ARTS
762
ARTS
fault with a wooden key if it serves our purpose'"
(De Doctr. Christ., IV, U, 26). In estimating the
importance of linguistic studies as a means of in-
terpreting Scripture, stress should be laid upon
e.\egetical, rather than technical grammar. Dia-
lectic must also prove its worth in the interpretation
of Scripture; "it traverses the entire text like a
tissue of nerves" (Per totura textum scripturarum
coUigata est nervorum vice, ibid., II, 40, 56).
Rhetoric contains the rules of fuller discussion
(prscepta uberioris disputationis); it is to be
used rather to set forth what we have understood
than to aid us in understanding (ibid., II, 18). St.
Augustine compared a masterpiece of rhetoric with
the wisdom and beauty of the cosmos, and of history
— "Ita quadam non verborum, sed rerum, elo-
quentia contrariorum oppositione seculi pulchritudo
componitur" (De. Civit. Dei, XI, 18). Mathematics
was not invented by man, but its truths were dis-
covered; they make known to us the mysteries
concealed in the numbers found in Scripture, and
lead the mind upwards from the mutable to the
immutable; and interpreted in the spirit of Divine
Love, they become for the mind a source of that
wisdom which has ordered all things by measure,
weight, and number (De Doctr. Christ., II, 39, also
Wisdom, xi, 21). The truths elaborated by the
philosophers of old, like precious ore drawn from the
depths of an all-ruling Providence, should be ap-
plied by the Christian in the spirit of the Gospel,
just as the Israelites used the sacred vessels of the
Egyptians for the service of the true God (De
Doctr. Christ., II, 41).
The series of text-books on this subject in vogue during the Middle Ages begins with the work of an African, Marcianus Capella, written at Carthage about A. D. 420. It bears the title "Satyricon Libri IX" fromsa(i;ra, sc. /anx,"a full dish". In the first two books, "Nuptise Philologi* et Mercurii ", carrying out the allegory that Phoebus presents the Seven Liberal Arts as maids to the bride Philology, mythological and other topics are treated. In the seven books that follow, each of the Liberal Arts pre- sents the sum of her teaching. A simpler presenta- tion of the same subject is found in the little book, intended for clerics, entitled, "De artibus ac dis- ciplinis liberalium artium," which was written by Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus in the reign of The- odoric. Here it may be noted that Ars means "text- book ", as does the Greek word t^x"";; dif:cip!ina is the translation of the Greek /xdOrja-is or ixaBriixaTa, and stood in a narrower sense for the matliematical sciences. Cassiodorus derives the word liberalis not from liber, "free", but from liher, "book", thus indicating the change of these studies to book learn- ing, as well as the disappearance of the view that other occupations are servile and unbecoming a free man. Again we meet with the Artes at the begin- ning of an encyclopedic work entitled " Origines, sive Etymologia; ", in twenty books, compiled by St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, about 600. The first book of this work treats of grammar; the second, of rhetoric and dialectic, both comprised under the name of logic; the thij'd, of the four mathematical branches. In books IV-VIII follow medicine, juris-
f)rudence, theology; but books IX and X give us inguistic material, etymologies, etc., and the re- maining books present a miscellany of useful informa- tion. Albinus (or Alcuin, q. v.), the well-known statesman and counsellor of Charles the Great, dealt with the .4 rffis in separate treatises, of which only the treatises intended as guides to the Triviinn have come down to us. In the introduction, he finds in Prov. ix, 1 (Wisdom hath built herself a hou.se. she hath hewn her out seven pillars) an allusion to the seven liberal arts which he thinks are meant by the seven pillars. The book is written in dia-
logue form, the scholar asking questions, and the
master answering them. One of Alcuin's pupils,
Rabanus Maurus, who died in 850 as the Arch-
bishop of Mainz, in his book entitled " De institu-
tione clericorum ", gave short instructions concern-
ing the Aries, and published under the title, "De
Ihiiverso ", what might be called an encyclopedia.
The extraordinary activity displayed by the Irish
monks as teachers in Germany led to the designation
of the Artes as Methodus Hrjbemi-ca. To impress
the sequence of the arts on the memory of the
student, mnemonic verses were employed such as
the hexameter;
Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, angulus astra.
Gram loquitur, Dia vera docet, Rhe verba colorat
Mu canit, Ar numerat, Geo ponderat, Ast colit astra.
By the number seven the system was made popu- lar; the Seven Arts recalled the Seven Petitions of the Lord's Prayer, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Virtues, etc. The Seven Words on the Cross, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Seven Heaveni might also suggest particular branches of learning. The seven liberal arts fomid counterparts in the seven mechani- cal arts; the latter included wea\'ing, blacksmithing, war, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and the ars theatrica. To these were added dancing, wrestling, and driving. Even the accomplishments to be mastered by candidates for knighthood were fi.xed at seven: riding, tilting, fencing, WT&stling, running, leaping, and spear-throwing. Pictorial illustrations of the Artes are often found, usually female figures with suitable attributes; thus Gram- mar appears with book and rod. Rhetoric with tablet and stilus, Dialectic with a dog's head in her hand, probably in contrast to the wolf of heresy — cf. the play on words Domini canes, Dominicani — Arithmetic with a knotted rope. Geometry with a pair of compasses and a rule. Astronomy with bushel and stars, and Music with cithern and organistrum. Portraits of the chief representatives of the different sciences were added. Thus in the large group by Taddeo Gaddi in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, painted in 1322, the central figure of which is St. Thomas Aquinas Grammar appears with either Donatus (who lived about A. D. 250) or Priscian (about A. u. 530), the two most prominent teachers of grammar, in the act of instructing a boy; Rhetoric accompanied by Cicero; Dialectic by Zeno of Elea, whom the ancients considered as founder of the art; Arithmetic by Abraham, as the representative of the philosophy of numbers, and versed in the knowledge of the stars; Geometry by Euclid (about 300 B. c), whose "Ele- ments" was the text-book par excellence; Astronomy by Ptolemy, whose "Almagest" Wiis considered to be the canon of star-lore; Music by Tubal Cain using the haminor, probably in allusion to the harmoniously tuned hammci's which are said to have sviggestcd to Pythagoras his theory of intervals. As coimterparts of the liberal arts are found seven higher sciences: civil law, canon law, and the five branches of theology entitled speculative, scriptural, scholastic, contemplative, and apologetic. (Cf. Ge- schichte dcs Idealisnuis, II, Par. 74, where the posi- tion of St. Thomas Aquinas towards the sciences is discussed.)
An instructive picture of the seven liberal arts in the twelfth century may be found in the work entitled " Didasialicum ", or "Eruditio Didascalici ", written by tlie .\ugustinian canon, Hugo of St Victor, who died at Paris, in 1141. He w.is de- scended from the family of the Counts Blankcn- burg in the Harz Mountains and received his educa- tion at the Augustinian convent of Haramersleben
