I was asked recently by a friend from my college days whether I would like to rewrite the diploma of the college where she teaches. They have no Classics department there, sad to say; my friend teaches English. I didn’t think to ask why she was in a position to recommend Latinists to do the job, but I assume she was on a committee charged with redrafting the diploma’s language. Beyond that, she did say that she gets to sign the diplomas as “Scriba”, which makes her… what? The Faculty Clerk? Secretary? I’m not sure.
Anyway, she sent me copies of the college’s old Latin diploma and the new diploma in English. I thought I had undertaken a simple task. But I hadn’t realized quite what a mare’s nest (in the secondary, more modern meaning of that idiom) I had gotten myself into.
I think that a Latin diploma is really the only piece of Latin prose with a practical function that a significant number of people come across in the US. Obtaining a degree in higher education is a highly significant milestone in the lives of people who obtain them; the diplomas themselves are often nicely framed and proudly displayed by people in many professions. One certainly can find evidence of complaints about the inconveniences of a degree whose text is in Latin; but I think it’s fair to say that most people feel that the Latin text embodies a sense of tradition, of the continuity we share with our predecessors whose feet have trod the same course.
If only the words on the parchment were worthy of the occasion. Any Latinist who has read an American diploma knows what I mean. Let’s look at Washington and Jefferson College’s diploma, an example chosen at random, which is mainstream in most respects:
Omnibus ad quos hae litterae pervenerint
salutem in Domino sempiternam! Notum sit quod nos
praeses et curatores Collegii
WASHINGTONIENSIS ET JEFFERSONIENSIS
auctoritate nobis commissa admisimus
[Nomen egredientis]
ad gradum
Baccalaurei in artibus
eique dedimus omnia iura dignitates et privilegia ad
hunc gradum spectantia. Cuius rei hoc diploma cum
sigillo nostro academico testimonio sit.
Datum ex aedibus academicis Washingtoniae
ante diem XIII Kalendas Junias anno domini MMVI
First on my own list are two incongruities: (1) a plainly Christian salutation (salutem in Domino sempiternam) and dating phrases for a college whose Christian affiliation is only historical and not evidenced, to the best of my knowledge, in other documents; and (2) the use of the ancient Roman system of calendar dates and Roman numerals (both of which lend themselves to errors) to communicate one of the truly important pieces of information in the document. Then there are the various oddities of Latin usage: the phrase iura, dignitates, et privilegia, very common in diplomas, to describe what is granted to the graduate is the most glaring example. Privilegia in Classical Latin does not mean “privileges” and dignitates is rare enough in the plural for a start. And even the college name is suspect: adjectives in -iensis refer to places, not people (and I am reliably informed that we are talking about the presidents in W & J’s case, despite its location in Washington, PA).
Someone might take issue with my tirade and point out that diplomas just aren’t examples of Classical Latin; their roots lie elsewhere. While that is true in the sense that the oldest universities in Europe have issued diplomas to their graduates for more than seven centuries, American universities were all founded by men (and later women) who had benefit of the Renaissance’s efforts to return Latin usage to its classical roots. And at least one old European university (Charles University in Prague, founded 1348) has a current diploma that puts our institutions in the shade through its clarity and dignity of style:
Summis auspiciis Rei Publicae Bohemicae Universitas Carolina Pragensis nos, rector universitatis et decanus facultatis ______, tenorem omnium quae sequuntur ratum praestamus lecturis ______, natus/nata die _____, in civitate ______, ordine studiorum baccalarii proprio qui _________ nuncupatur in doctrina _______, diligenter servato studia academica (summa cum laude) peregit quam ob rem iuxta legem n. 111/1998 leg. col. nomen academicum baccalarii ei tributum est quod in „bc.“ contractum cognomini eius rite anteponatur in cuius rei testimonium hoc diploma fieri iussimus (cetera scientiarum atque artium instituta quae disciplinam supra dictam colunt in huius diplomatis supplemento leguntur). Rector Promotor rite constitutus Decanus
I can only wish that my own diploma were so well worded. And it’s interesting to note that the learned folks at Charles U. avoid the whole issue of what a degree provides to a recipient.
We can however be thankful for small mercies. In online research for this post, I came across a transcription of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s diploma in theology, awarded in 1506, from the University of Turin–which was, in fact, a degree mill at this time. A segment follows with the original’s spelling:
Cum itaque venerandus vir Sacre Theologie Magister Dominus Frater Jacobinus de Prato ordinis minorum vocatus, tamquam vester promotor, vos Dominum Erasmum veluti sufficientem et in dicta Sacre Theologie Facultate Bachalarium benemeritum hodie coram nobis et venerando Domino Fratre Bernardino de Pirro Sacre Theologie Magistro Ordinis Praedicatorum dicte alme Unversitatis Decano et aliis dominis doctoribus de Collegio presentaverit, nosque cum prefatis dominis Decano ac aliis doctoribus dicti Collegii presentacionem huiusmodi de vobis actam solemniter duximus admittendam et quia in eadem Sacre Theologie Facultate idoneum vos reperimus ac sufficientem stantibus responsionibus per vos datis argumentis et questionibus vobis factis et prout a prefatis dominis Decano et ceteris patribus doctoribus et magistris de dicto Collegio in premissis deputatis in ipsa facultate repertus fuistis sufficiens et idoneus ad obtinendum licentiatus nec non doctoratus et magisterii gradum in predicta Sacre Theologie Facultate.
And here is a translation:
Thus when the venerable Master of Sacred Theology Friar Giacobino da Prato of the Order of (Friars) Minor, who is also your Promoter, presented you, Lord Erasmus, as a sufficient and worthy bachelor in the said Faculty of Sacred Theology in our presence and in the presence of Friar Bernardino del Pero, Master of Sacred Theology of the Order of Preachers, Dean of the said University, and in the presence of other Lord Doctors of the College, and when we solemnly judged admissible your presentation, we with the aforementioned Lords, Dean, and the other Doctors of the said College, caused you to be admitted. And because in the same Faculty of Sacred Theology we found you worthy and sufficient by the firm responses given by you to the arguments and questions made to you, such that by the aforementioned Lord Dean and the other Father Doctors and Masters of the said College, and by the authority given us in the same Faculty, you were found sufficient and fit for obtaining the Licentiate and even the Doctorate and the Grade of Master in the aforesaid Faculty of Theology.
I for one am grateful that diplomas have been markedly whittled down over time. It might take more time to read this diploma aloud than it took for Desiderius to earn it (apparently it took him 15 days, and his enemies mocked him for it).
My friend Chris Francese, the Asbury J. Clarke Professor of Classical Studies at Dickinson College, made a plea about nine years ago for all college diplomas to be written in English. Chris’s arguments are sound and practical (and in part based on some unhappy personal experiences). But, if American institutions of higher learning continue to issue degrees written in Latin, in defiance of the practices of America’s oldest university and of Oxford and Cambridge, is it really too much to ask that the words that represent the conferral accurately describe the significance of the degree, both to those that confer it and to the degree’s recipient? That may take some discussion, but it strikes me as much more worthwhile than a mission statement.