English Academical Costume, Medi?val (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from English Academical Costume, Medival

There is another and a very interesting side of University development. I mean the association, originally peculiar to the students, into Nations, with their representatives, the Proctors or Rectors, and the single Rector. With ourselves in England this official order has partly disappeared and partly been absorbed by, or transferred to, the educational system proper. In any case, it has rather to do with the subject of dignities, whereas I must confine myself, in the few remaining introductory remarks which I have to make, to that of degrees.

Of the order of Faculties I have spoken already. There had also been developed at Paris by the end, if not the middle of the thirteenth century, a system of degrees, from which we undoubtedly, to a great extent, borrowed. The degrees were already distinguished, not merely by different forms and conditions of admission, but also by different outward marks, of costume, or of what are more specially termed insignia. And in these outward marks there was, for some time, owing to what Mr. Mullinger happily terms the catholicity of the grades indicated, a comparative uniformity, particularly for the higher grades, throughout Christendom. I propose very briefly to enumerate the different grades, taking note of those stages in "Promotion" which we find expressly connected with regulations as to costume, or which bear technical names requiring some explanation. The word just used is technical on the Continent, I believe, for the higher degrees alone: in our old statutes it is used mainly with reference to the attainment of benefices: I use it, for convenience, of the attainment of degrees in general.

Determination. - I pass over, of course, the disciplinary regulations for the ordinary Scholar or Undergraduate. His academical dress will be considered directly. I pass over, too, the Scholar's previous residence, attendance at lectures and performance of Responsions. The ultimate test of attainments for the first grade in his Promotion consisted of logical Disputations carried on in the Schools.

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