Not all these studies were taught in every monastery or cathedral school. Many of the lesser monasteries and schools offered instruction chiefly in grammar, and only a little of the studies beyond. Others emphasized the Trivium, and taught perhaps only a little of the second group. Only a few taught the full range of mediaeval learning, and these were regarded as the great schools of the times (R. 71).
Rhabanus Maurus (776-865), one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, Abbot for years at Fulda, and a mediaeval textbook writer of importance, has left us a good description of each of the Seven Liberal Arts studies as they were developed in his day, and their use in the Christian scheme of education (R. 74).
Of the three studies forming the _Trivium_, grammar always came first as the basal subject. No uniformity existed for the other two.
1. GRAMMAR. The foundation and source of all the Liberal Arts was grammar, it being, according to Maurus, "the science which teaches us to explain the poets and historians, and the art which qualifies us to speak and write correctly" (R. 74 a). In the introduction to an improved Latin grammar, [3] published about 1119, grammar is defined as "The doorkeeper of all the other sciences, the apt expurgatrix of the stammering tongue, the servant of logic, the mistress of rhetoric, the interpreter of theology, the relief of medicine, and the praiseworthy foundation of the whole quadrivium." Figure 45, from one of the earliest books printed in English, also emphasizes the great importance of grammar with the words: "Wythout whiche science (s)ycherly alle other sciences in especial ben of lytyl recomme(d)." In addition to grammar in the sense we know the study to-day, grammar in the old Roman and mediaeval mind also included much of what we know as the analytical side of the study of literature, such as comparison, analysis, versification, prosody, word formations, figures of speech, and vocal expression (R. 76). These were considered necessary to enable one to read understandingly the Holy Scriptures, and hence, "though the art be secular," says Maurus, "it has nothing unworthy about it."
[Illustration: FIG. 45. A SCHOOL: A LESSON IN GRAMMAR (After a woodcut printed by Caxton in _The Mirror of the World_, 1481 (?). From Blades' _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, ii, Plate LVI)