Since their emergence around 1200, the universities had formed the most important centres of philosophy, where philosophers met and practiced until the end of the Middle Ages. Philosophy’s proper place was the Arts faculty, one ofthe four faculties that comprised the typical medieval university, along with Theology, Medicine, and Law - although not every university had all four. Philosophical subjects or subjects with a philosophical relevance were also discussed at the other faculties, especially in the faculty of Theology, but it must be emphasized that the medievals themselves opted for a division of their universities into independent faculties, each possessing its own statutes, curriculum, and administration.
Despite their widespread use in the Middle Ages, the titles Arts faculty (facultas artium) and Liberal Arts faculty (facultas artium liberalium) are misleading, as the syllabus at these faculties had almost nothing to do with the traditional programme of the seven liberal arts. Of these liberal arts, only logic and to a lesser extent grammar still played a prominent role in the educational system of the Arts faculty. Other main components of the syllabus, however, such as physics and metaphysics, were not considered liberal arts, as Albert the Great had argued and whose position on the matter was accepted and reiterated over the years. Nevertheless, the designation Liberal Arts faculty was used throughout the medieval period, mainly to stress the propaedeutic role of philosophy in relation to the other academic disciplines. In this sense, for example, the statutes of the Arts faculty of Freiburg im Breisgau maintained that the Arts faculty is the ‘‘devout nurse’’ (pia nutrix) of the higher faculties. It was only in the sixteenth century that the term philosophy became itself part of the denomination, in combinations like facultas artium seu philosophiae, or even replaced it, as in facultas philosophica, which was used in 1560 in Ingolstadt.
World History
