The name is absent

230 History of Universities

exercises and paid certain fees. Similarly, in Medicine, the
baccalaureate has tended to disappear; but in Law it has
been retained, whilst the doctorate is conferred largely as
an honorary degree, on persons who know no Law.

Commencement ended the undergraduate career of the
liberal Arts student; it was so called because it marked the
beginning of his career as a Master of Arts.¹ Two oral ex-
aminations, one by the chancellor as representative of the
Church, which resulted in the candidate receiving a teacher’s
license (hence the term Iiciendado, used in Latin America
for M.A.), and the second by a committee of masters; nu-
merous ceremonies and disputations; and finally the inceptio.
This ceremony, Englished as commencement, was a charac-
teristic medieval combination of stately pageant, religious
ceremonial, and broad farce. The last element was furnished
by a witty commencer who made shocking puns and low jests
at the expense of university dignitaries, who were supposed
to grin and bear it. That over, the candidates were voted
their degrees by the assemblage of masters, and formally
inducted into their fellowship by being invested with the
master’s hood and cap, kissed on the cheek, and presented
with a book as a symbol that they were competent to lec-
ture: Degree diplomas are apparently an American inven-
tion.

Such was the university in its original state :—a corpora-
tion of masters with a minimum of organization and a maxi-
mum of liberty, devoted almost entirely to teaching, with no
inducement or facilities for research, not even a university
library. Before the end of the middle ages, the liberty and
flexibility of the universities were much impaired, but the
lot of the poor scholar was greatly ameliorated, and research
endowed, by the foundation of colleges.

ɪ “Commencement” was not used for the ceremony of conferring the B.A.
until the sixteenth century, and then only in the English universities.

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