Trivium Quadrivium

See also: Trivium

The trivium and the Quadrivium correspond to two divisions, introduced at certain times of the Moyen-âge, in the school subjects Scolastique.

Traditionally, one distinguishes Seven liberal arts. Three of them, the Grammar, the Rhetoric and the Dialectical , form the trivium . The four others, the Arithmetic , the Geometry, the Astronomy and the Music, form the quadrivium .

For others, the trivium represents three arts, the quadrivium, four sciences. What is undeniable, it is that the substitution of the liberal arts to sciences which, for the Greeks, were true divisions of the human knowledge, is due to the primarily practical spirit of the Romans, as one sees it by Academic the of Cicéron. Their limitation with seven, their division, according to the numbers three and four, in trivium and quadrivium appear at Martianus Capella, Cassiodore and Boèce, and their successors, where they answer the mystical concerns which mixed then with the conjectures about the numbers.

Bède Worthy the, Alcuin, Jean Scot Erigène, Gerbert d' Aurillac, Fulbert of Chartres teach seven arts or consider them in the succession indicated by trivium and quadrivium. But it would not have to be believed that to that the mental activity of the men of the Moyen-âge was limited. Apart from theology and holy books, to which all gave a great place, they studied the Histoire, the Physique, the Philosophie, the Métaphysique (or Morale), the Médecine, later the Droit (Roman gun or ) Alchimie, etc the trivium and the quadrivium does not represent, no matter what the handbooks say some, that part of the medieval teaching.

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