Universities developed out of monastery and cathedral schools -- really what we would call elementary schools, but attended by adolescents and taught by monks and priests. The first was in Bologna, established in 1088 (see map below).

In these schools and universities, students began (with the always-present threat of flogging!) with the trivium -- grammar (the art of reading and writing, focussing on the psalms, other parts of the Bible, and the Latin classics), rhetoric (what we would call speech), and logic. Trivium, of course, is the origin of the word trivia -- the stuff beginners deal with!

Beyond that, they would study the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. All together, these subjects make up the seven liberal arts. Liberal referred to the free man, the man of some property, and liberal arts were in contrast to the practical arts of the working poor.