The Memory Palace Of Matteo Ricci

In 1596 the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci wrote the “Treatise on Mnemonic Arts,” a short book on memory recall, while posted in China as a missionary. Ricci’s memory device was called a memory palace, and it helped improve one’s memory. To aid in the recall of important facts and knowledge, Ricci outlined a system of assigning visual images to concepts and then “placing” the image in a memory palace. Ricci was one of the first Jesuit priests posted to China, and he wrote the book for Lu Wangai, the powerful governor of Jiangxi. Wangai’s three sons were preparing for advanced government examinations that were central to success in the imperial Chinese state. Ricci sought to impress his scholarly Chinese audience with his effective system of systematic memory recall, hoping it would help Wangai’s sons in their examinations. In turn, Ricci hoped that the system (and Wangai’s gratitude over his sons’ success) would make China’s scholarly class more interested in Catholicism and advance the aims of the Catholic church. The governor’s sons excelled in their examinations using traditional Chinese methods of repetition and recitation.