4to, (187 x 133 mm). 67 of 68 ll., lacking the first blank leaf. Brown 19th century morocco binding by Charlene Matthews, boards decorated with a gilt frame, spine with five raised- bands with title printed in gold and compartments decorated with gilt tools; gilt dentelles, blue, red and yellow silk book-mark, gilt edges. Excellent copy, reglé, foxing at the exterior blank margin of some leaves, some light foxing, overall very good.

“Far from introducing us to a modern world of revived classical rhetoric, Publicius's memory section seems rather to transport us back into a Dantesque world in which Hell, Purgatory and Paradise are remembered on the spheres of the universe... In short, this first printed memory treatise... comes straight out of the mediaeval tradition” (Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago 1972, p. 110-11).

Early circulation and printing:

A manuscript copy written by an English monk in 1460 testifies to the text's circulation before this date (Yates). Single copies survive of two earlier separate editions of the Ars memorativa (Toulouse ca. 1475-76, C 4979, and Paris ca. 1475-80, Pellechet Ms 9865) and of a different version of the Ars epistolandi (C 4978).

Johannes Lucilius Santritter, who worked as an editor for Ratdolt, appears as the writer or recipient of several of the model letters in the Ars epistolandi, and Ratdolt is mentioned once. The pope specified in the model letter to a pope is Paul II, who died in 1471: thus Scholderer suggests that the work was revised before then, presumably by Santritter, for publication by Ratdolt. Ratdolt reprinted the text in 1485 (updating the pope's name to Innocent VIII), and again, on his third, Augsburg press, in 1490, using the same woodcuts.

The author:

Little is known of the author, of whom no other works survive. He identifies himself in the text as a Florentine but may have been Spanish, and is known to have lectured at Basel, Leipzig and Erfurt in the 1460s (P. O. Kristeller in Renaissance News XII (1959), p. 90). Publicius was the author of the first printed ars memoriae; this rhetorical manual became very well known in the last two decades of the 15th century, it circulated independently as well in manuscript form (often made after the printed edition). The ars memorativa was printed first as a separate work in Toulouse in 1475/6, a single copy of it is known, and obviously not containing these illustrations. Several other printings of the separate text followed, and it also circulated after 1489 as part of Baldovinus Sabaudiensis Ars memoriae. Yet for all the popularity of this work, very little is known of the author, except that he was almost certainly not from Florence as he claimed. A manuscript of his work written in Toulouse states that he was from Spain, as indeed his references to Spanish habits and cultural artefacts may also confirm. He was a physician by profession, which helps explain his strong interest in the medical aspects of memory training. He participated actively in humanist circles in Germany and the Burgundian courts, and in 1464, after a career of itinerant teaching at universities including Brabant, Leipzig, and Cologne, he became a professor of rhetoric in Louvain, styling himself "poeta laureatus."

The influence of Jacobus's work can be seen in many of the arts of memory written in the 16th century, for example: Johann von Romberch copied large tracts of Jacobus's text in his Congestorium artificiose memorie in 1533; in 1537, Johann Spangenberg took most of his examples of mnemonic devices from Jacobus; and Jodocus Weczdorff wrote a short work almost entirely derived from this in 1500.

Illustration:

A striking feature are the illustrations in this book, many of the figures are not referred to in the text, and even among those that are referred to, the printer's images do not always fit the text precisely. In all, there are woodcut illustrations in the text, a full-page diagram, 42 woodcut roundels using a pictorial alphabet (with two illustrations for every single letter), two volvelles, a full-page astronomical diagram with a volvelle in form of snake on leaf d3v and a woodcut chessboard on sig. d8r; plus multiple woodcut decorated initials.

Chess:

In the late 15th century, the associations between chess and memory were strong, the chessboard offered an ideal theater for rational thought, the image of the chessboard and the list of its pieces included in the Ars memorativa are classified by Publicius as images “which delight the soul, sharpen the talent, and express the signs of memory very well”. The names of the chess pieces given by Publicius are interesting, with notable variations from the modern convention: a rook is a “governor” and a bishop is a “counselman”. The first printed book on chess was published in 1474 by Caxton, the Game and Playe of the Chesse, only the second edition of this work, printed by Caxton in 1483, contained woodcut images, two of them depicting a chess board - a year after the publication of this volume.

HC* 13545; BMC V, 287; IGI 8191; Goff P, 1096; Essling 292; Sander 5982; F. Yates, The Art of Memory, Chicago 1972; Alfred W. Pollard. Fine Books. London, 1912, p. 196; J. J. Murphy and Martin Davis, "Rhetorical Incunabula: A Short-Title Catalogue of Texts Printed to the Year 1500, Rhetorica 15 (1997): 355-474.

Provenance: From the library of Regia Monacensis (ink stamp on ll. A2r and d7v); manuscript owner’s inscription on recto of the second flyleaf attesting the purchase at the Hamilton Cole Library auction (New York, 8 April 1890); engraved bookplate of Walter Goldwater’s; private collection of David Nathan Maister, England.