Academic packages
In the Renaissance, the humanist educational offering was part of a larger vision
When humanism started displacing the medieval academic offering, only one of the seven liberal arts survived the new curriculum, and that was rhetoric.
The medieval education system in Europe was largely shaped by the liberal arts, liberal as in not mechanical, which were divided into two main categories: the trivium (3-way path) and the quadrivium (4-ways). These formed the foundation of education in the Middle Ages, particularly in the monastic, cathedral schools, and later in the universities that emerged across Europe. The structure of this system was designed to provide a well-rounded education that prepared individuals for various intellectual pursuits, particularly in philosophy, theology, and law.
The trivium represented the lower division of the seven liberal arts and focused on three subjects, grammar (the study of the rules of language and its proper usage), logic (or dialectic, was the art of reasoning, teaching students how to construct valid arguments, detect fallacies, and engage in debates), and rhetoric (the study of persuasion and effective communication, in which students learnt how to present arguments eloquently and persuasively, both in speech and writing).
Together, the trivium was primarily concerned with language, thought, and expression—forming the basis for more advanced study.
The quadrivium was the upper division of the liberal arts and comprised four subjects, which were considered more advanced and were focused on the study of number, space, and time: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The division between arithmetic and geometry is an old one and is the reason why we ‘mathematics’ is plural.
This academic package and curricular vision was largely inherited from the ancient world, but was revised at many points during the medieval period. By the 15th century, it was still running high, but was starting to be challenged by a new vision, by what many, from the 14th century onwards, had been referring to as studia humanitatis or the studies of humanity.
The studia humanitatis encompassed a group of subjects that were believed to be essential for a free person to study, as opposed to the more technical or scientific disciplines. These subjects focused on human culture, particularly ancient or classical literature and thought.
Instead of the seven medieval liberal arts, it included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and ethics or moral philosophy.
Unlike the rules-centred trivium ‘grammar’, the humanist ‘grammar’ involved the philological study of Latin (and later Greek) language and literature, with a focus on reading, understanding, and, innovatively, emulating classical texts from authors like Virgil, Cicero, and Livy.
Dialectic, the maths, music and astronomy were all discarded in this innovative academic offering. The musicians of the emergent Renaissance didn’t receive a quadrivium education, their musical training having nothing to do with the discipline of music offered by the medieval curriculum. The same went for the astronomers, mathematicians and the natural philosophers of the 16th century.
A new age required a new curriculum. A new vision, a new package. The overarching goal of the studia humanitatis was to cultivate what humanists called “virtuous and eloquent citizens.” The program was designed not merely to impart knowledge but to develop moral character, civic responsibility, and public eloquence - values which broke or significantly inflected the medieval tradition. The ideal humanist education aimed to produce well-rounded individuals who could contribute to public life and governance and foster cultural and intellectual achievements.
The old curriculum didn’t die, but was slowly being replaced, in university after university, across Italy first, and then throughout the West.
Humanists believed that the study of the studia humanitatis was transformative, refining both the mind and soul, and they championed the idea that education could elevate the individual and, by extension, society. It was an idea that could not be unthought and which, once enough momentum had been built, took the whole world by storm.