The Liberal Arts as a way of Awakening

If one were to trace the development of Christian Esotericism back to its source in Pre-Nicene Christianity, they will find it to have it's fundament in three pillars, those being the Sacraments, in particular the Eucharist, Contemplation, as practiced by the White Martyrs, the Monastics, and the Bible, as an inspired text with its meaning hidden and only accessible through correct interpretation

Depending on definition, Clement of Alexandria could he considered the first Christian Esotericist, his competition being Saint Paul, Saint John and Justin Martyr, but what makes Clement different is his explicit mention of Gnosis and its role in Christian life, so even if you want to accept someone else as the first Christian Esotericist, he will always be known as the first Christian Gnostic in opposition to the false Gnosis of what we today call Gnosticism (which for now, let's just say that it has its origin in Simon Magus)

Clement having studied the Old Testament and the Philosophers and seeing both as preparatory stages for accepting the Gospel, took from the Jewish Philosopher Philo the idea that the Bible has to be interpreted Allegorically to realize its deeper levels of meaning. Later, the greatest early Christian Theologian Origen of Alexandria, actualized what Clement wrote of in his own Exegesis, and while most of it is now lost, we still have a good idea of what genuine Esoteric Exegesis is supposed to look like, Origen divides the Bible into three levels, the outer literal level understood by all, the moral level understood by most, and the esoteric level understood by few, this, with some modifications, became the basis for Exegesis, Saint Ambrose brought this Origenist tradition to the West and so to Saint Augustine, who divides it into four levels, literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical, which also seem to be the origin of Hebrew PRDS Exegesis, but it's contents differ from it's Christian equivalent.

Although most of the influential Neoplatonists came from the Greek East, there also existed a Latin Tradition, it's three most important representatives are Calcidius, who translated and commented upon Plato’s Timaeus in Latin, Macrobius, who wrote a commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, and Martianus Capella, who wrote an original work, On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury, a Neoplatonic and Hermetic (as in, dealing with Hermes) allegorical work, which could also be considered as containing theurgic elements.

In The Marriage there is a description and summary of the Seven Liberal Arts, which are composed of the Trivium, Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, and the Quadrivium, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astrology, centuries before Capella's own time, the followers of Pythagoras studied the Quadrivium for their religious purposes, and around the time of Capella, Boethius tried to reconcile the Arithmos of the Quadrivium with the Logos of Christianity.

On the Marriage was highly influential during the Middle Ages, it was studied during the Carolingian Renaissance and the later Scholastic era but was overshadowed during the Renaissance with new Study Programs and new translations of Neoplatonist works.

What united these two topics, Exegesis and the Liberal Arts, was the mind of the High Middle Ages, and was personally begun by, of course, Hugh of Saint Victor. In the works of Hugh like his On the Sacraments, in which he explains ever ‘sacrament’ of the faith and is composed in a exitus-reditus model beginning with Creation and ending in Reintegration in God, explains the Origenist three-level model for Exegesis (in the translations of his work available online,the moral level is usually called tropological), but instead of just leaving it at that, he also outlines a way of how to reach those levels, the way being, of course, the Liberal Arts.

For Hugh the Trivium corresponds to the Literal level, with greater understanding of those three the greater your understanding of Scripture will be, and the Quadrivium corresponds to the two inner Tropological and Anagogical levels, the greater your understanding of Arithmos is, the greater your esoteric understanding of the Bible, and so the Logos, will be. This understanding of the relationship between Exegesis and Arithmosophy, and so Christianity and Pythagoreanism, was also developed and arguably rectified at the same time by Thierry of Chartres who continued where Boethius left off in the 6th Century.

This Christian Pythagorean tradition would later go on to produce Nicholas of Cusa and so can be considered a precursor to Christian

Cabala.