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Managing Knowledge: Diagrammatic Glosses to Medieval Copies of the Rhetorica ad Herennium

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Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the relationship between diagrammatic glossing and the interpretation of the text of the Rhetorica ad Herennium in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Using four manuscripts containing marginal diagrammatic notations to the text, the article shows how the pseudo-Ciceronian manual was first read through the lens of De inventione, with cross-referencing between the two texts common, while in the later period the diagrams tended to summarise the text as given, using mnemonic techniques such as division and enumeration to prompt and formulate the diagrams. In so doing, the article shows how diagrammatic glossing is a valuable alternative to textual glossing, and an important knowledge management device.

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Notes

  1. Notable studies include M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge, 2008 and her The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, Cambridge, 1998. See also The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. M. Carruthers and J. M. Ziolkowski, Philadelphia, 2002, pp. 3-30, for a general survey.

  2. See, for example, Cologne, Dombibliothek MS 166, dating from the 8th century, where the copies of Fortunatianus’s Ars rhetorica, and Victorinus’s Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetoricam are accompanied by diagrams. Cassiodorus’s Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum contained thirty-seven diagrams, including seven diagrams on the art of rhetoric – as seen in Bamberg Staatsbibliothek MS Patr. 61, also dating from the 8th century.

  3. I am completing a monograph on the use of diagrams in medieval rhetorical study in the 11th and 12th centuries, with particular reference to De inventione. See also I. O'Daly, ‘Diagrams of Knowledge and Rhetoric in Manuscripts of Cicero’s De inventione’, in Manuscripts of the Latin Classics 800-1200, ed. E. Kwakkel, Leiden, 2015, pp. 77-105. Note the examination of some of the theoretical issues at play in M. Carruthers, ‘Rhetorical Memoria in Commentary and Practice’ in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 209-37.

  4. On the early transmission of the Rhetorica ad Herennium see R. Taylor-Briggs, ‘Reading Between the Lines: The Textual History and Manuscript Transmission of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 77-96.

  5. B. Munk Olsen, ‘The Production of the Classics in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics: Production and Use, ed. C. A. Chavannes-Mazel and M. M. Smith, London, 1996, pp. 1-17 (17).

  6. Studies include C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge MA, 1927, pp. 93-158; J. Martin, ‘Classicism and Style in Latin Literature’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson, G. Constable and C. D. Lanham, Cambridge MA, 1982, pp. 537-68; R. N. Swanson, The Twelfth-Century Renaissance, Manchester, 1999, pp. 43-54.

  7. A. J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance, Philadelphia, 2013.

  8. J. O. Ward, ‘The Medieval and Early Renaissance Study of Cicero’s De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 3-75 (58-9).

  9. Studies include J. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts, Chicago, 2008, pp. 92-155; S. Kuttner, ‘The Revival of Jurisprudence’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson, G. Constable and C. D. Lanham, Cambridge MA, 1982, pp. 299-323.

  10. For example, the 14th-century library catalogue of Lanthony (Gloucestershire) records a ‘Retorica prima et secunda et quartus topicorum in vno volumen’, presumably De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium bound with the fourth book of Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, which concerned rhetoric. The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, ed. T. Webber and A. G. Watson, London, 1998, p. 76.

  11. Patrologia Latina, CLXXI, cols 1687-92.

  12. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, transl. M. F. Nims, Toronto: 2010. On the use of the figures in the medieval period see M. Caramago, ‘Latin Composition Textbooks and Ad Herennium Glossing’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 268-77. For the practical employment of the figures in the ars dictandi see I. S. Robinson, ‘The "Colores rhetorici" in the Investiture Contest’, Traditio, 32, 1976, pp. 209-38.

  13. Ward itemizes nine or ten commentaries on the text dating from the 11th-12th centuries, surviving either in complete or fragmentary form: ‘Medieval and Early Renaissance Study’ (n. 8 above), pp. 70-5. For a general treatment of these commentaries see K. M. Fredborg, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric and the Schools’, in Learning Institutionalized: Teaching in the Medieval University, ed. J. Van Engen, Notre Dame, 2000, pp. 21-41.

  14. Ward, ‘Medieval and Early Renaissance Study’ (n. 8 above), p. 71; K. M. Fredborg, ‘The Commentaries on Cicero’s De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium by William of Champeaux’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin, 17, 1976, pp. 1-39.

  15. Commentarius super Rhetoricam ad Herennium, ed. K. M. Fredborg, The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries of Thierry of Chartres, Toronto, 1988, pp. 217-61.

  16. See J. O. Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary, Turnhout, 1995, pp. 154-67; J. O. Ward, ‘Alan (of Lille?) as Rhetor: Unity from Diversity?’, in Atti del Convegno internazionale ‘Dictamen, poetria and Cicero: Coherence and Diversification’, ed. L. Calboli Montefusco, Rome, 2003, pp. 141-227. The commentary is partially edited and translated in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 1996, pp. 413-27.

  17. R. Copeland and I. Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric, Oxford, 2010, p. 391.

  18. Gerbert d’Aurillac, Correspondance: Lettres 1 à 220 (avec 5 annexes), ed. and transl. by P. Riché and J.-P. Callu, Paris, 2008, p. 220: ‘Opus sane expertibus mirabile, studiosis utile, ad res rethorum fugaces et caliginosissimas comprehendendas atque in animo collocandas’.

  19. [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and transl. H. Caplan, Harvard, 1954, III.28.

  20. An authoritative account of the Rhetorica ad Herennium’s contribution to the development of mnemonic techniques is found in F. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 2014 [1966], pp. 20-32.

  21. See summary of the text and bibliography provided in Carruthers and Ziolkowski, The Medieval Craft of Memory (n. 1 above), pp. 41-5, notably P. Sicard, Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle, le Libellus de Formatione Arche d’Hugues de Saint-Victor, Turnhout, 1993. C. Rudolph, The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge, 2014, asserts that the figural image did exist in physical form, most likely as a claustral mural painting, pp. 16-17.

  22. M. Evans, ‘The Geometry of the Mind: Scientific Diagrams and Medieval Thought’, Architectural Association Quarterly, 12, 1980, pp. 32–55.

  23. Diagrams were common in legal texts, perhaps due to the long-standing tradition of formulating tree diagrams to represent consanguinity and kinship. On this tradition see C. Klapisch-Zuber, L’Ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté, Paris, 2000.

  24. S. L’Engle, ‘The Pro-Active Reader: Learning to Learn the Law’ in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users, 2011, pp. 51-76; J. Fronska, ‘The Memory of Roman Law in an Illuminated Manuscript of Justinian’s Digest’ in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture ed. E. Brenner, M. Cohen and M. Franklin-Brown, Farham, 2013, pp. 163-79, and her ‘Turning the Pages of Legal Manuscripts: Reading and Remembering the Law’ in Meaning and Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art ed. N. Zchomelidse and G. Freni, Princeton, 2011, pp. 191-214.

  25. The descriptive vocabulary (node, branches, etc.) I employ in detailing the diagrams is borrowed from common taxonomic usage. For the description of nodes, however, I avoid the monikers ‘parent’, and ‘sibling’, and ‘child’, with preference instead for the terms ‘main’ and ‘sub-node’, thus avoiding the implications of derivation inherent in the familial vocabulary. Throughout, the division of nodes by branches is indicated with the use of a forward slash ‘/’.

  26. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, transl. H. E. Butler, Cambridge MA, 1953, 11.2.37. On the concept of divisio see K. Rivers, ‘Memory, Division and the Organisation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages’, in Premodern Encyclopedic Texts, ed. P. Binkley, Leiden, 1997, pp. 147-58. On schematic representations of divisio in biblical distinction collections as an ordering device, see R. Rouse and M. Rouse, ‘Statim Invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson, G. Constable and C. D. Lanham, Cambridge MA, 1982, pp. 201-25 (213). On the proliferation of mnemonic devices of this type in preaching see D. d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300, Oxford, 1985 and K. Rivers, Preaching the Memory of Virtue and Vice: Memory, Images and Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, Turnhout, 2010.

  27. A. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age, New Haven, 2010, p. 3.

  28. Blair suggests that knowledge management techniques function to manage a surfeit of information – see Too Much to Know, pp. 3-5. On the application of medieval mnemonic techniques, such as diagrams, to navigate the ‘forest’ of information see also C. Meyer, ‘Spuren im Wald der Erinnerung’, Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 67, 2000, pp. 10-57 (50-57). Bearing in mind the small sample of manuscripts under discussion here, it cannot be established whether these diagrams were composed in this instance with the intention of responding to a perceived excess of information. Considering the fact that most manuscripts of the Rhetorica ad Herennium from this period do not contain stemmatic diagrams, however, it would seem unlikely.

  29. An examination of the specifics of the relationship between the diagrams presented here, and the glossing and commentary tradition of this period on the Rhetorica ad Herennium lies outside the scope of this article, and will be discussed in a future study.

  30. I would like to acknowledge the aid of Erik Kwakkel and Jenny Weston, my former colleagues at Leiden University, in dating the manuscripts and glosses.

  31. Cf. J. O. Ward’s brief treatment of rhetorical ‘tables’ in ‘Rhetoric and the Art of Dictamen’, in Méthodes et instruments du travail intellectuel au moyen âge ed. O. Weijers, Turnhout, 1990, pp. 20-61. Ward presents a number of these ‘tables’ (pp. 53-9, especially pp. 53-7), commenting that ‘The tables have been set out in a manner dear to the medieval rhetor and dictator: numerous medieval manuscripts whether treatises, commentaries or summae contain such tables’. However, Ward does not make it clear what manuscripts his tables derive from; presumably they are a composite of his observations of the terminological basis of the tradition.

  32. Note that the title of the first text of the third part is repeated on fol. 121v, suggesting that these parts were joined from an early date.

  33. The extract given here from Quintilian’s De institutio oratoria has been edited in A. Stückelberger, ‘Anonymous Vadianus De rhetorica’, Museum Helveticum, 23, 1966, pp. 197-207 (200-3). The extract is also present in Colmar BM 375, fol. 1r-v, a French manuscript of De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium dating from the late 12th/early 13th century.

  34. Glossing in De inventione is heaviest on fol. 9r-v [I.24-5]. The marginal glosses present, linked to the main text with alphabetic tiemarks, derive from the commentary given in Victorinus’s Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetoricam on this section of De inventione - see for example the reference to the fable of the mouse and lion.

  35. I have been unable to examine this manuscript in person, but I am very grateful to Rudolf Gamper of the Kantonsbibliothek Vadiana who provided me with a black and white microfilm of it. The diagrams on fols 67v-68r show evidence of the use of coloured ink for the connecting branches (on fol. 67v), and for the branches and title of the principal node in the diagram of Diuisio on fol. 68r.

  36. Note, for example, the single diagram added to De inventione on fol. 4v which is a division of ars into intrinsecus and extrinsecus, as per Victorinus’s Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetoricam, I.5, and the examples provided in the marginal textual glossing (linked by alphabetic tiemarks) to the discussion of narratio on fol. 11r, which also derive from Victorinus’s commentary [I.19, p. 201].

  37. Further interlinear and marginal textual glosses are added to the Rhetorica ad Herennium in a thirteenth-century hand in a lighter ink, which represent a distinct layer of interaction with the text, and will not be discussed further here.

  38. Its provenance shall be discussed in more detail below.

  39. There is occasional evidence of faint, difficult to read, dry-point glosses in the margins of this manuscript, which have sometimes been written over by the diagrams (e.g. fol. 64r), representing an anterior stage of glossing.

  40. This manuscript is related to a copy of De inventione in Balliol’s collection. MSS 272 and 273 were given to the college in 1813 by Sir William Hamilton and appear to have been associated from an early date. See R. A. B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford, Oxford, 1963, pp. 288-9. MS 273 contains no diagrams, and no textual gloss.

  41. See, e.g., the interlinear gloss to I.13 on fol. 2v, which illustrates traits of personality with reference to characters from the plays of Terence, with dissimulatio glossed ‘ut de symone qui simulabat nupcias’ [sic], that is a reference to Simo’s ruse in the Andria.

  42. The transcription of the diagrams and texts here and throughout largely preserves the medieval spelling offered in the manuscripts themselves and does not attempt to modernize the spelling, unless the meaning is obscure. Obvious errors on the part of the scribe are indicated.

  43. There are a number of potential sources for this list of three questions: Cicero Partitiones Oratoriae, 18.62; Cicero Orator, 14.45, cf. Augustine: Confessiones. X.10.17; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 5.10.53.

  44. ‘Haec sunt naturales quaestiones. id est quae naturam rei ducunt in quaestionem. Dicuntur constitutiones quia dum de aliqua re quaeruntur controuersia statuitur.’.

  45. ‘Causa quid est. Controuersia. Quid differt a constitutione. Sic ut opinor. Aliud est quod infert. aliud quod infertur. Constitutio infert controuersiam Causa uero constitutia ipsa id est res posita in contentione’.

  46. ‘Quid species rethoricae a specibus differtur causae. Plurimum. Cum haec sint scientiae. Uel ut res artis illae autem materie quae informantur et dicuntur ab istis’.

  47. In Vad. 313 this section is indicated by the addition of a rubricated heading (fol. 66v); in Plut. 50.26, it is emphasized by a decorated initial.

  48. Plut. 50.26, fol. 74r reads ‘ammirabile’.

  49. Here Cicero defines the honourable as ‘one which wins favour in the mind of the auditor at once without any speech of ours’, the difficult as ‘one which has alienated the sympathy of those about to listen to the speech’, the ambiguous as ‘one in which the point for decision is doubtful, or the case is partly honourable and partly discreditable’, and the obscure as ‘one in which they auditors are slow of wit or the case involves matters which are rather difficult to grasp’. Cicero, De inventione ed. and transl. H. M. Hubbel, Cambridge, MA, 1949.

  50. De Inv. I.26: ‘Vitia vero haec sunt certissima exordiorum quae summopere vitare oportebit: vulgare, commune, commutabile, longum, separatum, translatum, contra praecepta’.

  51. Both the diagram and list append one additional term, that is, ‘assentatorium’.

  52. The relationship between the two manuscripts under examination is emphasized further by the use of a set of common keywords in the margins from I.14-16: ‘apud scientiem, apud nescientem, apud non credentem’.

  53. On the use of artificial memory and its conception in the Rhetorica ad Herennium see Yates, The Art of Memory (n. 20 above), pp. 20-32.

  54. Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric (n. 16 above), p. 154.

  55. J. O. Ward, ‘Rhetoric in the Faculty of Arts’, in L’Enseignement des disciplines, ed. O. Weijers and L. Holtz, Turnhout, 1997, pp. 147-71.

  56. See Yates, The Art of Memory (n. 20 above), pp. 63-134, on the status of the art of memory in the Middle Ages. See Carruthers, The Book of Memory, and her The Craft of Thought (n. 1 above).

  57. V. Cox, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric in Late Medieval Italy’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Renaissance Traditions, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 109-43 (110-11). On the development of the ars dictaminis see esp. M. Caramago, Ars dictaminis, ars dictandi, Turnhout, 1991.

  58. Gerard was a master of theology in Paris, and made his donation to the Sorbonne library upon his death in 1272. See Rouse, R., ‘The Early Library of the Sorbonne’, in R. Rouse and M. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to the Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, Notre Dame, 1991, pp. 341-408 (348-51). Rouse identifies the volume with Fournival’s Bibliomania 27. Peter Gumbert says the manuscript originates from N. France, but based on its decoration (notably the green colour-stroking of letters) it is more likely to be Italian in origin. Cf. P. Gumbert, ‘Cicerones Leidenses’, in Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics: Production and Use, ed. C. A. Chavannes-Mazel and M. M. Smith, London, 1996, pp. 208-44 (226).

  59. For the relationship between divisio, mnemonics and the development of medieval reference works see Rivers, ‘Memory, Division and the Organisation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages’ (n. 26 above), especially pp. 150-1.

  60. Note that this tripartite distinction is also used by the glossator of Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 250. See Ward, ‘Rhetoric and the Art of Dictamen’ (n. 31 above), p. 32.

  61. On the scribal emphasis given to the rhetorical figures see Camargo, ‘Latin Composition Textbooks and Ad Herennium glossing’ (n. 12 above), p. 269.

  62. Note that the scribe has mistakenly corrected an error here. It would seem that the node was originally labeled ‘Narrationis tria partes tria genera’, but the scribe seems to have regarded ‘tria genera’ as superfluous, and erased it, despite the fact that it is the terminology used in the text. Perhaps the scribe recognized that the terms ‘oratorical, poetic, digressive’ were not native to the text and opted for the more vague ‘partes’, rather than ‘genera’, to distinguish them.

  63. D.W. Robertson Jr., ‘A note on the classical origin of ‘circumstances’ in the Medieval Confessional’, Studies in Philology, 43, 1946, pp. 6-14 (6-7). For examples of medieval use of the circumstances see R. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 66-72.

  64. Carruthers, The Book of Memory (n. 1 above), p. 332.

  65. H. Hohmann, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric and the Law’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 193-207.

  66. On the later shift towards the application of Ciceronian rhetoric in a performative context see S. J. Milner, ‘Communication, Consensus and Conflict: Rhetorical Precepts, the Ars Concionandi, and Social Ordering in Late Medieval Italy’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. V. Cox and J. O. Ward, Leiden, 2006, pp. 365-401.

Acknowledgments

The research upon which this article is based was carried out at Leiden University during a three-year period as a postdoctoral researcher on the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek funded project ‘Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ [P.I.: Erik Kwakkel]. The author would also like to acknowledge the advice given by Peter Liebregts and Jenny Weston, my former colleagues at Leiden University, during the process of composition, as well as the valuable contributions of the anonymous peer reviewers.

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    Irene O’Daly

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O’Daly, I. Managing Knowledge: Diagrammatic Glosses to Medieval Copies of the Rhetorica ad Herennium . Int class trad 23, 1–28 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-015-0379-x

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