statute of 1432 de admissions ad pelluram). Students, and even doctors in theology (Mun. Acad. ii. 393), were also restricted to budge, and to sad-coloured habits. The robes of masters were to be flowing and reach to the ankles (see Mun. Acad. p. 212, an order of 1358 to the tailors not to stint the robes, which should be “largae el talares,” because clerks should be distinguished from the laity).
Fig. 6.—Members of New College, Oxford, from Chandler MS. (15th century).
The Cope, worn as part of academic dress over the gown, probably originated in the ordinary cappa clericalis, or everyday mantle of the clergy, which had been introduced into general use in England by synods of 1222, 1237 and 1268.[1] This kind of cope, closed in front, and originally black in colour, is generally known as the cappa clausa, and sometimes, for convenience' sake, had a slit in front to allow of the passage of the hands. It was worn by Regent Masters when lecturing (Mun. Acad. p. 421) and as a full dress by certain doctors. By the second half of the 14th century differences of colour occur; e.g. the Chancellor represented in a 14th-century miniature in the Oxford Chancellor’s Book (reproduced by J. W. Wells, The Oxford Degree Ceremony (1906), facing p. 19) wears a scarlet cope closed in front, lined with miniver and with tippet and hood of miniver, and there is also a mention in an ancient statute of Cambridge of a red cope worn by Inceptors in Canon Law (Clark, p. 102). The Rev. N. F. Robinson (loc. cit. p. 195) quotes the will of R. Browne, archdeacon of Rochester (d. 1452), to prove that the habit of a doctor of civil law was violet; he also thinks that that of a doctor of theology was green, and of a doctor of canon law scarlet. By the 16th century all copes were scarlet. Clark (p. 138) gives as evidence “ Stokys' picture ” in the Cambridge Registrary. The scarlet cappa clausa has survived to the present day at Cambridge as the dress worn by the Vice-Chancellor and by Regius Professors of Divinity, Law and Medicine when presenting for degrees. It is now open down the front, but the fur edging only reaches half-way down, marking the place where the slit used to be. At Oxford the so-called “cope” which is the Convocation robe of certain doctors is not a real cope, but is probably derived from the medieval tabard, the out-of-door dress worn by the clergy and others, it having become customary by the beginning of the 16th century for Regent Masters to wear the tabard at lectures as more convenient than the cope (Rashdall, II. ii. 639, and Mun. Acad. p. 421, where the pallium is spoken of as an alternative to the cappa clausa. The pallium is most probably to be identified with the tabard).[2] The capa manicata mentioned in Anstey (Mun. Acad. p. 421, &c.) seems to have been a shorter gown with bell-shaped sleeves reaching to the elbow, and lined with fur, worn by masters and bachelors of arts (see Druitt, p. 124), and a shorter tabard is also occasionally found (Robinson's Taberdum ad medias tibias). These are illustrated in fig. 6 from a MS. of the 15th century at New College, Oxford.[3] The D.D.’s wear the cappa clansa, the other doctors tabards (see also pl. iii., xvi. in Archaeologia, where William of Wykeham and all the doctors wear long sweeping tabards, as ample as copes), the Warden a shorter tabard, reaching just below the knees, and the M.A.’s gowns or tabards with false sleeves.
The Hood was originally worn by all scholars, as by everybody, and had evidently no academic significance. Sometimes a cap was also worn, the hood being thrown back (Chaucer’s “clerk of Oxenford” in the Ellesmere MS. illumination wears a red skull-cap, and a furred tippet and hood, with the hood falling rather back, though not on his shoulders). The liripipe[4] became somewhat elongated, as is seen in the hoods of the so-called M.A. group in the Chandler MS. An early mention of the undergraduate hood is the much-discussed Oxford Statute of 1489 (Mun. Acad. p. 360), which reads: “ut nullus de cetero scholar is non-graduates (nobili sanguine insignitis &c. exceptis) capitio quovis utatur publice … nisi liripipium consutum habeat et non context um, prout antiqua Universitatis laudabilis consuetudo exposcit …”[5] but the undergraduate
- ↑ See Rev. T. A. Lacey in Transactions of the St Paul's Ecclesialogical Society, vol. iv. (1900), p. 128, &c. Also Rev. N. F. Robinson in the same (1898), pp. 181–220.
- ↑ Clark (pp. 138-39) treats of the palhlurn and tabard as two separate garments, deciding that the pallium was a kind of tippet. Robinson considers the pallium to correspond to the tabard, his taberdum talare, which the Rev. T. A. Lacey (p. 128) also compares with the chimere of Anglican bishops. (See article CHIMERE, where the chimere is likewise traced to the tabard.) Moroni, Dizionario dell erudizione storica-ecclesiaslica, s.v. zimarra, says that professors of the university of Rome wear black zimarre while teaching. This recalls the pallium of Regent Masters (Mun. Acad. p. 421) and Inceptors in arts and medicine (id. p. 430).
- ↑ The Chandler MS. The drawings from which the illustration is taken are reproduced in the Transactions of the St Paul’s Ecclesialogical Society, p. 208, with an explanatory article by the Rev. N. F. Robinson, and in Archaeologia, vol. liii. pl. i., with notes by T. F. Kirby. Robinson identifies the various groups of the Society of New College on his plate i. (xv. in Archaeol.) by the aid of a statute of the College settling the order of standing in choir and at processions, and thus claims to settle the question of the dress of the various kinds of Doctor and Bachelor, M.A.’s, &c., at the period.
- ↑ In the present article “liripipe” will be used of the tail of the hood, “tippet” of the shoulder-cape, sometimes forming part of the same garment as the hood, sometimes not, and “scarf” of the “tippet” or scarf, e.g. of D.D.’s, Anglican clergy.
- ↑ “that no non-graduate scholar (with the usual exceptions of noblemen, &c.) shall wear any kind of hood in public, unless it have the liripipe sewn on, and not woven in one piece, as the ancient and venerable custom of the university demands." The meaning of this is not clear; Anstey (marginal note ad loc.) takes it to mean that the tail of the hood should be sewn to the hood; others that the tail of the hood should be sewn down to the gown; cf. Chaucer, Prol. to Canon's, Yeoman's Tale: “Till that I understood How that his cloke was sowed to his hood, For which, whan I hadde long avysed me, I demed him some Chanoun for to be, " which shows that this method of sewing the hood, whatever it were, was used to define rank; others again hold that “liripipium” here means a tippet or shoulder-cape, and that for some reason the hood was to be sewn to the tippet and not made all in one piece with it, Rashdall reads “consuetum” instead of “consutum” (footnote ii. p. 641). The Constitution of Archbishop Bourchier (1463) forbids undergraduates to use liripipes or “tippets” round the neck in public (Clark, p. 85), so the sewing down of the liripipe at the back may have been to prevent this improper use as a scarf. But in this case, what is the force of “et non context um”?
