William C. MichaelWilliam C. Michael

Mr. William C. Michael, O.P., is the founder and headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy and a Lay Dominican in the Catholic Church. Mr. Michael received an honors degree in Classics and Ancient History from Rutgers University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He led the CLAA to accreditation with Cognia in 2024. He has been studying and teaching the classical liberal arts for over 30 years.

Seneca on the True Liberal Arts

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“You have been wishing to know my views with regard to liberal studies. My answer is this: I respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making.  Such studies are profit-bringing occupations, useful only in so far as they give the mind a preparation and do not engage it permanently. One should linger upon them only so long as the mind can occupy itself with nothing greater; they are our apprenticeship, not our real work. Hence you see why “liberal studies” are so called; it is because they are studies worthy of a free-born gentleman. But there … Continue

The Sphere of Sacrobosco

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An early 13th century treatise on astronomy, by Iohannes de Sacrobosco. Translated by Lynn Thorndike, 1949. PROEMIUMCONTENTS OF THE FOUR CHAPTERS. — The treatise on the sphere we divide into four chapters, telling, first, what a sphere is, what its center is, what the axis of a sphere is, what the pole of the world is, how many spheres there are, and what the shape of the world is.In the second we give information concerning the circles of which this material sphere is composed and that supercelestial one, of which this is the image, is understood to be composed.In the … Continue