A knightly accolade of the intellect: promotion to doctor and magister
One of the key highlights of the academic culture of celebration in the early modern period was the ceremonial promotion to magister or doctor.
By obtaining the doctoral title, the candidate gained not only the right to teach at a university but also a title understood by the early modern nobilitas literaria as akin to those held by the aristocracy, conferring a prominent social rank that was – in this case – not attained without cost.
In the territory of modern-day Switzerland, Basel was the only institution with the authority to award degrees. The graduation process in Basel ideally involved seven steps: the censura, the tentamen, the examen, the professio, the disputatio, the promotio, and the meal.
However, the importance of the doctoral title and academic titles in general within Basel’s social hierarchy was a matter of continuous controversy between the university and the authorities throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This conflict resulted in an incident around 1760, where the mayor chose not to attend the 300th-anniversary celebration of the university’s founding to avoid giving precedence to the rector.
The procedure of the graduation ritual
We are thoroughly informed about the intricate procedure of the graduation ritual in Basel through the autobiography of Felix Platter. In 1557, Platter, who had studied for several years in Montpellier, was promoted to doctor of medicine. His graduation took place in a multistage process, concluding with a ritual investiture with the symbols of the doctorate and the mandatory doctoral feast.
To demonstrate his eligibility for the doctorate to the faculty, Platter offered to give a public lecture during the dog days, from the end of July to early August. On a Sunday, Platter publicly announced his lecture at the church door, which he delivered on 21 July before the entire medical faculty and many other professors on Galen’s De causis morborum.
On 24 August, the prospective doctor addressed Oswald Bär, the dean of the medical faculty, and requested admission to the doctorate. A day later, he was summoned to a three-member panel at Oswald’s house, where he presented his request again, detailed how long he had been studying medicine, and showed his master’s and bachelor’s certificates from Montpellier. The situation became difficult only when the question of the candidate’s age arose. Platter would not turn twenty-one until October, but the dean was convinced that a candidate should be no younger than twenty-four. Platter left, disheartened, believing his admission had failed. His future father-in-law even offered to lend him his horse that evening so he could ride to Montpellier to obtain his doctorate there. Yet his fears were completely unfounded.
On 16 August, the bedell came and called him to the tentamen, the first oral exam at Oswald’s house. The medical panel asked various questions, which he “answered confidently, finding them not as difficult” as he had expected. After an hour, he was given another task for the next day: to explain two texts by Hippocrates and Galen. The session ended with the professor’s daughter baking some cakes and a “night drink” paid for by Platter, with the professors being “very cheerful” with him. This type of exam was repeated twice more, with increasing public attendance. The following day, he explained the two assigned “themata” from memory for an hour, followed by a three-hour disputation with the three professors, during which Platter remarked that Mr. Oswald “wanted to be a great philosopher.” The whole process concluded with an invitation to a public disputation and another night drink with snacks prepared by the professor’s daughter, again paid for by Platter.
The candidate received two more topics, which he printed and published on Sunday, 29 August, by posting them at the four parish churches and sending them to “all doctors and professors” through the bedell, inviting them for the following Thursday. Despite catching a cold, Platter began the public disputation at 7 a.m. on 2 September, lasting until noon. Since this had not happened for a long time, almost “all academics” attended, including medical doctors and various magisters of philosophy. With God’s help, as he notes, he passed with honor. Another costly meal followed, this time at the Crown Inn, where Platter had to pay for a table.
Finally, Platter received the final approval for the initiation ritual of the ceremonial promotion. He was assigned two promoters: Doctor Isaac, who gave him the themata, and Doctor Oswald, who presented him with the insignia. The audience grew even larger. Platter had the invitation printed and, on Saturday, he walked through the city with Doctor Isaac and the bedell, “inviting the heads, deputies, academics,” many of his good friends, including his future father-in-law, to the upcoming actus publicus.
Until the late seventeenth century, the following ritual was an exclusively male event: not only were women generally excluded from obtaining academic degrees, but they were also tolerated as spectators only late and under various conditions.
On Monday, 26 September, it was finally time. Platter was led to the house of Dean Bär, they drank Malvasier wine, and he was dressed in a “black chamois, trimmed all around and at the seams with velvet an inch wide everywhere outside, in red trousers and a red silk, satin waistcoat,” and escorted to the college building. On the way, as they passed Doctor Huber’s house, Oswald realized they had no text for the candidate’s spontaneous interpretation and borrowed a book from Huber’s study. Finally, they reached the auditorium of the Faculty of Medicine, which was “decorated in stately fashion” and “filled with people everywhere, as no doctor had been promoted for quite some time.” Platter ascended the lower chair, Isaac the upper chair; musicians played, while Doctor Isaac gave a speech and presented Platter with his themata. After Platter had then delivered his speech from memory, Isaac stepped down and handed Platter over to Dean Oswald, who performed the investiture with the insignia doctoralia: “after a brief oration, he led me by the bedell with the scepter to the high chair, and with customary solemnity placed my velvet beret on my head, then a beautiful wreath, and performed the remaining ceremonies, including placing a ring on my finger.”
As a newly minted doctor, Platter had to give a spontaneous demonstration of his academic teaching ability: “When he called me out as a doctor, he addressed me, asking me to give a test, unexpectedly expounding on something in public. He flipped through a few pages in the book, showed me a passage. I read the text as it stood there, began to expound on it; then he closed the book, saying it was enough, and instructed me to give the thanks, which I did with a long oration from memory, thus concluding the act, which had lasted over four hours.”
Accompanied by brass music, a procession then left the auditorium and proceeded to the Crown Inn, where the doctoral feast was held. Platter reports on the procession: “And the rector D. Wolfgang Wißenburger walked with me, followed by the old gentleman D. Amerbach and other academics in considerable number, the bedell before me and the musicians, playing through the streets to the inn.” At the inn, seven tables were set for the meal, which, as Platter reassuringly notes, “cost only four batzen per person.” The entire event lasted until three o’clock in the afternoon, as people at the time did not sit together as long as they do nowadays, Platter adds – evidence of an increase in ostentatious consumption during the late sixteenth century. After the meal, Platter finally had an “evening drink” at Doctor Isaac’s house.
The doctoral feast, the communicative form of a ritually integrative meal, was costly – as much as 100 florins in one instance in 1721. The high costs become more understandable when one considers the list of mandatory invitations. The following had to be invited: “the rector, the deans, the professors, doctors, and licentiates of all faculties, the bedell and the notary; the heads, the deputies, the council secretary, and the senior council servant, finally the city’s foremost printers, along with students, friends, and other guests, as many as he wished.”
The costs of the entire graduation procedure were also distributed among a similarly extensive group. A master of philosophy, for example, had to pay fees to the faculty’s fiscus, the professors, the university’s treasury, the hall servants, the treasury of the prytaneum, the rector, the dean, the bedell, the university notary, the library treasury of the Faculty of Philosophy, and possibly an amount in lieu of the master’s meal. Until the end of the seventeenth century, the feasts continued to expand in scope, until in the eighteenth century, the century of frugality and enlightened simplicity, the custom in Basel gradually fell out of favor.