As a general rule a large proportion
of the monks' books were more or less richly
ornamented: they were the treasures as well as the tools
of the community. The books of the colleges were usually
for practical purposes: they were tools, treasured, doubtless,
for their contents, not for the beauty of the writing or
because they were decorated. The difference in character
of the collections as a whole was one of proportion in the
representation of the various classes of books. Generally
speaking, the monastic collection comprised proportionately
more theology and less canon and civil law than the
academic library. In the subjects of the trivium and
the quadrivium, and in philosophy, a college was more
strongly equipped than a monastery; on the other hand, a
monastery frequently had a larger proportion of classical
literature, and always more "light" or romance literature.
Early university studies were in two parts, the trivium
--grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium--
music, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic. These were
the seven liberal arts. A fresco in a chapel in the Church
of S. Maria Novella at Florence illustrates these arts.
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