Commentary; Posted: 6/7/06
Of caps and gowns
Rev. John C. Blackford,
Religion Columnist
Recently my wife and I were privileged to attend the graduation of a daughter, who received a degree of master of business administration from the school of management of a west coast university.
Included in the graduation program was a history of academic dress, and this article will relate some of the highlights that pertain to the garb of our high school and college graduates at this time of year.
A statute of the University of Coimbra in 1321 required that all ěDoctors, Licentiates, and Bachelors,î wear gowns. In England in the later fourteenth century, the statutes of certain colleges forbade ěexcess in apparel,î and prescribed the wearing of a long gown.
In the days of King Henry VIII of England, Oxford and Cambridge first began prescribing a definite academic dress.
European institutions have always had a great diversity in their specifications of academic dress, and this has been a source of confusion.
In contrast, American schools opted for a definite system that all might follow.
A significant contribution to the development of this system was made by a man named Gardner Leonard of Albany, NY, who designed gowns for his class at Williams College in 1887, and had them made by his familyís firm.
He took great interest in the matter and published an article on academic dress in 1893.
He was invited to work with an intercollegiate commission made up of representatives of leading institutions to establish a suitable system of academic apparel.
The commission met at Columbia University in 1895 and adopted a code of academic dress, which besides regulating the cut, style and materials of the gowns, determined the colors which were to represent the various fields of learning.
Since then, there have been minor revisions of the standards, the last in 1986, but they are much the same as when adopted.
The academic gown is the distinctive heritage from early university scholars, who were usually poor.
Many in medieval society saw the scholarsí interest in study and learning as idleness and indolence, and treated them with derision.
Students could afford only the cheapest materials for clothing, and black was inexpensive. Whatís now known as ěthe academic gown,î was the day-to-day dress for scholars on the street and in the classroom.
The cap, or mortarboard, is the headdress of most graduates. It also represents the links between the academic world and the church.
It originated in the ěhaloî or ěnimbus,î the light appearing around the head of a distinguished person.
Its purpose was to represent the spiritual or scholarly character of the wearer.
Although holiness was indicated by a round nimbus in the fifteenth century, and still is, persons of scholarly eminence were portrayed with a square nimbus, a custom preserved in the mortarboards of todayís graduates.
When we attend graduations this spring, we can be reminded of the centuries-old traditions behind the caps and gowns worn, and the religious significance of their origin.
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