also Inst. orat., V. x. 20–22. The best discussion of the ancient understanding of
topos is still that of Cope, An Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 124–133.
54. Sorabji’s discussion of the text is Aristotle on Memory, 31–34, and in his notes to
this passage.
55. Aristotle, De memoria, 452a, 17; trans. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, 56.
56. Liddell and Scott, s.v. ana-gignosko, and Lewis and Short, s.v. lego, legere.
57. Plato, Phaedrus, 275D; Collected Dialogues, 521.
58. Plato, Phaedrus, 276D; Collected Dialogues, 522.
59. Jacques Derrida has written at length on this passage from Phaedrus, from a
viewpoint similar to the one I have taken here, though with his own particular
objectives; see ‘‘Plato’s Pharmacy.’’
60. Plato, Phaedrus, 274D–275A; Collected Dialogues, 520.
61. The suggestion that this story reflects a survival of oral traditional cultures was
made by Notopoulos, ‘‘Mnemosyne in Oral Literature,’’ and is often repeated
in the writing of proponents of the ‘‘oral survivals’’ model for both ancient
and medieval culture – see, e.g., Ong, Orality and Literacy, 59–61. But it is
clear in the passage itself that Socrates is disparaging mere book-learning
which pretends to substitute for learned truth. Socrates’ own approval of
writing books for the proper reasons is evident as well. See Curtius, 304, and
Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus, 162–164. Hackforth notes that Plato seems to
have invented this story himself for this particular context, 157, note 2. Yates,
The Art of Memory, 53, notes that this myth was used in the Renaissance to
380
Notes to pp. 36–39
justify extreme Neoplatonist schemes for an ultimately powerful ‘‘artificial
memory’’; on the admiration of the Greeks for Egyptian memories, see
Havelock, 10. Egypt was ‘‘the mother of the arts’’ in one tradition passed
along by Hugh of St. Victor; in another, the Hebrews are said to have taught
the arts to the Egyptians; see Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, III, 2.
Martianus Capella says Thoth discovered all the arts; he was perhaps remem-
bering the Phaedrus. See J. Taylor’s note to his translation of Didascalicon,
210–211, note 3.
62. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 7. But later Clanchy seems to
contradict this position when he writes that ‘‘Literacy is unique among
technologies in penetrating and structuring the intellect itself’’ (149). I agree
with Clanchy’s earlier statement, which seems also to accord with the findings
of Scribner and Cole, Psychology of Literacy. This book reports a study of the
introduction of script into a traditionally oral culture, and concludes that no
general effects upon abilities to memorize or to think rational thoughts
resulted. On the complex nature of literacies within oral cultures, see espe-
cially Finnegan, Orality and Literacy.
63. The variety of devices that have been used to model the working of memory
and recollection is the subject of Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory. It makes a
telling history, as each successive technological innovation is pressed into
service in turn, from tablets to telephones to computers. What underlies all
the changes which Draaisma presents is the tenacious belief that human
recollection employs technique – it is not a whim of chance.
64. Ong, Ramus, 108.
65. This is one of the underlying themes of Clanchy, From Memory to Written
Record. Rhetorical memoria, to which the artes memorativae most often refer, is
concerned with invention (composition) – see Carruthers, The Craft of
Thought. On the complex understanding of memory and history, especially
in regard to questions of authenticity and ‘‘what really happened,’ see espe-
cially Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories, and Geary, Phantoms of
Remembrance.
66. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, I I . 3. 17: ‘‘[M]irabile plane genus operis, – in unum
potuisse colligi quicquid mobilitas ac varietas humanae mentis in sensibus
exquirendis per diversas causas poterat invenire, – conclusit liberum ac
voluntarium intellectum; nam quocumque se verterit, quascumque cogita-
tiones intraverit, in aliquid eorum, quae praedicta sunt, necesse est ut
humanum cadat ingenium.’’ On the filing-cabinet metaphor, see (among
many others) A. Clark, Being There, 67–69. I am indebted to John Sutton for
introducing me to Clark’s work on ‘‘connectionism’’; what Cassiodorus
describes in this text is in keeping with the extended-mind hypothesis of
mental ‘‘scaffolding,’’ exploited for the craft of thinking.
67. Jerome, Epistula, L X , 10: ‘‘Lectione quoque assidua et meditatione diuturna
pectus suum bibliothecam fecerat Christi.’’ The letter is Jerome’s eulogy for
the young priest, Nepotianus, written to his father, Heliodorus; Jerome
honors Nepotianus’ ability immediately to identify any and all citations, as
Notes to pp. 40–43
381
Jerome had witnessed at his own table. An ability we still honor in those who
have mastered it, however unusual it may be, it is no magic trick but a refined,
trained scholar’s art.
68. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, I . 3115 and X . 26.
69. Liddell and Scott, s.v. yZsat!r-irla. In Phaedrus 276D, the phrase trans-
lated by Cornford as ‘‘collecting a store of refreshment for his own memory,’’
which Plato uses when discussing what writing books is good for, is in Greek
‘‘heauto te hypomn¯emata [‘‘memoranda’’] th¯esaurizomenos’’ (ed. Fowler,
LCL). It is noteworthy that for Plato his book is a store-house for his memory,
its extension, not its substitute.
70. ‘‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth . . . But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven.’’
71. ‘‘And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts;
gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.’’
72. Lewis and Short, s.v. Citations are to Columella, De re rustica, 8. 8. 1, 8. 8. 3,
and 8. 9. 3; at 8. 14. 9 the pens for geese are also called cellae.
73. Georgics 4, 163–164 (Loeb translation). Virgil repeats this language in Aeneid, I ,
432–433, where he likens the builders of Carthage to bees who ‘‘strain their
cells to bursting with sweet nectar’’; ‘‘cum liquentia mella / stipant et dulci
distendant nectare cellas.’’
74. De re rustica 8. 9. 3; see also, for loculamenta, 8. 8. 3. Columella uses
loculamenta for a bee-hive in 11. 5. 2.
75. Martial, Epigrams, 1, 117 (Loeb edition): ‘‘De primo dabit alterove nido /
rasum pumice purpuraque cultum / denaris tibi quinque Martialem.’’
Cf. Epigrams 7, 17: ‘‘Hos nido licet inseras vel imo / septem quos tibi misimus
libellos’’ (‘‘you may place the seven little books I send you even in your lowest
pigeon-hole’’). Seneca uses loculamenta in De tranquillitate animi, when,
inveighing against those who collect books for show, he complains that such
idlers have ‘‘bookcases built up as high as the ceiling’’ (‘‘tecto tenus exstructa
loculamenta’’). These Latin words for Roman library fittings are discussed,
; together with citations, by J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, 32–36.
76. Virgil, Georgics, 4, 250. Medievalists and classicists spell the poet’s name
differently, classicists call him Vergil and medievalists Virgil (the usual
medieval spelling). In order to avoid a possibly confusing double entry,
I have adopted the medieval spelling throughout.
77. J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, 35.
78. OED, s.v. pigeon-hole (sb.), 7e.
79. Liddell and Scott, s.v. peritera-. Aristotle distinguishes between this bird
and other species.
80. Plato, Theaetetus, trans. Cornford, 197d–199.
81. Philosophy speaks of the ‘‘pennas etiam tuae mentis quibus se in altum tollere
possit adfiguram.’’ On the development of the winged soul from this image in
Boethius, see Pierre Courcelle, La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition
litteŕaire, 197–199 and plates 119–124. As used by Boethius the image is
Neoplatonic, as the soul, remembering, rises to its forgotten glory and perfection.
382
Notes to pp. 43–46
Courcelle stresses this connection, but the evidence does not, I think, support
a conclusion that the notion is exclusively Neoplatonic.
82. J. E. Sandys, ed., Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, 186. J. W. Clark calls
attention to this note (The Care of Books, 34, note 1) as suggesting that a
pigeon-hole arrangement was used also by the Greeks for filing written
material.
83. Cf. Hugh of St. Victor, De archa Noe, I I . ii. 11 (CCCM 176, 35), who says the
dove sent forth is mind/spirit: ‘‘Quod autem per auem anima significetur.’’
84. J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, 35; cf. the portrait of Ezra editing the Old
Testament in the seventh-century Codex Amiatinus, discussed by W. Cahn,
Romanesque Bible Illuminations, 33–34, and shown in plate 12. The deep wall-
recesses that sometimes housed the wooden armaria of the later Middle Ages
can be seen in a number of places. J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, has several
pictures of them; see esp. Figures 20 and 25. Two good illustrations of self-
standing wooden armaria are in Figures 27 and 28.
85. Inst. orat., I , x. 7: ‘‘muta animalia mellis illum inimitabilem humanae rationi
saporem vario florum ac sucorum genere perficiunt; nos mirabimur, si oratio,
qua nihil praestantius homini dedit providentia, pluribus artibus egeat.’’ Early
Christian instances are discussed in relation to Biblical and other ancient
antecedents by W. Telfer, ‘‘Bees in Clement of Alexandria’’; see also the article
by Jean Chaˆtillon in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualite´, s.v. dulcedo, dulcedo Dei.
86. The authorship of Philobiblon is discussed by E. C. Thomas, xliii–xlv.
87. Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, Prologue, 7.
88. This is Thomas’s reading; earlier editors, however, read ‘‘per spirituales vias
oculorum,’ a reading that makes better sense in terms of scholastic perception
psychology; see my discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s description of ocular
perception in Chapter 2.
89. Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, I , 25 (ed. Thomas, 13, trans. 163, my alterations).
It is interesting to notice the sexual metaphor that Bury uses to describe how
reading acts upon the memorial store during meditation. Sexual metaphors
for how reading acts upon the reader are common in clerical writing on the
subject from the thirteenth century on, most familiarly in Jean de Meun.
The trope is monastic in origin, centering on the thalamus or bedchamber of
the Song of Songs; see The Craft of Thought, esp. 171–220.
90. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, 22. 1 (PL 111, c. 594C): ‘‘favus Scriptura est
divina melle spiritualis sapientiae repleta.’’
91. Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, cap. 8, 136 (ed. Thomas, 76): ‘‘apes argumen-
tosae fabricantes jugiter cellas mellis.’’
92. Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, I , i.
93. [Gregory the Great], Dialogues, I . 4.10.122–125 (SC 260): ‘‘Super semetipsum
sacros codices in pelliciis sacculis missos dextro laeuoque latere portabat, et
quocunque peruenisset, scripturarum aperiebat fontem et rigabat prata men-
tium.’’ The evidence for authorship of the Dialogi has been thoroughly
reviewed by F. Clark, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, working in part from
the comprehensive studies of the text by its Benedictine editor, de Voguë´.
Notes to pp. 46–49
383
Clark’s work has shifted the balance of proof against the traditional attribu-
tion to the sixth-century pope, in favor of an author who was likely a monk
working in the Roman curia in the later seventh century. The authorship is
of no consequence to the point I am making here but it is nonetheless of
general interest.
94. Lewis and Short, Du Cange, s.v. scrinium; see also the Ox. Lat. Dict. The
scrinium memoriae may have been ‘‘of historical records’’; cf. Lewis and Short,
s.v. memoria. In a letter to a newly installed bishop, Gregory the Great gives
instructions to make an inventory and put it in his church scrinium: ‘‘De
quibus etiam secundum rerum inuentarii paginam desusceptum te facere
uolumus, et in scrinium ecclesiae nostrae transmittere’’; ‘‘concerning which,
according to the memorandum of the inventory, we want you to make a
receipt and transmit it to the archive of our church.’’ Gregory had from the
previous bishop such a receipt, which he sent ‘‘in scrinio nostro’’; Registrum
epistularum, III, 49.
95. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I I . ix. 56.
96. DuCange, s.v. scrinium.
97. Paulinus of Nola, Epistula 32. 16 (CSEL 29, 291. 10–11): ‘‘If a desire should
take hold for meditating on the holy law / Stopping here one may pore over
the sacred books.’’
98. Beeson, Isidorstudien, 162–163. The oldest manuscripts state that these and
several other such verses which he composed were written on Isidore’s book-
presses (‘‘scripta sunt in armaria sua’’); J. W. Clark, The Care of Books, 47,
note 2.
99. Beeson, Isidorstudien, 157; ‘‘Sunt hic plura sacra, sunt mundialia plura; / Ex
his si qua placent carmina, tolle, lege. / Prata vides plena spinis et copia floris;
/ Si non vis spinas sumere, sume rosas.’’ Note the allusion to the words of the
voice to Augustine, ‘‘Tolle, lege.’’ For a demonstration of Isidore’s intimate
familiarity with Augustine’s Confessions, see Courcelle, Les Confessions . . .
dans la tradition litteŕaire, esp. 235–253.
100. Alcuin, Epistula 22: ‘‘O quam dulcis vita fuit, dum sedebamus quieti inter
sapientis scrinias, inter librorum copias, inter venerandos Patrum sensus’’
(PL 100, 175C). Here Alcuin calls the books themselves scrinia. Compare
Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, ch. 7, 107, who calls the books that burned
with the Alexandrine Library, scrinia veritatis.
101. F. Henry, The Book of Kells, 150.
102. See, for example, the exhibition catalogues, Medieval Manuscripts and Jewelled
Book-Covers, of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 1910 and 1938.
103. MED cites legislation that includes makers of males with other leather-
workers.
104. OED, s.v. mail, etymological
note.
105. Bevis of Hamptoun 1297; First Shepherds’ Play (Prima Pastorum), 224–225.
106. Havelock, 48; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, A. 694; Piers Plowman, B, V . 230;
Layamon, Brut, 1769–1770. See also the Towneley ‘ Magnus Herodes,’ where
the king’s soldiers boast they have ‘ mych gold in oure malys,’ 453.
384
Notes to pp. 49–53
107. MED, s.v. male (a), cited from a fifteenth-century cookery-book.
108. On this portrait, painted on an oak panel and dated 1532, see Rowlands,
Holbein, 82–83 and plate 74. The strongbox rests against the wall behind the
merchant’s arm.
109. The Tale of Beryn, lines 701–702.
110. On Chaucer’s probable acquaintance with an architectural mnemonic
(though not necessarily with the text of the Ad Herennium), see my ‘‘Italy,
Ars Memorativa, and Fame’s House’’ and ‘‘The Poet as Master Builder.’’
111. Didascalicon, I , 2; cf. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, I , 11.
112. See Riche
´, Education and Culture, 461. Aldhelm, who died in 709, composed
a sort of riddle on the subject of his books, which is called ‘‘De arca libraria’’;
the text is in Thompson, Medieval Library, 114–115.
113. Cited by Riche
´, Education and Culture, 461, note 99, from Regulae magistri,
17: ‘‘Simul etiam arcam cum diversis codicibus membranis et chartis
monastherii.’’
114. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, I , 11. 49–50: ‘‘Memoria uero, quasi mentis
arca, firmaque et fidelis custodia perceptorum.’’
115. ‘‘Tollite librum istum, et possite eum in latere arcae foederis Domini Dei vestra.’’
116. This famous manuscript, which was brought to the Loire valley in the general
exodus of books from Italy during the later seventh and eighth centuries, was
first at Fleury and then, from the ninth century, in Tours, whence it was
stolen in the mid nineteenth century, sold to Lord Ashburnham, and then
recovered by the Bibliothèque nationale de France by the end of the century
(its alternative name, the ‘‘Tours Pentateuch,’’ acknowledges its long resi-
dence in that city). The book’s making, provenance, and subsequent history
is discussed most recently by D. Verkerk, The Ashburnham Pentateuch. The
manuscript is also discussed by Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination, 26–29.
The Book of Memory Page 65