The men attending the schools in thetwelfth century took pleasure in ridiculing oneanother’s background. Besides the more soberpursuits of medicine, rhetoric and law, the studentsfollowing the artes-programme, practising versecomposition, wrote derisory epigrams about Englishdrunkenness, Breton stupidity and Norman boasting.Often they jotted down ethnic jokes, mocking orpraising the military talents of the French, inglosses and snatches of verse in the margins ofmanuals of grammar and rhetoric, for instance inÉvrard of Béthune’s grammar textbook the Graecismus. At the emerginguniversity of Paris, students from all over Europeentered into ethnic slanging matches, or so BishopJacques de Vitry alleges, assailing their compeersand rudely hurling a multitude of insults and sneersat each another. Jacques de Vitry studied in Parisand later became bishop of Acre. In his History of the West heclaims that mutual envy and conflict led to verbalclashes and even physical violence. Students shouted‘drunk’ and ‘tail-bearer’ at the English, called theFrench arrogant, weak and effeminate, the Normansvain and boastful, the Romans violent and greedy,the Brabanters mercenaries and rapists, the Lombardsusurers and the Flemish rich, gluttonous and soft asbutter. Underscoring the relational-emotive aspectof identity, the convergence of students fromdifferent backgrounds – in an environment where theywere encouraged to stereotype – sparked anacceleration of acrimonious attacks on the other,further honing a sense of ethnicity. Mockery homedin on character traits and the etymology of ethnicnames, on religious affiliation and peoples’humanity, calling into doubt the full humanness ofthe English. The velocity of the incorporation ofsuch images in satire and invective – the focus ofthis chapter – suggests that the authors drew theirammunition from pre-existing images circulating inurban centres, as well as from literary examples andwere fed by the rhetorical prescripts discussed inchapter 3. In practice, within the social context ofthe schools and courts, students used these negativeepithets in warfare and conflicts as a battle cry,in keeping with Vegetius’s advice in De re militari to tapindignation and anger in encounters with the enemy.It was advice which the French chronicler William leBreton heeded directly in his Philippide.