Source: Abelson, P. (1906). The Seven Liberal Arts: A Study in Mediæval Culture. New York: Teachers’ College, Columbia University. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990019534120203941/catalog
The question of the historical development of the curriculum comprising the seven liberal arts has received very little attention from scholars. The available sources at hand are meagre, and the opinions of the authorities conflicting, on many interesting questions. On the chief point, however, all are agreed; namely: that historically the cycle of the seven liberal arts in the middle ages was an outgrowth of the ancient Greek and Roman systems of education; that from the Greek and Roman course of study modified by the introduction of Christian ideals of education the curriculum of the middle ages was gradually evolved. In the present chapter this development and adaptation will be briefly traced.
In earliest times Greek education consisted of the study of music and gymnastics. With the development of Greek life and thought the subject of music was broadened to include poetry and letters. Plato’s ideal scheme for the higher education of the “guardian class” contemplated a complete course in what we should call elementary, secondary and higher education. The elementary, — gymnastics, music, letters (i. e., grammar) , was to last till the twentieth year; secondary education, lasting from the twentieth to the thirtieth year, was to embrace science —arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and musical harmony. The higher education, from the thirtieth to the thirty-fifth year, was to consist of the study of philosophy, as a final preparation for the practical life of the ideal citizen. In the first two divisions of the course we have a possible foreshadowing of the future separation of the curriculum into the Trivium and the Quadrivium.
Aristotle’s curriculum, which was to serve as a foundation for higher studies, consisted of (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastics, (3) music, and sometimes drawing. He too considered gymnastics and music important branches. Aristotle’s ideas on education as they have come down to us are very fragmentary. There is no evidence to support the theory that he placed grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy in the preparatory curriculum of Greek education, as has been asserted. From the text of Book VIII of the Politics, the only source on Aristotle’s educational ideas, it certainly does not appear that these subjects of Plato’s advanced curriculum of higher studies also formed what has been called “Aristotle’s program of secondary education. ” In the absence of any definite statement by Aristotle as to his views on the subject it would be fair to assume that they agreed in the main with those of Plato, with the exception perhaps, that his plan for the scientific training of a man would call for more natural science than mathematics. But even these “scientific studies,” whether mathematical or biological, were never considered part of the secondary curriculum to be studied before the Greek boy had reached the “ephebean” age.
Set over against these “scientific studies” were the “practical studies” of the Sophists. Their ascendancy made rhetoric and not natural science the essential subject of the higher education of the Greeks. One of the effects of this change was that some study of mathematics had to be introduced into the preparatory curriculum since the value of mathematics to the Greeks was considered very great. Thus we find that in the third century the preparatory work of the Greek young man consisted of a study of the following subjects: (1) gymnastics, (2) grammar (rudiments of the language), (3) music, (4) drawing, (5) arithmetic, (6) geometry, — the last two being distinctly/ mentioned as the more advanced studies. Here again we have a foreshadowing of the distinction between the Trivium and the Quadrivium, the division of the later periods. We find no further record of changes in the Greek curriculum of the liberal studies till the first century of the Christian era.
In the works of Philo Judaeus (fl. c. 30 A. D.), there are frequent references to the encyclical liberal arts. He includes in his list all those that were current three hundred years before his time, except drawing and gymnastics. He adds, however, rhetoric and dialectic. All these studies are spoken of as preparatory subjects and are clearly differentiated from the higher study — philosophy. Philo does not mention astronomy in his catalogue of preparatory subjects.
It should be noted here that while the works of Plato and Aristotle on education are theoretical plans, they represent essentially the practice of Greek education in their day. For preparatory education, the subject under discussion, Plato and Aristotle appear to have adopted in toto the prevailing Greek ideas of the time.
In the first half of the third century we find a writer alluding to (1) grammar, (2) rhetoric, (3) geometry, (4) arithmetic, (5) astronomy, and (6) music, in such a way as to leave no doubt that he speaks of them as liberal arts. Dialectic, according to him, was then still considered a higher study.
In Greece, then, it would appear that until after the period of Alexander the Great, there were only three or four preparatory studies in the curriculum: letters, music, gymnastics, and drawing; that with the growth of knowledge, more subjects, like dialectics and mathematics, were added to the curriculum; and that in this way gradually there came to exist in free Hellas a cycle of studies which were considered the minimum of liberal training for the average free man. Although the number of these was not definitely fixed at this time, at least six of the seven subjects which later constituted the mediaeval curriculum were studied in the first century of the present era.
Passing on to the Romans, we find that only after the second Punic War did Rome begin to adopt Greek ideas of education. After the first period of innovation during which the education of the young Roman was conducted by Greek teachers in the Greek language, strong efforts were made to establish a national literature and a nation- al education. This period marks the beginning of text books written in Latin. M. T. Varro (116-27 B.C.), contemporary of Cicero and Caesar, attempted in common with them to build up a system of education based on Greek ideas, but in which Roman and not Greek literature should be the basis. To further his objects he wrote treatises on all the subjects taught in Greece in his day, but omitted drawing and included astronomy. His work, now lost, was entitled Disciplinarum Libri Novem, and contained treatises on grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, music, medicine and architecture. The books were undoubtedly written for secondary schools, which were at this time already clearly differentiated from the higher rhetorical schools. The practical secondary curriculum of the day was grammar in its narrow sense, and also literature, arithmetic, geometry and music — a repetition of the Greek curriculum of the third century before Christ.
Seneca (B.C 2-A.D. 65), an authority for his age on matters pertaining to our subject, did not limit the number of secondary liberal studies to seven; in fact, his ideas as to what constituted the circle of the liberal studies seem to have been very indefinite. Now it is grammar, music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy; now he speaks of medicine as a liberal art; again he plainly considers rhetoric and dialectic as higher studies and hence a part of philosophy, a
Nor does Quintilian (A.D. 35-95) seem to have had any conception of seven liberal arts. To be sure he speaks of the preparatory training given by the grammaticus as affording the Greek syKVKkiot iraidsia. But the cycle of preparatory studies which his model student of oratory was to master consisted only of grammar, a little music, geometry and astronomy; and even these, with the exception of grammar, were to be studied in a superficial manner. This was all the instruction given till the sixteenth year of the boy’s age.
So far, then, we are even further removed from the seven liberal arts than we were at the end of our survey of the Greek period. Apparently the influence of Varro had been of no avail to make permanent the curriculum which he had closely modelled after the Greeks. His failure to establish in Rome a modified Greek curriculum was due to the fact that soon after his time rhetoric and dialectic came to be considered advanced studies. The Roman secondary course as compared with the Greek, which the Romans were plainly attempting to follow, was thus much briefer. In the first place the period of secondary education in Rome was shorter, lasting till the six-teenth year of a boy’s age, not till the twenty-first as in Greece. Then again, the Romans’ character made them reject from the curriculum anything not of a practical nature. Therefore the study of mathematics, in which the contemplative Greek delighted, was reduced to a minimum in the Roman course of study. It is only as practical studies that Quintilian advised the study of geometry, arithmetic and astronomy.
The Roman schools, partially Hellenized, maintained their efficient and practical character for some generations after Quintilian, but a decline set in after the third century. As the spirit of superficiality crept in, everything was sacrificed to the immediate practical needs of the time. Excepting in Gaul and Spain, where the racial characteristics of the Gallic mind encouraged the study of rhetoric and eloquence as the highest form of cultivation, the curriculum of the average Roman school contracted, and the grammaticus encroached upon the work of the rhetor, a result which Quintilian had foreseen. In this way, while there was a decline in the field of higher education, the work in the secondary school was enriched by the addition of the elements of rhetoric and dialectics. The curriculum of the Roman school of this period consisted, then, of a superficial study of the elements of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. This undoubtedly was the accepted standard in the pagan schools at the beginning of the fourth century.
The evidence on this point becomes very convincing when we consider the latest researches as to the date of the work of Martianus Capella De Nuptiis Philologice et Mercurii. Capella, judging from the very little that is known of his life, could hardly have been a formulator of a curriculum; hence his work which describes the content of the seven liberal arts — grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, in the order given — would seem to have represented the accepted standards of his time. Wishing to write a poetic account of the liberal arts, he most naturally turned to the work of Varro — the Disciplinarum Libri Novem — as a model. To a provincial of Africa like Capella, Varro, “vir Romanorum eruditissimus,” was certainly a sufficient authority to follow in matters of both style and content. Again, the work of Capella like that of Varro, is divided into nine books, although since the first two books form the allegorical introduction, the subjects treated are only seven. The assumption that he followed Varro absolutely in treating the content is thus supported by the similarity in form of presentation. Indeed, according to his own statement, Capella omitted medicine and architecture, the two other subjects included in Varro ‘s treatise, only in order to keep within the mythological setting of his allegorical framework.
The fourth century then, may be taken to represent the period when the curriculum of the Pagan schools in the Empire assumed the fixed character of a course in the seven liberal arts. This century of social and political transformation marked the final stages in the evolution of a course of study, which through the medium of the public school — a characteristic institution of the later empire — proved perhaps the most effective means of preserving the classical culture of the ancient world.
But during the three centuries in which this pagan curriculum was thus crystallizing, it was viewed with rooted suspicion by the Christian leaders. Throughout the second, third and fourth centuries men of the type of Origen, Tertullian, and Jerome felt that these very schools were the most formidable opponents of the new religion. And, when one considers how much was at stake in the contest, the vehement denuncia- tions of the pagan education by these men become intelligible enough.
The close of the fourth century, however, saw a decisive change; the triumph of Christian ideals was complete; and the decadence of the old education in nearly every part of the Empire was as marked as the decline of paganism. Now that these schools no longer menaced the supremacy of the rising church, the merits of the old curriculum could be considered dispassionately by Christian leaders. It did not require much discernment to see that while the rhetorical pagan schools of Gaul as they existed in the fourth and fifth centuries in their decadent form were worse than useless from the Christian point of view, the subject matter of their instruction, — literature, rhetoric and dialectic — was of real value to the Christians as an aid to the study of theology. Such in fact was the prevailing opinion among the devotees of the new religion even in the earlier period of strife with paganism. Even in the respective generations of Origen, Tertullian and Jerome the Christians had frequented these schools to a limited extent, and while a good Christian could not conscientiously become a teacher of rhetoric, it was not considered improper for him to study in the pagan institutions. It would seem reasonable then, that later in the fifth century Christians would not offer objections to the introduction of the seven liberal arts of Capella as a part of a curriculum which was to be a preparation for the study of theology,
The tendency to use the elements of the pagan curriculum in Christian education was encouraged by Augustine himself (354-430), who wrote treatises on grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry and music — six of the seven subjects of the mediaeval curriculum. His influence was potent in committing the church to a recognition of the arts as suitable subjects for Christian study. He sought to prove his contention by recalling the biblical sanction which justified “despoiling the Egyptians.” Although not the originator of the curriculum of the seven liberal arts, he, more than any one else, made possible its general adoption by the Christian world of the west. With the support of such eminent authority it was but natural that the position of the secular liberal arts as a part of Christian education in the mediaeval curriculum should become secure. As far as is known Cassiodorus (480-575) was the first Christian to use the term “seven liberal arts” in his De Artibus et Discipliniis Liberalium Literarum, a work designed to supplement his earlier work, De Institutis Literarutn Sacrarum. He supports Augustine’s contention as to the necessity of the study of the liberal arts as a preparation for sacred studies, and quotes biblical proof to show that the number of these studies must be seven. The text “Wisdom builded her house; she has hewn out her seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1) gives him conclusive scriptural authority for his views. This quotation is of significance. It means that at this time Christian leaders admitted the necessity of incorporating secular studies into the Christian curriculum, and since these secular studies had been definitely seven in number for over a century and a half, reasons were to be found from a Christian standpoint explaining scripturally that their number seven was divinely sanctioned. With Cas- siodorus, the number and the subjects of the mediaeval curriculum become definitely fixed. His authority, together with that of Augustine before him, was all sufficient to give to it that rigid character which it maintained for some nine hundred years. Their work marks the final transition of the pagan curriculum into the mediaeval world of letters.
From the time of Cassiodorus the term “seven liberal arts” is the regular expression for the round of preparatory secular studies. Isidore of Seville uses it as well as the terms “trivium” and “quadrivium.” So do Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus and the scholastic writers. Later, so definite did this term become, the seven liberal arts were not infrequently made the subjects of poems and paintings.
Summing up the results of this inquiry, the following generalizations may be made:
- In some five centuries of educational development the J Greeks evolved a curriculum of seven liberal arts. The entire content of this curriculum was preserved for Rome in the Latin language by Varro.
- This curriculum was adopted by Rome in part only during the period of the later Republic and the early Empire.
- In the declining days of the Empire a marked reversion to the entire Greek curriculum took place, and its form and con- tent were definitely fixed about the close of the third century of our era.
- Christianity, triumphant, found it necessary to appropriate to its own use the content of this curriculum as a preparatory discipline for its higher study of theology.
- Having settled upon the fundamental proposition of the value of secular studies, the Christian leaders followed the line of least resistance, and adopting in toto the pagan cur- riculum then in existence, hallowed their choice by scriptural sanction.
- The spirit of tradition, so characteristic of the period, was strong enough to maintain this curriculum in its rigidity throughout the middle ages.
