The Book of Memory
Page 77
scribendo plura inuenimus quam inuenta scriberemus. Neque enim uel in hoc
meam insipientiam fateri erubesco. Nunc ergo ad propositum reuertentes de
fabricatione arche sapientiae prosequamur.’’
69. Though related to oral composition theories of poetry, the characterization of
oral style in sermons is somewhat different. On oral formulaic style in Greek
poetry, see Parry and Lord. The theory as applicable to medieval poetry has
been considerably modified – see Watts, The Lyre and the Harp; Curschmann,
‘‘Oral Poetry’’; Brewer, ‘‘Orality and Literacy in Chaucer’’; Foley, The Theory
of Oral Composition; and Zumthor, La Poeśie et la voix dans la civilization
me´die´vale.
70. See Leclercq’s essays ‘‘L’Art de la composition’’ and ‘‘Sur la caractère litteŕaire
des Sermons de S. Bernard.’’ Leclercq quotes Robert of Basevorn on Bernard:
‘‘Sciendum quod modus ejus sine modo . . . Hic semper devote, semper
artificialiter procedit’’ (Charland, 247). Notice how, for Basevorn, Bernard’s
seeming artlessness (‘‘modus ejus sine modo’’) is always the product of artful-
ness (‘‘semper artificialiter’’), that is, of his artful memoria which, when
properly designed and adequately stored, allows for what one might call
artfully planned-in-advance-spontaneity. That this ancient goal of oratory
was not thought to be incompatible with monastic humility and silence is
clear from a comment by an anonymous monk, who speaks of ‘‘Bernardus
noster, monachorum Antonius et Tullius oratorum’’ (quoted by Leclercq,
‘‘L’Art de la composition,’’ 153). Another twelfth-century composition that
was formed through internal meditation and dialogue with his community is
Anselm’s Monologion, as he tells us in its preface.
71. Southern, Life of Anselm, 30.
72. Southern, Life of Anselm, 31.
73. The meaning of livore carens is discussed by Southern, Life of Anselm, 30,
note 1. There have been a number of studies by Renaissance scholars of how
modern notions of intellectual ownership and copyright came into being; one
that takes proper account of the late medieval, humanist context within which
those legal notions arose is Eden, Friends Hold All Things in Common.
74. Southern, Life of Anselm, 31. All the earliest copies of Proslogion include the
two additions; see Southern, St. Anselm and His Biographer, 65.
75. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 331–351.
76. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 335.
77. Root, ed., Troilus and Criseyde, esp. lxx–lxxiii. A more recent discussion of the
versions of this poem is the introduction by Windeatt to his edition of Troilus
and Criseyde, who argues that the textual revisions are not authorial but scribal
editing of Chaucer’s foul papers, the state his dictamen might well have been
left in. For a judicious overview of these matters with regard to Chaucer’s
texts, see Fisher, ‘‘Animadversions on the Text of Chaucer, 1988.’’
78. On the problems which such medieval practices present to modern editors
seeking to produce an authoritative text (in the modern sense), see the editors’
introduction to Kane and Donaldson, The B-Text of Piers Plowman, and also
Notes to pp. 264–271
441
Kane, ‘‘John M. Manly and Edith Rickert,’’ in Editing Chaucer, and two essays
by Donaldson, ‘‘Manuscripts R and F in the B-Tradition of Piers Plowman’’
and ‘‘The Psychology of Editors of Middle English Texts.’’ For a consider-
ation of the problem in terms of modern literary theory, see Patterson,
Negotiating the Past, chapter 2.
79. Discussed by Pasquali, Storia della tradizione, esp. 437–449.
80. The situation of a literary text after the mid thirteenth century becomes ever
more complicated as it achieves status as a proper author or Poet in a
vernacular language which is just achieving respectability. The scribes can
assume editorial powers in such cases, and the dialogue of readers with texts
becomes quite complex. The role of commentaries in this process is critical.
81. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible; my remarks on the actual page format-
ting of glossed books owes much to this study. More recently, see Smith,
Masters of the Sacred Page; Gibson, The Bible in the Latin West; and Rouse,
Manuscripts and their Makers.
82. G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible, 46–47; this book and the
earlier studies of the development of Biblical exegesis during the previous
medieval centuries, especially by Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages and The Gospels in the Schools, show how their major scholarly project was
to develop such a line-by-line complete commentary, and how Anselm of
Laon was deliberately reductive and non-controversial in his project, as is
suitable for a study and teaching book. Both books also clearly show how
much more sophisticated advanced commentary had become during these
same centuries.
83. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 22. In order to recapture a somewhat
similar understanding about the inclusive nature of a text, Jacques Derrida
revived the format for his meditation, Glas.
84. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 23. Peter of Poitiers’s Biblical genealogy
is discussed briefly in my next chapter.
85. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 36–37.
86. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 42–44.
87. The page lay-out and decoration of these books has been described well by De
Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, esp. 24–27, 42–44, and 57–58.
88. The commentary sources in this manuscript are discussed in S. Kuttner and
B. Smalley, ‘‘The ‘Glossa Ordinaria’ to the Gregorian Decretals.’’ There are
large illuminated initials at the start of each of the five books of Decretals,
which makes this one of the earliest illuminated Decretals. The basic com-
mentary is the standard beginning commentary put together by Bernard of
Parma, and first promulgated in 1234, so this is quite an early copy.
89. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 25.
90. This manuscript, in Latin, was written for a monastery in Bohemia in the late
fourteenth century. Besides the Fulgentius/Bersuire, it also contains a poor
text of Hugh of Fouilloy’s treatise on the dove and the hawk (discussed in
greater detail in Chapter 7).
91. Pasquali, Storia della tradizione, 446.
442
Notes to pp. 272–274
92. Inst. orat., I I . iv. 27–29.
93. Metalogicon, I . 24. 80–84: ‘‘Siquis autem ad splendorem sui operis alienum
pannum assuerat, deprehensum redarguebat furtum; sed poenam saepissime
non infligebat. Sic uero redargutum si hoc tamen meruerat inepta positio, ad
exprimendam auctorum imaginem, modesta indulgentia conscendere iube-
bat.’’ The image of patching with stolen cloth, as McGarry notes, is both from
Horace, Ars poetica, 16, and from Mt. 9:16, ‘‘no man putteth a piece of new
cloth unto an old garment.’’
94. Aldo Bernardo, whose translation I have used, translates turba as ‘‘mass’’ but
Petrarch is using it specifically in the context of recollection,
and in such a
context turba refers not to mass as such but rather the unorganized, unde-
signed ‘‘crowding’’ of material that overwhelms memory; cf. Albertus Magnus
on Tullius’ rules.
95. Familiares, X X I I , 2; trans. Aldo Bernardo, 213. On the notion of the authoring
text in the early modern period, see Cave, The Cornucopian Text.
C H AP T E R 7
1. Blum, Die Antike Mnemotechnik, esp. 1–17.
2. See Miedema, ‘‘The Term Emblemata in Alciati.’’ An interesting set of late
Middle English meditational emblem-poems was described in an essay by
Thomas W. Ross, ‘‘Five Fifteenth-Century ‘Emblem’ Verses from Brit. Mus.
Addit. MS. 37049.’’ See also Hanning, ‘‘Poetic Emblems in Medieval Narrative
Texts.’’ Since this note was first written, a great deal more work has been done
on Additional 37049, a Carthusian product intended for meditational use, and
others like it, in the light of medieval meditational practices described in the
first edition of The Book of Memory and subsequently in The Craft of Thought.
The early modern emblem books have been much studied and reproduced in
facsimile. Enenkel and Visser, Mundus emblematicus, contains essays by reliable
scholars, and extensive current bibliography.
3. Ma
ˆle, The Gothic Image, esp. 390–396. The phrase laicorum litteratura is from
the twelfth-century meditational treatise, Gemma anima by Honorius
Augustodunensis. Discussing the uses of pictura, the author lists three: ‘‘first,
because it is the reading-material of the laity; secondly, as the house is honored
by such adornment; thirdly, that the life of those who lived before is recalled in
memory’’ (PL 172. 586). The wide currency of such reasons for using pictures is
discussed, with a number of excellent examples, in De Wit, The Visual
Experience of Fifteenth-Century English Readers. Recent discussions of Gregory
and Bishop Serenus include Duggan, ‘‘Was Art Really the ‘Book of the
Illiterate?’’’ and Chazelle, ‘‘Pictures, Books, and the Illiterate’’ and ‘‘‘Not in
Painting but in Writing.’’’ A broader context for the problem is provided by
Frank, The Memory of the Eyes, and Kessler, ‘‘Gregory the Great and Image
Theory,’’ ‘‘Turning a Blind Eye,’’ and Spiritual Seeing, esp. 104–148; see also
Onians, ‘‘Abstraction and Imagination in Late Antiquity,’’ especially on the
ubiquitous use of verbal ekphrasis in late antique literature, and B. Newman,
Notes to pp. 275–277
443
‘‘What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw?’’’ on the role of human agency in garnering
divine visions. Important discussions of the philosophical problems raised by
painted and sculpted images in the Middle Ages, West and East, include
Belting, Likeness and Presence, and Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform
and History as a Visual Art.
4. ‘‘Sicut enim littere quodam modo fiunt uerborum figure et note, ita et pictura
scriptarum rerum existunt similitudines et note’’; Gilbert Crispin, Disputatio
Iudei et Christiani, section 157 (ed. Abulafia and Evans, 52). See also Camille,
‘‘The Book of Signs,’’ esp. 135–138.
5. On the matter of reading the decorative apparatus of medieval books, see
especially the comments of Alexander, The Decorated Letter, Parkes, ‘‘The
Concepts Ordinatio and Compilatio,’’ and Camille, ‘‘The Book of Signs.’’ On
the role of ornament more generally, see the acute comments of Grabar, The
Mediation of Ornament; Grabar focuses on Islamic art but his remarks have
general relevance.
6. Gregory I, Registrum epistularum, X I . 10. 22–26: ‘‘Aliud est enim picturam
adorare, aliud per picturae historiam quid sit adorandum addiscere. Nam
quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa
ignorantes uident quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt;
unde praecipue gentibus pro lectione pictura est.’’ Gregory expressed the same
sentiment in an earlier letter (IX. 209, written July, 599) to Bishop Serenus
regarding the same incident: ‘‘Idcirco enim pictura in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi
qui litteras nesciunt saltem in parietibus uidendo legant, quae legere in
codicibus non ualent’’ (lines 12–14): ‘‘For this reason painting should be
used in churches, that those who do not know letters at least by looking at
the walls may read those [things] which they are not able to read in books.’’
Notice the use of the verb legere for both books and painting. The relationship
of these two letters (and the issue of their genuineness) is discussed by
Chazelle, ‘‘Not in Painting but in Writing.’’
7. See above, Chapter 2. The matter is also discussed at length in The Craft of
Thought, especially chapters 2, 3, and 4. Kessler underscores the point in
‘‘Turning a Blind Eye’’; the ambiguity created by consistently using the
word imago for both physical and mental images throughout the Middle
Ages has caused a great deal of problems for unwary historians. A similar
ambiguity can attend the use of verbs like pingo and describo in verbal
ekphrases, as demonstrated later in this chapter.
8. The modern edition is by Segre
´. The Bestiaire and its Response have been
admirably discussed by Beer, Beasts of Love, who also translated the work,
though I have made my own here. Sylvia Huot first drew my attention to
Richard; she discusses his work in From Song to Book.
9. These commonplaces Richard could have found in Isidore; see Segre
´’s intro-
duction to his edition, vii–viii, and note 3.
10. Richard de Fournival, Li Bestiaire d’amours: ‘‘Ceste memoire si a .ij. portes,
veir et oir, et a cascune de ces .ij. portes si a un cemin par ou i puet aler, che
sont painture et parole’’; 4.
444
Notes to pp. 277–281
11. Richard de Fournival, Li Bestiaire d’amours: ‘‘Car quant on voit painte une
estoire, ou de Troies ou d’autre, on voit les fais des preudommes ki cha en
ariere furent, ausi com s’il fussent present. Et tout ensi est il de parole. Car
quant on ot .i. romans lire, on entent les aventures, ausi com on les ve¨ıst en
present’’; 5.
12. Richard de Fournival, Li Bestiaire d’amours: ‘‘Car il est bien apert k’il a parole,
par che ke toute escripture si est faite pour parole monstrer et pour che ke on le
lise; et quant on le list, si revient elle a nature de parole. Et d’autre part, k’il ait
painture si est en apert par che ke lettre n’est mie, s’on ne le paint’’; 5.
13. On energeia/enargeia in medieval meditative practice, see The Craft of Thought,
130–142. The figure is discussed by Aristotle, Rhetoric, I I I . 10–11, and by
Quintilian, Inst. orat., VIII. iii, especially (as ornatus). On Aristotle’s use of
the term, see both Kennedy’s translation of the Rhetoric and S. Newman,
‘‘Aristotle’s Notion of ‘Bringing-Before-the-Eyes.’’’
14. Richard de Fournival, Li Bestiaire d’amours: ‘‘Car je vous envoie en cest escrit
et painture et parole, pour che ke, quant je ne serais presens, ke cis escris par sa
painture et par sa parole me rendre a vostre memoire comme present’’; 6–7.
Beer translates escris as ‘‘composition,’’ a word that does not capture how
writing itself was thought to have painture, as a scribe was referred to as pictor,
and the verb describere can mean both ‘‘write’’ and ‘‘describe.’’
15. Parkes, ‘‘The Concepts Ordinatio and Compilatio.’’
16. Dante Alighieri, La vita nuova: ‘‘In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria
dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice:
Incipit vita nova. Sotto la quale rubrica io trovo scritte le parole le quali è mio
intendimento d’assemplare in questo libello; e se non tutte almeno la loro
sentenzia.’’ Edited by M. Barbi for the Società Dantesca Italiana; translated by
Charles Singleton, An Essay on the Vita Nuova, 26. I discussed this passage also
in Carruthers, ‘ Ars inveniendi, ars memorativa.’’
17. Singleton, Essay on the Vita Nuova, esp. 25–42.
18. DeWit discusses this poem, calling attention to its heavy visual emphasis,
24–28. The text is in Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. McCracken, 268–279.
I discussed an anonymous poem composed about this same, the so-called
‘‘Long Charter of Christ,’’ whose visual layout in CUL MS. Ii. 3. 26 helps to
demonstrate the ekphrasis and prosopopeia of the words, which invite the
reader continually to remember and recollect the Passion, in The Craft of
Thought, 102–103.
19. Similarly, in ‘‘The Second Nun’s Tale,’’ the figure of St. Paul appears in order
to speak a text from Ephesians (Canterbury Tales, VIII. 200–216).
20. These examples are given by Alexander, ‘‘Scribes as Artists,’’ 107–109. See also
now his comprehensive study, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of
Work.
21. Nordenfalk, Kanonta
¨flen, 46–54, and the same author’s ‘‘Beginnings of Book
Decoration,’’ 9–15 (the quotation is from p. 10).
22. De Hamel, Glossed Books of the Bible, 60.
23. Nordenfalk, ‘‘Beginnings of Book Decoration,’’ 12.
Notes to pp. 282–291
445
24. The excellent study prepared in connection with the 1996 exhibit of the
Utrecht Psalter in the Catharijne Convent museum in Utrecht includes a
lengthy analysis of the manuscript by van der Horst (van der Horst et al., The