La tradition mnémotechnique à l’ombre de Giordano Bruno : le manuscrit Français 12251 de la BNF

Abstract

In 1958, Nicola Badaloni called for a « studio sistematico dei trattatisti dell’arte della memoria
per chiarire in quale misura fosse valutato il contributo dato da Bruno ». Such an exhaustive
study of the impact of Bruno’s mnemonics on the tradition of the art of memory has yet to be
conducted. This contribution aims to shed some light on this question by presenting manuscript
Français 12251 from the BnF. The author of the manuscript uses Bruno’s lexicon (‘subject’,
‘ombre’) but does not adopt his technical innovations. The contextualization of the manual
within the mnemonic tradition and comparisons with other treatises influenced by Bruno provide
a better understanding of the philosopher’s influence on the later mnemonic tradition. In
addition, this unpublished manuscript has some other interesting features, such as its recipient
(a woman) and the use and description of a real castle as a mnemonic spatial structure.