Liberal Arts in Middle Ages

Even today, when historians have abandoned the idea, many regard the Middle Ages as a time dark and ignorant, the huddled masses in shadows until the burst of light that came with the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment. For centuries, it is often thought, medieval thinkers knew little of the classical world, and hated what little they knew.

Not so. Medieval thinkers and educators didn’t invent the liberal arts, but they took them up with abandon. One of the most important works was Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, which CS Lewis described as “a text-book in the Middle Ages” (Allegory of Love, 81). It was a marriage of Mercury with the liberal arts (summarized as Philologia); it was also a marriage of pagan learning with Christianity.

Ernst Curtius (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 38-39) summarizes the romance that occupies the first part of the book: 

“The work opens with a poem to Hymen, who is addressed not only as a conciliator of the elements and the sexes in the service of Natura but also as the matchmaker among the gods. Of these, Mercury is yet unmarried. On the advice of Virtus, he consults Apollo. Apollo proposes the learned maiden Philologia who, being well versed not only in the lore of Parnassus but also in the secrets of the starry heavens and the underworld, embraces all knowledge. Virtus, Mercury, and Apollo, escorted by the Muses, mount through the celestial spheres to Jupiter’s palace. An assembly of the gods, which also includes allegorical figures, sanctions Mercury’s wish and decides that Philologia shall be admitted to the danks of the gods. . . . Philologia is adorned by her mother Phronesis . . . and greeted by the four Cardinal Virtues and te Three Graces. At the bidding of Athanasia, she is forced to vomit up a number of books . . . , in order to become worthy of immortality. She then ascends to heaven in a litter born by the youths Labor and Amor and the maidens Epimelia (application) and Agrypnia (the intellectual worker’s night labors and curtailed sleep). In heaven Juno, as the patroness of marriage, comes to meet her and instructs her concerning the inhabitants of Olympus, who, however, are very different from those of the Greek Olympus. Not only all sorts of demons and demigods, but also the antique poets and philosophers . . . are included. As her wedding present the bride receives the seven liberal arts.”

Capella devotes a book to each of the arts, each personified as a woman. Rhetoric, for instance, is “a magnificently tall and beautiful woman, wearing a dress decorated with all the figures of speech and carrying weapons with which she wounds her adversaries.”

The last is Harmony, described by Martianus in these terms: “She indeed, above all others, will be able to soothe the cares of the gods, gladdening the heavens with her song and rhythms; and she desires only to make our palaces resound, detesting the ever-increasing dullness and spiritlessness of the earthborn, resulting from their lack of skill in melic verse. . . . It will be both a pleasure and a prophet to listen to this maiden, rediscovered after so many generations and restored to the melic arts” (Stahl 350). When music is played, the sound is not monotonous and simple, but “a blending of all instrumental sounds creating a full symphony of delectable music” that “soothed the breasts of mortal by standards and the gods for some time” (Stahl translation, 351).

Harmony shared her wisdom with various peoples: “with a generous outpouring of my favor, I revealed the concepts of my art to men, in a manner which they could understand. For I demonstrated the use of stringed instruments at Delphi, through the Delian cithara; flutes were blown by my companion the Tritonian and by the Lydian Marsyas; the Mariandynians and Aonians blew upon reed pipes their hymns to heavenly deities; I permitted the Egyptians to try their skill with the Pandura; and I did not deny myself to shepherds imitating on their pipes the calls of birds or the rustling of trees or the gurgling of rivers” (Stahl translation, 357).

Harmony discourses at length on technical issues in the theory of music, but she isn’t only a fine art or a technike. Harmony is a political art. Using pipes and strings, “The Pythagoreans assuaged the ferocity of men’s spirits . . . and taught that there is a firm binding relationship between souls and bodies” (Stahl Translation, 357).