And an excerpt.
FIFTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES HAD A problem. Their incoming students were young and unruly, so confident in their own abilities that they did not apply the requisite level of effort in class. So universities instituted hazing requirements; before their education could begin, new students needed to complete humiliating tasks in order to be purged of their pride, gluttony, and other sins.
According to The Medieval Magazine, some of these hazing rituals included becoming a de facto servant to an upperclassman—as at the University of Avignon in France—or paying for other students to go to the baths (which was deemed immoral only when the university faculty weren’t also invited).
But perhaps the strangest and most elaborate of the hazing rituals was Deposition, a practice that predominated with slight variations in both Germany and Sweden beginning in the late 1400s In order to enroll in their chosen universities, students in these countries endured a bizarre series of tests that makes the modern college application process look simple.
The best recorded accounts take place at Uppsala University in Sweden in the 15th and 16th centuries, but the practice existed in most of Germany at the time as well. Details vary slightly, but Deposition seems to have worked like this:
When new students—all of whom were male—arrived at a university, they announced their presence to the dean. Then they waited. Once enough people requested to study at the school, the dean scheduled a Deposition, so that the new students could formally enroll.
