students a fitting penalty or even expel them from the University.
=== University blessing and grace ===
Peter Redford Scott Lang reintroduced a tradition of praying the grace before and after meals when he brought back student common dinners in 1887. According to Lang, the use of Latin graces at student meals had disappeared by the time of Samuel Johnson's visit to St Andrews in 1773. Johnson was astonished that the grace was not recited in Latin, and it was requested that he write a Latin grace for the university. Common meals at the university ceased in 1820 and so did the grace with them. Lang wrote that he learned of the grace from George Edward Day, who himself learned it from an elder retired professor while visiting Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson. At dinner, the retired professor recited a short grace, explaining that Johnson's grace was so long that the president could not remember it except for one sentence: Sit nomen domini benedictum (blessed be the name of the Lord). The shorter grace became the standard until common dinners ceased to occur. Reinstituting common student dinners in 1887, Lang reintroduced the university blessing and university grace.
Due to the story of the composition of the graces by Samuel Johnson, there has previously been a belief that the University of St Andrews' graces derived from Johnson's alma mater, Pembroke College, Oxford. According to a historian of the University of St Andrews, Ronald Gordon Cant, the current graces and the music settings composed for them "although based on traditional forms, these forms had no specific connection with earlier St Andrews usage, and bear no resemblance whatsoever to the old Pembroke grace". Thus, Cant states that the current graces "were specially composed for the Common Dinners instituted in 1887".
University Blessing:Sit nomen Domini Benedictum per Jesum Christum salvatorem nostrum. Amen.
(Blessed be the name of the Lord through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen.)University Grace:
Before Meat:Gloria Patri Filio Spirituique Sancto In Saecula …
