... This
Last Wynter Living In Padoa, With Diligent Serche I Learned, That The
Noumbre Of Scholers There Was Little Lesse Than Fiftene Hundreth;
Whereof I Dare Saie, A Thousande At The Lest Were Gentilmen."[110]
The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic
seclusion of an English university.
He need not attend many lectures,
for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the
rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing
elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to."[111] So being a gentleman and
not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself to fencing or riding:
For at Padua "there passeth no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte,
tourneiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates of armes,
handled and furnisshed after the best sort: the greatest dooers wherof
are scholers."[112]
Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice,
in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which
was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither
Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan.... the passengers being for the most
part of these kinds"[113] and, as Moryson points out, if he did not, by
giving offence, receive a dagger in his ribs from a fellow-student, he
was likely to have pleasant discourse on the way.[114] Hoby took several
trips from Padua to Venice to see such things as the "lustie yong Duke
of Ferrandin, well accompanied with noble menn and gentlemen ... running
at the ring with faire Turks and cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the
Turkishe maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the wyndowes among the
ladies full of sweete waters and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin
Quarter students who frequent "La Morgue," went to view the body of a
gentleman slain in a feud, laid out in state in his house - "to be seen
of all men."[115] In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at
Venice, a student could spend all day watching mountebanks, and bloody
street fights, and processions.
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