. The Seven Liberal Arts were the corner-stones of a classical education in the Middle Ages. The basic three, known as the Trivium, were grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic. After mastering these, a student was ready to proceed to the Quadrivium, which comprised arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The grouping was established as the core of Christian education in the Institutions of Cassiodorus and the writings of Boethius. Their Latin names were all grammatically feminine (Grammatica, Rhetorica, etc.), so when they came to be personified in literature and art they were naturally represented as women.
Between 410 and 439, the North African Martianus Capella wrote De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, in which Philology, accompanied by her handmaidens the Seven Liberal Arts, marries Mercury, the god of eloquence. This mixed verse-prose text, in which the Liberal Arts are first presented as female personifications, was enormously popular in the schools for the next millennium. Grammar is a Roman physician, succoring the young; Dialectic has a serpent concealed in her sleeve, as a clever counsel must conceal a crucial point; Rhetoric is armored with her decorative skills; Geometry is a traveler, measuring roads and distances; Astronomy is winged and carries an inlaid metal book; Arithmetic emanates rays; Music has a stringed instrument. Commentaries were written in the 9th century by Dunchad, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, and Remigius of Auxerre, and in the 12th by Bernard Silvestris among others.
In the Carolingian period, two of Charlemagne’s court poets, Theodulf of Orléans and the anonymous Hibernicus exul, wrote verses on the Liberal Arts, which have sometimes been considered as sources for artistic depictions, possibly in Charlemagne’s palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. One of the most widespread brief descriptions of the Liberal Arts occurs in the account of Charlemagne’s Spanish campaign ascribed to Archbishop Turpin of Reims (Pseudo-Turpin), a text that first appears in Latin ca. 1138 and was rapidly translated into French and most of the other vernaculars of Europe. In this text, the Liberal Arts were depicted in Charlemagne’s palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Pseudo-Turpin does not describe the pictorial images but lists the subdivisions of each subject, with some brief interpretation. Grammar and its subdivision orthography teach one to write down words correctly and then to understand what is written, as church lectors must do. Music is the art of David and the angels; the four lines of a staff signify the cardinal virtues, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance, and the eight notes the beatitudes. Dialectic teaches us to discern right from wrong. Rhetoric teaches us to speak suitably, calmly, and beautifully. Geometry measures spaces, such as cities, fields, and army camps. Arithmetic counts things. Astronomy, here conceived as astrology, tells about lucky and unlucky hours for doing things. Though not depicted, necromancy, or magic, is also discussed briefly. At about the same period, Baudri of Bourgueil (1045–1130) described the chamber of Countess Adèle of Blois, where the decoration included statues of Philosophy, Medicine, and the Seven Liberal Arts surrounding the bed.
Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Didascalicon: de studio legendi (before 1141), a general introduction to the disciplines necessary for the study of Scripture and theology, presents the Liberal Arts as the remedy for the loss of knowledge and goodness in the Fall, while the mechanical arts compensate for the resulting weakness of the human body. The Didascalicon was accompanied in many manuscripts by schematized diagrams of the Arts. But Hugh did not restrict learning to the usual seven. Like the Seven Deadly Sins, the Arts acquired hangers-on and subdivisions. The Didascalicon also discussed medicine, magic, and practical arts.
The longest and most carefully integrated 12th-century study of the Liberal Arts was the Heptateuchon of Thierry of Chartres (1141), designed to organize learning for the ultimate purpose of understanding philosophy. All seven Arts, even arithmetic and geometry, were useful in understanding the nature of God in different ways. In the late 12th century, Godefroi of Saint-Victor composed an 800-line Fons philosophiae, an allegorical dream vision inspired by Hugh, in which philosophy and theology are the crowning intellectual experiences of human life; the Liberal Arts are described at the beginning of the quest.
Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus (ca. 1179–83) describes the Liberal Arts constructing the chariot of Nature. Alain also wrote a short Rhythmus de incarnatione Christi on the Incarnation, which defines the usual laws of Nature viewed through the Seven Liberal Arts.
Two closely related 13th-century poems describe the Mariage des sept arts. One is by Jehan le Teinturier d’Arras and the other is anonymous. In both, the poet lies in bed and dreams that he is in a flowery meadow where he sees seven beautiful maidens. The eldest, Grammar, is the mother of the others. She announces her intention to marry un serjant Dieu called Faith; her daughters follow her example. Rhetoric chooses Alms, a persuasive advocate; Logic chooses Penitence, uns hardiz avocat; Arithmetic chooses Confession, who counts sins; Geometry chooses Abstinence, defined as measure; Astronomy chooses Love, who pierces through all the heavens to God; and Music chooses Prayer to praise God. In the anonymous version, Logic, here called Dialectic, chooses Alms, and Rhetoric chooses Obedience. More surprisingly, Astronomy is replaced by Theology. The lady Physic, accompanied in Jehan’s version by Theology, appears, and after some discussion the suitors are summoned to celebrate the nuptials.
In the mid-13th century, Gossuin de Metz wrote a popular encyclopedic work in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, Image du monde, which was illustrated with forty-six figures referred to in the text. Some manuscripts also illustrate the Liberal Arts; unusually for the tradition, the figures are male. Grammar, as usual, holds a whip, or is accompanied by a male teacher who holds it. Rhetoric is shown as a male cleric arguing, with a ruler or sealed document in his hand. Henri d’Andeli framed his witty analysis of the quarrel between the Arts and the new disciplines of Philosophy and Theology (the ancients and the moderns) at the University of Paris in the verse Bataille des sept arts (ca. 1259). Grammar and the traditional literary arts as taught in the schools of Orléans, aided by Donatus, Priscian, Virgil, Ovid, and other authors, do battle with the new university curriculum taught at Paris: Philosophy, Theology, Medicine, and Law, aided by Aristotle and Boethius. The Paris faction is marshaled under the banner of Dialectic, assisted by Rhetoric, elevated (or reduced) to business-letter writing (ars dictaminis). The other Arts find practical applications for their traditional skills: Arithmetic counts supplies; Geometry measures encampments and troop movements; Music entertains the army; Astronomy casts the horoscope for the battle. Logic wins, but Henri begs the question by pointing out that, ultimately, no triumph of language is possible without Grammar.
The images in Charlemagne’s and Adèle’s palaces have not survived, but others have. The best-known images of the Seven Liberal Arts are the figures on the west façade at Chartres (1145–50), where full-length female figures with attributes alternate with male scholars. The traditional figures are unlabeled but are usually assumed to be those used by Thierry of Chartres: Priscian for grammar, Aristotle for dialectic, Cicero for rhetoric, Boethius for Arithmetic, Ptolemy for Astronomy, Euclid for Geometry, and Pythagoras for Music. Personifications of the Liberal Arts also appear on cathedral façades at Auxerre and Sens and on figures around a window in the west end of Laon; the figures in the rose window on the north side have been restored. The gable of the north-transept portal of the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand shows the Arts as male figures. At Le Puy, there are 15th-century female figures of Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Music in the sacristy. The figures that once stood beneath the Last Judgment at Paris have been destroyed. Those at Loches no longer survive, and the figures in the archivolt of the north portal at Déols were destroyed in 1830.
Manuscript illustrations of the Arts are surprisingly uncommon; few texts of Martianus are illustrated, and no tradition develops. Only a scattering of Martianus manuscripts are illustrated at all, and only a handful of those are French. One 9th-century illustrated French manuscript of Martianus survives (B.N. lat. 7900A) and another from ca. 1100 (Florence, Bibl. Mediceo-Laurenziana MS San Marco 190). Arts also occur in a manuscript from the 11th century, accompanied by verses on the Arts (B.N. lat. 3110); from the 12th, possibly Arras, Bibliothèque de la Ville 599. None of the philosophical studies of the Arts have illustrations, and the only illustrations to the Arts in Alain de Lille’s Anticlaudianus occur in the German translation. Occasionally, as in Pierpont Morgan MS 222, Boethius is shown with Philosophy and the Seven Arts. Only the Image du monde of Gossuin has a traditional picture cycle, which also appears in the Rothschild Canticles and the Virgiet de solas.
In other decorative arts, a late 12th-century Limoges enamel casket survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, showing figures of the Arts, Philosophy, and Nature in roundels. Rhetoric is a male, holding scales, but the other Arts are female.
The Seven Liberal Arts in Education: Grammar. The way in which students learned basic Latin changed little throughout the medieval period. The grammars of Donatus (Major and Minor) and Priscian, followed by moral proverbs of the Distichs of Cato and the fables of Aesop, Avianus, and Phaedrus remained the core texts; as part of the collection sometimes called the Auctores octo, they lasted into Renaissance printed editions, supplemented by two 12th-century texts by French authors: Alain de Lille’s Parabolae and the collecton of anecdotes called Moretus, usually ascribed to Bernard. More recent texts, working specifically with biblical Latin, included studies of words and constructions. The most widely used were by Bede and Alcuin.
In the late 12th century and early 13th, metrical grammars intended for students having advanced beyond Donatus appeared. The two most popular were the Graecismus of Eberhardt of Béthune (1212) and the Doctrinale de puerorum of Alexander of Villa Dei (1199). The same period saw the more speculative and philosophical grammars of the Modistae, whose inquiries into the nature of language, the modes of being, understanding, and signifying (modus essendi, intelligendi, et significandi) were widely read in the 13th and 14th centuries. Chief among them were Peter Helias, Jean de Garlande, and Peter of Spain. Their theories were revived among linguistic philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries and again among modern-day French and American theoreticians of language, such as Lacan, Derrida, and Jakobsen.
Dialectic, or Logic. Cassiodorus and Martianus Capella both treated dialectic, basing their work on Aristotle, and the Dialectic and Rhetoric that Alcuin composed for Charlemagne and his court had a modest circulation from the 9th through the 11th century, but until the 12th century the core text remained Boethius, De topicis differentiis.
Rhetoric. Rhetoric changed and developed, especially from the 12th century on. While Cicero and the Rhetorica ad Herennium (thought to be by Cicero as well) continued to be read and commented on, new texts also appeared. Important French authors include Thierry of Chartres, Matthieu de Vendôme, and Jean de Garlande. Geoffroi de Vinsauf, despite his name, was English, but his Poetria nova (ca. 1200) circulated widely in glossed manuscripts in France as well as the rest of Europe. From the late 12th century, prose writing was taught especially through the art of official and unofficial letter writing, the ars dictaminis.
Arithmetic. Classical arithmetic included number, ratio, and proportion and continued to be studied from such authors as Boethius and Cassiodorus. The introduction of Arabic numerals, which spread slowly from the 13th century on, made computation easier but did little to change the study of numbers. The innovative work was done in the 13th century, when the Elementa of Jordannes described experiments with weights and measures, and the practical mathematical treatises of Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa) culminated in the Fibonacci series for determining the convergence of a series of ratios.
Geometry. Geometry was studied in Boethius’s translation of Euclid and, from the 12th century, in the Practica geometriae of Hugh of Saint-Victor. In the 10th century, Gerbert of Aurillac (the future Pope Sylvester II) incorporated practical surveyors’ manuals into the study of geometry. Practical geometry also included treatises on the use of measuring instruments and overlapped with astronomy in the treatise on the use of the astrolabe (known from the 10th century) and the equatory of planets. Jordannes and Fibonacci also wrote geometry texts. The geometry of construction and sculpture found its most interesting expression in the Sketchbook of the 13th-century designer Villard de Honnecourt.
Astronomy. Astronomy followed the system of planetary relationships worked out in Plato’s Timaeus, which was known in Latin translation, and the Almagest of Ptolemy. Martianus Capella’s Book 8 also provided a good discussion of astronomy. Astronomical calculations were necessary for figuring the dates of Easter; Bede’s table continued to be used, and others were developed. Gerbert of Aurillac wrote a treatise on the astrolabe. In the 1130s, Bernard Silvestris incorporated astronomical material into his Cosmographia, as did Thierry of Chartres in his Heptateuchon, and later in the century Alain de Lille discussed astronomy at length in the Anticlaudianus. William of Moerbecke translated Aristotle from the Arabic versions, and practical school texts were written in the 13th century by John of Sacrobosco.
Music. Boethius’s De institutione musica remained the chief textbook throughout the Middle Ages. His discussion, like that of Martianus Capella, was based largely on Pythagorean number symbolism and stressed harmonics. Gregorian chant developed fully in the Frankish kingdom in the 8th century and was written in neumes, which appeared at varying heights and in different shapes above the words, but with no staff lines or clear indication of exact pitch or duration. The alphabet letters taken from Paul the Deacon’s Ut queant laxis hymn to John the Baptist by Guido d’Arezzo in the 11th century gave the tones ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, from which the modern scale developed. These could be written on a staff to indicate regular intervals and duration, and by the 13th century neumes had become obsolete.
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