Quadrivium

From Awe

In European universities up till at least the time of the Reformation, most serious students took seven yearsover their university careers. After the first three years, they would graduate with a B.A., for which the basic curriculum was the trivium. The next step involved the quadrivium.

The quadrivium ('four ways'), containing the subjects arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, led to the M.A. (Master of Arts).

The trivium (Latin for 'three ways') contained three subjects, grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic). This was the curriculum which led to the B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) degree.