• Menmnosyne Hist [oria, i.e. Mnemnosyne Historia].

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Language:
  • Latin
Creator:
  • K., C.
Call number:
  • Euro 18Q 13579
Extent:
  • [25] ll. (24 engr ll., one divided and mounted on two leaves). 29.5 cm.
Format:
  • Book
Description:
  • "The first engraving is a visually separate section cut from the last engraving. Both of these sections were prepared on the same plate, divided into three horizontal bands. The upper two bands read horizontally, as normal, and conclude the narrative presented in the images; the bottom segment, reading vertically, was meant either to remain as a sort of colophon or (more likely) to be cut away and placed at the beginning vertically as her. In lettering so minute as to require a loupe to read, it includes the monogram of the author ("C.K.") and the title, as above, one one shield; and, on another shield turned sideways, the imprint and date. The printer's name is difficult to read, but neither Benzing nor Paisey provide a remotely similar name of any printer in Germany. These first and last engravings are the only ones that have been mounted, as their peculiar function would require; all the others are printed onto the full sheets bound here.
  • "The use of pictures and letters, combined like a rebus, to aid the memory of students in mastering a mass of details is a technique closely associated with the integration of word and image in the Baroque era. In addition, it fits neatly with the refined theories of cognition, perception, and allegory that suffused Baroque art.
  • "As a specific pedagogic technique, it was formerly considered to have been begun by Johann Bruno, whose biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie calls "the inventor of the 'emblematic teaching method' ... through fable, pictures, and letters to aid the memory of learners". Buno's Memoriale Institutionum Juris appeared in 1670-1672 with five folding plates to aid students of the Justinian code, and he also did a history of the world employing 18 engraved plates entitled Historische Bilder... in 1672. Our unrecorded work antedates both of Buno's works and comprises more plates and images.
  • "After the title, representing women with symbols of the liberal arts and death at the last, the work illustrates the history of the world from the beginning until the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in the Peace of Westphalia. The plates do not give a direct visual image of the events of world history. Rather they provide a series of unusual and memorable images, combined with verbal hints, to fix the concepts and names in the mind of the student. In the first plate the images are few and large, but as world history becomes more eventful the plates wax richer in images until we find in one plate covering the eighth century ("Seculum Octavum") 138 panels along twelve rows, each with any number of objects forming the represented concept or name. The plates are clearly labelled as to millenium and century.
  • "In Nägler Die Monogrammisten the only monogram corresponding to the one used here and in the right period is that of the Nuremberg engraver Carl Kretschmann, whose recorded work in Hollstein includes nothing that points to such a work as this.
  • "Although it must for now remain anonymous, this unique and remarkable exercise in the art of memory is a rich source of imagery and iconography, an unforgettable study in the development of teaching and memory aids, and a remarkable suite of complex and sophisticated engravings.".
  • Pretty amazing. Hard to believe there is not a key to this work, as the imagery is so abbreviated that there is not one image I can make out, though it is tempting to think that one at the far right of the fourth row of Seculum Decimum Quintum refers to the invention of moveable type. --IT.
  • "Apparently unrecorded mnemnotechnic history of the world. It is surely one of the longest and richest attempts to use allegorical images as a teaching aid.
Publisher:
  • Strassbourg. 1661.
Subject:
  • Mnemonics
  • History
Author:
  • K., C.
Created:
  • 1661-01-01T00:00:00Z
Date:
  • 1661
Location:
  • Special Collections Euro 18Q 13579
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/1c18dr199
Edm rights:
  • No Known Copyright
Range label:
  • Logical
Binding note:
  • 1/4 vellum, paste bds. interleaved.