But there is quite a different element in the degree from that which has so far been mentioned. That was democratic, the consent of the community; this is autocratic, the authority conferred by a head, superior to, and outside of the community. The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford represents this second principle; he gives the degree in virtue of 'his own authority' as well as of that 'of the University'. This authority is originally that of the Church, to which, in England at any rate, all mediaeval students _ipso facto_ belonged; the new student was admitted into the 'bosom' (_matricula_) of the University by receiving some form of tonsure, and for the first two centuries of University existence, no other ceremony was needed. Matriculation examinations at any rate were in those happy days unknown. Hence the authority which the cathedral chancellor, representing the bishop, had exercised over the schools and teachers of the diocese, was extended as a matter of course to the teachers of the newly-risen Universities. The fitness of the applicant for a degree was tested by those who had it already, but the ecclesiastical authority gave the 'licence' to teach. This ecclesiastical origin of the M.A. degree is well shown in the formula of admission (pp. 15, 16). The new Master is admitted 'in honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi' and 'in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost'. [Sidenote: The Pope and the Universities.] The close connexion of the Church and higher education is further illustrated by the view of the fourteenth-century jurists that a bull from the Pope or from the Holy Roman Emperor was needed to make a teaching body a 'Studium Generale', and to give its doctors the _jus ubique docendi_[10]. A curious survival of the same idea still remains in the power of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as English Metropolitan, to recommend the Crown to grant 'Lambeth degrees' to deserving clergy; this is probably a survival of the old rights of the Archbishop as 'Legatus Natus' in England of the Holy See. [Sidenote: Survivals in the modern Degree Ceremony.] There were then two elements in the conferring of a mediaeval degree, the formal approval of the candidate by the already existing Masters and the granting of the 'licence' by the Chancellor.