Studium Institute

Courses of study in the classical liberal arts

These are sets of exercises, not lectures. They aid the study of grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, mathematics, and chant with examples and practice, and they keep the traditional names and questions in view while the student works.

Begin Here

Introduction

Preface to the TriviumOpenAn overview of grammar, logic, and rhetoric: why the study of language, logic, and rhetoric should come first in higher studies and how these three relate to one another in a coherent whole.

Part I

The Trivium

The arts of speech: grammar, logic, and rhetoric

1Ars GrammaticaOpenA course of study in grammar: the art of correct speech and interpretation.Homeric GrammarOpenA course of study in the grammar of Homeric Greek, for reading the poems as they were made.2Ars LogicaOpenA course of study in scholastic logic: predicables, categories, propositions, syllogisms, dialectic, and fallacy.3Ars RhetoricaOpenA course of study in rhetoric, which is ordered to persuasion and truth, especially since the true and the just are by nature more powerful than their opposites (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric I.1). It is carried beside the syllogism: the enthymeme, and the hidden premise brought into the open.

Part II

The Quadrivium

Number, figure, harmony, and the heavens

Under Construction

4Arithmetica[Additions Needed]OpenNumber considered in itself, before it is applied to figure or to sound: the even and the odd, and the kinds of multitude.5Ars Musica[Complete but Being Edited]OpenMusic treated as a liberal art, not as a trade.Byzantine VoiceOpenA set of exercises for Byzantine liturgical chant: reading, following, and singing the score.6GeometriaOpenAn introduction to Euclidean geometry: magnitude at rest, and the figures that follow from it.7Astronomia[Incomplete, Early Stage]OpenMagnitude in motion: the measure of the heavens, and the ordered courses of the stars.

Part III

Medieval World and Beyond

Courses of study outside the seven liberal arts

8The Age of ChivalryOpenBulfinch’s King Arthur and the Mabinogeon: a knight’s training, then the stories, with the poems set out for study.9Vademecum for the ArtsOpenA course of study in painting, sculpture, building, and music across the centuries from 1050 to 1510.

Part IV

Other

10Philosophy Web-ExercisesOpenInteractive philosophy exercises after Harry Gensler's harrycola.com.

Designed and directed by Timothy Kearns, Ph.D. AI tools were used for drafting some of the study sections and for building the interactive exercises and answer keys.