Note 14 — Chapter III · THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY

This term faculty, which originally signified the capacity (facultas) to teach a particular subject, came to be applied technically to the subject itself or to the authorised teachers of it viewed collectively. A University might include one or all of the “Faculties” of Theology, Law, Medicine and the Liberal Arts, although naturally enough each of the chief Universities had its own particular department of excellence. A complete course of instruction in the seven liberal arts, enumerated in the old line “Lingua, tropus, ratio, numerus, tonus, angulus, astra,” was intended as a preparation for the study of theology—the main business of Oxford as of Paris University. The Arts were divided into two parts, the first including the three easier or “trivial” subjects—Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic; the second the remaining four—Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy.