to school every day without wetting our feet. We have also good companions in the house with us, well advanced in their studies and of excellent habit – an advantage which we well appreciate, for as the Psalmist says, ‘With an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright’.
They then came to the real purpose of the letter:
Wherefore lest production cease from lack of material, we beg your paternity to send us by the bearer, B., money for buying parchment, ink, a desk, and other things which we need, in sufficient amount that we may suffer no want on your account (God forbid!) but finish our studies and return home with honour. The bearer will also take charge of the shoes and stockings which you have to send us, and any news as well.
The combination of reassuring parents about academic success and immediately requesting money and clothing makes the letter particularly relatable. Medieval university education could be expensive, especially when students had to travel to another city and maintain themselves there.
Money was not the only thing medieval students requested from home. Surviving examples include appeals for books, parchment, trousers, linen and bedding. Two brothers studying at Chartres even asked their mother to send thick lambskins for winter clothing, parchment for making a psalter, their father’s large boots and some good chalk because the chalk they already had was apparently worthless.
Eustache Deschamps: “I ask of you greetings and money.”
A fourteenth-century manuscript of Justinian’s Institutes – the doodle is apparently made by a bored medieval law student of his lecturer. Library of Congress LCCN: 2004596530
There are many examples of letters home with demands for support, along with a few replies in which the parents send money along with admonitions against spending it too quickly. Perhaps the best example of a medieval student asking a parent for money comes from the French writer Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406). In his youth he attended the University of Orleans before going on to work for the King of France. In the year 1400 Eustache penned this imaginary letter from a student to his father:
Well beloved father, I have not a penny, nor can I get any save through you, for all things at the University are so dear, nor can I study in my Code or my Digest [these are legal texts], for their leaves [pages] have the falling sickness. Moreover, I owe ten crowns to the Provost, and can find no man to lend them to me. I ask of you greetings and money.
The student has need of many things if he will profit here; his father and his kin must supply him freely so that he will not be compelled to pawn his book, but will have ready money in his purse, with gowns and furs and decent clothing; or he will be damned for a beggar; wherefore, that men may not take me for a beast, I ask of you greetings and money.
Wines are expensive, as are hostels and other good things; I owe in every street, and am hard put to free myself from such snares. Dear father, deign to help me! I fear being excommunicated; already I have been cited, and there is not even a dry bone in my larder. If I cannot find money before this feast of Easter, the church door will be shut in my face; wherefore grant my supplication. I ask of you greetings and money.
Well beloved father, to ease my debts contracted to the tavern, at the baker’s, with the professors and the beadles, and to pay my subscriptions to the laundress and the barber, I ask of you greetings and money.
Deschamps was a poet and satirist, and the escalating demands are clearly meant to be amusing. Yet the humour worked precisely because his audience would have recognised the situation. Students really did have to find money for accommodation, food, clothing, books and university fees. They could accumulate debts, borrow money and write home when their resources disappeared.
Student life hasn’t changed that much
The universities of medieval Europe were very different from their modern counterparts, but the surviving letters of their students reveal experiences that remain remarkably recognisable.
Young scholars left home, moved to unfamiliar cities and discovered that independence was expensive. Their parents, meanwhile, received letters assuring them that their children were studying diligently before inevitably arriving at the real point of the correspondence.
Please send money.
Centuries later, that may be one part of university life that requires no translation.
University students complaining about money is hardly a modern phenomenon. Medieval letters reveal young scholars writing home with familiar requests: send money, send clothes, and please understand just how expensive student life has become.
For parents who have sent their children off to university, the complaints found in these medieval letters may sound surprisingly familiar. Students needed money for books, accommodation, clothing and food, and when their funds ran low, they knew exactly whom to ask for help.
Several surviving letters from the Middle Ages offer a glimpse into student life, including the financial pressures faced by young people studying far from home. Some are polite and carefully reasoned. Others suggest that medieval students could be just as creative as their modern counterparts when explaining why they desperately needed more money.
A medieval student asks for money
One example comes from the 1220s and concerns a student studying at Oxford. His request was preserved in a collection of model letters:
B. to his venerable master A., greeting. This is to inform you that I am studying at Oxford with the greatest diligence, but the matter of money stands greatly in the way of my promotion, as it is now two months since I spent the last of what you sent me. The city is expensive and makes many demands; I have to rent lodgings, buy necessaries, and provide for many other things which I cannot now specify. Wherefore I respectfully beg your paternity that by the promptings of divine pity you may assist me, so that I may be able to complete what I have well begun. For you must know that without Ceres and Bacchus Apollo grows cold.
The final line draws upon classical mythology: Ceres was associated with agriculture and food, Bacchus with wine, and Apollo with knowledge and learning. In other words, studying becomes considerably more difficult when a student has nothing to eat or drink. Our writer is already showing off his learning as he begs for money!
The letter is particularly interesting because it comes from a collection of model correspondence. Rather than necessarily representing one individual’s plea to his father, it shows that requests for money were common enough among medieval students to become a recognisable type of letter.
Medieval students also had plenty of explanations ready if their parents were reluctant to send more money. They might complain that their university town was particularly expensive, or blame rising living costs on a harsh winter, a siege, a poor harvest or an unusually large influx of students. Other excuses were more personal: the messenger carrying their last payment had been robbed or had disappeared with the money, while some students claimed they had already borrowed as much as they could from fellow scholars. Whatever the circumstances, there always seemed to be a good reason why more money was urgently needed.
Two brothers studying in France
Another example comes from two brothers studying at a university in France during the thirteenth century. They wrote to their father to report that things were going well academically. Unfortunately, their finances were another matter:
To their very dear and respectable parents M. Matre, knight, and M. his wife, M. and S., their sons, send greetings and filial obedience. This is to inform you that, by divine mercy, we are living in good health in the City of Orleans, an are devoting ourselves wholly to study, mindful of the words of Cato, ‘To know anything is praiseworthy.’ We occupy a good dwelling, next door but one to the schools and market-place, so that we can go to school every day without wetting our feet. We have also good companions in the house with us, well advanced in their studies and of excellent habit – an advantage which we well appreciate, for as the Psalmist says, ‘With an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright’.
They then came to the real purpose of the letter:
Wherefore lest production cease from lack of material, we beg your paternity to send us by the bearer, B., money for buying parchment, ink, a desk, and other things which we need, in sufficient amount that we may suffer no want on your account (God forbid!) but finish our studies and return home with honour. The bearer will also take charge of the shoes and stockings which you have to send us, and any news as well.
The combination of reassuring parents about academic success and immediately requesting money and clothing makes the letter particularly relatable. Medieval university education could be expensive, especially when students had to travel to another city and maintain themselves there.
Money was not the only thing medieval students requested from home. Surviving examples include appeals for books, parchment, trousers, linen and bedding. Two brothers studying at Chartres even asked their mother to send thick lambskins for winter clothing, parchment for making a psalter, their father’s large boots and some good chalk because the chalk they already had was apparently worthless.
Eustache Deschamps: “I ask of you greetings and money.”
There are many examples of letters home with demands for support, along with a few replies in which the parents send money along with admonitions against spending it too quickly. Perhaps the best example of a medieval student asking a parent for money comes from the French writer Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406). In his youth he attended the University of Orleans before going on to work for the King of France. In the year 1400 Eustache penned this imaginary letter from a student to his father:
Well beloved father, I have not a penny, nor can I get any save through you, for all things at the University are so dear, nor can I study in my Code or my Digest [these are legal texts], for their leaves [pages] have the falling sickness. Moreover, I owe ten crowns to the Provost, and can find no man to lend them to me. I ask of you greetings and money.
The student has need of many things if he will profit here; his father and his kin must supply him freely so that he will not be compelled to pawn his book, but will have ready money in his purse, with gowns and furs and decent clothing; or he will be damned for a beggar; wherefore, that men may not take me for a beast, I ask of you greetings and money.
Wines are expensive, as are hostels and other good things; I owe in every street, and am hard put to free myself from such snares. Dear father, deign to help me! I fear being excommunicated; already I have been cited, and there is not even a dry bone in my larder. If I cannot find money before this feast of Easter, the church door will be shut in my face; wherefore grant my supplication. I ask of you greetings and money.
Well beloved father, to ease my debts contracted to the tavern, at the baker’s, with the professors and the beadles, and to pay my subscriptions to the laundress and the barber, I ask of you greetings and money.
Deschamps was a poet and satirist, and the escalating demands are clearly meant to be amusing. Yet the humour worked precisely because his audience would have recognised the situation. Students really did have to find money for accommodation, food, clothing, books and university fees. They could accumulate debts, borrow money and write home when their resources disappeared.
Student life hasn’t changed that much
The universities of medieval Europe were very different from their modern counterparts, but the surviving letters of their students reveal experiences that remain remarkably recognisable.
Young scholars left home, moved to unfamiliar cities and discovered that independence was expensive. Their parents, meanwhile, received letters assuring them that their children were studying diligently before inevitably arriving at the real point of the correspondence.
Please send money.
Centuries later, that may be one part of university life that requires no translation.
You can read more about this topic in Charles Homer Haskins’ article, “The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by their Letters” and the book The University in Medieval Life, 1179-1499, by Hunt Janin.
Top Image: 14th-century depiction of a university lecture.
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