The Emblem in Early Modern Europe by Peter M. Daly

Author:Peter M. Daly [Daly, Peter M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 17th Century, Literary Criticism, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781351890830
Google: eRSoDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05T16:19:22+00:00

Figure 5.12 Jakob Bosch Symbolographia, Augsburg and Dillingen 1701. The book contains 2052 illustrations on the plates. Reproduced by permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections

There is little doubt that the ars memorativa played a role in some educational systems during the early modern period, including the education of Jesuits. To what extent these artificial arts impacted the Jesuit creation of emblems is unclear. Having read many Jesuit emblems, I find little evidence. It is true that the famous Jesuit of the Chinese mission of the early modern period, Matteo Ricci, created in 1596 a memory palace for the influential Chinese governor of Jiangxi province, Lu Wangai, of the Ming dynasty bureaucracy.53 Ricci had become fluent in Chinese and had discussed his view of artificial memory with local Chinese scholars and was also “seeking to instruct in mnemonic skills” (Spence, 4) the Governor’s family. Lu had three sons who were about to take the all-important advanced government examinations, the “surest route to fame and fortune” (Spence, 4). Ricci was using a tried and true Jesuit technique of influencing the powerful in order to further a Catholic cause. As Spence puts it: “Thus we can be almost certain that Ricci was offering to teach the governor’s sons advanced memory techniques so that they would have a better chance to pass the exams, and would then in gratitude use their newly won prestige to advance the cause of the Catholic church” (Spence, 4). If it had worked so well in Bavaria, when not in China?

The governor’s sons did well in their exams but probably not because of Ricci’s artificial arts of memory. Their success was likely due to traditional Chinese methods of training memory by repetition and recitation. In fact the eldest son was cited by Ricci himself as noting that these artificial arts of memory demanded a fine memory in the first place (see Spence, 4)

The ars memorativa had featured in Ricci’s education at the Jesuit College in Rome in the classes on rhetoric and ethics, where among others Pliny and Quintilian were read.

The idea of order or sequence seems important. In the arts of artificial memory the order in which words and things are presented or remembered was also important to Ricci. But vivid illustrations were likewise important to Ricci, who took with him to China a copy of the illustrated Nadal. But the extent to which Nadal’s work, vividly visual though the printed version is, may be considered in the context of artificial memory seems to be doubtful. Nadal is surely more indebted to Ignatian notions of the importance of sight, of the visual experience, which should be pressed into the service of religious meditation. Especially modern readers of emblems often seek in vain for an order in which the individual emblems are presented. These emblems may have visual motifs, but each emblem tends to be complete in itself, perhaps a miniature form of allegory and often with no or little relationship to what goes before or comes after.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.