Diploma

Diploma (Greek, from dipldos, twofold), originally a double and folding tablet. At the end of the Roman republic, and under the early empire, it was applied to any official document or letter of recommendation giving special privileges to particular persons (e.g. the privilege of availing themselves while travelling of the facilities usually confined to officials). Afterwards the word seems to have been applied, though not commonly, to all official documents (whence "diplomatics," a synonym for palaeography). It was revived in the seventeenth century, and variously used, sometimes only for documents issued by kings and emperors, as contrasted with papal "bulls." The name is now usually given only to the documents which attest the conferring of an academic degree on their holder, or his admission to membership in some learned corporation; and in Germany to patents of nobility.