THE ART OF MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
duced to the correct classical memory images for those 'things', the liberal arts. In the barbarised world, the voices of the orators were silenced. People cannot meet together peacefully to listen to speeches when there is no security. Learning retreated into the monasteries and the art of memory for rhetorical purposes became unnecessary, though Quintilianist memorising of a prepared written page might still have been useful. Cassiodorus, one of the founders of monasticism, does not mention the artificial memory in the rhetoric section of his encyclopaedia on the liberal arts. Nor is it mentioned by Isidore of Seville or the Venerable Bede. One of the most poignant moments in the history of Western civilisation is Charlemagne's call to Alcuin to come to France to help to restore the educational system of antiquity in the new Carolingian empire. Alcuin wrote a dialogue 'Concerning Rhetoric and the Virtues' for his royal master, in which Charlemagne seeks instruction on the five parts of rhetoric. When they reach memory, the conversation is as follows: Charlemagne. What, now, are you to say about Memory, which I deem to be the noblest part of rhetoric ? Alcuin. What indeed unless I repeat the words of Marcus Tullius that 'Memory is the treasure-house of all things and unless it is made custodian of the thought-out things and words, we know that all the other parts of the orator, however distinguished they may be, will come to nothing'. Charlemagne. Are there not other precepts which tell us how it can be obtained or increased. Alcuin. We have no other precepts about it, except exercise in memorising, practice in writing, application to study, and the avoidance of drunkenness which does the greatest possible injury to all good studies...5 The artificial memory has disappeared! Its rules have gone, replaced by 'avoid drunkenness'! Alcuin had few books at bis disposal; he compiled his rhetoric from two sources only, Cicero's 5
W. S. Howell, The Rhetoric of Charlemagne and Alcuin (Latin text, English translation and introduction), Princeton and Oxford, 1941, pp. 136-9.
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