[63]
The successful candidate ordinarily proceeded within a short time to the
public examination, which was held in the cathedral. At this examination
he received both the formal license to teach and the Doctor's degree.
Before the appointed day he went about inviting friends and public
officials to the ceremony. Ostentation at this time was forbidden:
Those who are candidates for the Doctor's degree, when they give
their invitations to the public examination, should go without
trumpets or any instruments whatever; and the Beadle of the
Arch-deacon of Bologna, with the Beadles of the Doctors under
whom they are to have the public examination, should precede him
on horseback. At that late day they [the candidates] shall not
provide any feast, except among scholars from the same house or
among those related to the candidate in the first, second, third,
or even the fourth degree. Furthermore no one of the Rectors
shall presume to ride with him on that day.[64]
On the actual day of the examination, however, "the love of pageantry
characteristic of the mediaeval and especially of the Italian mind was
allowed the amplest gratification"; the candidate went to the cathedral,
doubtless preceded by trumpeters, and escorted by a procession of his
fellow-students. The statutes of the German Nation at Bologna describe
as one object of that organization "the clustering about, attendance
upon, and crowding around our Doctors-to-be, in season and out of
season.
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