ABSTRACT
The education the Church introduced was based on the ‘liberal arts’ curriculum of the Romano-Greek world into which the Church had been born. It provided instruction in seven subjects: the trivium consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (logic) and the quadrivium consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Before pupils could begin these studies, however, they had to learn the elementary skills of reading and writing. First learning by heart the letters of the alphabet, the Credo (the Creed) and Pater Noster (Our Father), they would go on to learn to read in the Psalter. Then the study of Latin Grammar would begin using the Grammar of Priscian, a sixth-century teacher at Constantinople; and perhaps a book like Aelfric’s Colloquy, the constant aim throughout being to teach the pupil not only to read and write in Latin but also to dispute and converse in Latin. In theory the teaching of the trivium was the function of the grammar schools and the quadrivium that of the universities, though in practice the grammar school, as its name implies, probably did little more than teach grammar and provide some first readings in classical texts, logic – though possibly introduced in some schools – becoming a university subject.*
