DEUS SCIENTIARUM DOMINUS. - Apostolic constitution, beginning with words taken from 1 Sam. 2:3, promulgated on Pentecost Sunday, 24 May 1931, to regulate instruction in all ecclesiastical universities and faculties (AAS, 23 [1931], pp. 241 ff.).
It begins with a preamble in which the right to teach, entrusted to the Church by its Divine Founder, is asserted, and the work accomplished by the Church itself over the centuries in the field of higher education is recalled. This is followed by 58 articles divided into 6 titles.
Attached to the constitution are the *Ordinationes*, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies on 12 June 1931, in 49 articles, to regulate the proper observance of the pontifical prescriptions.
The constitution sets as the aim of universities and faculties the provision of higher education and the initiation into scholarly work as a path to the advancement of ecclesiastical sciences. Admission to faculties is permitted only after a prior suitable preparation, in accordance with the faculty itself: attendance at lectures is required before presenting oneself for academic degrees, so that, for example, one does not gain access to the doctorate in theology before completing the fifth year in the corresponding faculty. The degrees are: the baccalaureate, the licentiate, and the doctorate. No one may aspire to the doctorate before obtaining the licentiate. The doctorate is necessary for teaching in a faculty. The subjects of instruction are assigned according to the criterion of ensuring, on the one hand, a thorough knowledge of fundamental doctrines and, on the other, sufficient information regarding the many disciplines that have arisen or developed more recently. Therefore, the disciplines in a single faculty are divided into main, auxiliary, and special. Indeed, among the main disciplines, there is one principalissima, called *praecipua*, to which everything else must be coordinated. The special disciplines must be treated and exercised in such a way as to harmoniously accompany and complete the main disciplines, but without requiring excessive work and without ever causing the slightest detriment to the careful and truly supreme study of the principal doctrines (Discourse of Pius XII to ecclesiastical students of Rome, AAS, 31 [1939], p. 246).
Before the licentiate, the characteristic subject of the faculty (in theology, all treatises; in canon law, the entire Code; in philosophy, all parts, etc.) must be fully explained. After the licentiate, study becomes more specialized, and the drafting of a scholarly thesis, at least part of which must be published, is prescribed for the attainment of the doctorate. Thus an attempt has been made to harmoniously reconcile the demands of speculative and positive formation, of solid and general culture and of specialization.
All ecclesiastical faculties are subject to this legislation (though here and there suitable adaptations to certain local conditions have been authorized) and are under the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies.