Memory and the Church Fathers

While reading the Conferences of John Cassian I began to marvel at the encyclopedic scriptural memory of the desert monastics that were interviewed by Cassian and his friend Germanus.  How did they do it?  Not only did they remember large portions of scripture, but their memory functioned like a topical bible or concordance that could pull references from all parts of scripture.  I had to know.

The Book of Memory: A Study of Medieval Culture by Mary Carruthers offered the answers.  Carruthers extensive research explains the place and use of memory in medieval culture and most interestingly explores the different arts and techniques that were employed.  For instance, many Christians would memorize the entire Psalter, which  usually took two to three years.  Hugh of St. Victor wrote a short treatise to explain his personal method, which included the following steps:

1. Visualizing a grid with 150 locations, one for each Psalm.
2. Behind each number the first few words of each Psalm would be memorized, so that one had the complete reference system for all 150 psalms.
3. Then the individual Psalms themselves would be memorized.

Other techniques for memorizing lists or the contents of the gospels would use visualization and mental pictures to help with the recollection and organizing of data.  The goal of this memorization wasn't simply to know a lot of information, but to be an aid in contemplation and invention.

I wanted to use some of these methods with my children and discovered a book that uses some of these medieval techniques for a modern audience:  Memorize the Faith (And Anything Else) by Kevin Vost.  We started memorizing the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount last week and we have had great success.  It took us about 15 minutes to memorize them and we can now recall them forward or backward or starting at any point.  I highly recommend this book!