about, attendance upon, and crowding around our Doctors-to-be, in season and out of season.”  Moreover, “the Scholars of our Nation shall individually accompany the one who is to be made Doctor, to the place where the insignia [of the degree] are usually bestowed, if he so wishes, or has so requested of the Proctor [of the Nation].  Also, they shall escort him with a large accompanying crowd from the aforesaid place to his own house, under penalty of one Bologna shilling."[65]

The University statutes are to the same effect, but they prohibit horse-play, and the extravagance of tournaments.  “Ultramontane” scholars are those from north, “Cismontane,” those from south, of the Alps.

Moreover, the ultramontane scholars shall accompany the ultramontane candidate, and the cismontane, the cismontane, from their dwelling places to Saint Peter’s when they go there to take the public examination, and at that time hay and straw shall not be placed [on the floor of] the church.  Furthermore all the ultra-and cis-montanes shall be present at the public examination, and all shall afterwards accompany the new Doctor from the church to his house under penalty of ten Bologna shillings, which it shall be the duty of the Rector to exact within eight days.  And no scholar at the public examination of any citizen or foreign scholar shall be dressed for a dance or a brawl or a tournament, nor shall he joust as a knight.  If any one disobey, he shall incur the penalty of perjury and ten Bologna pounds, and if he does not pay this within ten days on the demand of any Rector he shall be deprived of the advantage and honor of our University.  And we impose the penalty of perjury also upon the Rector of the student who is to take the public examination, and this penalty he shall incur from the very fact that he should by all means exact from the candidate an oath that on the day on which he rides about to give invitations for the public examination which he is to take, he will not bring about any jousting or brawling as some have done heretofore.  And if the candidate, when required, is unwilling to take the oath, or if he takes the oath and breaks it, he [the Rector] shall utterly forbid the public examination and direct the Doctors not to hold their meeting and also stop the Beadle, so that he shall not dare to announce his programme through the schools, under an arbitrary penalty to be imposed.[66]

The ceremony at the cathedral included, first, the formal test of the candidate.  After making a speech he held a disputation, in which he defended a thesis taken from the Laws against opponents chosen from the body of students, “thus playing for the first time the part of a Doctor in a University disputation.”  He was then presented by the Promoter to the Archdeacon, who conferred the final License to teach Civil or Canon Law or both, according to the student’s training.  This was done by a formula probably similar to the following, which is taken from a book published in 1710: