This posting is meant to be a primer to all those who are interested in their historical transmission and who are interested in the future of the studies of the liberal arts, whether Mason or not.
These subjects were known collectively as the Liberal Arts to distinguish them from the Mechanical Arts -- and also because they were associated with "free" men as opposed to serfs or slaves. During the Middle Ages, the first three of the Seven Liberal Arts were dubbed the Trivium and were associated with the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity; the other four were known as the Quadrivium and were associated with both the four cardinal virtues of Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence and Justice as well as with the four rivers of Paradise. Masons will especially appreciate some of these associations and see immediately the hand of Medieval Masons in the language of our ritual work.
Certainly, Freemasonry is not the source of these disciplines, but from ancient times in fact, the study of these traditional Seven Liberal Arts has been closely associated with, championed and advocated by the building craft, beginning with the explicit admonitions about the education of an architect made by the famous architect of Caesar Augustus, Vitruvius. His Ten Books on Architecture were never "lost" during the Middle Ages. He spends considerable time outlining the ideal education of an architect, and specifically refers to the Seven Liberal Arts. Copies of this treatise had travelled with the Legions to all parts of the Empire, so that fortresses, bridges, aqueducts and so forth could be constructed. From this work by Vitruvius, the architect who "found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble," we know that the Roman Empire had well organized guilds of Masons -- schools that passed on the art and craft of building. These guilds survived in various parts of the Empire long after the Fall of Rome -- and in the period when Christianity had also infused itself into every nook and cranny of public life. It isn't difficult for an attentive and studious Mason to identify a few details in our work that suggest that a Christian cultural veneer was applied over a pre-Christian guild ritual. The most telling is the seemingly arbitrary use of the Holy Saints John... about whom Sir James Fraser had much to say in his monumental work The Golden Bough
.During the Middle Ages, most education was under Church control. The monasteries preserved and copied manuscripts -- and Vitruvius' work was one of the more often copied, since monasteries needed to be built -- and built to last. Eventually, as universities were established in the 1200s at Paris, Bologna, Salamanca and Oxford, the Liberal Arts model was naturally adopted, and over time, adapted for the development of curricula. As one might expect, with time, experience and new discoveries, other subjects naturally were added to what constituted the fundamental education of a university educated person. I am endebted to a colleague of mine, Dr. William Purcell, for the recommendations I am about to make. One very important treatise about the Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages is David L. Wagner's The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages
. For an example of an actual medieval treatment of the Seven Liberal Arts, in typical, medieval allegorical form, is that of Martianus Capella.The link between the ancient study of the Seven Liberal Arts and the medieval guilds of stone masons, which over time became modern Freemasonry, may be found in a document known as the Halliwell Poem or the Regius Manuscript, from about 1390 (although the language dates it to about 1290).
Turning to an examination of sources for the study of each of the Seven Liberal Arts, two great resources for studying the Grammar of English is Analyzing English Grammar, by Thomas P. Klammer and Analyzing the Grammar of English, by Richard V. Teschner and Eston Evans. You can also read a brief, but very informative treatise about Grammar's role in the ancient world by a professor of Classics, Dr. Owen Ewald, here.
Another work that casts a great deal of light on the subject of the English language in particular is Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, by an ingenius fellow, John McWhorter. It makes a lively read whose well documented arguments challenge many cherished but apparently incorrect ideas about the development of the English language and even reach far back into antiquity.
If you are interested in the more general area of the use of language and of course, of its potential for misuse, the great classic by S. I. Hiyakawa ought not be ignored by any person of refinement! His monumental work, Language in Thought and Action, will help you to fight the on-going battle with ignorance among those who "confuse the map with the territory."
Moving on to the subject of Rhetoric, the place to start is, no surprise, Aristotle's Rhetoric. I have a couple of recommendations. One is George Kennedy's Aristotle's Rhetoric and Friedrich Solmsen's edition of The Rhetoric & Poetics of Aristotle. The Poetics is also a fascinating work. It does not deal exclusively with what we now narrowly define as poetry. In one of the chapters, using anger as a model for his acute analysis, Aristotle examines human emotions. This chapter could be considered a primer for the study of psychology.
The study of Logic teaches critical reasoning skills to enable a person who has mastered language and the poetic devices employed by skilled speakers to get his point across with sound arguments. Nowadays, this skill is often taught by symbolic logic. One of the greatest book written on the subject in the twentieth century was Irving Copi's Logic. As a sidebar, I had the honor of being a student of his at the University of Hawaii in the 1970 when he was teaching there. Maybe I'm just enthusiastic, because Dr. Steve Layman, a colleague of mine who is author of a logic text informs me that even more popular than Copi's book is Patrick Hurley's Logic is also available with CD ROM.
As for Arithmetic, and Mathematics generally, there are a number of books available that are very readable and educational for even the non-specialists or the math-phobic. One is Matthew Watkins' Useful Mathematical & Physical Formulae.
Another, which I am reading now, is the classic from the 1970s, The History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann.
Of the seven liberal arts, the one most associated and relevant to the ancient craft of building is GEOMETRY.
There are a number of books I recommend. First, I want to encourage Masons to take seriously the admonition that they should study geometry.
There are a number of online sources -- just google "Euclidean Geometry" and you'll find a lot of valuable resources. But for those who, like me, enjoy a "real" book, I recommend a book that is probably out of print but which can be found online: Plane Geometry for College Students
by William Stone, from 1958! Other books that will dazzle you with amazing facts about the geometry in the world around us include A Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau, Sacred Geometry, by Miranda Lundy, The Power of Limits, by Gyorgy Doczi and Sacred Architecture, by AT Mann.
Despite the fact that I've been co-author of five volumes of previously unknown Baroque music, I am not a musician, but love Music, the sixth of the Seven Liberal Arts.
I recommend Barret Tagliarino's Music Theory because it is well written and can give even the average person a great appreciation for music and its relationship to geometry.
Finally, the queen of the Seven Liberal Arts is Astronomy. Even if you are not mathematically inclinced, you will love Robin Heath's Sun, Moon & Earth -- a good place to start for anyone interested in the heavenly bodies.
Finally, remember that the Seven Liberal Arts are the foundation of all learning. If you are a parent, insist on their conscious and deliberate inclusion in your child's education, public or private. You might not win that battle, so be proactive and give your child the wonderful roadmap to becoming a life-long learner, ever curious about the world and how it works.
If you're Mason, by all means, dig in and drink deeply from these and other books. Finally, no matter who you are or where you're starting from, never cease to learn and never cease encouraging others to do so.
Enjoy!
