Artes Mechanicae

A high medieval construction site from the Maciejowski Bible.

"Mechanical arts": a medieval concept of ordered practices or skills, often juxtaposed to the traditional seven liberal arts Artes liberales. Also called "servile" and considered "vulgar"^[1], from antiquity they had been deemed unbecoming for a free man, as ministering to baser needs.

Already Johannes Scotus Eriugena (9th century) divides them somewhat arbitrarily into seven parts:

• vestiaria (tailoring, weaving)
• agricultura (agriculture)
• architectura (architecture, masonry)
• militia and venatoria (warfare and hunting, "martial arts")
• mercatura (trade, commerce)
• coquinaria (cooking)
• metallaria (blacksmithing, metallurgy)^[2]

In his "Didascalicon", Hugh of St Victor includes navigation, medicine and theatrical arts instead of commerce, agriculture and cooking.^[3] Hugh's treatment somewhat elevates the mechanical arts as ordained to the improvement of humanity, a promotion which was to represent a growing trend among late medievals.^[4]

The classification of the Artes Mechanicae as applied geometry was introduced to Western Europe by Dominicus Gundissalinus under the influence of his readings in Arabic scholarship.

See also

• Artes liberales
• Medieval technology

Footnotes

1. ^ See for instance Cicero'sDe Officiis, Book I, xxlii.
2. ^ In his commentary on Martianus Capella's early fifth century work, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, one of the main sources for medieval reflection on the liberal arts.
3. ^ Hugues de Saint-Victor, Libri septem eruditiones didascaliae, ch.26 (PL 176, col.760): lanificium, armaturum, navigationem, agriculturem, venationem, medicinam, theatricam
4. ^ See Georges Legoff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press) 116.

References

• Walton, S.A., An Introduction to the Mechanical Arts in the Middle Ages, AVISTA, University of Toronto, 2003