The Book of Memory

by Mary Carruthers

  Thomas suggests that although some cite the Psalms by number, others

  omit such numerical citation, referring instead generally to ‘‘the Psalter,’’

  since the Psalms are so commonly known:

  Next, whenever a particular Psalm is cited, it is also referred to as the fortieth or

  thirtieth, or in another similar manner. Others however omit such citation, and

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  only say: ‘‘This is found in the Psalter,’’ and the reason is that the Psalms are generally

  well known. 84 (my emphasis)

  This comment by Thomas would seem to explain why, even in late

  medieval written Bibles, the Psalms are commonly unnumbered while in

  all the rest of the books the chapter numbers are included. The Psalms are

  unnumbered because they are so well known, having been memorized as a

  first book – people have their own schemes for recalling them (some recite

  them with their numbers, some do not), and a cue is enough to bring forth

  the whole text in recollection. In written texts such as moral treatises and

  treatises on preaching, well-known texts such as the Psalms and Epistles are

  commonly referenced by the first few words of a phrase only, for example,

  ‘‘Beatus vir &c.’’ Or in some treatises, one finds a verse referenced solely by

  the first letters of the words, on the model, adduced earlier, of ‘ b. u. q. n. a.’

  for Psalm 1:1. These references could only be useful to readers who had

  memorized verbatim the texts being cited.85

  Thomas of Waleys says, though, that thematic sentences taken from

  every other part of the Bible must be cited by chapter and book. This

  comment indicates how widely used some sort of numerical grid was as a

  mental filing system. The style for citing the Decretum, used in glosses and

  other contexts throughout the Middle Ages, was according to the number

  of the large division (distinctio, quaestio, or causa) followed by the intro-

  ductory word or phrase of the particular canon referenced, ‘‘xxxij c.

  multorum’’ or ‘‘xxiv c. cum itaque.’’ If two or more canons in a given

  quaestio or distinctio began with the same words, they might be distin-

  guished as, for example, ‘‘c. Si quis i, Si quis ii,’’ etc. Similar forms were

  used for citation of the various volumes of decretal collections compiled

  after Gratian’s catalogue. 86 Obviously a canon lawyer was expected to have

  pretty well memorized the entire set of Decretals in order to be able to use

  these references without a great deal of wasteful ‘‘turning the pages.’’

  William of Ockham, in his Dialogus, speaks of his relief at having stocked

  his memory with so much material, including all the Decretals, when he

  found himself exiled in Munich; Peter of Ravenna, a fifteenth-century

  Italian lawyer, claimed (as we will see) that adopting his version of an

  alphabetical mnemonic enabled him to learn all the decretal collections.

  Yet there were clearly risks in citing too many numbers while one spoke.

  Thomas of Waleys advises that supplementary authorities, Biblical and

  patristic, should not be fully cited by book and chapter number, but by

  book alone. If one insists on citing every chapter number it often happens,

  when bringing together several authorities, that a chapter number falls out

  of the preacher’s memory, and one then could bring forth another section

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  than the one intended. Wherefore, he says, he praises the practice of former

  times when preachers did not cite chapter numbers in their delivery, but

  only when they wrote their sermons down. He concludes, ‘‘I think their

  method was better because it was safer [tutior] than the modern method by

  which chapter numbers and books are cited together.’’87 Before dismissing

  this as the advice of an irredeemable pedant terrified of being caught out by

  a colleague, let us consider it in terms of the practical difficulties attendant

  on the numerical grid as a method for recalling text.

  The grid serves essentially as a coding and filing system for the orderly

  and ready recollection of material. In using a mnemonic, however, one

  does not normally call out its coordinates, whether one’s grid be the

  architectural places or this numerical one. The grid is essentially arbitrary,

  in the sense that it is not part of the material placed within it, any more

  than a file is part of what it contains. However, wrong coordinates will send

  one to the wrong part of the file, and thus to the wrong text, causing a

  devastating loss of place. Thomas advises articulating only the name of the

  work cited, a safer thing to do since it isn’t a part of the grid. It is not the file

  itself, only the name of the file. Indeed it is striking that he advises avoiding

  articulation of the code whenever possible, even of the Psalms, if one can

  get away with it. Only in the more secure situation of a corrected, written

  version should the numerical grid be articulated, when any miscitation can

  be worked out. And his advice is given for safety’s sake.88

  Not every preacher followed Thomas’s advice in this matter; he himself

  suggests that it is a bit old-fashioned, and of course the sermons we have

  preserved are all in written form, with all citations given. But it is a

  significant point that medieval citations are given before the text more

  frequently than after it. The anterior position serves to cue the mental

  grid. Our mode of citing after a quotation, in parentheses or a footnote, is

  designed solely to send a reader to a printed source that he or she must find

  elsewhere. Our citations are referrals, not access cues to a mental grid of texts.

  Indexing systems devised in the monasteries and, later, the universities

  seem all to have served the dual function of being both tools for finding

  texts initially and also for noting them in the memory, as mnemonic hooks.

  Not only numbers could serve such a purpose: the Dominican system,

  devised for the Bible concordance, of citing by book, chapter number, and

  letter (A–G) to indicate the position of a text within the chapter was widely

  disseminated. The Rouses describe a bookmark of the thirteenth century,

  which explains the key to the pagination scheme of the volume in which it

  is found, a Cistercian manuscript in which pages are marked with a

  combination of letters and dots. 89 One side of the bookmarker says: ‘‘Ut

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  memoriter teneatur alphabetum taliter ordinatur: a .a :a a:,’’ etc. Evidently

  this reference scheme was designed in part to provide a memory grid for the

  readers. On the reverse of this bookmark, the strip of parchment is divided

  into seven equal sections, marked A through G, the location scheme also

  used by the Dominicans within chapter divisions. One held this side

  against the edge of the page to provide the finely tuned location for the

  text. A number of other such bookmarks are known.90

  As Richard and Mary Rouse say of all these various coding and filing

  schemes, ‘‘they emerge with striking suddenness in the West, to the point

  that one may say that, probably before 1220, certainly before 1190
, no such

  tools existed; and that, after the 1280s, the dissemination and new creation

  of such aids to study were commonplace.’’91 Of the sudden proliferation of

  written tools there is no doubt; as there is also no doubt that the same order

  (the Dominicans) chiefly responsible for creating them is also chiefly

  responsible for the dissemination of mnemonic devices based on places,

  including the Herennian one. It is also true that during the thirteenth

  century schemes for memory training were disseminated into the general

  culture in France and especially in Italy, via vernacular translations and

  adaptations of the architectural and other memory-training techniques.

  We therefore should not assume that these multitudinous study aids

  replace memory as a fundamental tool; instead, they often were thought

  of as memory systems first and manuscript aids second. This suggests that

  reading and memorizing were taught as they were in antiquity, as one

  single activity, and, further, that the monastic understanding of what one

  does in reading, so well described by Dom Leclercq, not only persisted but

  became part of general culture in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and later

  centuries, for reasons that had as much to do with the moral value of

  memoria in meditation and prayer as with its utility. But this is a subject for

  later chapters.

  Furthermore, the proliferation of written guides to these various heu-

  ristic schemes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries does not mean that

  there were no indexing mnemonics in use earlier. Hugh’s Preface describes

  an indexing scheme in great detail, long before 1190, and, for reasons I have

  indicated, it seems most likely he was describing a well-known, persistent

  technique. Indeed it is likely that all these schemes – numbering of

  chapters, alphabetizing (the memory scheme which Aristotle described in

  De memoria was an alphabetical one), page indexing by number and/or

  letters – are medieval adaptations of schemes known since antiquity as

  memorial schemes. With the Rouses and other scholars, I suppose that a

  chief reason for the proliferation of written indexing schemes was that

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  more people had need of organized textual material and that there were

  more texts to be consulted after the twelfth-century infusions from Spain

  and Sicily. Once the scholarly community was enlarged beyond the mon-

  astery, the need for written transmission was greater, and priests and friars

  who need to preach have need of preachers’ tools. But this did not occur at

  the expense of memory; indeed the written schemes themselves are to be

  used as memory grids, ut memoriter teneantur.

  One other intriguing practice which indicates the tenacity and perva-

  siveness of the methods described by Hugh of St. Victor is that of quota-

  tion itself, and the related practice of what Hugh calls ‘‘gathering,’’

  colligendum. The medieval verb quotare first makes its appearance, accord-

  ing to the Revised Medieval Latin Word List, early in the thirteenth century

  (which does not mean it was unknown earlier). Derived from the adjective

  quot, ‘‘how many,’’ it meant ‘‘to number’’ a book, dividing a longer text into

  numbered subdivisions, such as chapters. Robert of Basevorn discusses

  quoting in chapter 31 of his Forma praedicandi, written in 1322. After the

  prayer, the theme is restated and quoted, ‘‘quotandum quantum ad librum

  et capitulum.’’ For authorities other than the theme, it is not necessary to

  give the section number ‘‘secundum modum modernum’’ (apparently, like

  Thomas of Waleys, Robert did not like the new custom of citing every

  authority by chapter number), though one may number books in a series

  (like I and II Kings), or one may also give a chapter number in a book

  which explains another book (Gregory’s Moralia in Job, for instance, which

  comments direcly on Job). The correct form is, ‘‘Gregorius primo, vel

  secundo, Moralium super illud Job.’’ But masters and professors of theol-

  ogy may ‘‘quote’’ (numerically divide) anything:

  It is permitted, indeed it is their prerogative, for masters and professors of sacred

  theology to quote everything in a carefully worked-out manner [exquisite], since in

  regard to this matter much deference is given them by others, because of the

  testimony of their excellent teaching and display of humility regarding their

  responsibilities, and because of the dignity and honor of their rank.92

  So the practice of quoting, marking, and numbering a text for citation

  seems to have been the special prerogative of the most learned members of

  the university, who alone are able to quote exquisite.

  The quotation of patristic texts is a feature of thirteenth-century scholar-

  ship, and made possible the compendia of authorities designed for sermon

  composition, such as distinctiones collections, textual concordantiae, and

  other libri rerum memorandarum. Often in these collections, each quote is

  cited by book and chapter number (and in some by the further refinement

  of A–G division), the two basic coordinates of the grid that serve not only

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  to help find the quotes in a complete text of their parent work but to place

  them in a memory file, so that, considering Avaricia, for example, would

  bring forth a number of texts, each labelled in a mental file called

  ‘‘Avaricia.’’ Indeed, for most preaching friars, working far from large

  libraries, the citations could only have served as memory coordinates.93

  It is likely that the passion of many late medieval preachers for number-

  ing sermon divisions – what has been called the scholastic or university

  method of the thirteenth century – is related to the nature of this numerical

  grid. Thomas Waleys says that numerical division of the theme in the

  modern style is not just a gimmick, but most useful for both the preacher

  and his auditors:

  Indeed if only one division of the theme be made, still that division will be

  beneficial as to those subjects, as much for the preacher as for the hearer. For

  the moderns began not just because of a vogue, as others believe, to divide the

  theme, which the ancients did not customarily do. Especially it is useful for the

  preacher, because division of the theme into separate parts affords an opportunity

  for dilation in the later development of his sermon. For the hearer truly it is most

  useful, because when the preacher divides the theme and afterwards develops the

  parts of the division in order and clearly, both the matter of the sermon and the

  form and manner of the preaching is more easily understood and retained; that

  will not be the case if the preacher proceeds unclearly or without order and by a

  confused structure.94

  Of special interest in this advice is the assumption on Thomas Waleys’s

  part that both preacher and auditor relied on the numerical system for

  retaining discourse, for the key both to successful dilation and to retention

  is orderly division by number. This manual was written within a university

  setting, in which preacher and heare
rs alike were scholars, but the same

  method was used in preaching to the laity.95 The fourteenth-century

  Dominican preacher, Giordano of Pisa, whose sermons were taken down

  by dictation while he spoke, used the method of division constantly. Since

  he preached commonly two or three times a day, Friar Giordano often only

  got through the first few divisions of his sermons, though he always

  announced all his themes in order in his introduction. When exhausted,

  he would promise to continue where he left off at a later time – and he did,

  invariably picking up exactly where he left off. These sermons were taken

  down as they were preached; they were not later corrected. 96

  Robert of Basevorn’s quoting schemes

  Several excellent examples of how thematic division works mnemonically

  can be found in Robert of Basevorn’s treatise on preaching. For a sermon

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  on the Passion, Robert suggests the following ‘‘division’’ of the text: ‘‘Jesus

  iterum clamans voce magna emisit spiritum,’’ Mt. 27:50 (I will quote the

  Latin text here because the word-play, essential to its mnemonic effective-

  ness, cannot be reproduced in an English translation):

  Hic notantur: Passionis utilitas, Jesus; patientis potestas, clamans; humanitatis

  veritas, voce magna; patiendi libertas, emisit; separationis acerbitas, spiritum.97

  This is the basic division into five, a portion of the theme plus a rhyming

  catchphrase which in some way (not always clear to me, I confess) abstracts

  the major idea to be developed from each of the five divisions.

  Then comes the subdivision, also in five parts:

  Subdivitur tunc sic: Quinque sunt vocales, scilicet A E I O U, quae omnem vocem

  faciunt. Sic quinque vulnera Christi omnem sonum, sive doloris sive gaudii faciunt.

  Vide in manibus A et E: [Jer. 31:3] ‘‘Attraxi te miserans’ etc. [Is. 49:16] ‘‘Ecce in

  manibus meis descripsi te’’; I in latere: talem enim figuram imprimit vulnus

  lanceae, hoc est ‘‘ostium arcae’’ quod ‘‘in latere,’ etc. in Gen. [6:16] et in Joan.

  [20:27]: ‘‘Infer digitum tuum huc et mitte in latus meum, et noli esse incredulus,’’

  etc.; O et U in pedibus: [Ps. 8:6] ‘‘Omnia subjecit Deus sub pedibus ejus.’’ Ideo ut

  consequaris dicas facto: [Job 23:11] ‘‘Uestigia ejus secutus est pes meus.’’98