The Oxford Degree Ceremony

by J. Wells

(1) University Dress clerical.

As all members of the University were ipso facto clerks, their dress had to correspond; the marks of clerical dress were that it was to be of a certain length (later it was specified that it should reach the heels, talaris), and that it should be closed in front, but there was great licence as to colour; the 'black' or 'subfusc' prescribed by the Laudian Statutes is the result of the asceticism of the Reformation, and was unknown in Oxford before the sixteenth century. We have in the wills of students and in the inventories of their properties, abundant evidence that our mediaeval predecessors wore garments suitable to 'Merrie Englande', e.g. of green, blue or blood-colour. Sometimes the founder of a college left directions what 'livery' all his students should wear; e.g. Robert Eglesfield prescribed for the fellows of Queen's College that they were to dine in Hall in purple cloaks, the Doctors wearing these trimmed with fur, while the M.A.s wore theirs 'plain'; the colour was 'to suit the dignity of their position and to be like the blood of The Lord'. Cambridge colleges still in some cases prescribe for their undergraduates gowns of a special colour or cut.

One curious survival of the 'clerkship' of all students is the requirement of the white tie in all University examinations and in the degree ceremony. The 'bands', which (to quote Dr. Rashdall) 'are merely a clerical collar', have disappeared from the necks of all lay members of the University below the degree of Doctor, except the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors; the dress of the latter is the full-dress of an ordinary M.A. in the seventeenth century, and preserves picturesque old features which have been lost elsewhere.

(2) The Cope and the Gown.

The proper dress of the mediaeval Master, though probably an undergraduate could also wear it, was the cappa or cope; this at Oxford was usually black in colour, but Doctors had quite early (i.e. in the time of the Edwards) adopted as the colour for it some shade of red, thus beginning the custom which still survives. The scarlet 'habit', worn at Convocations by Oxford Doctors over their ordinary gowns, retains the old name 'cappa', but the shape has been completely altered. The sister University, however, still preserves the old shape; the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor presides at their degree ceremonies in a sleeveless scarlet cloak, lined with miniver, which exactly corresponds to the fourteenth-century picture of our Chancellor receiving the charter from Edward III. The gown, the 'putting on' of which is now the distinguishing mark of the taking of the B.A. or M.A., is simply the survival of a mediaeval garment which was not even clerical, the long gown (toga) or cassock, which was worn under the cappa. The dress of the 'Blues' at Christ's Hospital preserves the gown in an earlier stage of development. The modern usage which gives the gown of the B.A. sleeves, while that of an M.A. has them cut away, has in some unexplained way grown out of a similar usage as to the mediaeval cappa.

(3) The Hood.

The mark, however, which specially distinguished the degree was the hood, as to which the University was always strict, assigning the proper material and the proper colour[26] to that of each faculty. The hood was not a mere adornment or a badge, it was an article of dress. Originally it seems to have been attached to the cappa, and, as its name implies, was used for covering (the head) when required. Its practical purpose is quaintly implied in the books of the Chancellor and the Proctors (sub anno 1426), where it is provided that 'whereas reason bids that the varieties of costume should correspond to the ordering of the seasons, and whereas the Festival of Easter in its due course is akin from its nearness to summer,' it is henceforth allowed that from Easter to All Saints' day, 'graduates may wear silken hoods,' instead of fur ones, 'old custom notwithstanding.' The M.A. hood, even in its present mutilated form, still presents survivals of the time when it was a real head covering, survivals which should prevent those who wear it from putting it on upside down, as many often do. The B.A. hood was already in the fifteenth century lined with lamb's wool or rabbit's fur, and the use of miniver by other than M.A.s and persons of birth or wealth[27] was strictly forbidden by a statute of 1432.

(4) The Cap.

The last and not the least important part of mediaeval academic dress still remains to be spoken of, the cap. The conferring of this with the ring and the kiss of peace has been already mentioned (p. [27]), these being the marks of the admission of new Masters and Doctors. As under the Roman Law the slave was manumitted by being allowed to put on a cap, so the 'pileus' of the M.A. was the sign of his independence; hence he was bound to wear it at all University ceremonies. The cap was sometimes square (biretta), sometimes round (pileus); Gascoigne (writing in 1456) tells us that in his day the round cap was worn by Doctors of Divinity and Canon Law, and that it had always been so since the days of King Alfred; not content with this antiquity, he also affirms that the round cap was given by God Himself to the doctors of the Mosaic Law. He adds the more commonplace but more trustworthy information that the cap was in those days fastened by a string behind, to prevent its falling off.

The modern stiff corners of the cap are an addition, which is not an improvement; the old cap drooped gracefully from its tuft in the centre, as can still be seen in the portraits of seventeenth-century divines, e.g. in Vandyck's 'Archbishop Laud', so familiar from its many replicas and copies. Later usage has specialized the round cap of velvet as belonging to the Doctors of Law and Medicine, and a most beautiful head-gear it is; it is preserved, in a less elaborate form, at the degree ceremony in the round caps of the Bedels.