Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T07:09:26.303Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

CHAPTER 10.1 - THE TRIVIUM AND THE THREE PHILOSOPHIES

Get access

Summary

The liberal arts in medieval education

Medieval universities gave institutional form to a hierarchical notion of knowledge which they inherited from antiquity. Both Plato (Republic II, III, VII) and Aristotle (Politics VII, VIII) described a basic education which comprised a grounding in elementary grammar, literature, music, and arithmetic, and which prepared the way for the advanced study of mathematics and finally philosophy, whose object was wisdom, the supreme end of knowledge. That view of the propaedeutic role of the ‘liberal arts’, as they were called, arts for the free, as opposed to the servile, man passed into Roman education, where they had the directly practical end of preparing for a training in law and public life. It was in turn inherited by the Middle Ages and adapted, above all by Saint Augustine, to Christian objects of mastering the meaning of Scripture as the repository of Christian wisdom founded upon faith and the love of God. By the time of the emergence of universities in the twelfth century, theology, as the end of profane knowledge, had been joined by the more practical ends of law and medicine.

The arts were therefore distinguished from the higher subjects in a number of important ways. In the first place they were a heterogeneous grouping without any unity other than their common introductory function. From antiquity they were divided between the three verbal disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, and logic (the trivium or threefold way to wisdom), and the four mathematical disciplines, of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium or fourfold way).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×