Students started their university studies at the Faculty of Arts. The mediaeval division of the seven artes liberales or liberal arts (logic, rhetoric, grammar, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy) evolved into a form of education in which students received classes in rhetoric and ethics in addition to the main subjects of logic, physics and metaphysics. It was a two-year course of lectures with practicals. After the Arts curriculum, students could continue studying at one of the higher faculties: civil law, canon law, medicine or theology.

A characteristic feature of the Leuven situation is that most students of the Arts education were not only taught but also lived in a kind of boarding school, a so-called pedagogy. There were four pedagogies: The Castle, The Lily, The Falcon and The Pig.

Leuven students took their texts to class. The texts were usually transcribed beforehand, supplemented during the lecture and additionally embellished with illustrations. These lecture notes thus offer not only a picture of the curricula at the old university of Leuven, but also a unique insight into student life. In total, about a thousand Leuven lecture notes are known.