ABSTRACT
The mediaeval student is a more elusive figure than his teachers, for he is individually less conspicuous and must generally be seen in the mass. Moreover the mass is much diversified in time and space, so that generalization is difficult, what is true of one age and one university being quite untrue of other times and places. By far the largest element in the correspondence of mediaeval students consists of requests for money; "a student's first song is a demand for money", says a weary father in an Italian letter-writer, "and there will never be a letter which does not ask for cash". It is this broadly human quality that gives the productions of the mediaeval student a special interest for the world of today. In his relations to life and learning the mediaeval student resembled his modern successor far more than is often supposed.
