HE phenomenon of the Theatre, once so famous and so long forgotten, suggests many problems, a few of which will be briefly raised in this chapter, though a whole book might be written on this subject. Did Camillo invent his
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as I know, new and significant Ficinian additions to the memory tradition. Ficino therefore had the materials for doing what Camillo did, for housing a Hermetised art of memory in a memory building stored with the talismanic, astralised mythological imagery which he was such an adept at inventing. In the De vita coelitus cotnparanda he speaks of constructing an 'image of the world'.2 To form such an image within an artistic architectural framework within which astral memory imagery was skilfully arranged might have been very congenial to Ficino. One wonders whether some of the peculiarities of Ficino's imagery, the fluctuating meanings which he attaches to the same image—the image of the Three Graces for example3—might be explained if the same image were to be thought of as on different grades, as in Camillo's Theatre.
I do not know of any actual mention of the art of memory in Pico della Mirandola's works, though the opening words of his Oration on the Dignity of Man might have suggested the form of Camillo's memory building:
1 have read in the writings of the Arabs that Abdullah the Saracen, when asked what seemed to him most marvellous in this theatre of the world (mundana scaena) replied that nothing seemed to him more splendid than man. And this accords with the famous saying of Mercurius Trismegistus, 'What a miracle is man, O Asclepius.'4
Pico is of course here speaking of the world as a theatre only in a general sense, as a well known topos.5 Yet the description of Camillo's Theatre is so full of echoes of the Oration, that it is possible that its opening allusion to Hermetic man as dominating the theatre of the world might have suggested the theatre form for the Hermetic memory system.6 But it remains unknown whether Pico had himself thought of constructing a 'theatre of the world'
2 See G.B. and H.T., pp. 73 ff.
3 On varying interpretations of the Three Graces by Ficino, see E. H.
Gombrich, 'Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of his Circle', Journal of the Warburg and Counauld Institutes, V I I I (1945), PP- 32 ft
4 Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, ed. cit., p. 102.
5 On the theatre topos, see E. R. Curtius, European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, London, 1953, pp. 138 ff.
6 As suggested by Secret, art. cit., p. 427.
N—A.O.M. l 6 l
illustrating the lay-out of his mind as expressed in the Heptaplus, as Camillo's Theatre does.
Though these are but fragmentary suggestions, it is, I think, unlikely that the occult memory system was invented by Camillo.
More probably he was developing in a Venetian setting an inward use of Hermetic and Cabalist influences in the framework of the classical art of memory which had been earlier adumbrated by Ficino and Pico. Nevertheless the fact that his Theatre was so universally acclaimed as a novel and striking achievement shows that it was he who first put Renaissance occult memory on a firm basis. And, so far as the historian of the art of memory is con- cerned, his Theatre is the first great landmark in the story of the transformation of the art of memory through the Hermetic and Cabalist influences implicit in Renaissance Neoplatonism.
There can be no possible connection, one would suppose, between the occult transformation of artificial memory and the earlier memory tradition. But let us look once again at the plan of the Theatre.
Saturn was the planet of melancholy, good memory belonged to the melancholic temperament, and memory was a part of Pru- dence. All this is indicated in the Saturn series of die Theatre where, on the Cave grade, we see the famous time symbol of the heads of a wolf, a lion, and a dog, signifying past present and future. This could be used as a symbol of Prudence and her three parts of memoria, intelligentia, providentia, as shown in the famous picture by Titian, labelled 'Prudence' (PI. 8a), of a man's face with the three animal heads below it. Camillo, who moved in the main Venetian artistic and literary circles is rumoured to have known Titian,7 but in any case would know of the three animal heads as a symbol of Prudence in her time aspect. And now, continuing to look at the Saturn series of the Theatre, we perceive that the image of Cybele vomiting fire on the Banquet grade of this series means Hell. Remembering Hell as a part of Prudence is thus represented in the Theatre. Moreover, the image of Europa and the Bull on the Banquet grade of Jupiter means true religion or Paradise. The image of the Mouth of Tartarus on the Banquet grade of Mars means Purgatory. The image of a sphere with
7 Altani di Salvarolo, p. 266.
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Ten Circles on the Banquet grade of Venus means the Earthly Paradise.
Thus beneath the splendid Renaissance surface of the Theatre there still survives artificial memory of the Dantesque type. What did the coffers or boxes under the images of Hell, Purgatory, the Earthly Paradise, and Paradise in the Theatre contain? Hardly Ciceronian speeches surely. They must have been full of sermons.
Or of cantos of the Divine Comedy. In any case, we certainly have in these images vestiges of older uses and interpretations of artificial memory.
Moreover, there is probably some connection between the stir caused by Camillo's Theatre and the revival of interest in Venice in the Dominican memory tradition. As already mentioned, Lodovico Dolce, the ready purveyor of literature likely to be popular, wrote the preface for the collected edition of Camillo's works (1552), which included L'Idea del Theatro, in which he spoke of Camillo's 'more divine than human intellect'. Ten years later, Dolce came out with a work on memory in Italian,8 very elegantly expressed in the fashionable dialogue form, modelled on Cicero's De oratore; one of the speakers is Hortensio, recalling the Hortensius in Cicero's work. This litde book has a surface of Venetian Ciceronianism in the volgare, classical rhetoric in Italian, which is exactly the style of the Bembist school to which Camillo had belonged (as will appear later). But what is this modern-looking dialogue on memory by Dolce, the admirer of Camillo ? It is a translation, or rather adaptation, of Romberch's 'Congestion'. The crabbed Latin of the German Dominican is transformed into elegant Italian dialogues, some of his examples are modernised, but the substance of the book is Romberch. We hear in the dulcet tones of Dolce's 'Ciceronian' Italian the scholastic reason why images may be used in memory. And Romberch's diagrams are exactly reproduced; we see once again his cosmic diagram for Dantesque artificial memory, and the antiquated figure of Gram- mar, stuck over with visual alphabets.
Amongst Dolce's expansions of Romberch's text, is the one, mentioned earlier, in which he brings in the allusion to Dante as a guide to remembering Hell.9 Other expansions by Dolce are
8 L. Dolce, Dialogo nel quale si ragiona del modo di accrescere et conservar la memoria, Venice, 1562 (also 1575, 1586).
9 See above, p. 95.
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modernisations of Romberch's memory instructions through bringing in modern artists whose pictures are useful as memory images. For example:
If we have some familiarity with the art of painters we shall be more skilful in forming our memory images. If you wish to remember the fable of Europa you may use as your memory image Titian's painting: also for Adonis, or any other fabulous history, profane or sacred, choosing figures which delight and thereby excite the memory.10
Thus, whilst recommending Dantesque imagery for remembering Hell, Dolce also brings the memory image up to date by recom- mending mythological forms as painted by Titian.
The publication of Rossellius's book at Venice in 1579 is another indication of the popularity of the older memory tradition. As well as its powerful exposition of Dantesque artificial memory, this book also reflects some more modern trends. An example of this is Rossellius's choice of notable practitioners of arts and sciences to 'place' in memory as memory images of them. This most ancient tradition, going right back to remote Greek antiquity, when they placed Vulcan for Metallurgy,""1 and of which we have seen one mediaeval example in the row of figures placed in front of the arts and sciences in the Chapter House fresco glorifying Thomas Aquinas, is being carried on by Rossellius:
Thus for Grammar, I place Lorenzo Valla or Priscian; for Rhe- toric I place Marcus Tullius; for Dialectic Aristotle, and also for philosophy; for Theology Plato . . . for Painting, Phidias or Zeuxis . . . for Astrology, Atlas, Zoroaster, or Ptolomcy; for Geometry, Archimedes; for Music, Apollo, Orpheus . . . "
Are we now looking at Raphael's 'School of Athens' as useful for memory and 'placing' his Plato as Theology, his Aristotle as Philosophy ? In the same passage, Rossellius 'places' Pythagoras and Zoroaster as representing 'Magia, and this in a list of figures which he is placing for remembering virtues. It is interesting to find that 'Magia' has moved up into the virtues, and there are other indications in Rossellius's book that the Dominican memory tradition is moving in modern directions.
10 Dolce, Dialogo, p. 86 recto.
10a See above, p. 30.
11 Rossellius, Thesaurus, p. 113 recto.
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Infiltration of Neoplatonism into the older memory tradition is also present in the Plutosofia by the Franciscan, Gesualdo, published at Padua in 1592.12 Gesualdo opens his chapter on the art of memory with quotations from Ficino in the Libri de vita (Gesualdo might be used in future efforts to solve the problem of Ficino and memory). He sees memory on three levels; it is like the Ocean, father of waters, for from memory flow all words and thoughts; it is like the heaven, with its lights and operations; it is the divine in man, the image of God in the soul. In another passage he compares memory to the highest celestial sphere (the zodiac) and to the highest supercelestial sphere (the sphere of the Seraphim). Clearly Gesualdo's memory moves amongst the three worlds, in a manner similar to that shown in the lay-out of the Theatre. Yet after his Ficinian and Camillan introduction, Gesualdo devotes the bulk of his treatise to the old type of memory material.
Thus it would appear that the older memory tradition mingled with the new type of occult memory, that the thunders of a friar's sermon on rewards and punishments, or the warnings of the Divine Comedy, might still be heard echoing somehow together with, or below the surface of, the new style of oratory with its new style arrangement of memory, and that our discovery of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise in Camillo's Theatre belongs into a general atmosphere in which old style memory merges with the new. The Renaissance occult philosopher had a great gift for ignoring differences and seeing only resemblances. Ficino was able happily to combine the Summa of Thomas Aquinas with his own brand of Platonic theology, and it would be quite in keeping with the general confusion if he and his followers failed to notice any essential difference between Thomas Aquinas's recommendation of 'corporeal similitudes' in memory and the astralised images of occult memory.
Camillo belongs, not to the Florentine Renaissance of the late fifteenth century, but to the Venetian Renaissance of the early sixteenth century, in which the Florentine influences were ab- sorbed but took on characteristically Venetian forms, one of the most characteristic of which was Ciceronian oratory. The recom- mendation of the artificial memory in De oratore, a work devoutly
12 Another edition at Vicenza in 1600.
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imitated by the 'Ciceroniani', would carry weight in these fashion- able circles. Camillo was himself an orator and an admirer of Cardinal Bcmbo, the leader of the 'Ciceroniani', to whom he dedicated a Latin poem about his Theatre.13 The memory system of the Theatre is intended to be used for memorising every notion to be found in Cicero's works; the drawers under the images contained Ciceronian speeches. The system, with its Hermetic- Cabalist philosophy and foundation, belongs into the world of Venetian oratory, as the memory system of a 'Ciceronianus' who intends to deliver Ciceronian speeches in the volgare. Such was the material which Camillo drew out of the drawers and recited with such excitement to Viglius,
With the Theatre, the art of memory has returned to its clas- sical position as a part of rhetoric, as the art used by the great Cicero. Yet it is not as a 'straight mnemotechnic' that it is being used by the Venetian Ciceronian. One of the most purely classical in appearance of Renaissance phenomena, the revival of Ciceronian oratory, is here found associated with a mystico-magical artificial memory. And this revelation of what the memory of a Venetian orator could be like is important for the investigation of Erasmus's well-known attack on the Ciceronians of Italy in his Ciceronianus (1528). A fierce anonymous reply to this work, which was both a defence of the Ciceronians and a personal attack on Erasmus, had been published in 1531. Its author was Julius Caesar Scaliger, but this was not known at the time, and suspicion had fallen on Giulio Camillo as possibly the author. Viglius believed this, and the er- roneous conviction that Camillo had attacked his famous friend is behind Viglius's reports to Erasmus about the Theatre.14
No one has suspected that Erasmus's objections to the 'Cicero- niani' might have included distaste for a tendency to occultism.
This may or may not be the case. But at any rate the Ciceronianus controversy should not be studied without reference to Camillo and his Theatre, and what was said about it in the Venetian academies.
The proliferation of academies was a notable phenomenon of the
13 There is a Latin poem by Camillo dedicated to Bembo and mention- ing the Theatre in the Paris manuscript Lat. 8139, item 20. For references about Camillo and Bembo, see Liruti, pp. 79, 81.
'14 See Erasmus, Epistolae, IX, 368, 391, 398, 406, 442; X, 54, 98, 125, 130 etc.; and cf. Christie, Etienne Dolet, pp. 194 ff.
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Venetian Renaissance, and Camillo is a typical Venetian academi- cian. He is said to have himself founded an academy;15 several of his surviving literary remains probably originated as academic discourses; and his Theatre was still being discussed more than forty years after his death in a Venetian academy. This was the Accademia degli Uranici, founded in 1587 by Fabio Paolini who published a large volume, entitled Hebdomades, reflecting dis- courses made in this academy. It is divided into seven books, each containing seven chapters, and 'seven' is the mystical theme of the whole.
Paolini's thick volume has been studied by D. P. Walker,16
who regards it as representing the occult core of Renaissance Neoplatonism as it had developed when transferred from Florence to Venice. Here are the Hermetic influences operating in the Venetian setting. Within the seven-fold arrangement, Paolini presents 'not only the whole theory of Ficino's magic, but also the whole complex of theories of which it is a part.'17 He quotes the passage on the magic statues from the Asckpius and goes as far as he dares in the magical direction. It may be added that he was also interested in Cabala, and in the angel magic of Trithemius, quoting the names of the Cabalistic angels which go with the planets in the same form as they are given by Camillo.18
One of the chief aims of Paolini and his academy, as revealed in the Hebdomades, was to apply the magical theories to that leading interest of the Venetians, oratory. Ficino's theories about 'plane- tary music' designed to draw down planetary powers through musical correspondencies, were transferred by Paolini to oratory.
'He believed', says Walker, 'that just as a proper mixture of tones could give music a planetary power, so a proper mixture of "forms"
could produce a celestial power in an oration . . . The set (of forms) has something to do with the number seven, and some of the things are the sounds of words, figures of speech, and Hermo- genes' seven Ideas, that is the general qualities of good oratory.'19
15 Liruti, p. 78.
16 On Paolini's academy, the Hebdomades, and the mentions in the latter of Camillo's Theatre, see Walker, Magic, pp. 126-44, 183-5.
17 Ibid., p. 126.
18 F. Paolini, Hebdomades, Venice, 1589, pp. 313-14. Paolini refers for these seven angels and their powers to Trithemius's De septem secundadeis which is a treatise on 'practical Cabala', or conjuring.
19 Walker, Magic, pp. 139-40. Walker suggests that Paolini's interest 167
The close connection of Paolini's ideas on magical oratory with Camillo's memory system for orators, based on seven, is obvious, and indeed Paolini quotes long passages from L'Idea del Theatro, including the one describing its seven-fold construction, based on the planetary seven.20 The Hebdomades might take the place of the great work explaining the background of his Theatre which Camillo himself never wrote. And we learn from it that a kind of 'planetary oratory' was envisaged which should produce effects on its hearers, like the fabled effects of ancient music, since the words of the speaker were activated by planetary influences drawn into them.
The Hebdomades discovers for us a 'secret' of Camillo's Theatre which otherwise we would never have guessed. As well as provid- ing a magically activated, because based on the fundamental Seven, memory system for orators, the Theatre also magically activated the speeches which the orator remembered by it, infusing them with planetary virtue through which they would have magical effects on the hearers. It may be suggested that Camillo's interpretation of the magic of the statues of the Asclepius may be of importance here. The connection of the right and perfect and therefore magical forms of oratory with the magic memory image might be through the interpretation of the magic statues whereby their power is due to their reflection of celestial harmony through their perfect proportions. Thus the perfect proportions of, let us say, the magical Apollo image, would produce the perfectly proportioned, and therefore magical, speech about the sun. The Venetian magicians are presenting us with extremely subtle interpretations of the magic of the Renaissance.
20 Hebdomades, p. 27, quoting L'Idea del Theatro, p. 14; cf. Walker, p. 141.
in the seven forms of good oratory laid down by Hermogenes (the Greek writer on rhetoric of the first century A.D.) probably connected with the 'sevens' mystique. Camillo had also been interested in Hermogenes; see the Discorso di M. Giulio Camillo sopra Hermogene, in Tutte le opere, ed. cit., I I , pp. 77 ff.
Paolini makes the remark that J. C. Scaliger believed in the seven forms of Hermogenes and showed them 'quasi in Theatrum' {Hebdomades, p. 24). I do not know to what work of Scaliger's this can refer, but the remark may suggest that Paolini saw Erasmus's opponent as belonging to the mystical 'Sevens' school in rhetoric and memory.
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