discussions of the matter, including mine, are derived. In addition, see Chenu’s
discussion of the matter in Towards Understanding St. Thomas, 130–132.
4. Jerome, ‘‘Commentary on Galatians,’’ cited in Lewis and Short, s.v. origi-
nalis; see also s.v. auctor.
5. Petrarch, Secretum, I I , trans. Draper, 102. The Latin reads: ‘‘Laudo hec, quibus
abundare te video, poetice narrationis archana. Sive enim id Virgilius ipse sensit,
dum scriberet, sive ab omni tali consideratione remotissimus, maritimam his
Notes to pp. 237–239
435
versibus et nil aliud describere voluit tempestatem; hoc tamen, quod de
irarum impetu et rationis imperio dixisti, facete satis et proprie dictum
puto’’; Petrarca, Opere, 124, 126.
6. On the development of the ars dictaminis, considered crucial to the needs of
increasing administrations both ecclesiastical and royal, see Haskins, ‘ Artes
dictandi,’’ and Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Training for notaries (that
is, legal and administrative officials) at universities like Padua and Bologna
included both ars dictaminis and the ars notataria; see Siraisi, Arts and Sciences,
33–65.
7. Epistulae morales, 84. All references are to this edition; the translations are my
own. This particular commonplace was quoted intact by Macrobius in the
preface to his Saturnalia, and it appears frequently in later medieval collec-
tions as well. A brief history of some of its citations, beginning in the seventh
century, is in Rouse and Rouse, Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons, 115–117.
Thomas of Ireland used it extensively in the preface to his florilegial collection,
Manipulus florum; this collection was one of the most widely circulated and
longest-lived of the florilegial collections for preachers, and is the subject of
the Rouses’ fine study.
8. In this same epistle, Seneca also counsels reading and writing together to blend
one with the other, ‘‘so that what has been collected from our reading, our
stylus may render in graphic form.’’ For the Jerome reference see Chapter 5,
note 102 above.
9. See Greene, The Light in Troy; this trope in particular is discussed, 72–80.
Telfer, ‘‘Bees in Clement of Alexandria,’’ considers the trope in early
Christianity. See also the study of Erasmus’s Adagia by Eden, Friends Hold
All Things in Common, which importantly considers humanist ideas of intel-
lectual property, based in Christian as well as pagan antiquity.
10. Greene, The Light in Troy, chapters 2 and 3.
11. A comprehensive study of this rich idea in Augustine is Stock, Augustine the
Reader.
12. The late Latin formation moderni (always contrasted with antiqui) is discussed
by Curtius, esp. 251–255. Southern has well analyzed the historical conscious-
ness of twelfth-century scholars like John of Salisbury, in contrast to that of the
Renaissance – see Medieval Humanism, 105–132. Southern notes that twelfth-
century writers looked to the past ‘‘only for the quite practical purpose of
equipping themselves to look forward’ (126). A relationship between
Froissard’s ‘‘careless’’ attitude towards fact in his chronicle of the English
and French wars and the scholastic definitions of memory found in Duns
Scotus is the subject of Janet Coleman’s essay on ‘‘Late Medieval Memoria.’’
Coleman encounters a perennial problem of traditional intellectual history,
however, because she cannot connect the formulations of a limited intellectual
elite, represented by Scotus, to a general literary culture, represented by
Froissard; that connection is to be found in rhetorical memoria. A more
complete discussion of the historiographical problem is in Coleman, Ancient
and Medieval Memories.
436
Notes to pp. 240–245
13. See L. Smith, Masters of the Sacred Page, for the development of visual page lay-
out and commentary traditions. Smith suggests that the page format of a large-
letter central text (in the script called textualis), with interlinear glosses plus
layers of commentary written in generous margins – which for all its technical
difficulties was adopted very rapidly for study books in Europe during the
twelfth century – was first used for books of law (in the teaching of which
commentary was vital), thence for Biblical material. Examples are illustrated in
Smith’s Figures 5 and 6. See also Gibson, The Bible in the Latin West, esp. her
introductory survey of types and Plate 14.
14. The story is in Southern, Life of Anselm, 150–151; my quotations are from these
pages.
15. Dondaine, Les Secre´taires, 17.
16. OED, s.v. maker; cf. MED, same heading. The word writer could be used,
from a very early time, to mean author, but this was not its primary meaning
until very recently (OED, s.v. writer). In Middle English, the primary mean-
ing of writer was ‘‘one who writes, a penman.’’ Chaucer’s scribe Adam has been
identified as Adam Pinkhurst, a member of the London Scriveners Company
whom Chaucer employed over the course of two decades: see Mooney,
‘‘Chaucer’s Scribe.’’
17. Marrou, Histoire de l’e´ducation, 230–231, 375, 522, note 13, and 553, note 30.
18. Inst. orat., X . iii. 15.
19. Aristotle, De anima, I I I , 11. 434a 9–10; see Wolfson, esp. 91–93.
20. This was especially true of Thomas Aquinas; see Wolfson, 122.
21. Wolfson, 78, referring to Metaphysics, 6. 1027b 29–30, and De anima, I I I , 7.
431a 14–17: ‘‘when the object [of perception] is pleasant or painful, the soul
makes a sort of affirmation or negation, and pursues or avoids the object. To
feel pleasure or pain is to act with the sensitive mean towards what is good or
bad as such. Both avoidance and appetite when actual are identical with this:
the faculty of appetite and avoidance are not different, either from one another
or from the faculty of sense-perception; but their being is different. To the
thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception (and when it
asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues them). That is
why the soul never thinks without an image (phantasmatos)’’; (trans. by
J. A. Smith of the text ed. by Ross). The passage in the Metaphysics defines
the combinative and separative functions of judgment.
22. D’Avray describes the contents of small, pocket-sized books (vademecum),
which mendicant friars carried with them; these contain sermon models
and other sermon aids. In one, the sermons are written out only as sets of
rhyming headings to which Scriptural texts are attached. This is truly a
model or outline of subject matters for a sermon, the res which an individual
preacher would then be able to expand extempore; The Preaching of the
Friars, 59–60.
23. De memoria augenda, s. 2b; I refer to the Huntington Library copy, published
at Rome, c. 1493. Matheolus was greatly influenced by Hugh of St. Victor, as
well as the standard trio of Thomas Aquinas, Cicero, and Aristotle.
Notes to pp. 245–252
437
24. Heroides, 18, 19–20: ‘‘talibus exiguo dictis mihi murmure verbis, / ceter
a cum
charta dextra locuta mea est.’’ Cited by Balogh, 214–216; see also McCartney,
‘‘Notes on Reading.’’
25. Conf., X . ix. I have used the Latin text of Verheijen, CCSL 27.
26. The quoted words are from Conf., X . xi.
27. Augustine took these etymologies from the Roman lexicographer, Varro; the
frequentive intensifier -ito is added to the root in each case.
28. Sermones. 225; PL 38. 1097: ‘ Et ego scio . . . nec ego comprehendo; sed cogitatio
facit nos extendi, extensio dilatat nos, dilatatio nos capaces facit.’’ This sermon
was preached to the newly baptized (infantes) on Easter, c. 400–405.
29. Conf., X . xvii.
30. Southern, Life of Anselm by Eadmer, x. Mackey, ‘ Inter nocturnas vigilias:
A Proof Postponed,’’ gives an excellent analysis of the composition of the
Proslogion, stressing its origin in prayerful emotion.
31. Southern, Life of Anselm by Eadmer, 29–30. I have given a part of the Latin text
in parentheses because, while Southern’s is an excellent English translation, it
cannot entirely preserve the connotations of the original.
32. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, esp. 6–14, 401–404.
33. Gui, c. 14, transl. Foster, 37. Cf. Tocco, c. 30 (AASS, March I . 669F): ‘‘post
brevem somnum in sua camera . . . in loco, quem sibi ad orandum elegerat, in
oratione prostratus; ubi orando mereretur addiscere, quae oportuisset post
orationem scribere vel dictare.’’
34. Tocco, c. 31 (AASS, March I . 670B), trans. Foster, 70: ‘‘ut affectus orando
mereretur ad divina ingredi, et intellectus huius merito intueri, quae altius
intelligeret, quo affectus ardentius in id, quod luce caperet, amore flagraret.’’
Thomas Aquinas is one of Murray’s examples of an individual in whom
‘‘monastic’’ and ‘‘intellectual’’ cultures coexisted; Reason and Society, 340.
Evidently, Anselm would be another.
35. Gui, c. 16, trans. Foster, 38.
36. Foster, 37. Recall that Quintilian suggests lying on one’s back to stimulate
invention. A posture associated with Augustine during meditational compo-
sition is seated, bowed over with his knees drawn up, and his head in his hand;
see the plates in Courcelle, Les Confessions. A typical posture of composition in
later medieval portraiture shows the composer sitting at a desk with his scribal
pen and knife, staring into space before a blank sheet. I am indebted to
Michael Camille for pointing this out to me.
37. The forma tractatus/tractandi is discussed particularly by Minnis, Theory of
Authorship; see also Allen, Ethical Poetic, and Simpson, ‘‘Modes of Thought
and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman.’’
38. Ars rhetorica, I I I , 13.
39. Ars rhetorica, c. 23 ‘‘De memoria’’ (Halm, Rhetores latini minores, 440).
40. Inst. orat., V I I I . vi. 64.
41. This and the preceding quotation are from Inst. orat., X . iii. 2.
42. Inst. orat., X . iii. 3. On the translation of Quintilian’s phrase ‘‘sanctiore aerario
conditae,’’ see Russell’s note in the new Loeb translation, 336.
438
Notes to pp. 252–256
43. Inst. orat., X . iii. 25.
44. Inst. orat., X . iii. 21.
45. Inst. orat., X . iii. 17.
46. Inst. orat., X . iii. 28.
47. Inst. orat., X . iii. 31–32.
48. Inst. orat., X . vi. 1.
49. Inst. orat., X . vi. 5.
50. Inst. orat., X . vii. 1–29; all quotations in this paragraph are from that chapter.
51. Quintilian uses the same phrase used also in the Ad Herennium, imagines
rerum. It is thus apparent that he did not despise the making of such images;
on the contrary, he regards them as most necessary, but as additional associ-
ations to stir the orator’s memory not as a substitute for the heuristic of
divisions marked in orderly sequences.
52. Inst. orat., I . ii. 30.
53. Inst. orat., V I . ii. 29; cf. X . vii. 15. See also I V . ii. 121ff., where Quintilian
describes the usefulness of imagines rerum to engage the intentio of the
audience as well. But this motive is always secondary to their necessity to the
author.
54. Inst. orat., X . vii. 32.
55. Cited by Rosen (30), from the 1839 edition of Giordano’s sermons, 121.
Modern editions of Giordano da Pisa’s sermons are appearing with some
regularity, beginning with Delcorno’s 1974 edition of the Lenten sermons, and
see especially Delcorno’s 1975 study of him, Giordano da Pisa. His technique is
discussed as typical of early fourteenth-century Pisan Dominican preaching by
Bolzoni, The Web of Images, 1–40.
56. Cited by Rosen (31), from the 1839 edition of Giordano (60), vol. 386 in the
series ‘‘Biblioteca scelta di opere italiane antiche e moderne.’’ This passage was
subsequently quoted in the biographical preface to Narducci’s 1867 edition of
Giordano’s Prediche inedite, xx, note 1. All of these editions are described by
Delcorno, xv–xvii.
57. On the editorial problems presented by a lack of author-corrected exemplars,
see Delcorno’s introduction to Quaresimale Fiorentino, esp. lxxii–lxxiv.
58. Deferrari, ‘‘Augustine’s Composition,’’ 108, citing Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 42. 26 (‘‘Farewell Sermon’’), PG 36. 492A (more recently ed.
Bernardi, SC 384). The word Gregory uses, graphides, refers to incising with
a stylus on wax tablets rather than writing with a reed pen or kalamos, which
was used on papyrus: see Liddel and Scott, s.v. CPAUX, and Thomas, Literacy
and Orality in Ancient Greece, esp. 64–88.
59. Deferrari, ‘‘Augustine’s Composition,’’ 105; cf. PG 67. 741. Deferrari cites
much evidence of similar practices, 101–106; in De doctrina christiana, IV.
62–63, Augustine recommends the practice of ex tempore composition of
sermons but allows that some preachers may need to memorize and deliver
what others have composed eloquently and wisely before.
60. Sermones, 225, 3 (PL 38. 1097): ‘‘ecce ego qui vobiscum loquor, antequam ad
vos venirem, cogitavi ante quod vobis dicerem. Quando cogitavi quod vobis
Notes to pp. 256–259
439
dicerem, jam in corde meo verbum erat. Non enim vobis dicerem, nisi ante
cogitarem.’’ Augustine is preaching on the text ‘‘Verbum erat apud Deum’’
(Jn. 1:1) , so the word verbum is a pun in this sermon – moreover, on this
occasion verbum is the res (subject) of his sermon, a paradox of the sort
Augustine relished.
61. Examples occur throughout Giordano’s sermons, especially when he spoke
twice in a day. The reporter will note that Friar Giordano finished his sermon
later, ‘‘but I was not there and so I didn’t write down any more.’’ Examples are
in Delcorno’s edition, 105, 284, and 418.
62. Inst. orat., X I . ii. 47.
63. Cicero, Brutus, 139.
64. De archa Noe, I . i. 12–16: ‘‘In qua collatione, quia quedam specialiter placuisse
fratribus scio, ea potissimum stilo commendare uolui, non tantum ideo quod
ea digna scribi existimem, quam idcirco quod quibusdam prius inaudita et ob
hoc quodammodo magis grata esse cognoui’’; ed. Sicard, CCCM 176.
All
references are to this edition; the translation is that of ‘‘a Religious of CMSV.’’
The treatise has a different title in the Patrologia Latina edition (PL 176.
618–680), De arca Noe morali; the accompanying ekphrastic picture-summary
of the work, thought to be related but separate by the PL editors and titled De
arca Noe mystica (PL 176. 681–702), is now considered properly to be a fifth
book and is so presented by Sicard, with the heading Libellus de formatione
arche.
65. Isidore, Sententiae, I I I . 14. In this same chapter Isidore also defines, as part of
the same topic, the difference between reading aloud and silently, and the
need for memoria. See Chapter 5 above.
66. The structurally exceptional phrase in De archa Noe, I I . xvi. 7–8, is ‘‘per
circunspectionem frondet et expandit ramos,’’ which is an elision of two
three-word phrases. It is worth paying attention to these internally rhyming
figures of speech in medieval treatises, which often occur where one would
expect an orientating summary or outline of what is to follow at the start of a
major new section in a work (as here, between Books II and III).
67. De archa Noe, I I I . i. 3–4. Hugh had concluded, after the summary verses
outlining the stages of the arbor sapientiae which he will develop next, that
they all needed a break from such long-winded discourse: ‘‘Sed quia longius
sermo processit, paululum respiremus’ (II. xvi.11). Though this treatise was
obviously written down, Hugh is careful to maintain the feel of an oral delivery,
which makes the close connection of this meditation to the wholly verbal
ekphrastic picture accompanying it particularly interesting. A similar twelfth-
century treatise with an ekphrasis is the meditation on the Exodus Tabernacle
by the Norbertine canon Adam of Dryburgh, composed around 1180. The
ekphrasis is used as a device to organize a meditation on the life of the Church,
much as Hugh of St. Victor uses Noah’s Ark; see Carruthers, The Craft of
Thought, 237–254. The Norbertines were closely connected to the Victorines.
68. De archa Noe, I I I . xvii. 43–49: ‘‘Sed iam, dum incidentium rationum exposi-
tionem prosequimur, longius a proposito nostro digressi sumus. Vnde et de
440
Notes to pp. 260–264
hoc quoque ueniam postulamus, quia, ut uerum fatear, sepius in hoc tractatu
The Book of Memory Page 76
