The career of a student was divided into two parts by his (p. 148) "Determination," a ceremony which is the origin of the Bachelor's degree. At Paris, where, at all events in the earlier period of its history, examinations were real, the "Determination" was preceded by "Responsions," and no candidate was admitted to determine until he had satisfied a Regent Master in the Schools, in public, "de Questione respondens." The determination itself was a public disputation, after which the determiner might wear the bachelor's "cappa" and lecture on the Organon. He continued his attendance on the lectures in the Schools up to the time of his "Inception" as a master. The Inception was preceded by an examination for licence and by a disputation known as the Quodlibetica, at which the subject was chosen by the candidate. The bachelor who was successful in obtaining the Chancellor's licence proceeded to the ceremony of Inception, and received his master's _biretta_. The stringency of examinations varied in different universities and at different times. The proportion of successful candidates seems to have been everywhere very large, and in some universities rejection must have been almost unknown. We do find references to disappointed candidates, _e.g._ at Caen, where medical students who have been "ploughed" have to take an oath not to bring "malum vel damnum" upon the examiners. But even at Louvain, where the examination system (p. 149) was fully developed in the Middle Ages, and where there were class lists in the fifteenth century (the classes being distinguished as _Rigorosi_, _Transibiles_, and _Gratiosi_), failure was regarded as an exceptional event ("si autem, quod absit, aliqui inveniantur simpliciter gratiosi seu refutabiles, erunt de quarto ordine"). The regulations for examinations at Louvain prescribe that the examiners are not to ask disturbing questions ("animo turbandi aut confundendi promovendos") and forbid unfair treatment of pupils of particular masters and frivolous or useless questions; although at his Quodlibeticum, the bachelor might indulge in "jocosas questiones ad auditorii recreationem." The element of display implied in the last quotation was never absent from medieval examinations, and at Oxford, there seems to have been little besides this ceremonial element. A candidate had to prove that he had complied with the regulations about attendance at lectures, etc., and to obtain evidence of fitness from a number of masters. A bachelor had to dispute several times with a master, and these disputations, which were held at the Augustinian Convent, came to be known as "doing Austins." The medieval system, as it lingered at Oxford in the close of the eighteenth century, is thus described by Vicesimus Knox.