2. Infeld, Quest: An Autobiography, 263, 267, 272, 274–275.
3. ‘‘The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas’’ by Bernardo Gui, and Bartholomew of
Capua, ‘‘Testimony at the First Canonization Inquiry.’’ Translated by Foster,
Biographical Documents, 50–51, 37; 107.
4. These sources are available in the AASS, March vol. I , 655–747, in Pru
¨mmer,
Fontes vitae, and in an English translation by Foster, Biographical Documents.
See Foster’s excellent bibliography, x–xii. The relationship between the
various accounts is surveyed also by Mandonnet, ‘‘Pierre Calo et la le´gende
de S. Thomas.’’
5. Dondaine, Les Secre´taires, esp. 10–25.
6. Dondaine, Les Secre
´taires, 25.
7. See Foster, Biographical Documents, 44–45; Gui, c. 25; Tocco, c. 43.
8. Foster, Biographical Documents, 73, note 59.
9. Chenu, Introduction à St. Thomas, 245; see also Dondaine, Les Secre´taires,
20–22, and plate 37.
10. Foster, Biographical Documents, 38; Gui, c. 16; Tocco, c. 31.
369
370
Notes to pp. 6–12
11. Foster, Biographical Documents, 51; Gui, c. 32.
12. Chenu, Introduction à St. Thomas, 248–249.
13. The technique is described by Leclercq, Love of Learning, esp. 76–77.
14. Dondaine, Les Secre´taires, 19.
15. Foster, Biographical Documents, 38 (Gui, c. 16), 51 (Gui, c. 32), and 37 (Gui, c. 15).
16. Gui, c. 15.
17. Dondaine, Les Secre´taires, 51; Gui, c. 32; Fontes vitae, 89.
18. Dondaine, Les Secre´taires, 18. Walz, San Tommaso d’Aquino, 167–168, explains
Evan the Breton’s story as an oblique reference to a practice of leaving notes to
a secretary to write up while the author slept; but this is not what the sources
say took place. The typical postures of profound concentration and sleep were
remarkably similar; see my discussion in Chapter 6.
19. ‘‘Epystolas de rebus maximis quaternas dictabat aliis, ipse manu propria
quintam scribens.’’ Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum libri, II. 2. There does
not seem to be a contemporary source for this story, though Cicero flatters
Caesar as one who ‘‘forgot nothing except his injuries’’; ‘‘Pro Ligario,’’ xii, 35.
The story is told to illustrate Caesar’s superior memory in the elder Pliny’s
Natural History, VII, xxv, 92. Petrarch quotes from both of these sources in his
own recounting of the story. Cicero’s account of the superior memory of his
friend, the orator Hortensius, is in Brutus 87–88: in his encomium, Cicero
emphasizes Hortensius’s facility in speaking sine scripto, without written notes,
an ability always much admired; see my discussion in Chapter 6.
20. ST, I , Q. 24, a. 1 resp.
21. Smalley, Study of the Bible, 148.
22. Legrand, Archiloge sophie, 24 (ed. Beltran, 145): ‘‘et pour tant est ce que on l’en
estudie mieulx es livres enlumineź pour ce que la difference des couleurs
donne souvenance de la difference des lignes, et consequanment de ycelle
chose que on l’on veult impectorer. Et de fait les anciens quant ilz vouloient
aucune chose recorder et impectorer, ilz mectoient en leurs livres diverses
couleurs et diverses figures a celle fin que la diversiteét la difference leur
donnast meilleur souvenance.’’ See Hajdu, Das Mnemotechnische Schriftum des
Mittelalters, 114. The English translation is mine.
23. John Wyclif, ‘‘De veritate sacrae scripturae,’’ cap. 6 (quoted by Smalley, ‘‘The
Bible and Eternity,’’ 84): ‘‘sed quinto modo sumitur scriptura sacra pro
codicibus, vocibus aut aliis artificialibus, que sunt signa memorandi veritatem
priorem, quomodo loquitur Augustinus.’’
24. Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) dictated her mystical visions in her own best
Latin to a scribe, who took them down; then she had the written version
corrected by a priest for any inelegancies. It is apparent from the descriptions
of how she worked that she composed first probably in German, then
translated that into Latin herself, dictated this version, and then had it finally
corrected for solecisms. It is also apparent that she could understand Latin
well enough to know whether the priest’s corrections fairly represented her
meaning. This represents a very different situation from that commonly
assumed when moderns use the word ‘‘illiterate.’’ See Derolez, ‘‘The Genesis
Notes to pp. 12–18
371
of Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Liber divinorum operum.’’’ On the meaning of the
term ‘‘illiterate,’’ see also Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, esp.
175–185.
25. The excellent studies by Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, and Stock,
The Implications of Literacy, are cases in point. Much of the early work on
literacy was done in the context of the ancient world: a helpful account, which
demonstrates that orality and literacy were complexly mixed even in ancient
Greece, is Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, and see also Harris,
Ancient Literacy.
26. See Stock’s fascinating dissection of the fundamentalist aspect of various
eleventh-century heresies in his Implications of Literacy, 88–240. He does
not identify this as fundamentalism, but rather associates it with literacy per
se; the conjunction seems to me a bit of a red herring, however, because the
determining distinction has to do with views of literature, which can exist
among either oral or literate groups.
27. Smalley, ‘‘The Bible and Eternity,’’ 89.
28. For example, see Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 98.
29. Greimas defines cultural values not as absolutes but as cultural and psycho-
logical modes, which allow adaptation and changes of behavior; see On
Meaning, esp. chapter 8, ‘‘On the Modalization of Being.’’
30. These texts are now readily available along with a number of others discussed
in this book, in Carruthers and Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of
Memory. My translations of Hugh of St. Victor’s Chronicle preface, Albertus
Magnus’s discussion of trained memory in his De bono, and Thomas
Bradwardine’s treatise ‘‘On Acquiring an Artificial Memory’’ (appendices A,
B, and C) appear in this edition in the version published in that anthology.
I thank the Directors of the University of Pennsylvania Press for permission to
use them.
C H A P T E R 1
1. The phrase occurs in the beginning of La vita nuova, although the intimate
connection of memory with writing is evident throughout his work (compare
Paradiso 17, 91–92, where Cacciaguida tells Dante he shall carry things told to
him about the future ‘‘scritto nella mente’’). For a brief discussion of the
memory-as-book metaphor, see Curtius, 326–332, but his whole previous
discussion of ‘‘The Book of Nature’’ (chapter 16) is pertinent. E. G. Gardner
has an excellent study of Dante on memory and imagination, in which he
especially notes that for Dante memory was ‘‘mental writing’’; ‘‘Imagination
and Memory in the Psychology of Dante,’’ esp. 280–282.
2. Havelock, Literate Revolution, 57. Eisenstein rightly emphas
ized the cultural
effects of the ‘‘democratization’ of the reading public made possible by numer-
ous, cheap printed materials; The Printing Press, esp. vol. 1, 71–159, and The
Printing Revolution, chapter 4. Good summary discussions of the state of
literacy among various medieval laity at various times and in various places
372
Notes to pp. 18–21
are Parkes, ‘‘The Literacy of the Laity,’’ D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars,
29–43, and Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, 151–201. The ancient situation
is discussed by Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. For the
situation in the later Roman period, comprising far more literate societies
(by the narrow definition of ‘‘book-acquiring public’’) than any to be found
again in Europe until the high Middle Ages, see also Harris, Ancient Literacy.
3. Cicero, Partitiones oratoriae, 26.
4. Max Black, Models and Metaphors, 219–243.
5. 450a 25; translated by Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, 50. Unless otherwise noted,
I have used Sorabji’s translation of Aristotle’s treatise throughout. Hett (LCL)
translates: ‘‘for the movement produced [by a phantasm] implies some impres-
sion of sense movement, just as when men seal with signet rings.’’ The Greek is
‘‘katha´per hoi sphragizomenoi tois daktyliois’’ (text ed. Hett, LCL). Daktylioś
(Liddell and Scott, s.v.) is a ‘‘signet-ring,’’ a word used also by Plato in his
version of this metaphor; Aristotle’s verb is a synonym of the one Plato uses,
meaning ‘‘to authenticate with a seal’’ (Liddell and Scott, s.v. surag-izo).
6. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, 5, note 1; Plato uses the image in Theaetetus.
7. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, 5, note 2.
8. Richardson, Mental Imagery and Human Memory, contains a helpful review of
current experimental work in this field, set within a solid philosophical frame-
work. Two interesting books which attempt definitions of ‘‘representation’’
within the context of verbal and cognitive functions are Malcolm, Memory and
Mind, and Fodor, The Language of Thought.
9. Chaytor makes much of this, Script to Print, 6–10. See also Eisenstein, ‘‘Clio
and Chronos,’’ and the essays in Ku¨chler and Mellon, Images of Memory.
10. Albertus Magnus, Postilla super Isaiam, 11.6–9 (Opera omnia, vol. 19) on Is. 1:1,
quam vidit: ‘ Auditu enim satis certus non fuit, sed visu certificabatur, sicut dicit
Horatius.’ The lines from Horace are Ars poetica, 180–181: ‘ Segnius irritant
animos demissa per aurem, / quam quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus.’
11. Liddell and Scott, s.v. eikom.
12. Jerome, Commentarii in Hiezechielem X I I , on Ezek.40.4 (CCSL 75, 554, lines
177–182): ‘‘nihil enim prodest uidisse et audisse, nisi ea quae uideris et audieris,
in memoriae reposueris thesauro; quando autem dicit, Omnia quae ego osten-
dam tibi, intentum facit auditorem, facit et cordis oculis praeparatum, ut
memoriter teneat quae sibi ostendenda sunt, Quia ut omnia ostendantur tibi,
adductus es huc.’’
13. Guido d’Arezzo, Epistola de ignoto cantu (Letter to Brother Michael): ‘‘Sicut in
omni scriptura xx. et iiii. litteras, ita in omni cantu septem tantum habemus
voces’’; ed. Gerbert, Scriptores, vol. 2, 46. This letter can be dated from internal
evidence to 1032.
14. A summary discussion of ‘‘mental imagery’’ as a concept in modern psychol-
ogy is in Richardson, 4–24; he mentions ‘‘dual coding theory,’’ in which
pictures and verbal processes are considered to be alternative, independent
methods of symbolic representation, and a ‘ common coding theory,’’ in
which ‘‘a single system of abstract propositional representations’ underlies
Notes to pp. 21–23
373
‘ all cognitive and mnemonic processes’ (6). See also Malcolm’s remarks on
‘ The Picture Theory of Memory,’’ 120–164.
15. Augustine, De natura et origine animae, I V .vii.9 (CSEL 60, 389, lines 7–19).
16. A version of the diagram is shown in the New Grove Dictionary
s.v. Solmization. An account of it by Karol Berger in terms of mnemotech-
nical principles is in Carruthers and Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of
Memory. The early twelfth-century chronicler Sigebert of Gembloux wrote
of Guido:
Guido, Aretinus monachus, post omnes pene musicos in Ecclesia claruit, in hoc prioribus
praeferendus quod ignotos cantus etiam pueri et puellae facilius discant vel doceantur per
ejus regulam quam per vocem magistri, aut per visum [usum] alicujus instrumenti,
dummodo sex litteris vel syllabis modulatim appositis ad sex voces, quas sola musica
recipit, hisque vocibus per flexuras digitorum laevae manus distinctis per integrum
diapason, se oculis et auribus ingerunt intentae et remissae elevationes vel depositiones
earumdem vocum. Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, cap. 144. (PL 160, 579C)
Of interest in this account is not only the emphasis upon the eyes’ importance
to the success of Guido’s two schemes, but also the specific mention of girls
learning chant. Baddeley, Psychology of Memory, 235–254, describes some
experiments on the nature of what he calls ‘‘auditory memory’’: these tend
to focus on the ability to reproduce and recognize rather than to manipulate
and adapt – a clear example of how different modern psychological under-
standing of ‘‘memory’’ is from medieval memoria.
17. Most current psychological experimentation points to the conclusion that the
visual is indeed most important for the ability to recollect, whether ‘‘visual’’
includes ‘‘pictorial’’ or not. As Richardson puts it, ‘‘stimulus imageability is an
excellent predictor of memory performance’’ (99). As a corollary to this,
however, Richardson points out that mere ‘‘vividness’’ in a pictorial mental
image is insignificant; what counts is its ability to create ‘‘relational organ-
ization’’ in the memory. Memory pictures need to be brought together in a
coherent image or ‘‘scene’’ to be useful for accurate recollection; numbers,
diagrams, and the alphabet are images with their own built-in organization, of
course. For a cogent critique of problems that can arise from using words like
‘‘image’’ and ‘‘picture’’ to talk about what the brain actually contains, see
Malcolm, Memory and Mind. Malcolm particularly warns against an ‘‘iso-
morphic’’ notion of ‘‘mental image,’’ the idea that the shape of such an image is
in some way like the form in which it is received; a version of this notion is
assumed in assertions that the structure of thought is changed by the way in
which text is presented to the memory; see esp. 143, 244–245.
18. See the first chapter of Baddeley, Psychology of Memory, discussing Ebinghaus in
particular. A helpful gloss of the various terms used in contemporary neuro-
psychology for the processes of recollection is Dudai, Memory from A to Z.
19. Albertus Magnus, Commentary on Aristotle’s De memoria, tract. 2, c.1:
‘‘[R]eminiscentia nihil aliud est nisi investigatio obliti per memoriam’’
(Recollection is nothing but the investigation
by the memory of what has
been forgotten); trans. Ziolkowski. In c. 3 of this same commentary, Albertus
374
Notes to pp. 23–25
distinguishes iteration from recollection. A succinct statement is the follow-
ing: ‘‘Et ista est differentia in qua reminisci differt ab eo quod est iterato
addiscere, cum reminiscentia possit moveri quodam praedictorum modorum
in id principium quod est ante quaesitum jam in memoria, sive ex parte rei,
sive ex parte consuetudinis. Iterato autem addiscens a talibus non movetur.
Cum vero non investigat et movetur per aliquod principium, tunc non
recordabitur vel reminiscetur’’ (This is how recollecting differs from rote
learning, since recollection can be set in motion by any of the methods just
mentioned, to discover that starting-point in the memory which is before what
one now seeks, either through the nature of the subject matter itself or through
his customary associations with it. A person learning by rote is not prompted
by such things.When one neither investigates nor is cued by some prompting
association, then one will not be recalling or recollecting) (my translation
[which is certainly looser than my Classics colleagues would quite approve; it
should be compared with Ziolkowski’s more literal translation]). Albertus’s
whole commentary, as translated by Ziolkowski, is in Carruthers and
Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of Memory, and most of my quotations
are from it. When medieval writers talk about memoria, in virtually every
context other than when defining distinctions among the ‘‘inward wits,’’ they
mean memoria as trained reminiscence, as in the phrase ars memoriae. Simple
iterative ability, or rote, is not a significant issue for them; see my further
discussion of this matter in chapter 3 below.
20. For a fuller discussion of the derivation and changes in meaning of the English
word rote, see Chapter 7 below, and OED s.v. rote. In the late fourteenth
century, the word was beginning to acquire the pejorative meaning it now has,
but as a secondary meaning.
21. Thomas Aquinas is clearer than is Albertus on this point. In his commentary
on Aristotle’s De memoria, Aquinas states that recollection, even when seem-
ing to reconstruct logically, always proceeds from humanly originated associa-
The Book of Memory Page 63