The collective name given by the schoolmen (educators) of the Middle Ages to the four "liberal arts"; viz., arithmetic, music, geography, and astronomy.

The quadrivium was the "fourfold way" to knowledge; the trivium, to the "threefold way" to eloquence; both together compiled the Seven Liberal Arts enumerated in the following hexameter: Lingua, Tropus, Ratio, Numerus, Tonus, Angulus, Astra; or the higher division of the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages, comprising geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music .