eldest, Grammar, is the mother of the others. She announces her intention to marry un
serjant Dieu called Faith; her daughters follow her example. Rhetoric chooses Alms, a
persuasive advocate; Logic chooses Penitence, uns hardiz avocat; Arithmetic chooses
Confession, who counts sins; Geometry chooses Abstinence, defined as measure;
Astronomy chooses Love, who pierces through all the heavens to God; and Music
chooses Prayer to praise God. In the anonymous version, Logic, here called Dialectic,
chooses Alms, and Rhetoric chooses Obedience. More surprisingly, Astronomy is
replaced by Theology. The lady Physic, accompanied in Jehan’s version by Theology,
appears, and after some discussion the suitors are summoned to celebrate the nuptials.
In the mid-13th century, Gossuin de Metz wrote a popular encyclopedic work in
octosyllabic rhyming couplets, Image du monde, which was illustrated with forty-six
figures referred to in the text. Some manuscripts also illustrate the Liberal Arts; unusually
for the tradition, the figures are male. Grammar, as usual, holds a whip, or is
accompanied by a male teacher who holds it. Rhetoric is shown as a male cleric arguing,
with a ruler or sealed document in his hand. Henri d’Andeli framed his witty analysis of
the quarrel between the Arts and the new disciplines of Philosophy and Theology (the
ancients and the moderns) at the University of Paris in the verse Bataille des sept arts (ca.
1259). Grammar and the traditional literary arts as taught in the schools of Orléans, aided
by Donatus, Priscian, Virgil, Ovid, and other authors, do battle with the new university
curriculum taught at Paris: Philosophy, Theology, Medicine, and Law, aided by Aristotle
and Boethius. The Paris faction is marshaled under the banner of Dialectic, assisted by
Rhetoric, elevated (or reduced) to business-letter writing (ars dictaminis). The other Arts
find practical applications for their traditional skills: Arithmetic counts supplies;
Geometry measures encampments and troop movements; Music entertains the army;
Astronomy casts the horoscope for the battle. Logic wins, but Henri begs the question by
pointing out that, ultimately, no triumph of language is possible without Grammar.
The images in Charlemagne’s and Adèle’s palaces have not survived, but others have.
The best-known images of the Seven Liberal Arts are the figures on the west façade at
Chartres (1145–50), where full-length female figures with attributes alternate with male
scholars. The traditional figures are unlabeled but are usually assumed to be those used
by Thierry of Chartres: Priscian for grammar, Aristotle for dialectic, Cicero for rhetoric,
Boethius for Arithmetic, Ptolemy for Astronomy, Euclid for Geometry, and Pythagoras
for Music. Personifications of the Liberal Arts also appear on cathedral façades at
Auxerre and Sens and on figures around a window in the west end of Laon; the figures in
the rose window on the north side have been restored. The gable of the north-transept
portal of the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand shows the Arts as male figures. At Le Puy,
there are 15th-century female figures of Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Music in the
sacristy. The figures that once stood beneath the Last Judgment at Paris have been
destroyed. Those at Loches no longer survive, and the figures in the archivolt of the north
portal at Déols were destroyed in 1830.
Manuscript illustrations of the Arts are surprisingly uncommon; few texts of
Martianus are illustrated, and no tradition develops. Only a scattering of Martianus
manuscripts are illustrated at all, and only a handful of those are French. One 9th-century
illustrated French manuscript of Martianus survives (B.N. lat. 7900A) and another from
ca. 1100 (Florence, Bibl. Mediceo-Laurenziana MS San Marco 190). Arts also occur in a
manuscript from the 11th century, accompanied by verses on the Arts (B.N. lat. 3110);
The Encyclopedia 1031