Trivium and Quadrivium
The Seven Liberal Arts
These seven arts are the tradition’s own curriculum: three that free the word, four that free the number, ascending from the power of words to the motions of the heavens. Each art stands as a pillar of its own, and at each you will find what the art asks, what to read, and where to begin.
- The Trivium
- Grammar, logic and rhetoric are the arts of the word. They teach a reader to say what is so, to test it, and to speak it fittingly.
- The Quadrivium
- Geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy are the arts of number. They train the mind on things that hold necessarily, in space, in sound and in the heavens.
I. Seven pillars
II. A course in the seven arts
‘Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars’ (Proverbs 9:1).
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
The Boethius Institute offers a separate certificate course over the same seven arts, which takes its name and its shape from the verse: six lectures to each art, and an account of every art in your own words. Enrolment and the lectures are on artsofliberty.org; what the Studium keeps is your record of them. The seven pillars above stand on their own. The course is one way through them, and not the only one.
- Structure
- Trivium, then Quadrivium
- Lectures
- Forty-two, six to each art
- Evidence
- Lectures heard, and an account of each art