ABSTRACT
Apart from treatises on the seven arts, or in their field, various verse descriptions attest the Carolingian adoption of their study as the normal field of higher education. They were apparently also represented pictorially, though no Carolingian examples survive: a poem of Theodulf of Orleans suggests the description of an actual picture or carving, as do others. While the Carolingian imperial encouragement of schools tended to produce more educated and intelligent clergy, the product of new and original works in the field of the liberal arts was small. There was very little fertilizing contact with Byzantine or Arabic learning: only, in fact, in the case of music, and the Neoplatonist teaching about the structure of the universe. The anonymous De mundi caelestis terrestrisque constitutione liber appears to be founded on the work of a disciple of the Neoplatonist philosopher Macrobius, but also on eastern and non-Christian material.
