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xxviii

as people who knew well the reasons
for these things. It was the custom at that time
that if a man were a bondsman to one or several
people, or if he were of low birth, even if he became
rich and had many possessions, even so he did not
dare to study the seven liberal arts, because the
noble and high men wanted to maintain
the principle that they [the arts] should remain free and
liberal. And for this reason they gave them the name of
the seven liberal arts. And they were rightly
named liberal. For they are so free that they
give the soul to God freely. And they were so carefully
ordered and given so comprehensively that one could not
take anything away, nor adjust anything, and indeed
the good and expert scholar neither
wanted nor knew how to meddle with them. For
if any part of them were changed or altered, then
the whole would be disfigured. And this is because they
were so reasonably and rightly made that no person living
in the world, however profound his knowledge, whether
pagan, or Jew, or Christian,
could not, nor knew not how to change, adjust,
remove, or oppose them in any way.