either law or theology—the professional schools that prepared
leaders for church and state.
o The first part of the liberal arts was the trivium, consisting
of the three basic arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. It is
important to note that the textual basis for these arts was
entirely Christian: the Bible and other “classics” of the
Christian tradition.o The quadrivium was given to the four more advanced arts:
arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Again, these were
grounded in lore derived from the classics of Christian history.
To the quadrivium should be added philosophy, which was
regarded as the necessary entry point into theology.o It is important to be aware of the entirely Christian character
of the medieval universities: Everything was in service of the
church and depended on the support of the church. The study
of law was canon law; the study of theology was Christian
(Catholic) theology.Scholastic Theology
• In the medieval universities, theology was truly “the queen of
the sciences” not only because its knowledge gave preferment in
the most important profession, but also because it provided the
fullest expression of the medieval conception of reality sub specie
aeternitatis (“from the perspective of eternity”).
• The subject matter of theology was conceived of primarily in
terms of doctrines. Over the course of centuries, the statements
of the creeds and of Scripture were collated into collections of
“sentences” (sententiae) that expressed key doctrines, together with
the scriptural passages that supported the propositions.
o This represented a radically different approach to the learning
and reading of Scripture than had obtained in the monasteries
and cathedral chapters; there, lectio divina, as we have seen,
was a ruminative and meditative reading. But the schools
were training professionals who had to be brought up to speed