“The classical Roman curriculum of the liberal arts,
as defined by Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 bc), had consisted of nine subjects
— grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine
and architecture. In the middle ages, medicine eventually became a university
subject [i.e. one of the advanced subjects, with law and theology], while architecture
was a craft learnt in apprenticeship and practice rather than in school. ...
At an early stage, the programme became formally divided into a first
and second phase, the trivium and quadrivium. The trivium
— grammar, logic and rhetoric — dealt with techniques of discussion.
The quadrivium — geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music —
constituted a ‘scientific’ syllabus, summarising the principles
of order in the physical world.” [1]
The richest medieval depiction
of the Seven Liberal Arts is the dense schematic and allegorical composition
of Herrad of Hohenburg in her Hortus deliciarum, a codex containing
a pedagogical miscellany for the use of the nunnery of which she was abbess,
dating from the end of the twelfth century.[2]
Herrad gives us a classicizing image,
with Philosophia enthroned as the mistress of all the arts, the source
of the 'seven founts of wisdom' which are the arts themselves, symbolized
first as streams and then as the women in the arcades of the wheel. Plato
and Socrates sit at Philosophia's feet; 'poets' and 'wise men', below
the figure, are the beneficiaries of this learning. [3] The only
nod to a religious context is the reminder, in Philosophia's banner, that
"All wisdom comes from God."
[1] Michael Haren, Medieval Thought: the Western Intellectual Tradition
from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century, 2d ed. (Toronto, 1992), 67-8.
[2] Herrad of Hohenburg (ca. 1130-1195), Hortus
deliciarum, ed. Rosalie Green et
al. (2 vols., London: Warburg Institute, 1979), 2:33 (f. 32r).
[3] The place of the three heads in Philosophia's
crown (Ethics, Logic, and Physics) in the schema is not clear.
