Quidditas Volume 16 Volumes 16-17, 1995-1996 Article 5 1995 Ethics and the Seven Liberal Arts: Another Look at the Liberal Arts Curriculum of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Willard W. Dickerson III Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Dickerson, Willard W. III (1995) "Ethics and the Seven Liberal Arts: Another Look at the Liberal Arts Curriculum of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," Quidditas: Vol. 16 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol16/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Ethics and the Seven Liberal Arts: Another Look at the Liberal Arts Curriculum of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Willard W. Dickerson III ost modern discussions of the liberal arts curriculum of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries focus their attention rather M narrowly on the seven arts subsumed under the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).1 This is not without some cause. After all, Thierry of Chartres, in the prologue to his Heptatheucon, remarked: For since these are the two principal tools of the philosopher, understanding ( intellectus) and the expression ( interpretatio) thereof-the quadrivium gives light to understanding and the 1 See, for example, H. Parker, "The Seven Liberal Arts," English Historical Review 5 (1890): 417-6!; Paul Abelson, The Seven Liberal Arts: A Study in Medieval Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1906); Franz A.