The Faculty of Arts was one of the four traditional divisions of the teaching bodies of medieval universities, the others being Theology, Law and Medicine. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest as students had to graduate there to be admitted to one of the higher faculties.
The Faculty of Arts took its name from the Seven Liberal Arts: the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy).
In the universities of continental Europe, this faculty has more often been named the equivalent of 'Faculty of Philosophy' (e.g., Norwegian: Det filosofiske fakultet, Slovene: Filozofska fakulteta). Nowadays this is a common name for the faculties teaching humanities.
Famous quotes containing the words faculty of, faculty and/or arts:
“If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“Eliot dead, you saying,
“And who is left to understand my jokes?
My old Brother in the arts . . . and besides, he was a smash of
poet.””
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)