Middle Ages and Renaissance 219
tury they suffered from the vicissitudes of Latin American
politics, to which the large measure of student government
that they had inherited from Bologna, made them particu-
larly prone. Sad indeed is the contrast between the relative
poverty and futility of the Latin American universities to-
day, with their magnificent effectiveness three centuries ago:
a warning to the universities of the United States. Academic
freedom, and a healthy body politic that functions without
chronic violence, are absolutely essential conditions of a
sound university.
So much for Bologna and her offspring. Docta Bononia
mater Studiorum, as an old medal describes her, is still carry-
ing on in the ancient city, although shorn of all her inde-
pendence by the Fascist government; and with her inde-
pendence have gone her former excellence and distinction.
If we turn to her coeval and ancient rival, the University of
Paris, our ancestor in the academic family tree, we find a dif-
ferent story; for the University of Paris, in spite of successive
reorganizations, is happily functioning in a democratic
society as one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning.
Bologna was first a Law School; Paris, first a school of
Liberal Arts and Theology. For a thousand years before
America was discovered, European boys were studying the
seven Liberal Arts as described by Martianus Capella in
the fifth century: the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and
Logic) and the Quadrivium (Music, Arithmetic, Geometry,
and Astronomy). These Seven Arts, together with the
Three Philosophies brought in by the twelfth-century renais-
sance, and the Greek and Hebrew literature introduced by
the later renaissance, remained the backbone of the under-
graduate course in European and American universities well
into the nineteenth century. The Liberal Arts originally
meant the studies suitable for a liber homo, or free man. To