The Book of Memory
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[aut corpus reficiebat necessariis sustentaculis aut lectione animum]. When he read,
his eyes would travel across the pages and his mind would explore the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent [lit. stilled] [sed cum legebat, oculi ducebantur per
paginas et cor intellectum rimabatur, vox autem et lingua quiescebant]. We would
sometimes be present, for he did not forbid anyone access, nor was it customary
for anyone to be announced; and on these occasions we watched him reading
silently in that way [and never the other] [sic eum legentem vidimus tacite et aliter
numquam], 63 and so we too would sit for a long time in silence [sedentesque in
diuturno silentio], for who would have the heart to interrupt a man so engrossed
[tam intento]? Then we would steal away, guessing that in the brief time he
had seized for the refreshment of his mind [reparandae menti suae], he was resting
from the din of other people’s affairs [feriatum a strepitu causarum alienarum],
and reluctant to be called away to other business. We thought too that he might
be apprehensive that if he read aloud, and any closely attentive listener [ne auditore
suspenso et intento] were doubtful on any point, or the author he was reading
used any obscure expressions, he would have to stop and explain various
difficult problems that might arise, and after spending time on this be unable to
read as much of the book as he wished. Another and perhaps more cogent reason
for his habit of reading silently was his need to conserve his voice, which was
very prone to hoarseness. But whatever his reason, that man undoubtedly had a
good one.
I have quoted this description at length because I think it is often misread.
It presents an excellent contrast between the two kinds of reading, lectio and
meditatio. Ambrose withdraws over a book into silence, meditatio, even
though others are present. Augustine contrasts it specifically here with the
activity of lectio, delivered in a loud voice to a listener who freely asks
questions. In meditational reading, Ambrose, the reader, is intentus; in the
other kind, the listener is suspensus and intentus.
In a scholarly tradition going back to Norden (1922), Balogh (1927), and
Hendrickson (1929), Augustine’s response is characterized as one of ‘‘sur-
prise and wonder’’ at Ambrose’s ‘‘strange’’ habit. 64 I do not find these traits
in what Augustine says, however. Instead this seems to me a sympathetic
portrait of a very busy man’s efforts to make time for the kind of scholarly
study that refreshes him, written (we should remember) by a man who by
then was himself a very busy bishop, subject to exactly the interruptions
and demands he shows us in Ambrose. What surprises Augustine is that
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Ambrose never seemed to read in the other way, though others were present
(‘‘et aliter nunquam’’). This situation helps to explain the slight defensive-
ness of Augustine’s last remark about Ambrose’s weak voice, responding to
what might be seen as his rudeness or failure in duty. Saving the voice is a
reason given for using vox tenuis, in addition to its usefulness for memoriz-
ing, in the rhetoric of Fortunatianus, who was more or less Augustine’s
contemporary.
The basic contrast in Augustine’s portrait of Ambrose is carried in the
two words strepitus and tacitus.65 Meditative reading is Ambrose’s means of
acquiring silentium amid the strepitus of his daily activities, even in the
common room where his petitioners gathered. To repair his mind (‘‘rep-
arandae menti suae’’ – we notice again the underlying motif of building),
Ambrose refrains from lectio and engages instead in meditatio.
Strepitus, especially for Augustine, means ‘‘loud noise, confusion, rum-
bling,’’ and other sorts of disordered, unconcentrated, busy noise, the
interruption that daily congress creates. At the end of Book IX of the
Confessions, Augustine laments the contrast between the meditative con-
versation between Monica and himself, as they talk alone (soli) and
gradually ascend to mystical contemplation (‘‘venimus in mentes nostras
et transcendimus eas, ut attingeremus regionem ubertatis indeficientis,
unde pascis Israel in aeternum veritate pabulo’’),66 and descend back to
the chattering noise of the mouth where words are born and die (‘‘ad
strepitum oris nostri, ubi verbum et incipitur et finitur’’; my emphasis). The
contrast here is exactly that made in his description of Ambrose, and casts
some additional light on it. For Augustine never says that his conversation
with Monica ceases; all the verbs continue to be in the first person plural,
indicating shared activities. Being soli and taciti does not mean being
‘‘solitary’’ or ‘‘private’’ in a modern sense, nor does it mean ‘‘quiet’’ in our
sense; it has rather to do with the difference between their concentrated,
attentive, meditational conversation and strepitus, between rumination and
chit-chat. Indeed, while they are speaking (‘‘dum loquimur’’), they touch a
little (‘‘modice’’) that eternal life, ‘‘toto jictu cordis,’’ ‘‘with an all-out thrust
of our hearts.’’ The heart-thrust here should, I think, be understood as a
figure for a particular effort of recollection, as Augustine plays on the root
of Latin recordari (cor, cordis).67
Whether or not the vocal chords are used is a secondary difference
between the two methods of reading. This distinction is well defined by
Isidore of Seville in some brief memory advice that he gives in his
Sententiae. After advising that one divide a long text in order to memorize
it according to the memorial principle of brevitas, he says that memory is
Memory and the ethics of reading
215
also much better aided by silent reading than by reading aloud: ‘‘Silent
reading is more acceptable to the senses [meaning here the interior senses
engaged in making memories] than full-voice; the intellect is better trained
[lit. constructed] when the voice in reading is quieted, and in silence the
tongue is moved. For by voiced reading the body is tired and the voice’s
sharpness is dulled.’’68 Ambrose’s silent reading is not a function of whether
his lips move or not, but of his single-minded concentration, the solitude
and silence he creates for himself, even in a busy room.
Augustine begins his description of Ambrose with the metaphor of
rumination; Ambrose’s hidden mouth of his recollecting heart ruminates
the texts of Scripture. Such reading was nourishment for his mind, as food
was for his body (yet another instance of the digestion–rumination meta-
phor associated with meditatio). When he read for this purpose, his eyes
were led over the page as his recollecting mind cracked open its meaning
(‘‘cor intellectum rimabatur’’). The verb rimor is related to the noun rima,
meaning ‘‘crack, fissure,’’ and was used originally in an agricultural context
to mean ‘‘turn up’’ or ‘‘tear open’’ the ground. Rimor is used by Virgil of a
vulture feasting on entrails, and by Juvenal of an augur pouri
ng over the
heart of a sacrificed chicken.69 All of this indicates that meditative reading,
legere tacite, was a slow, thorough process in keeping with its memorative
function, one in which each word was examined thoroughly (‘‘broken into
pieces’’) as one stored a piece of text away together with its heuristic
associations. Rimor is an intensely energetic, suspenseful, concentrated,
and meticulous activity, which gives a vigor to meditation that the placid
image of cud-chewing may not.
This concentration is described as tacitus, intentus, a state in which, in
this scene, both Ambrose and his companions are in long-lasting silence
(‘‘diuturno silentio’’). Silentium is also a word found in late-antique rhet-
orical texts, those of the tradition Augustine was educated in, in connection
with the meditatio necessary for memoria. Thus, Martianus Capella advis-
ing on the techniques of memory describes how to produce the state of
concentration necessary for firm recollection: texts to be learned are not
‘‘read in a loud voice, but are more usefully meditated in a murmur; and it
is clear that the memory is stimulated more readily at night than during the
day, when also the silence everywhere helps, nor is concentration inter-
rupted by sensory stimuli from outside.’’70 Silentium is the accompaniment
and also the result of being intentus, of meditatio, and memoria (which is
why memory is easier at night) but it is evidently not incompatible with the
vocal murmur which, together with writing on one’s tabulae, helps greatly
in memorizing. 71
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Intensity is also part of the attitude the student needs listening to
his master’s lectio; Augustine describes how such a listener would respond,
if only Ambrose were reading ‘‘magna voce.’’ Since listening students
had to memorize the commentary as they heard it, clearly the intentus
necessary to remember had to be part of their mental attitude as
well. In both lectio and meditatio, intentus refers to the absorbed, suspense-
ful attitude, ‘‘hanging on each word,’’ which the memory needs for
success. This is mental silence, lack of noise (strepitus), mental solitude;
modern students certainly recognize the state, but we associate it with
‘‘individual creativity’ rarely achieved, rather than with an ordinary
requirement for reading, or indeed most kinds of writing. Antiquity and
the Middle Ages associated it with memory and recollection, and
when they speak of silence and solitude in such a context, this state of
attentive concentration is what they usually mean. They also thought
that it could be taught, and encouraged practice and techniques for
achieving it. 72
This understanding of silence is still evident towards the end of the
Middle Ages in the work of a scholastic rather than monastic writer,
Thomas Aquinas. When, in the Summa theologica, he digests for his readers
Tullius’ memory rules, Thomas alters one of them in a significant way. The
Ad Herennium states that ‘ solitude’ conserves the sharp outlines of memory-
images (‘‘solitudo conservat integras simulacrorum figuras’’); Thomas
changes the reading to ‘‘solicitude’’ (‘‘sollicitudo conservat integras simu-
lacrorum figuras’’).73 He does so, I think, because he understood the
essential importance of a memory’s being an affectus or pathos, that is, he
knew the sensory-emotional nature of the state we call concentration (and
think of as entirely mental). Sollicitudo is best translated in English as
‘‘worry,’’ as a dog is said to worry a bone; it is conceptually like Augustine’s
use of rimor and Petrarch’s of discutere. After nearly a millennium of
monastic development of the twin ideas of ‘‘solitude’’ and ‘‘silence,’’ the
quality of intense, aroused attention implied in meditatio even in ancient
pedagogy, and its fundamental necessity in the disciplines of memory, was
completely apparent to Thomas Aquinas. For him, solitudo, in the context
of memory training, is synonymous with sollicitudo, that attitude of mind
which vexes or worries the emotions and the sensations, in order to engage
in the activity of making, storing, recalling memory-images, to the exclu-
sion of outside strepitus and bustle even when it is going on immediately
around one. Thomas’s success at producing this state in himself is attested
to by the many stories of his peers. And without that degree of emotional
concentration, memory fails.
Memory and the ethics of reading
217
Thomas Aquinas’s biographers associated his deep concentration with
his prodigious memory; Francis of Assisi’s biographers do as well. Thomas
of Celano writes: ‘‘whenever he read in the Sacred Books, and something
was once tossed into his mind, he indelibly wrote it in his heart. He had a
memory for [whole] books because having heard something once he took it
in not idly, but with continued devout attention his emotion-memory
[affectus] chewed on it. This he said was the fruitful method for teaching
and reading, not to have wandered about through a thousand learned
discussions [tractatus].’’74 Affectus in this description is the agent by
means of which rumination and memorization take place; in other
words, remembering is an activity in which the emotions must be engaged
in order for it to occur at all.
F L O W E R S O F R E A D I N G I : H E L O I S E
‘‘The method of reading consists in dividing,’’ says Hugh of St. Victor,
‘‘modus legendi in dividendo constat.’’75 Reading fundamentally proceeds
by divisio. This meant that every text one learned was stored and recalled
basically as a series of short sequences, whether one knew it from start to
finish, as many ancients knew Virgil and Homer, and many Christians
knew several books at least of the Bible; or whether one learned a number
of set passages from it, as I learned Shakespeare’s plays; or whether one
learned only its aphorisms and maxims. The ordering of these texts, their
compositio or collatio, was a function of the mnemonic heuristics one
imposed on them (I am speaking purely in terms of how a student learned,
not of how texts were copied by scribes). It is this fundamental feature of
the memorial design and its method that made it possible for a single
segment of information to be cross-filed, so that one could, for example,
find Psalm 1, verse 2, in the mental file containing the words of Psalm 1 in
complete textual order and in that dealing with the subject of lex Domini.
One could thus think of it in several different settings, leading to the
process of ‘‘composition’’ in the modern English sense. It is no wonder
that early writers considered building metaphors to be so apt both for
reading and for composing, for each memorized chunk is like a plank or
brick one places into a memory design.
From at least Alexandrine times, a favored form of elementary textbook
was the florilegium, or compilation of extracts and maxims derived from
the great writers of the past. It was as pop
ular with Christians as it had been
with pagans. I have alluded to this literary form many times during my
study, but I now want to look at the genre in greater detail. Its essence is
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well defined by the title of Petrarch’s contribution to it, Libri rerum
memorandarum. A florilegium is basically the contents of someone’s
memory, set forth as a kind of study-guide for the formation of others’
memories. The contents are what Hugh of St. Victor called sophismata,
others more commonly called dicta or dictiones, and they are presented
either verbatim (ad verba) or summatim (ad res).
The most familiar variety brings together ethical topics, vices and virtues
and socially useful habits, such as those for study or for civic behavior. Such
compilations are common in antiquity; Cicero says, attributing Aristotle,
that Protagoras was the first to gather together and write down the ‘‘rerum
illustrium disputationes’’ or commonplaces (communes loci). 76 Aristotle’s
word for the ‘‘special topics,’’ as distinct from the general categories such as
antithesis or similarity, is eid¯e, and they were so called because they belong
to the practical, particularized realm of political and ethical life. In Roman
rhetoric, the commonplaces were moral in nature; Quintilian must
warn his readers that he is using the word in an unusual sense when he
applies communis locus to the ‘‘places of argument’’ (Inst. orat., V. x. 20–21).
Most often, they were arranged by moral categories, ‘‘in adulterium,
aleatorem, petulantem,’’ or categories of evidence, ‘‘de testibus, de tabulis,
de argumentis.’’77
A good example of a scholar’s florilegium is the Carolingian encyclope-
dia of Hrabanus Maurus, De universo. In the preface to it which he
addresses to his former colleague, now bishop, Haimon, Hrabanus
describes his motive for undertaking the work. He recalls that they were
students together, reading a multitude of books not only of divine learning
but also of natural history and liberal arts. Since then, divine providence
has released Hrabanus from external cares, but called Haimon to pastoral
duties as bishop, where he must contend not only with the pagans to the
east, but with a fractious populace. Wherefore, says Hrabanus, ‘‘I consid-