The Faculty of Arts was one of the four traditional divisions of the teaching bodies of medieval universities, the others being Theology, Law and Medicine. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest as students had to graduate there to be admitted to one of the higher faculties.[1]
The Faculty of Arts took its name from the Seven Liberal Arts: the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy).
In the universities of continental Europe this faculty has more often been known as the Faculty of Philosophy. Nowadays it is a common name for the faculties teaching humanities.