HOW MARDI GRAS INFLUENCED UNIVERSITY LIFE

As a native of New Orleans, I enjoyed many a Mardi Gras as a child and young man.  Though I have not resided in NO since 1969, it is still my home town, and a few days ago when I read a few pages about a Parisian Mardi Gras, decided to add it to my blog.   Hugh Murray

MARDI GRAS UNIVERSITY

            Monday 8 February 2016 is New Years’ Day in China, Vietnam, Korea, and many other Asian countries.  It is also Rosen Montag in Germany,  Tomorrow is the day before Lent begins, and in many Christian nations, it is Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, Mardi Gras, Fasching, Pancake Tuesday, etc.  With Lent, many Christians gave up something they liked for 40 days, until Easter, when they might again enjoy all the pleasures they were accustomed to.  Some gave up meat (carne mean meat in Latin), so there would be meatless 40 days.  But the day before, all could stuff themselves with meat, drink, and whatever.  Mardi Gras is simply Fat Tuesday.  In New Orleans, south Louisiana, and Mobile, it is the biggest holiday of the year.  In Rio in Brazil, not even the new mosquito virus can halt the samba competitions and parades.  In parts of Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, parades and festivities, with national variations.  In the more puritanical Scotland, women race while flipping pancakes in a pan.

            Most others work as usual – in most of the US people are generally unaware that in part of the nation there is a huge holiday.  If they think of it, they think it frivolous, for booze and boobs and excess.  I was reading a controversial, but fascinating book by Rodney Stark, in which he shows how Mardi Gras may have greatly influenced our universities.  I quote from his How the West Won, paperback ed. 2015, pp. 167-68.

            “In March 1229 at the start of the pre-Lenten Carnival – which was much like a modern Mardi Gras, complete with masks and uninhibited behavior – a group of University of Paris students became embroiled with a tavern owner over their bill. A fight broke out, other patrons supported the owner, and the students were beaten and thrown into the street.  The next day the students returned with reinforcements and clubs, broke into the tavern, beat the owner and patrons, smashed everything, and then rioted in the streets.

            “City officials demanded punishment.  University officials took shelter in the exemption of the Church from local courts, since the university was a religious institution.  But Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis IX, was then serving as regent of France, demanded retribution.  The university then allowed the city to take action against the students.  Unfortunately, the city guardsmen picked out a group of students who had not taken part in the riot and even killed several of them.

            “The university went on strike…The strike caused a severe economic pinch in Paris.

            “After two years Pope Gregory IX, himself a graduate of the university, issued a bull that guaranteed the institution total freedom from local authorities -…by placing it directly under papal patronage and control.  The university thus had the right to establish its own rules and statutes, as well as the exclusive right to punish violations….The pope’s bull became the university’s charter, which,…,served as the model for new universities.”

            So many of our notions of academic freedom may be traced back to a brawl during Mardi Gras in Paris in the year 1229.