eived his master's
_biretta_.

The stringency of examinations varied in different universities and at
different times. The proportion of successful candidates seems to have
been everywhere very large, and in some universities rejection must
have been almost unknown. We do find references to disappointed
candidates, _e.g._ at Caen, where medical students who have been
"ploughed" have to take an oath not to bring "malum vel damnum" upon
the examiners. But even at Louvain, where the examination system (p. 149)
was fully developed in the Middle Ages, and where there were class
lists in the fifteenth century (the classes being distinguished as
_Rigorosi_, _Transibiles_, and _Gratiosi_), failure was regarded as an
exceptional event ("si autem, quod absit, aliqui inveniantur
simpliciter gratiosi seu refutabiles, erunt de quarto ordine"). The
regulations for examinations at Louvain prescribe that the examiners
are not to ask disturbing questions ("animo turbandi aut confundendi
promovendos") and forbid unfair treatment of pupils of particular
masters and frivolous or useless questions; although at his
Quodlibeticum, the bachelor might indulge in "jocosas questiones ad
auditorii recreationem." The element of display implied in the last
quotation was never absent from medieval examinations, and at Oxford,
there seems to have been little besides this ceremonial element. A
candidate had to prove that he had complied with the regulations about
attendance at lectures, etc., and to obtain evidence of fitness from a
number of masters. A bachelor had to dispute several times with a
master, and these disputations, which were held at the Augustinian
Convent, came to be known as "doing Austins." The medieval system, as
it lingered at Oxford in the close of the eighteenth century, is thus
described by Vicesimus Knox.

"The youth whose heart pants for the honour of a Bachelor of (p. 150)
Arts degree must wait patiently till near four years have
revolved.... He is obliged during this period, once to oppose and
once to respond.... This opposing and responding is termed, in
the cant of the place, _doing generals_. Two boys or men, as they
call themselves, agree to _do generals_ together. The first step
in this mighty work is to procure arguments. These are always
handed down, from generation to generation, on long slips of
paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on foolish subjects, of
th