Chapter 32 - Scholastics and Bible

Summary

The studies of the medieval university were nearly always based upon the “Arts” course. Medieval philosophy followed Aristotle in its division of Arts into the “mechanical” and the “liberal”. Mechanical were all that needed manual dexterity, from the cobbler and saddler to the painter and sculptor: indeed, many modern artists, from William Morris to Eric Gill, insist upon this as the only sane definition. Liberal were the arts concerned only with brain-work. These were again divided into sections and subsections by the university authorities. The Trivium was the first stage: hence our adjective trivial in the sense of “comparatively unimportant”. This comprised Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic. Next came the Quadrivium, i.e. Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music and Geometry. This was not so great as it sounds; for the first three were studied only in the most elementary sense for Church purposes, even where they were seriously studied at all; and the last, again, only in its most rudimentary forms. After seven years the student became in England and France a Master of Arts, in Germany a Doctor of Philosophy: different phrases for the same thing. This philosophy was the so-called scholastic, a product so definitely medieval that it must be clearly defined before we go farther. It can best be described by noting how far it agrees with or differs from the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome on the one hand; or on the other, those of modern times.