ABSTRACT
Many studies concerned with the design of sacred architecture in the middle ages have dealt with the question of trade secrecy among medieval masons, a topic which will also be taken up shortly here. Architecture was consistently used as a metaphor for the divine creation and the Church, models of which were repeatedly conceptualized in architectural terms. The way to acquire knowledge was through the liberal arts which had already appeared as a curriculum in Plato's Academy. It was expanded by Varro in the first century to incorporate grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine and architecture. By the time Martianus wrote De nuptiis, the number of subjects had been reduced back to seven by the omission of medicine and architecture. Even if a specifically architectural connotation were intended, it might simply mean sound site-preparation and construction rather than anything esoteric about the plan.
