Are the seven liberal arts the way God has designed children to learn? This is a claim made by many in the Classical movement.

Several things happened in my life to make me question this assertion. One is the information I learned from my daughter. She was a student at Hillsdale and took a class called Artes Liberales. In it, she read about Maritanus Capella. I read the papers and booklets she received in this class and was surprised to find out that, essentially, we got the specific seven liberal arts in Western education from Martianus Capella. He can be read about: here, here, and here. He seems to be drawing from many previous Roman writers, but his book appears to be the one that was used extensively and became the authoritative word on the subject. Gregory of Tours called it a school manual.

This is less than thrilling news to me.

As an Orthodox Christian, I would like to know more about the education that was practiced in the Eastern Roman Empire, in Byzantium. Here is one article. (Yes, I know it's just a wiki article, but the prejudice against wikipedia is just intellectual snobbery.)