The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [46]
A detail from the Giotto frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua shows the meeting between Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate. Note the early attempt at perspective.
In the frescoes of S. Maria Novella in Florence the order of seven arts, seven virtues, seven sins, is depicted. In the painting of the four cardinal virtues, additional memory cues are provided. The figure of Prudence holds a circle (representing time) in which are written the eight parts of the virtue. Putting together the images, the layout, and the use of lettering, it was thus possible to derive an entire system of knowledge from one mnemonic fresco. Cathedrals became enormous memory theatres built to aid the worshippers to recall the details of heaven and hell.
Mnemonics were also used by the growing university population. All lectures were read from a set text to which teachers added their glosses, or comments. Many of the instructions to students took the form of mnemonic lists and abbreviations for use when the time came for examinations.
For those who were rich enough to be familiar with written manuscripts, there was a difference between reading and writing which has since disappeared. A member of a noble family would have in his household at least one person who could read and another who could write. Letters were almost never read by the recipient, but by these servants. Moreover, a servant who could read would not necessarily be able to write. As will be seen, writing was a separate art requiring much more than simple knowledge of the shape of letters.
Our modern word ‘auditing’ comes from this practice of hearing, for accounts would be read aloud to those concerned. Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds heard his accounts once a week. Pope Innocent III could read, but always had letters read aloud to him. It was this habit which explains the presence in the text of warnings such as, ‘Do not read this in the presence of others as it is secret.’ In fact, those who could read silently were regarded with some awe. St Augustine, speaking in the fifth century about St Ambrose, said: ‘… a remarkable thing… when he was reading his eye glided over the pages and his heart sensed out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.rsquo;
It was for this reason that writing fell under the discipline of rhetoric in the schools, since writing was meant to be read aloud. Early charters, or land grants, would therefore often end with the word valete (goodbye), as if the donor had finished speaking to his listeners. Even today, wills are still read aloud.
It was this oral habit which separated reading from writing. The former used the voice, the latter the hand and eye. But even writing was not a silent occupation. In the thirteenth century, with the influx of new knowledge and with the general economic improvement, the demand for manuscripts grew. Monasteries began to partition off one wall of their cloisters, dividing it into small cubicles, some no wider than 2 feet 9 inches, to accommodate monks whose duty it was to copy manuscripts. These cubicles were called ‘carols’. They usually had window spaces facing the garden or cloister of the church, and in bad weather oiled paper, rush matting or glass and wood partitions could be erected to fill these spaces.
The novel use, in the Arena Chapel, of dramatic and realistic figures to impress the virtues and vices on the memory. Here, Charity receives gifts from heaven as generously as she dispenses them to others from her bowl.
A general view of the Arena Chapel frescoes, painted deliberately in vivid and memorable style, which were to be ‘read’ in order and remembered by