10. Transmitting Knowledge; The Trivium: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric
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Beginning in Late Antiquity, scholars in the Latin world classified higher learning into seven distinct branches. As outlined in Martianus Capella’s early fifth-century allegory, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, these consisted of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. This set of learned mental activities, intended to be performed by free men, were henceforth known as the liberal arts, in direct contrast with the manually performed mechanical arts. The philosopher Boethius (ca. 477–524) devised a curriculum that divided the liberal arts into a more elementary linguistic trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and a more advanced, numerological quadrivium (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music). Emphasis on the bifurcation of the trivium and quadrivium was further strengthened at the court of Charlemagne (768–814), and the Emperor himself is known to have followed this course of study, aided by Alcuin of York (ca. 732–804) and other scholars present at his court. The seven-part structure was largely replicated in medieval universities, even as the applied disciplines of law, medicine, and theology came to the fore. Though the rigid medieval conception of the liberal arts, especially concerning the trivium, was highly theoretical, humanist thinkers approached the learning of language, argumentation, and morality in somewhat more practical terms. Beyond Florence and the other Italian city-states, new patterns of learning took hold. Even Aristotelian study, a staple of medieval scholastic learning, came under the influence of new Greek learning and the Neoplatonic Academy.