Trivium

Allegory of Grammar and Logic/Dialectic. Perugia, Fontana Maggiore.
Allegory of Grammar. Priscian on the left teaches Latin grammar to his students on the right. Relief by Luca della Robbia. Florence, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.[1]

The trivium is implicit in De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but the term was not used until the Carolingian Renaissance, when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium.[2] Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essential to a classical education, as explained in Plato's dialogues. The three subjects together were denoted by the word trivium during the Middle Ages, but the tradition of first learning those three subjects was established in ancient Greece, by rhetoricians such as Isocrates.[3]: 12–23  Contemporary iterations have taken various forms, including those found in certain British and American universities (some being part of the Classical education movement) and at the independent Oundle School in the United Kingdom.[4]

  1. ^ Onions, C.T., ed. (1991). The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. p. 944.
  2. ^ Marrou, Henri-Irénée (1969). "Les arts libéraux dans l'Antiquité classique". pp. 6–27 in Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Âge. Paris: Vrin; Montréal: Institut d'études médiévales). pp. 18–19.
  3. ^ Stahl, W. H. (6 November 1978). Roman Science: Origins, Development, and Influence to the Later Middle Ages. Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-20473-9.
  4. ^ See Martin Robinson, Trivium 21st century. Each of these iterations was discussed in a conference at King's College London on the future of the liberal arts at schools and universities; see [1] Archived 2016-05-25 at the Wayback Machine and Boarding Schools Association,Oundle School - improving intellectual challenge Archived 2020-08-15 at the Wayback Machine.

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