Two Books Press

The Curricula

The Craft of Memory

A four-year course in the medieval arts of memory. Students learn to divide, number, place, and picture what they read, so that it stays with them and can be used.

A drawn hand on parchment, each joint labeled with a note of the musical scale.
Guidonian hand, Mantua, late 15th century. Bodleian Library, MS Canon. Liturg. 216.

What it teaches

For most of Western history a trained memory was the mark of an educated person, and the training was taught. Quintilian called memory the treasure-house of eloquence. Hugh of Saint Victor taught his students to lay the Psalter up by number. Medieval readers stored whole books in ordered places and could walk through them at will.

The Craft of Memory recovers that training, following the anthology of Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski, The Medieval Craft of Memory. Freshmen begin where medieval schoolboys began: with number, the hand, and the page. The architectural art of places and images arrives in the second year, as it did in the schools.

Nothing is memorized for its own sake. Every passage is stored for a use, most of it as the substance of a thing, a smaller part word for word: Scripture, psalms, maxims, and the poems the student recites.

The first year

Year 1 runs on the same 36-week calendar as Gradus ad Montem, unit for unit, and stores the matter each writing unit will spend.

  1. Fable and the Treasury · setting up the florilegium, the student's own book
  2. Narrative and the Numbered Grid · storing a true story, and the Odyssey
  3. Chreia and the Hand · the hand as a memory place, and the sayings of the wise
  4. Maxim and the Alphabet · the letter-pictures, and the Beatitudes

Two threads run through all four years: the Gospel of Matthew, built chapter by chapter into one memory figure, and the Psalms, learned by number.

The shape of a week

Four sessions a week of about 25 minutes, each opening with the Sign of the Cross and the unit's verse and closing with the student's rumination log. At home, five minutes before bed: the day's new matter murmured once. Review weeks and two audits a year keep the whole store in reach.

At a glance

Who it's for
High school students, beginning in ninth grade.
Time
About 25 minutes a day, four days a week, 36 weeks a year.
In the box
Student Book · Teacher Book · Record Sheet · Drill Cards
Also needed
A sewn blank book, three colors of ink, and one large sheet of paper. The readings are public domain and free.
Works with
Stands alone. Shares its calendar with Gradus ad Montem, and its florilegium can serve as that course's commonplace book.
A medieval master seated at a lectern, writing in a book, beneath the words Magister Hugo.
Hugh of Saint Victor writing, 13th century. Leiden University Library, MS Vulcanius 45.

Sample pages

Two Student Book pages: the opening of Unit 1, Fable and the Treasury, with a reading from Quintilian, and a table for setting up the florilegium.
Unit 1 begins with Quintilian on the treasure-house of memory, then sets up the florilegium.
Two pages of drill card sheets, each a table of card calls and answers.
Drill card sheets, ready to print on cardstock and cut.

All sample pages →

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