instaurans.’’ If the variant reading, ‘‘excited by its novelty,’’ is at all authentic,
it suggests that Jerome thought this way of organizing Biblical glosses to be
especially innovative as well as useful. His image of himself renewing an old
building with a new editing method emphasizes his sense of innovation.
410
Notes to pp. 145–148
134. The Book of Durrow’s glossaries are discussed in the facsimile edition, ed.
Luce et al., vol. 2, 7–14 and esp. at 10. A general discussion of alphabetical
habits during the Middle Ages is Daly and Daly, ‘‘Some Techniques in
Medieval Latin Lexicography.’’
135. Daly, Alphabetization, esp. 93–96; the ancients did know how to alphabetize
absolutely, for examples of fully alphabetized lists survive. A common partial
alphabetizing scheme used in the Middle Ages is by the first syllable of a word
(e.g. ba- words, then be- words, then bi-, bo-, bu-). This most likely reflects
early reading-recitation training, in which students proceeded from letters to
syllables, before learning complete words; see the discussion below of a
similarly aphabetized fourteenth-century index.
136. Quintilian, Inst. orat., I V . v. 3.
137. First described in Thomson, ‘‘Grosseteste’s Topical Concordance.’’ Southern
also discussed the making and purpose of the indices in Robert Grosseteste,
186–204; in particular Southern mined them for information about
Grosseteste’s sources and the many theological topics that concerned him.
Southern calls the Index ‘‘a record of Grosseteste’s reading’’ (191), but it is also
his reference key to passages he had previously read and marked in many
different books, which he could readily access again by using the index’s
subject-symbols and citations. One could think of it as a kind of prosthetic
artifact made for his memory, extending and supporting the contents of his
own mental library. As a prosthetic, others also evidently found it useful.
138. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’’ 132.
139. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’’ 121–122.
140. Thomson, ‘‘Grosseteste’s Topical Concordance,’’ 140.
141. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’ 124, note 4.
142. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’’ 124. Another transcribed entry
was printed by Thomson, together with a description of MS. Lyons 414, in
his Writings of Robert Grosseteste, 122–124, and see also ‘‘Grosseteste’s Topical
Concordance.’’
143. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste’’; see also Hunt’s ‘‘Manuscripts
Containing the Indexing Symbols of Robert Grosseteste.’’ To those which
Hunt lists might be added Huntington Library MS. HM 26061, a Bible and
missal of the mid thirteenth century, containing what appear to be indexing
symbols, especially in the center margin of the book of Proverbs. It is not
clear that these correspond to Grosseteste’s system, however, and they might
be those of a reader with his own version of notes, having shapes similar to
some used by Grosseteste. See the reference to this MS. in Rouse and Rouse,
Preachers, Florilegia, and Sermons, 18, note 34, and the description of it in the
Huntington Library’s Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.
144. Thomson, ‘‘Grosseteste’s Topical Concordance,’’ 144; cf. Writings of Robert
Grosseteste, 124.
145. I have somewhat modified the translation of Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert
Grosseteste,’’ 127, from the Latin quoted in Callus, ‘‘The Oxford Career of
Robert Grosseteste,’’ 46: ‘‘Sed quando aliqua ymaginatio notabilis sibi
Notes to pp. 148–151
411
occurrebat ibi scripsit ne laberetur [sic] a memoria sua, sicud et multas
cedulas scripsit que non omnes sunt autentice. Non enim est maioris autor-
itatis que dissute scripsit in margine libri phisicorum quam alie cedule quas
scripsit, que omnia habentur Oxonie in libraria fratrum minorum, sicut
oculis propriis vidi’’ (from MS. Vat. Palat. lat. 1805, fo. 10v).
146. Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert Grosseteste,’’ 128–129.
147. Compare the typical entries transcribed by Hunt, ‘‘The Library of Robert
Grosseteste,’’ 124, with those transcribed by Thomson, ‘‘Grosseteste’s
Topical Concordance,’’ 142, and Writings of Robert Grosseteste, 123.
148. There has been a suggestion made, amounting in some accounts now to a
fact, that Grosseteste used parchment slips as well as margins to record notes;
some scholars have speculated that these slips formed the basis of his
concordance. The suggestion was based on William of Alnwick’s reference
to Grosseteste’s having written marginal notes and ‘‘multas cedulas’’ (and on
another manuscript reference to Grosseteste’s cedula: ‘‘Hanc demonstracio-
nem inveni Oxonie in quadam cedula domini Lincolniensis’’; see Hunt, ‘‘The
Library of Robert Grosseteste,’’ 127). Latin sceda or scida, diminutive scedula
or cedula, does indeed mean ‘‘a strip of papyrus’’ or ‘‘a small leaf or page’’
(Lewis and Short, s.v. scida). But, like Latin pagina, a word with which it is
often associated (as in Martial, Epigrams, IV, 89), it carries the connotation of
something composed or put together in haste and informally, the sort of
thing one would write on the last little bit of a book. So, Latin schedium is ‘‘an
impromptu poem or speech’’ (Lewis and Short, s.v. schedium). Quintilian
refers rather contemptuously to scholars who toil away reading even worth-
less notations (‘‘indignos lectione scidas,’’ Inst. orat., I. viii. 9). In other words,
cedula, like Latin pagina and English note, can refer both to a kind of writing
surface and to a genre of composition. It seems likely that William of
Alnwick (and the writer of the marginal note mentioned by Hunt) was
characterizing all of Grosseteste’s marginalia as cedulae, that is ‘‘impromptu,
disjointed memoranda of ideas,’’ and not necessarily referring to actual little
scraps of parchment. Indeed the parallelism of his reference tips the balance
in favor of this interpretation (‘‘what he wrote . . . in the margin of his Physics
is of no greater authority than the other ‘cedulae’ which he wrote’’). One
must also wonder whether it is plausible that the library of the Friars Minor at
Oxford had kept stacks of little parchment scraps having no authority as well
as Grosseteste’s books – for it is in that library that William Alnwick says he
saw Grosseteste’s marginal cedulae.
149. The text has been edited by Borgnet, vol. 5, 30–47.
150. Rouse and Rouse, Preachers, Florilegia, and Sermons, 20–21, talk briefly about
the citational system used in this index, but not its alphabetizing scheme. The
index is on fos. 318–322 of the manuscript.
151. The catalogue of Tichfield Abbey in Hampshire calls its cases columpnae; see
Wilson, ‘‘The Medieval Library of Tichfield Abbey.’’ A translation and
sketch, reconstructed from the manuscript description, is given by Clark,
The Care of Books, 77–79.
412
No
tes to pp. 151–156
152. Thompson, The Medieval Library, 613–629. Medieval English pressmarks are
illustrated in Indices and Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts, 1, esp. Plate 17; see
also the account of pressmarks in Ker, Medieval Libraries, xviii–xix, and
under individual entries.
153. Daly, Alphabetization, 18–26.
C H AP T E R 4
1. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, and Carruthers and Ziolkowski, eds., The
Medieval Craft of Memory. On Boncompagno more particularly, see
Carruthers, ‘‘Boncompagno at the Cutting Edge,’’ and the bibliography
recorded therein. On rhetoric at Oxford, see Camargo, ‘‘Between Grammar
and Rhetoric,’’ and Medieval Rhetorics of Prose Composition; Woods, ‘‘Teaching
the Tropes in the Middle Ages’ and ‘‘The Teaching of Poetic Composition’’;
and Lanham, ‘‘Writing Instruction.’’
2. See especially Bolzoni, The Web of Images. The thesis of Brian Vickers, In
Defense of Rhetoric, that medieval rhetoric was so fragmented and diffuse that it
had no influence on humanist grammarians of the fifteenth century and later,
has been effectively challenged by the work of John O. Ward, J. J. Murphy,
Kathy Eden, Martin Camargo, Marjorie C. Woods, Rita Copeland, and many
others.
3. A history of the medieval teaching of these two ancient rhetoric textbooks is
well demonstrated in Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric; this study corrects a great
many errors of fact and emphasis in older accounts of medieval rhetoric, such as
that of C. S. Baldwin. The history of teaching rhetoric more generally between
antiquity and early modern humanism is recounted by the essays and translated
texts in Cox and Ward, The Rhetoric of Cicero. I discussed the medieval
academic commentary traditions regarding memoria in the context of practical
memory art between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries in ‘‘Rhetorical
Memoria’’ and in ‘‘How to make a composition.’’ Translations of a number
of medieval works about memory craft, both practical and academic, which are
discussed in The Book of Memory, can be found in Carruthers and Ziolkowski,
eds., The Medieval Craft of Memory.
4. Carruthers, ‘‘Italy, Ars memorativa, and Fame’s House.’’ On the pre-twelfth-
century dissemination of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, see the chapter by
Taylor-Briggs in Cox and Ward, Rhetoric of Cicero.
5. The title, Libellus de formatione arche, has been adopted on good manuscript
authority by its most recent editor, Patrice Sicard (CCCM 176). It was called
De arca Noe mystica in PL, a title now superseded.
6. The text I have used is Traugott Lawler, John of Garland’s Parisiana poetria.
Lawler says that John of Garland’s system was ‘‘applied only to what is said in
the classroom’’ (237, note on lines 87–115), but this is not so, for lines 103–105
counsel paying attention to the page design in order to remember what one
reads. John’s treatise was also probably addressed to elementary students; see
Lawler, xviii–xix.
Notes to pp. 157–161
413
7. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 194–268.
8. In general, I quote Lawler’s translation of the Latin text, but I have made
changes which reflect the meaning of certain words in the context of memory
advice. Distinguo means to ‘‘mark’’ or ‘‘set off’ by a distinctive color or mark, as
well as having the vaguer meaning ‘ separate.’ It also means ‘ punctuate.’ This
phrase in this context is unambiguous advice to make mental notae, perhaps
even in color, as is done in written texts. Autentica means ‘ original’ or ‘‘belong-
ing to the sources,’ not ‘‘authentic’ in our sense; see Chenu, Introduction à
St. Thomas, 109–113.
9. Differentias is an alternative word for distinctio; see Lawler, 239, note to line 108.
10. The use of summary pictures and diagrams in monastic meditation is dis-
cussed in Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, esp. chapter 4.
11. Lawler places a comma in his text between ‘‘linguarum’’ and ‘‘sonorum,’’ but
I think the sense of the passage requires that it not be there; the phrase
translates into English as ‘‘the sounds of languages,’’ that is, familiar words
associated mnemonically with strange ones by homophony, as Bradwardine in
his art of memory uses English words to remember Latin (see Appendix C).
12. The standard study of the development of the Bestiary is McCullough, Medieval
French and Latin Bestiaries, and see also W. Clark, Medieval Book of Birds.
13. See Morson, ‘‘The English Cistercians and the Bestiary,’’ Bulletin of John
Ryland’s Library 39 (1956–7): 146–170; Morson especially discusses the use of
material from the Bestiary in the writings of Aelred of Rielvaux and other
English Cistercians.
14. Philippe de Thaon’s Bestiary is discussed by McCullough, 47–56. On the patron-
age of Adeliza and other notable women aristocrats in Norman England, see the
chapter by Crane on Anglo-Norman literature in The Cambridge History of
Medieval English Literature.
15. Yates, Art of Memory, 118.
16. Host von Romberch, Congestorium artificiose memorie, Venice: Melchiorem
Sessam (1533). The writing of the treatise is dated to 1513. Romberch was a
Dominican friar from Cologne; the work is discussed by Yates, Art of Memory,
122–130, which reproduces some of the many schematic drawings in it.
17. Clark Hulse has suggested to me that this habit may help to explain why even
in the sixteenth century the decoration of many books could be left incom-
plete; if readers were encouraged to supply a memory-image of their own for a
text, they might not have objected as we now would to having books with
missing decoration. Romberch’s advice is aimed at an audience of readers
wishing to retain written material. There is a brief chapter at the end on how to
retain aurally presented material, but he begins by saying that he has little to
offer on the subject beyond the fact that it is the speaker’s duty to speak clearly
and to use vivid gestures (advice going back to antiquity), and he observes that
memorizing from a book is much easier because we can read the text several
times in order to imprint it clearly.
18. I found this passage in Allen, ‘‘Langland’s Reading,’’ 352, where it is discussed
in relation to an entirely different subject.
414
Notes to pp. 163–173
19. Nordenfalk suggests an Egyptian or at least Near Eastern source for the
Eusebian layout. Using a grid to relate pictorial images is a lay-out found
first in mosaics from the Antioch region. The chapter and verse grid format for
the Bible goes back at least to the Masoretic text. All of this fragmentary
evidence would point to a Near Eastern milieu for the beginnings of the
mnemonic use of a grid. The little we can judge of Aristotle’s systems suggests
that he used linear schemes, but whether they constituted a true grid or not is
hard to tell.
20. Obermann, Bishop Thomas Bradwardine, 10–22. The article on Bradwardine
by Murdoch in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography does not mention this
treatise at all. It is reported as a ‘‘doubtful’’ work by J. A. Weisheipl,
‘‘Repertorium Mertonense,’’ 182. Weisheipl examined only the inferior ver-
sion in Sloane 3744 (which he erroneously identifies as Sloane 377). The
internal evidence of the text for date and provenance is strong, as I demon-
strated in my 1992 edition of the text.
21. A much fuller discussion of the authorial and textual problems of this work,
and a description of the manuscripts, is in my edition, Carruthers, ‘‘Thomas
Bradwardine’’; see also the preface to my translation of it in Carruthers and
Ziolkowski, eds., The Medieval Craft of Memory, 205–206.
22. Yates mentions it, Art of Memory, 114, and Beryl Rowland treats it as in the
Herennian tradition in ‘‘Bishop Bradwardine, the Artificial Memory, and the
House of Fame.’’
23. Quintilian says that Metrodorus of Scepsis used the Zodiac as the basis for a
mnemonic system of places (Inst. orat., XI. ii. 22). Nordenfalk describes a
Canon Tables, each one marked with a zodiacal sign, in a tenth-century
manuscript: ‘‘A 10th-Century Gospel.’’ There is no proof that these marks
were being used as a mnemonic, but Nordenfalk comments that the use of the
Zodiac as part of the decoration of Canon Tables was rare. Perhaps in this
instance someone additionally marked the Canon Tables, which already
organized Gospel references for easy collation and recollection, with these
signs from some conventional mnemotechnique
24. In a number of studies, Sandler has analyzed illuminated devotional manu-
scripts made for the Bohun family during the fourteenth century, including at
times and in places that Bradwardine also frequented: these are notably char-
acterized by fanciful grotesques and drolleries in their margins. See Sandler,
‘‘The Word in the Text,’ ‘ Political Imagery,’’ and ‘‘The Writing Bear.’
25. The Rutland Psalter (BL MS. Add. 62925) is dated c. 1260. Its use of marginal
grotesques is ‘‘precociously early’’ in style; see Kauffmann, Romanesque
Painting, no. 112. A facsimile of this psalter was prepared for the Roxburghe
Club by Millar.
26. Albertus, De bono, I V . ii. a. 2. Resp. 11: ‘‘confusio generatur ex parte loci vel
locati vel eius quod actu visibilem facit locum et locatum.’’ See Appendix B for
The Book of Memory Page 71
