The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan D. Spence: Concept of Memory Palaces

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Introduction

The book under discussion is The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci written by Jonathan D. Spence. It tells the readers about the life of Matteo Ricci in the Chinese Empire. Some people claim that this book presents information about the Chinese culture, religion, and lifestyle in the sixteenth century, whereas it can be considered a biography with the elements of narration. The author tried to insert more information about the country which is alien to us as his knowledge afforded.

The author of the book is familiar with the Chinese culture, history, customs and traditions, religion, and lifestyle; he attempted to make us see that the Western and the Eastern worlds are as similar as different. There are a lot of things in common; at the same time, we encounter a great number of aspects that seem ambiguous and not understandable to us. In this respect, the book is easy to read but not very easy to understand.

It seems strange to insert a such number of references and claims of other people, whereas the reader requires an interesting story of Matteo Ricci and his method of the memory palace. I did not experience the feeling of satisfaction after having read this book; it leaves a lot of space for thinking up what is missing and completing the story. I did not understand the concept of memory; though it took the author the whole book to explain the techniques of developing ones memorizing skills and the aspect of memory palaces.

The information concerning Matteo Riccis concept of memory palaces presented in the book is generalized to the extent that it is necessary to search for an explanation and some clarifications in the additional sources; His description of the memory palace can be found in a short book on the art of memory which he wrote out in Chinese.

Jonathan D. Spence created a book that is of great value for students who acquire knowledge in Western cultures and try to succeed. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci is a great example of joining a biography of a famous person with the existing conditions of contemporary people, their customs, and beliefs. To be more exact, the image of the Christian priest Matteo Ricci is inserted into the environment of Chinese mandarins and those who possess non-Christian religion; Jonathan D. Spence described a European in the East and the way he got accustomed to the alien lifestyle.

The Problems of Integrating the Story of a European into a Large, Complex Foreign Empire

So, the major issue which is raised in the book is the problem of integrating the story of a Christian priest who came to China to make the local population adopt his religion with the help of a memory-skills-developing technique. Matteo Ricci taught the Chinese how to build a memory palace. He told them that the size of the palace would depend on how much they wanted to remember. Using tricks and demonstration of his phenomenal memory Matteo Ricci was going to achieve his basic goal of sharing his religion with aliens.

This priest seemed to benefit from the journey where he was a strange man in the strange country; he was mastering the Chinese language and acquired knowledge in specific dialects; furthermore, While Ricci was living in Zhaoging in 1584, he drew a map of the world. This map was completed as a Chinese map of the world because it was a large-scale map where all place names were transcribed into Chinese. The map is one of the elements which make the readers interested in this story; it inserts the figure of the priest into Chinese society.

However, the map is a positive feature of the story and the way of inserting the figure of a European into the Chinese society of non-Christian people. We must remember that [if] at one level Riccis career makes sense only in the context of an aggressive Counter-Reformation. The problem of religion is one of the burning problems of that time, whereas the author of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci shows the main character as a passive priest who is waiting for people to believe in the religion he is ready to preach.

Matteo Ricci does not seem to be interested in preaching at all: he introduces his methods of memorizing

It was this general facility for remembering the order of things that had been elaborated into a system over the succeeding centuries; by Riccis time it had become a way for ordering all ones knowledge of secular and religious subjects, and since he was a Catholic missionary Ricci hoped that once the Chinese learned to value his mnemonic powers they would be drawn to ask him about the religion that made such wonders possible.

Thereby, his methods of preaching were not needed, at least it seems that the Chinese were interested in the method rather than in the religion that made it possible to perform such miraculous tricks. Another vivid evidence of the Chinese not being interested in the Christian religion is that they wanted to take lessons in mnemonic techniques.

Governor Lu is mentioned in the book to demonstrate that the attempts of Matteo Ricci to instruct the Chinese in mnemonic skills failed. Ricci expected that Lus three sons would in gratitude use their newly won prestige to advance the cause of the Catholic church. As he was hired to teach them his extraordinary mnemonic techniques, he thought that they would ask him about his religion after scoring success in passing exams which can influence their lives. Nevertheless, the governors sons passed the exams successfully and did not feel grateful to Ricci; they did not ask him about his religion and its features:

though the governors children did extremely well in the exams, this does not seem to have been because of Riccis mnemonic methods but rather because of diligent study along traditional Chinese lines of repetition and recitation, aided perhaps by the mnemonic poems and rhyming jingles that were part of current Chinese memory practice.

It shows that the Chinese were not interested either in the religion of Matteo Ricci or in his mnemonic techniques. The Chinese had a currently available method of memorizing great pieces of information which helped them to succeed in the exams and promoted people in various posts within the main areas of the Chinese administration. The book is full of ideas concerning the concept of memory, religion, and culture introduced by other authors, like Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler.

The concept of the palace of memory originated from the ideas of the Greek poet Simonides; Ricci was probably introduced to the idea of memory palaces by way of the scholar Cypriano Soarez, whose textbook on the basic lessons of rhetoric and grammar& was required reading for Jesuit students in the 1570s. The Greek poet experienced the necessity of using his memory to the full capacity in the palace: when he stepped outside the room, a strong wind crushed the crowd to death, and Simonides had to identify the bodies of his relatives and friends from memory.

Later, the concept of memory progressed into the Christian doctrines, where a Christian mnemonic tradition [was] focused on memory arts as the means to marshal spiritual intentions. It means that the whole idea of preaching was based on the ability of people to remember great pieces of information without confusing facts and data. The Christian priests had to possess good memory skills to preach passionately and without peeping at textbooks.

As a matter of fact, &there developed a whole tradition of texts that sought to sharpen Christian devotion through evoking imagination of believers&So, the imagination should have been used to memorize images and stories from the Bible and other religious sources. When Matteo Ricci tried to introduce a similar practice into the Chinese religious and cultural life, he met alternative teaching of rhymes and recitation which was currently used in China.

Thereby, the religion, culture, and concept of memory did not contribute greatly to the better understanding of the Christian by the Chinese people. It turned out that there are specific techniques of developing memory skills and using them with a one-hundred-percent efficiency in China; such methods could be used without learning or/and adopting the alien religion.

Successfulness or Unsuccessfulness of Integrating the Image of the Priest into China

The image of the Christian priest in China or some other country with non-Christian religion is a distinctive Counter-Reformation. Matteo Ricci is the main character of the book The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci written by Jonathan D. Spence. The author of this nice book should have shared his knowledge about China with the readers; the question is whether he did it successfully or failed to describe the adventures and mnemonic techniques of the Christian priest.

Conclusion

To my mind, the process of integrating the image of Matteo Ricci and his biography into the environment of the Chinese people who had no desire to adopt his religion was not very successful. The Chinese wanted to learn the techniques which made his memory a phenomenal issue. So, there is a description of the three sons of Governor Lu; this person wanted his sons to pass exams successfully and invited the priest to teach his sons those famous techniques.

I do not find it interesting to read about ideas concerning memory, Christian religion, and attempts to make people adopt this religion introduced by a great number of other different authors. It seems like there was no other information to insert into the story except the opinion and beliefs of great thinkers and writers. What is the purpose of writing a biography without telling predominantly about the main character?

This book is supposed to be a bright mixture of narration, description, explanation, and biography; though it is a list of thoughts introduced by famous writers and philosophers, priests, and popes which presents mentioning of Matteo Ricci, a Christian missionary priest who wanted to preach the Christian religion to people of China.

To conclude, the concept of memory palaces is one of the basic issues raised in the book written by Jonathan D. Spence. The story is focused on developing the idea of memory which can be developed and used to the full capacity. Moreover, the image of the Christian priest Matteo Ricci is introduced to tell the readers about the development of thoughts concerning the concept of memory and memory palaces as well.

I did not manage to find a clear explanation of the technique of memory palaces; there are only references to this unique method of improving ones memory and collecting the acquired knowledge. The book is not bad at all; it is not well-structured and lacks some thought-provoking aspects, suchlike intrigue (the author could give references on the memory palaces technique throughout the text and explain it in the end).

The problem of integrating a European into the Chinese empire seemed to be an unexpected step with a view to the title of the book as philosophic methods are more often explained taking into consideration the Ancient World, though it turned out to be natural for a Christian priest to find his way amongst the Chinese and demonstrate his phenomenal memory to attract more people to the Christianity.

Bibliography

Spence, Jonathan D. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1985

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