The Book of Memory

by Mary Carruthers

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