ARTS
758
ARTS
knowledge should gradually come to act together
along the lines of their identical interests. Such
unions appear to have been formed soon after these
two universities came into existence, if indeed they
did not exist before. Schools of arts, theology, law,
and medicine had been established throughout
Europe previous to the organization of the uni-
versitias, and the separate existence of such schools
foreshadowed the division of the university teaching-
body into faculties. Although there is evidence of
the existence of a general association of the Mas-
ters at Paris, about the year 1175, the first direct
proof of the existence of faculties in the same
university goes back only to the year 1213. The
four faculties then recognized were theology, arts,
canon law, and civil law. The term facutti/ was
used at first to designate a specific field of knowl-
edge; but in 1255 we find the Masters at Paris
using the term in the modern meaning of a imion of
the teachers in a certain department of knowledge.
The new turn given to the meaning of the word
was not without significance. The centre of power,
the "jacullas", had shifted from the objective to
the subjective side of knowledge. Henceforth the
teacher was to be the dominant influence.
The term Art.5, in medieval academic usage, com- prehended all studies in the sphere of the higher and non-professional intellectual activity. The traditional "liberal arts" derived from the Romano-Hellenic schools, were seven in number. They were made up of the trivium, embracing grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and the quadrivium, or music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The trivium may be said to have corresponded to the Arts studies proper in the modern college course, and the quadiivium to the science studies. While the medieval universities held to the traditional number of the liberal arts, they did so only in a theoretical way. New subjects were at times introduced into the curriculum, and classified as belonging to one or other of the seven arts. The instruction given under the several arts was, quantita- tively as well as qualitatively, very unequal. The trivium generally formed the body of the Arts curricu- lum, especially up to the A.B. degree. After that, more or less of the quadrivium was given, together with advanced courses covering the ground of the trivium. Grammar was a wide term. Theoretically, it included the study of the whole I^atin language and literature. Rhetoric was the art of expression, both in writing and speaking. It corresponded to what we should now call, in a broad sense, oratory. Dialectic was the study of philosophy, including logic, meta- physics, and ethics. In philosophy, Aristotle was the great authority, the Magister, as he came to be reverentially called. Certain of his treatises had long been known throughout Europe, and these, together with the logical works of Boethius, were called, in school parlance, the " Old Logic ", in contradistinction to those ArLstotelean treatises which became known in Northern Europe only in the twelfth century, and hen<;e were designated as the " New Logic ". The old cloistral and cathedral schools had kept alive the study of the Latin classics, and handed it on to the uriiversities; but the passion for dialectic swept aside the study of grammar and rhetoric. The Latin authors were but little read, or not at all; the Greek classics were unlcnown. It was not until the rise of Humanism in the fifteenth century that the study of the ancient literat\ires of Rome and Greece was, generally speaking, made a regular and important part of the university course in Arts.
The following list includes the books that were to bo "read", or lectured on, by the Masters of the Faculty of Arts, at Paris in 1254. It covers the period of six or seven years from entrance, or ma- triculation, up to the Master's degree, and, were the "disputation.s" added, it might be regarded as
typical of the Arts course in the medieval universities
generally. A specific date was set for finishing the
"reading" of each book.
1. Old Logic: Porphyry, "Isagoge" (Introduc-
tion to the Categoriae): Aristotle, "'Categorise " and
- ' Perihermenia"; Boethius, " Divisiones " and " To-
pica ". except Bk. IV.
2. New Logic: Aristotle, **Topica". " Elenchi ", "Analvtica Priora ", Aualytica Posteriora ".
3. Ethics: Aristotle, "Ethica" (_ad Nichomuchum), four books.
4. Metaphysics: Aristotle. " Metaphy-ica ".
5. Astronomy: Aristotle, " De CfX'lo ", "Meteora", first Bk.
6. Psychology and Natural Philosophy: Aristotle, "Physica", " De Auimalibus ". "De .\ninii ", " De Generatioue ", " De Causis " (attributed at the time to Aristotle), " De Sensu et ,Sensato '*, " De Somno et Vigilia ", "De Plantis", "De Memnri.i et Keminis- centia ", "De Morte et Vitl ", Costa Ben Luca, " De DiRerentia Spiritus et Animas '.
7. Grammar and Rhetoric: Priscian Major (16 books of his " Inslitutiones Grammatica' "), Priscian Minor (last two l)ooks of the same); Gilbert de la Porr^e, "Se,x Principia; Barbarismus (third book of Donatus. "Ars Major"); Priscian. " De Accentu ".
(Cf. Chartularium Univ. Paris, Part I, n. 246.)
Masters of Arts, like masters, or doctors, of other faculties, were divided into regents and aon-regents. Regents were blasters actually engaged in teaching. All who received the degree of Master in the Arts course at Paris, had to take an oath to act as regents, i. e., to teach, for a period of two years, unless dis- pensed. The purpose of tliis statute was, partly at least, to provide a sufficiency of teachers for the Arts course, which usually included the great ma.ss of the students of the University, and which was the necessary gateway to the higher studies of theology, law, and medicine. As the Master's degree, at Paris, could be taken at twenty years of age, the conse- quence of the regency rule was to make the Faculty of Arts a body of young men, many of them being at the same time students of one of the higher facul- ties, or preparing to become such. Teaching in- cluded lectures, disputations, and repetitions. It was long before there w'ere salaries, the Masters being dependent on what they were able to collect as tuition-fees from their pupils. The oatli re- quiring newly created Masters to teach for a jieriod at the university was abolished at Paris only in 1452. At Oxford the custom was continued for a half-century later, and some vestiges of it remained until comparatively recent times. The Privat- dozenl of the modern German university represents a development of the medieval regency rule.
At O.xford and Cambridge, which have the most faithfully adliered to the medieval archetype, tlic Faculty of Arts still occupies a position of pre- dominant importance. At Oxford, especially, the Arts studies still furnish the materials for the most characteristic type of mental training given by the University. The A.B. course is followed by the great majority of the students, and philosophy, mucli of it Aristotelean, is still the backbone of the body of knowledge for all candidates for the Baccalaureate. The Master of Arts at Oxford on taking his degree becomes a member of the Faculty by right, and a member of the governing body of the University as well. The governing body consists of two houses, the Congreg.ation and the Convocation, the former includ- ing all resident Masters of Arts, and the latter those who are non-resident. Outside of England, the relative position of the Faculty of Arts in the uni- versity has been considerably altered since medieval times. The promising development of the Arts studies under Hmnanism w:is checked in Northern Europe by the absorbing theological controversies and civil wars which grew out of the preaching of the new doctrines by Luther and the other reformers. The effect was most evident in Germany, where, imtil the close of the seventeenth century, the course in Arts, or Philosophy, as it had come to
