Masters, Pupils, Friends, And Thieves. A Fashion of Ars memorativa in the Environment of the Early German Humanists

Abstract

This article considers several issues regarding the art of memory (ars memorativa) that can be observed in printed treatises composed by early German humanists. It seems that between about 1474 and 1530 it was fashionable for some German scholars to compose, compile and publish mnemonic treatises of their own. There is evidence that the treatises by, e.g., Matheolus Perusinus, Jacobus Publicius, Conrad Celtis, Petrus de Ravenna, Jodocus Wetzdorf, Conrad Umhauser, Hermann von dem Busche or Johannes Cusanus were widely read and spread at the turn of the 16th century. The characteristic features of the treatises, their structure and the format from this period, such as the quantitative analysis of the treatises printed till the end of the 15th century, are considered in the article. The other part of the text focuses on the environment of the German humanists who used to read and write mnemonic treatises, exchange ideas and, sometimes, even thieve them from one another.