The Most Epic of Grudges

In 1827, the University of Oxford did a major review of its statutes, including the oath that BA students had to take before they started their Masters degree.  This oath included a lot of normal stuff promises to follow the statutes of the University, not to lecture elsewhere, and not to revert to bachelor level study.  However, it also included a promise that was not normal, namely that they would never agree to the reconciliation of Henry Symeonis.  They had to say boldly and with fervour:  'quod numquam consenties in reconciliationem Henrici Simeonis'.

It sounds scarier in Latin.

Who was this guy?  What had he done?  At the time, no one knew.  And no one had known for centuries - they found a record in 1651 where someone proposed to remove this part of the oath because no one knew who he was.  Strangely, the proposal was rejected and the oath to ostracize Henry Symeonis was maintained.

It wasn't until 1912 that an intrepid archivist named Reginald Lane Poole found out that  Symeonis was a wealthy townsman in Oxfort in the early 1200s (four hundred years before the attempt to erase his name was made in 1651).  He was found guilty of murdering a student of the University, but suffered only a fine and exile from the city.  And Symeonis refused to stay away - he left in May 1242 but he was back by 1243, to the utter fury of the University.  Then, in 1264, King Henry II pardoned Henry Symeonis for the murder.

Violence erupted.  The University fought ferociously against the town, and that is when the oath to never be reconciled to Symeonis was formally established.  And kept, even thought Symeonis himself must have died before the turn of the century based on his age.  Gradually, no one remembered why they hated him, but they knew that they did.

A strange form of justice, but I suppose it's still better than some of the things one reads in the news these days.