See BACHELOR.

BACCALAUREATE.  The degree of Bachelor of Arts; the first or lowest degree.  In American colleges, this degree is conferred in course on each member of the Senior Class in good standing.  In Oxford and Cambridge it is attainable in two different ways;—­1.  By examination, to which those students alone are admissible who have pursued the prescribed course of study for the space of three years. 2.  By extraordinary diploma, granted to individuals wholly unconnected with the University.  The former class are styled Baccalaurei Formati, the latter Baccalaurei Currentes.  In France the degree of Baccalaureat (Baccalaureus Literarum) is conferred indiscriminately upon such natives or foreigners and after a strict examination in the classics, mathematics, and philosophy, are declared to be qualified.  In the German universities, the title “Doctor Philosophiae” has long been substituted for Baccalaureus Artium or Literarum.  In the Middle Ages, the term Baccalaureus was applied to an inferior order of knights, who came into the field unattended by vassals; from them it was transferred to the lowest class of ecclesiastics; and thence again, by Pope Gregory the Ninth to the universities.  In reference to the derivation of this word, the military classes maintain that it is either derived from the baculus or staff with which knights were usually invested, or from bas chevalier, an inferior kind of knight; the literary classes, with more plausibility, perhaps, trace its origin to the custom which prevailed universally among the Greeks and Romans, and which was followed even in Italy till the thirteenth century, of crowning distinguished individuals with laurel; hence the recipient of this honor was style Baccalaureus, quasi baccis laureis donatus.—­Brande’s Dictionary.

The subjoined passage, although it may not place the subject in any clearer light, will show the difference of opinion which exists in reference to the derivation of this work.  Speaking of the exercises of Commencement at Cambridge Mass., in the early days of Harvard College, the writer says “But the main exercises were disputations upon questions wherein the respondents first made their Theses:  For according to Vossius, the very essence of the Baccalaureat seems to lye in the thing:  Baccalaureus being but a name corrupted of Batualius, which Batualius (as well as the French Bataile [Bataille]) comes a Batuendo, a business that carries beating in it:  So that, Batualii fuerunt vocati, quia jam quasi batuissent cum adversario, ac manus conseruissent; hoc est, publice disputassent, atque ita peritiae suae specimen dedissent.”—­Mather’s Magnalia, B. IV. p. 128.

The Seniors will be examined for the Baccalaureate, four weeks before Commencement, by a committee, in connection with the Faculty.—­Cal.  Wesleyan Univ., 1849, p. 22.