Quadrivium
LIBERAL ARTS OF ASTRONOMY, ARITHMETIC, MUSIC AND GEOMETRY
Quadrivial; Quadrivials; Quadrivia
From the time of Plato through the Middle Ages, the quadrivium (plural: quadrivia) was a grouping of four subjects or arts—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—that formed a second curricular stage following preparatory work in the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts, and formed the basis of a liberal arts education in Western society until gradually displaced as a curricular structure by the studia humanitas and its later offshoots, beginning with Petrarch in the 14th century.