The statutes of the universities of Southern France, and especially of Avignon and Aix, give us some further information, and we possess a record of the proceedings at Avignon of the Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, referred to in the passage we have quoted from the regulations of the Cistercian College at Paris. Similar prohibitions occur in other College statutes.
At Avignon, the Confraternity of St Sebastian existed largely for the purgation of bajans and the control of the abuses which had grown up in connection with the jocund advent. One of its statutes, dated about 1450, orders that no novice, commonly called a bajan, shall be admitted to the purgation of his sins or take the honourable name of student until he has paid the sum of six _grossi_ as entrance money to the Confraternity. There is also an annual subscription of three _grossi_, and the payment of these sums is to be enforced by the seizure of books, unless the defaulter can prove that he is unable to pay his entrance fee or subscription, as the case may be. The Prior and Councillors of the Fraternity have power to grant a dispensation on the ground of poverty. After providing his feast, and taking an (p. 113) oath, the bajan is to be admitted "jocose et benigne," is to lose his base name, and after a year is to bear the honourable title of student. Noblemen and beneficed clergy are to pay double. The bajan is implored to comply with these regulations "corde hilarissimo," and his "socii" are adjured to remember that they should not seek their own things but the things of Christ, and should therefore not spend on feasts anything over six _grossi_ paid by a bajan, but devote it to the honour of God and St Sebastian. The Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, at the College of Annecy, in the same University, throws a little more light on the actual ceremony of purgation. The bajans are summoned into the Abbot's Court, where each of them receives, _pro forma_, a blow from a ferule. They all stand in the Court, with uncovered heads and by themselves ("Mundus ab immundo venit separandus"); under the penalty of two blows they are required to keep silence ("quia vox funesta in judiciis audiri non debet.") The bajan who has patiently and honestly served his time and is about to be purged, is given, in parody of an Inception in the University, a passage in the Institutes to expound, and his fellow-bajans, under pain of two blows, have to dispute with him. If he obtains licence, the two last-purged bajans bring water "pro lavatione et purgatione." The other rules of the Abbot's Court deal with the duties to be (p. 114) performed by the youngest freshman in Chapel (and at table if servants are lacking), and order bajans to give place to seniors and not to go near the fire in hall when seniors are present. No one, either senior or freshman, is to apply the term "Domine" to a bajan, and no freshman is to call a senior man a bajan. The Court met twice a week, and it could impose penalties upon senior men as well as bajans, but corporal punishment is threatened only against the "infectos et fetidissimos bejannos."