| The seven liberal arts were the prevailing early medieval intellectual and philosophical framework in Western Europe. This study investigates the corresponding educational model. The goal of education was not accumulation of knowledge; the medieval scholar sought to encounter the being of each art, or discipline, thereby discovering the unity of thought revealed by integrating within him/herself the seven disciplinary perspectives. Initial broad-based inquiry led the researcher to two key sources in the fourth century: Martianus Capella and Boethius, and two leading scholars from the twelfth: Hugh of St. Victor and John of Salisbury. Two principal questions emerged: what was meant by encountering the being of an art, and what it meant to think in the way of a discipline.; The researcher employs a metaphor for the medieval educational model in which scholars gazed into a house with seven windows, and perceived unity of thought from a diversity of perspectives. This study is concerned with the form of education, the construction of the house, rather than curricular content. In providing the epistemological configuration of knowledge, education both creates and perpetuates civilization. This wholistic educational model was integral to the twelfth century renaissance, before the rise of universities.; Students studied all seven arts, beginning with the trivium, (based on the word, or language arts); grammar, dialectic (logic) and rhetoric, and then the quadrivium (based on number, or mathematics): arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. Medieval manuscripts and statuary depict the arts as sisters, sometimes with their mother philosophy or wisdom. The goal of education was to attain wisdom, through uniting the communicative arts (trivium) with scientific understanding of lawfulness in the created world (quadrivium). Each discipline mirrored higher reality, and was studied in order to perceive the hidden truth it revealed. This clearly religious paradigm parallels modern perception, found in systems theory, that everything is interrelated by its very nature.; The twelfth century model of education hinged on embracing and inviting paradox, and affirming interconnectedness. Medieval scholars trained in the seven liberal arts knew that true wisdom can only be achieved through a diversity of perspectives. |
