The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oxford Degree Ceremony, by Joseph Wells

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Title: The Oxford Degree Ceremony

Author: Joseph Wells

Release Date: February 26, 2010 [EBook #31408]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

The Oxford Degree

Ceremony

By

J. Wells

Fellow of Wadham College

Oxford

At the Clarendon Press

1906

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

PREFACE

The object of this little book is to attempt to set forth the meaning of
our forms and ceremonies, and to show how much of University history is
involved in them. It naturally makes no pretensions to independent
research; I have simply tried to make popular the results arrived at in
Dr. Rashdall's great book on the _Universities of the Middle Ages_, and
in the Rev. Andrew Clark's invaluable _Register of the University of
Oxford_ (published by the Oxford Historical Society). My obligations to
these two books will be patent to all who know them; it has not,
however, seemed necessary to give definite references either to these or
to Anstey's _Munimenta Academica_ (Rolls Series), which also has been
constantly used.

I have tried as far as possible to introduce the language of the
statutes, whether past or present; the forms actually used in the degree
ceremony itself are given in Latin and translated; in other cases a
rendering has usually been given, but sometimes the original has been
retained, when the words were either technical or such as would be
easily understood by all.

The illustrations, with which the Clarendon Press has furnished the
book, are its most valuable part. Every Oxford man, who cares for the
history of his University, will be glad to have the reproduction of the
portrait of the fourteenth-century Chancellor and of the University
seal.

I have