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Seeing and Writing: The Art of Observation in the Early Jesuit MissionsPaul Nellesaa Carleton University, Ottawa

Online publication date: 04 August 2010

To cite this Article Nelles, Paul(2010) 'Seeing and Writing: The Art of Observation in the Early Jesuit Missions', IntellectualHistory Review, 20: 3, 317 333

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.492612URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492612

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Intellectual History Review 20(3) 2010: 317333

Intellectual History ReviewISSN 1749-6977 print/ISSN 1749-6985 online

2010 International Society for Intellectual Historyhttp://www.informaworld.com/journals DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2010.492612

SEEINGAND WRITING: THE ARTOF OBSERVATIONINTHE EARLY JESUIT MISSIONS

Paul Nelles

Taylor and FrancisRIHR_A_492612.sgm10.1080/17496977.2010.492612Intellectual History Review1749-6977 (print)/1749-6985 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & [email protected] two years on the run following the 1614 imperial ban on Christianity, the Jesuit lay brother

Leonard Kimura was imprisoned at Nagasaki. Born into a staunchly Christian Japanese familyand among the first native Japanese Jesuits, Kimura remained in prison until sentenced to death by slow fire two years later. Though the Jesuits remained powerless against Japanese author-ities, Kimuras plight did not go unreported. The annual letter for 1619 describes the rgime ofthe Nagasaki prison and other features of the Japanese judicial and penal system. Among themore curious aspects recounted of Kimuras life in prison, we find the following:

There were three prisoners under the direction of Leonard, all of whom spoke of nothing other thanvirtue and heavenly things. In the morning they practised one hour of mental prayer, and another hourof oral prayer, reciting the litanies of the saints, and then the rest of the time until dinner was spent inspiritual reading. After having prepared a vile dinner, each applied himself to his chosen task: thus the

afternoon passed with one occupied with reading for a period of four hours, another with writing, andthe others with some other labour. After which they returned to reading books of a sacred character,and another hour of prayer, paying particular attention to the points upon which they must meditate thefollowing day.1

While we wonder what Kimura might have written in Nagasaki prison, there is nothing out of theordinary about the cycle of spiritual exercises depicted here. Prayer, reading, and some kind ofwriting or annotation constituted the backbone of Jesuit devotional practice, and the kind of habit-ual writing performed at Nagasaki was by no means an isolated phenomenon. Writing formed aroutine component of Jesuit mission life. A few years later Paul Le Jeune would report from New

I would like to thank Ann Blair, Jonathan Greenwood, Joel Kropf, Andreas Motsch, Justin Rivest and Richard Yeo forcommenting on earlier versions of this paper. Research was undertaken with the assistance of the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada.

1Histoire de ce qui sest pass au Japon. Tire des lettres escrites s annes 1619, 1620, 1621, translated by P. Morin(Paris: Sebastian Cramoisy, 1625), 1718: Ils estoient trois prisonniers soubs la charge de Leonard, les discours desquelsnestoient dautre chose que de la vertu, et des biens du Ciel. Ils faisoient le matin une heure doraison mentale, et uneautre heure doraison vocale, en rcitant les Litanies des Saincts, et le reste du temps jusque disner ils lemployoient la lecture spirituelle. Aprs avoir fait un meschant disner chacun diceux sappliquoit en quelque chose qui luy estoitparticulire: puis le midy estant pass lun soccupoit lire lespace de quatre heures, lautre escrire, et les autres enquelque autre ouvrage. Aprs lequel temps ils retournoient la lecture des saincts livres, et faisoient encore une autreheure doraison, avec la considration des poincts sur lesquels ils devoient mditer le jour suivant.


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France that in order to demonstrate his sangfroid while witnessing a long and particularlyanimated shamanistic rite, I did not abstain [] from going about my business in the usual way:reading, writing, and making my little prayers.2

Reports from the Jesuit overseas missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have longfascinated European readers. From the first missions to India and Japan of the 1540s, letters and

accounts of the missions circulated widely in both manuscript and print, feeding the appetite of areading public hungry for knowledge of the laws and customs of distant peoples and the geogra-phy, flora and fauna of foreign lands. Like other early modern missionaries, the Jesuits mademuch of their status as eye-witness observers.3 Nonetheless, the observational methods whichmissionaries employed in gaining knowledge of non-European cultures have received littleconsideration. The Jesuit case affords a glimpse of the observational tools and cognitive practicesdeployed in the overseas missions. As we shall see, notes played an essential role in bringingorder to the onslaught of new experiences, alien customs, unfamiliar languages and unexpectedcircumstances routinely encountered.

Behind the Jesuit letters and reports which flowed into Europe from the New World and Asialies a culture of habitual observation and notation. While little trace remains of this everyday writ-

ing, it is clear that Jesuits wrote and wrote. The odd clue attests to the ubiquity of Jesuit scribbling.TheRelations from New France, for example, occasionally refer to some kind of written mmoireor notebook from which material for the annual letters was drawn. While theRelations are rhetor-ically refined and carefully edited texts, it is clear that they were based on some more immediatewritten record.4 Matteo Ricci, who had spent more than thirty years as part of the Jesuit missionin China, left his account of the enterprise theHistory of the Introduction of Christianity intoChina unfinished upon his death. Other members of the Chinese mission were left to completethe account using Riccis notes. One Beijing Jesuit explained: after the death of Father [Ricci] Ifound several things written in his hand, where from the very beginning he had noted day by daythe events of this mission.5 Such reference to note-taking and notebooks is not uncommon.

All too often notes and notebooks reveal little about their production, cognitive functions or

uses.6 The Jesuit case helps to make sense of many of these issues. Despite the scarcity of missionnotes, it is nonetheless possible to reconstruct the note-taking practices of Jesuit missionaries.

2Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, edited by L.Campeau, 9 vols (Rome-Qubec/Montral: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu-Presses de lUniversit Laval/ ditionsBellarmin, 196792), vol. 2, 688: Je ne laissay pas, nantmoins, pour luy monstrer que je ne mestonnois pas de sesdiableries, de faire toutes mes actions lordinaire: de lire, dcrire, de faire mes petites prires. My translations of theRelations are based on those in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by R.G. Thwaites, 73 vols (Cleveland:Burrows Brothers, 18971901), frequently modified.3 See A. Grafton,New Worlds, Ancient Texts: the Power of Tradition and Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: BelknapHarvard, 1992); A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); A.Frisch, The Invention of the Eye-Witness: Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France (Chapel Hill: NorthCarolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2004).4 For example,Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol.2, 687: voicy une partie des choses que jay marqu dans mon mmoire. On the rhetorical complexity of theRelations,see M.-C. Pioffet,La tentation de lpope dans les Relations des jsuites (Qubec: Septentrion, 1997).5 Fonti Ricciane: documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia delle prime relazioni tra lEuropa e la Cina(15791615), edited by P.M. dElia (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1942), CLXVIII: Ritrovai dopo la morte del Padrealcune cose scrite di sua mano, dove notava giorno per giorno sin dal principio le cose di quest missione. Account ofSabatino De Ursis; hisRelaao was composed in 1611.6 These problems have recently been broached by historians. See L. Daston, Perch i fatti sono brevi?,Quaderni storici,108 (2001), 74570; L. Daston, Taking Note(s),Isis, 95 (2004), 4438; A. Blair, Note-Taking as an Art of Transmis-sion, Critical Inquiry, 31 (2004), 85107; R. Yeo, Between Memory and Paperbooks: Baconianism and Natural Historyin Seventeenth-Century England,History of Science, 45 (2007), 146; P. Nelles, Libros de papel, libri bianchi, libri

papyracei. Note-Taking Techniques and the Role of Student Notebooks in the Early Jesuit Colleges,Archivum Histori-cum Societatis Iesu, 76 (2007), 75112.


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THE ART OF OBSERVATION IN THE JESUIT MISSIONS 319

This will not only help us to understand better the mechanics of the missions, but also promisesto shed light on the use of notes and the function of note-taking in the early modern period moregenerally.

It is no coincidence that the economy of writing described in the reports from Japan and NewFrance is suspended within a structured system of devotional activity. Observation in the

missions drew upon a battery of deeply engrained devotional and intellectual exercises in whichnotes and note-taking played a prominent role. To modern sensibilities, spiritual and empiricalmodalities seem worlds apart. Yet as others have shown, the rise of early modern empiricism wasdependent upon a host of converging scientific, medical, legal, and social epistemologies.7 As anempirical practice, observation in early modern Europe normally involved the production ofsome kind of written description of a natural object, artefact, or event. Yet the act of observation,as Lorraine Daston has argued, engages a range of cognitive practices about which we know verylittle, such as the ability to focus the mind, halt the attention upon the object of study, and exercisethe memory.8 Particularly when witnessing temporally contingent cultural phenomena behav-iour, practices, events, conversations faculties such as memory and recall play a significant rolein the observational process. The Jesuit case allows us to explore the relationship between

observation, the textual culture of note-taking, and other forms of early modern cognitive practicewhich remain insufficiently understood, in particular the status of memory, visuality and oralityas observational processes. As we shall see, the primary function of Jesuit mission notes was toserve as an aid to and not simply a record of observation. Writing notes enabled Jesuits torecall, visualize, and focus upon particular aspects of the experience of mission.

We should not be surprised that Jesuit missionaries turned to devotional practice in develop-ing observational methods. Jesuit spirituality was firmly rooted in the Christian meditative tradi-tion which used contemplation as a means of fixing the gaze upon some object of spiritualknowledge. Contemplatio referred to the action of attentively considering something with boththe eyes and the mind, particularly God and divine things. Within this tradition, as MaryCarruthers has shown, meditation deliberately cultivated the making of mental images as a

fundamental procedure of thought.9 Employing techniques of absorption and concentration,contemplation focused the attention in an ordered fashion upon some object or idea. By themiddle of the sixteenth century, in many European vernaculars contemplation had come todenote the activity of concentration and observation more generally. Astronomical observation,for example, was occasionally described as contemplating the stars; Galileo refers to thecontemplation of the motions of the heavens.10 Bacon thought of the seventh day of creationas the day wherein God did rest and contemplate his own works.11 Contemplation in this sensecould mean both to look at some real thing with sustained attention, and to consider mentally anobject or idea. Furetire defined contemplation as fixing the mind or the gaze in order to medi-tate upon some object and to look at it carefully.12 Sometimes implicit reference is made to the

7 B. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2006); B. Shapiro,A Culture of Fact: England 15501720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Frisch,The Inventionof the Eye-Witness; G. Pomata and N. Siraisi, Introduction, inHistoria: Empiricism and Erudition in Early ModernEurope, edited by G. Pomata and N. Siraisi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 138.8 L. Daston, Perch i fatti sono brevi?, 75461; L. Daston, Taking Note(s), 4445.9 M. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought. Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 4001200 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10.10 G. Galilei,Il saggiatore, in Opere, edited by F. Flora (Milan-Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1953), 122: contemplazionide moti celesti.11 F. Bacon,Advancement of Learning, in The Works of Francis Bacon, edited by J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis, and D.D. Heath,10 vols (London: Longman, 185774), vol. 3, 296.12

A. Furetire,Dictionnaire Universel (The Hague and Rotterdam: Arnout & Reinier Leers, 1690), s.v. contempler:Attacher son esprit, ou sa veu, pour mditer sur quelque object, pour le regarder attentivement.


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visualization or mental reconstitution of the object of observation. Thus, the Calvinist mission-ary Jean de Lry, in describing the Tupi of Brazil, asked his readers to imagine in your mind anaked man, well-formed and with well-proportioned limbs. Lry then proceeded to describe incareful detail the mans piercings and adornments, urging the reader to fill in this mental picturewith details supplied from Lrys first-hand observation of the Tupi. At another juncture, Lry

referred to this process simply as contemplation.13

Notes served important cognitive functions in Jesuit observational practice. Jesuit note-takingwas rooted in two complementary cultures: first, Jesuit contemplative practice which placed apremium upon the visualization of the object of knowledge; and second, a battery of pedagogicalexercises which valourized the cognitive appropriation of knowledge and oral facility over rotememorization and verbatim recall. Notes and notebooks served essential roles within both thesecultures.

NOTATION AND VISUALIZATION

The best-known Jesuit notebook is the spiritual diary kept by Ignatius of Loyola, the founder ofthe order, for a period of some thirty-five years. Though he intended it to be destroyed upon hisdeath, a few pages remain, spanning a period of some thirteen months. Ignatiuss note-takinghabits are described by Luis Goncalves da Cmara, to whom Ignatius dictated his autobiography:

When he was saying mass he also had many visions, and when he was drawing up the Constitutions hehad them too, very often. And this he could now affirm more easily because every day he wrote downwhat passed through his soul, and could now find it in writing. And thus he showed me a fairly largebundle of writings, of which he read me a good part. These were mostly visions which he saw in confir-mation of one of the Constitutions, seeing sometimes God the Father, at other times all the threepersons of the Trinity, at other times Our Lady [].14

If we turn to the diary itself, the entries vary greatly. Some, such as those made in May 1545, offerbrief descriptions of Ignatiuss emotional state:

Thursday. TearsFriday. No tearsSaturday. TearsSunday. TearsMonday. I think I had tears.15

Others entries are longer, providing detailed descriptions of Ignatiuss interior visions. We can

consider the entry from 6 March, recording his experiences during the Mass of the Trinity:On pronouncing the words Te igitur, I felt and saw, not obscurely but brightly, in full light, the veryBeing or Essence of God, appearing as a sphere, a little larger than the sun appears; from this Essencethe Father seemed to be going or deriving, so that when I said, Te, that is Father, the image of the

13 J. de Lry,Histoire dun voyage faict en la terre du Brsil (La Rochelle: Antoine Chuppin, 1585), 1112. The referenceto contemplation is not present in the earlier edition of 1578.14 L. Goncalves da Cmara, Memoriale, in Fontes narrativi de S. Ignatio de Loyola et de Societatis Iesu initiis , editedby D.F. Zapico and C. de Dalmases, 4 vols (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 194365), vol. 1, 5046; I haverevised the translation in Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Includingthe Text of The Spiritual Exercises, translated by J.A. Munitiz and P. Endean (London: Penguin Books, 1996), 634.15 Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Diary, in Personal Writings, 106.


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Divine Essence came to me before that of the Father. During this representation and vision of the Beingof the Blessed Trinity, I could not distinguish or have sight of the other Persons [] I could not doubtwhat had been shown and seen; rather, when I turned to investigate and reconsider it, I felt new interiorimpulses, all taking me to love what I had been shown. Indeed I seemed to have more clarity of vision,reaching beyond the heavens.16

This episode vividly illustrates the relationship of the senses to the imagination in Jesuit psychol-ogy. In recording the content of his visions, Ignatiuss intention was not to recreate or relive anexperience all over again. Rather, written notes objectified the experience of the imagination,rendering its sensual nature capable of being seized by the intellect. Ignatius added that whenrecording the vision in his notebook later that evening, the understanding saw something, thoughby far the most part was not so clear, nor so distinct, nor as large [] it represented somethingto the understanding, or was drawing it to itself, and showed that it was the same.17 Notesallowed the recall and re-visualization of the original, fleeting meditative moment. They helpedto detach the mind from the senses, and for spiritual experience to become the focus of the atten-tion and the object of scrutiny. Ignatiuss notebook is filled with deletions, additions and marginal

annotations. Visions appear to have been flagged with special signs, no doubt in order to returnto them for special consideration at a later point. Other passages are underlined or circled, andmany of these Ignatius copied out onto a separate sheet.18 Such markings testify to the use ofnotes to transform spiritual experience into a crystallized object of knowledge.

The use of notes as an aid to contemplation was not limited to Ignatius. Prior to entering thesociety, novices were meant to have undertaken a spiritual retreat. This consisted of an exhaustiveexamination of conscience followed by the performance of a series of carefully selected spiritualexercises. The performance of the spiritual exercises was highly ritualized, with the individualexercitant entering the retreat placed under the guidance of a spiritual director. During thisprocess, reading and writing were carefully monitored. Though the devotional handbookcompiled by Ignatius the famous Spiritual Exercises was printed for use within the order, it

was routinely deemed a dry read and was not meant to be placed in the hands of the exercitant.19

Rather, the task of giving the exercises fell to the spiritual director, who orally described thesubject of meditation the nativity, or the passion, or some other devotional subject for thefollowing day. The Exercises themselves progress by iterating a series of brief points orpuntos(which in Spanish can mean both points and notes). These puntos were explained by thedirector, and Ignatius stressed that this should be done briefly and succinctly the details were tobe filled in by the exercitant during the meditation.20 Ignatius advised that thepuntos should thenbe dictated even more concisely so that they might be firmly fixed in the mind. If time pressed, acopy might be used.21 However delivered, experienced spiritual directors urged time and again

16 Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Diary, in Personal Writings, 93.17 Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Diary, in Personal Writings, 94.18 Ignatiuss markings are reproduced in the edition of the notebook published in Ignatius of Loyola,Constitutiones Soci-etatis Iesu, edited by A. Codina, 3 vols (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 19348), vol. 1, 86158. On Igna-tiuss habits when composing his journal, see the brief remarks in Ignatius of Loyola,Journal spirituel, translated andannotated by M. Giuliani (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 1959), 1415.19 Documents bearing on the practice of the exercises have been gathered inDirectoria Exercitiorum Spiritualium (15401599), edited by I. Iparraguirre (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1955). The bulk of the documentation hasbeen translated by M.E. Palmer,On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit Manuscript Directories and the Offi-cial Directory of 1599 (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996). Where quoted, all translations are Palmers.20 Ignatius, Exercitia spiritualia [] et eorum directoria (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1919), 224: discurriendo solamente porlos punctos con breve o sumaria declaracin.21Directoria, 74: Mejor es, a quien tiene tiempo, no llevar escriptos los puntos, sino, haviendo declarado la materia

dictrselos a l mesmo de su mano. Quien no tiene tanto tiempo, puede llevrselos in escripto y dexrselos [] y dexarsolamente los puntos en escripto succintamente puestos; Palmer,Directories, 8.


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that written notes should be as brief as possible.22 This summary text would then be used tocommit the subject of the meditation to memory. Juan de Polanco, Roman secretary of the societyand right-hand man to Ignatius, composed summaries for this express purpose, and they circu-lated widely in manuscript.23 While Polancos summaries closely follow the Ignatian text, theirprimary function was to facilitate recall of the spiritual directors oral explication of the exercise.

One commentator recommended the following routine: the notes were to be read before bed,reviewed mentally before sleep, then recalled immediately upon awakening. With the subjectfirmly fixed in the mind, the meditation itself could begin.24

The theme of each exercise, therefore, was highly determined explained orally by the spiri-tual director, copied or dictated in point form, and then read through, reviewed and recalledmentally. The shape it would assume in the mind of the exercitant was left open. In the SpiritualExercises, this was described as the composition of place, a process of seeing through the gazeof the imagination the material place where the object of contemplation is situated.25 Thisinvolved the detailed mental description of an imagined place or event. In composing the scenefor meditation, the exercitant was urged to draw upon the senses, especially sight, in order tomake the event real. All five senses were called into play. In the meditation on hell, for example,

the exercitant was urged to hear with ones ears the wailings, howls, cries, blasphemies againstChrist our Lord, and to smell [] the smoke, the burning sulphur, in addition to gazing withthe eyes of the imagination at the great fires and at the souls appearing to be in burning bodies.26

Such an appeal to the senses and the imagination drew upon a common strain of Thomisticpsychology which accorded a prominent place to the use of images for both devotional andintellectual purposes. Aquinas had reasoned that it is natural to man to reach the intelligibiliathrough the sensibilia because all our knowledge has its beginning in sense.27 The Exercisesperpetuate the dominant late medieval and early modern understanding of the cognitive processwhereby objects of knowledge were considered to be known first in the imagination through thesenses, prior to being seized by the intellect. As the common formula had it, there is nothing inthe intellect which was not first in the senses.28 This view of cognition made the senses, partic-

ularly sight, the natural ally of memory, as the use of images as memory aids was considered toreplicate the cognitive process itself.29 Whether the real thing or a simulacrum, the overall effectwas the same: the object of knowledge was imprinted upon the mind. Describing the meditationon sin, Ignatius succinctly described this cognitive cycle: bring the memory to bear on the firstsin, which was that of the angels, then apply the intellect to the same event, in order to reasonover it, and then the will.30

22 See, for example,Directoria, 97: con gran brevidad y succintamente; doc. 7, 125: Bonum est puncta dictare, velscripta relinquere sub brevitate.23Directoria, 328 ff.24Directoria, 2578; Palmer,Directories, 10910. Polancos directory, widely used, recommends dictation of the exer-

cise: Directoria, 288; Palmer, Directories, 124. A later commentator advised that the exercise should only rarely becopied out by the exercitant;Directoria, 497.25 Ignatius, Exercitia Spiritualia, 274; Personal Writings, 294. For a cogent discussion of the role of visualization in Jesuitspirituality, and Jesuit visual culture generally, see J.C. Smith,Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Cath-olic Reformation in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), esp. 3540.26 Ignatius, Exercitia Spiritualia, 2946; Personal Writings, 298.27 Quoted in Smith, Sensuous Worship, 39.28 K. Park, The Organic Soul, inThe Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner,E. Kessler and J. Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 470.29 See, in general, M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990).30 Ignatius, Exercitia Spiritualia, 2768: El primer puncto ser traer la memoria sobre el primer pecada, que fu de los

ngeles, y luego sobre el mismo el entendimiento discurriendo, luego la voluntad, queriendo todo esto memorar yentender por ms me envergonar y confundir; Personal Writings, 295.


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Visualization lies at the core of the exercises. One experienced spiritual director glossed thecomposition of place as follows:

a person makes himself present, as it were, to the place where the event occurred, or to some otherplace. With the eyes of the imagination he beholds everything which is found, said, or done there []He can also imagine that all these things are similarly present to him in the place where he is.31

Another explained how the points are first recalled to memory, then pictured physically in theimagination, until finally focused upon by the intellect. He drew on pseudo-Bonaventure toelaborate: first the faithful disciple by his exterior sense or eye beholds exterior creatures, then,by rising somewhat, he deposits in his imagination what he has perceived with his outer eye.32

There are repeated cautions not to get bogged down in the process of visualization; the overallgoal was to pass from visible things to invisible.33 As Polanco explained, the point of using thesenses in the first place was to lead towards the exercise of these inner senses of the mind.34 Nodoubt for this reason recourse to actual images was counselled only rarely. At best, those whofound visualization difficult were advised to recall a particular image (of hell or the last

judgement, for example) they had seen painted on an altarpiece or some such place.35

A single meditation normally lasted an hour, followed by a period of examination of themeditation itself. Here, writing again surfaces in devotional practice. The 1599 official handbookfor giving the exercises, drawing on decades of practical experience, gave explicit advice on therole of notation:

The exercitant should write only what is connected with prayer, i.e. points which God may communi-cate to him in meditation, or even outside of meditation. These should be noted very briefly, notdiffusely after the manner of a discourse.36

Maintaining a record of spiritual experience was necessarily a rather amorphous process. It was

described by one director as a collection of spiritual fruit, essentially a register of the emotionalstate of the exercitant during meditation tears, joy, compassion and so on.37 Another counselledexercitants to note down their holy resolutions, lights, and devout affections [] They shouldtry to express in few words the main point of the whole fruit so that later they can use it to renewtheir spirit.38 Others described notes as a record of a particular train of thought, of spiritualmovements, or of some special consolation.39 However characterized, it is clear that notationconstituted a crucial part of the contemplative process. One spiritual director advised that exer-citants should be supplied not only with some spiritual text such as theImitation of Christ, butalso with other necessary materials including paper, ink, a pen, a knife, a writing desk, scissorsand a clock.40

31Directoria, 394; Palmer,Directories, 174.32Directoria, 196; Palmer,Directories, 801.33Directoria, 196; Palmer,Directories, 81.34Directoria, 301; Palmer,Directories, 132; the point is reiterated inDirectoria, 395; Palmer,Directories, 175.35Directoria, 449; Palmer,Directories, 209.36Directoria, 58990; Palmer,Directories, 297.37Directoria, 461; Palmer,Directories, 218.38Directoria, 358; Palmer,Directories, 156.39Directoria, 258; Palmer,Directories, 110; see alsoDirectoria, 378; Palmer,Directories, 166; andDirectoria, 444;Palmer,Directories, 206.40

Cited in I. Iparraguirre,Historia de los Ejercicios de San Ignacio, 2 vols (Rome-Bilbao: Institutum Historicum Soci-etatis Iesu-El Mensajero del Corazn de Jess, 194655), vol. 2, 252.


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Notes performed a double function in the Jesuit contemplative cycle. They first served toprompt the imagination which, drawing upon the senses, would mentally picture a particularsubject. Visualization in the form of a detailed mental description of an imagined person, placeor event was the central task of the act of contemplation. Following meditation, further notes weremade in order to record the highly particularized shape the pictured subject had assumed in the

mind of the exercitant. These notes were meant to record the interior reality of the visualizedexperience. Of course, visualization of an imagined subject differs greatly from observation of anobject physically present to the beholder. Nonetheless, visualization techniques could serve aspowerful observational tools. Due to the temporal nature of experience, much observation ishighly contingent on the ability of the observer to recall what has been seen, heard or otherwiseperceived. Visualization as a process of active memory represents a key stage between theperception of sensory experience and the act of recording experience in writing. For Jesuitstrained in such techniques, seeing was a highly self-conscious practical exercise. The object ofvision was first deliberately converted into a mental image, and it was this mental image, not thedatum of raw experience, which was transposed to the blank page. While notes recorded visualexperience, their main purpose was to trigger the re-visualization of experience at a later time.

The primary function of such notes, in other words, was indexical rather than descriptive. Theyserved not as a paper memory, but aided the act of recollection.

WRITING, ORALITY AND COGNITION

Our consideration of devotional practice has suggested that Jesuits received explicit training inthe use of notes in order to visualize, record and recall interior spiritual experience. If we turn toanother important arena of Jesuit activity, the colleges, we gain additional insight into the role ofwritten notes in Jesuit mnemonic culture. Here we are confronted not with the visual realm, butrather with the oral world of the early modern classroom. In the colleges, the Jesuits developed

advanced note-taking techniques at all levels of study. Notebooks constituted important cognitivetools in both the five-year lower cycle of studies of grammar, humanities and rhetoric aimed atboys and adolescents, as well as in the higher courses in philosophy and theology for moreadvanced students. Though the colleges educated Jesuit and non-Jesuit students alike, by theclosing decades of the sixteenth century most Jesuits coming into the order had received someform of instruction in Jesuit establishments. Student notebooks constituted crucial instruments oflearning in the pedagogical life of the colleges, providing the foundation for drills and exercisesboth in the classroom and during private study. Note-taking in the colleges was indebted toscholastic learning methods which aimed at the rapid comprehension of texts through summaryand drill, and which valued the cognitive appropriation of course material over rote recall andverbatim mastery.41

There was a good deal of flexibility in the range of note-taking techniques used in the colleges.Lectures consisted of the standard fare typical of the early modern classroom, normally assumingthe form of a commentary on an authoritative author. Cicero, Caesar or Sallust, for example,might be followed in the lower cycle of studies; Aristotle in the philosophy course; and Aquinasin the theology course. In general, dictating lectures was discouraged. Students at all levels were

41 What follows is taken from P. Nelles, Libros de papel. On the pedagogical culture of the colleges, see G. Codina Mir,Aux sources de la pdagogie des Jsuites: le modus parisiensis (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1968);F. de Dainville,Lducation des Jsuites (Paris: ditions de Minuit, 1978); A. Scaglione,The Liberal Arts and the JesuitCollege System (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1986); J.W. OMalley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA

and London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 20042;Les Jsuites la renaissance: systme ducatif et production dusavoir, edited by L. Giard (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995).


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repeatedly exhorted to note down whatever was necessary, a phrase left deliberately vague asmore intellectually able students were expected to take fewer notes.42 In fact, a double culture ofnote-taking existed in the colleges. Most students kept a notebook in which a dictated passagewas recorded, and they then annotated the text directly in class with material from the lecture. Insome instances, allowance was made for the use of printed texts. In this case students either

entered their notes directly into the margins of the text (if books were cheap and plentiful) or intoa notebook, with some kind of system for keying handwritten notes to the printed text. An alter-native system was in place for more able students, who took fewer notes on loose sheets. Thesenotes would later be transcribed into a regular notebook and supplemented with material takenfrom printed commentaries and other sources.

The student notebook was thus more than a classbook, as students were meant to devote aconsiderable amount of time outside the classroom to maintaining their notebooks and addingsupplementary material. It also differed from the commonplace-book or notebook of excerptsbased on student reading. Though advice on excerpting was occasionally offered, the compilationof a common-place book was quite distinct from the composition of the course notebook. 43 Inaddition, periods of private study in the colleges were frequently carried out in small groups, and

notes were meant to be shared. It was expected that stronger students would lend their notes toless able members of their cohort.44

Though maintained in Latin, stuffed with dictated passages of classical texts and annotatedwith excerpts copied from worthy commentators, student notebooks need to be placed within thehighly oral culture of the colleges. The lecture itself was based on the collective reading of anauthoritative author, and the student notebook was meant to capture information received aurallyfrom the professor. Not only did the notebook record an oral lecture, but the purpose of the note-book itself was to enable oral facility with the course material. A battery of oral exercises thefamous modus parisiensis lie at the heart of Jesuit pedagogy. Of prime importance were therepetitio and the disputatio. The repetitio of the lecture is probably best translated as recapitula-tion, and is not the same thing as rote recitation (an exercise used infrequently, mostly in the

study of grammar). Notes were meant to serve as aids to the recapitulation exercise, carried outin class immediately following the lecture in groups of two to four students, and outside of classduring periods of private study (again, sometimes in small groups). In most cases, students wouldmake use of their notes during these exercises. Further recapitulation exercises were carried outthe following day, before the lecture in this case, students were not meant to use their note-books, but rather, to perform the recapitulation from memory. On Saturdays, a recapitulation ofthe weeks lectures was also undertaken. In some cases, as at the Collegio Romano, this washighly competitive, with a repetitorchosen on Friday afternoons, and assigned three or fouremendatores students tasked with critiquing the recapitulation. These Saturday exercises werealso meant to be conducted without notes.45 Having learned the material through recapitulation

exercises, the student would demonstrate mastery via disputation, in the form of oral sparringwith another student. Here, too, no use was to be made of notes.46

42 See, for example, the Ordo studiorum [Collegii Romani] (1558), inMonumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu, editedby L. Lukacs, 7 vols (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 19651992), vol. 2, 10: Cum vero audiunt, scribant;non quidem omnia, sed ea tantum, quae notatu digna videbuntur; Nelles, Libros de papel, 889.43 See, for example, D. de Ledesma, De ratione et ordine studiorum Collegii Romani (15645), inMonumenta Paeda-gogica, vol. 2, 5589; Nelles, Libros de papel, 989. On later Jesuit advice on excerpting, see Blair, Note-Taking asan Art of Transmission, esp. 96102. More generally, see A. Moss,Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring ofRenaissance Thought(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).44 Nelles, Libros de papel, 95101.45 Ledesma, De ratione et ordine studiorum Collegii Romani, inMonumenta Paedagogica, vol. 2, 603, 614; Nelles,Libros de papel, 935.46 Nelles, Libros de papel, 1012.


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Notes and notebooks in the colleges were essentially transitory in nature, offering a way toprocess aural experience and fix it in the mind. In other words, classroom notebooks were meantto serve as short-term memory aids rather than long-term repositories of data. Students receivedintense training in processing aural information, in committing it to memory and in appropriatingit for their own purposes. Once they had mastered the lesson, the idea went, students would have

no further need of their notes. This is highlighted by the fact that for the annual review of thecourse, students were meant to create an entirely new summary of the course material, conciseand to the point.47 While notes were thus necessary, they were disposable. One professor at theCollegio Romano, Benito Pereira, bluntly offered his opinion on the best kind of notes none atall.48 In terms of their cognitive function, classroom notes mirror the role they played in Jesuitdevotional practice. In both cases, notes were meant to record perception, whether an interiorvision or an oral lecture, and the use of notes to capture experience in this way itself formed partof the cognitive process. The goal was not to establish a fixed record of all known things, butrather, to create a flexible, highly individualized register of experience which could serve tointensify and solidify the perception of visual and auditory phenomena.

OBSERVATION AND EXPERIENCE

Notebooks, note-taking and writing of all kinds thus played a prominent role in Jesuit devotionaland pedagogical practice. The function of notes and note-taking in the field when individualJesuits were on mission was slightly different. For one thing, Jesuits were expected to writeregularly to Rome reporting on the mission. The frequency of communication with Romedepended on proximity; initially, Jesuits in Italy were required to write weekly, those elsewherein Europe monthly. Jesuits overseas were expected to write to Rome once a year, though lettersand reports circulated at more frequent intervals at the regional level. Any special business wasto be dispatched immediately, rather than waiting for the next routine interval. Polanco, in his

capacity as Secretary, issued a directive on writing to Rome which reviewed a number of issuesrelated to drafting and circulating letters within the society. As well as offering practical advice date all incoming and outgoing correspondence, flag queries requiring a response and so on Polanco codified existing Jesuit practices of ordering information. He distinguished betweenstrictly administrative or business matters on the one hand, and edifying material on the other.The latter took the form of accounts of missionary activity, local habits and customs, or simply,strange or noteworthy events. Such letters were circulated broadly within the society as a whole,and to select groups outside the order. Polanco recommended that in addition to the routine corre-spondence with Rome, every four months an additional letter should be composed, consisting ofselect accounts of edificatory material plucked from the outgoing correspondence of the previousfour months. Rapidly institutionalized within the society, this practice produced the well-knownquarterly (and later annual) letters from the missions.49

Polanco issued explicit instructions on how Jesuits in the field were to set about selecting infor-mation to be sent to Rome. Specific rubrics were provided, emphasizing particular aspects of the

47 See, for example, Polancos advice in Constitutiones que en los collegios [] se deven observar (154850), inMonu-menta Paedagogica, vol. 1, 44; Nelles, Libros de papel, 1026.48 B. Pereira, Breve instruttione del modo di leggere il corso (1564), inMonumenta Paedagogica, vol. 2, 669; Nelles,Libros de papel, 89.49 See M. Friedrich,Circulating and Compiling theLitterae Annuae. Towards a History of the Jesuit System of Commu-nication,Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 77 (2008), 339. On communication within the missions more broadly,

see L. Clossey, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2008).


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mission: preaching, hearing confessions, the receptiveness of the local population and so on. Inaddition, Jesuits were asked to reflect upon the progress of the undertaking, and to visualize themission as a whole.

And so that this is not judged superficially, it would be best that each day, or at least a few days a week,each one view, as though from a very high place, the entire enterprise as it unfolds, how ground is beinggained or lost, which means would be best to serve God, and which things should be adopted,continued, abandoned, or changed.50

Polancos council mirrors the kind of advice found in the Spiritual Exercises and elsewhere the composition of place, the visualization of experience. Having composed a tableau of themission, adding details here, foregrounding certain events and removing others, it could then bedecided what to note down. The process of visualization allowed the missionary to review the sumof his experience, isolate significant events and decide what to commit to writing. Visualization,in other words, was the first step towards rendering the missionarys world legible. Seeing was adeliberately complex process which involved both cogitation and notation: writing served to solid-ify and amplify the legibility of experience. Dispatched to the court of the Mughal emperor Akbarin the early 1580s, Antonio de Monserrate attests to the ubiquity of this kind of everyday writing:

Ever since the days of our Father Ignatius of happy memory, who was the first to prescribe it, it hasbecome customary in the society to write down whatever occurs. Roderic Vincentius, the Superior ofthe Province of the society, charged me to record whatever would happen both on the way and duringour stay with the King. The nature of my calling and the rule of the society imposing on me the obli-gation of obeying to the letter, I so conformed to this order that every day, at night, for full two and ahalf years, I committed to writing the events of the day.51

For Jesuits in the missions, the act of annotation was, above all, a process of selection, a way ofsifting through the barrage of experience in order that truly significant phenomena could be

isolated and brought into focus. As Michel de Certeau has observed, the blank page functions asa place for the exorcism of many of the worlds ambiguities.52 Note-taking constituted an activepart of the process of observation: it was the combined process of visualization and notationwhich halted the attention upon specific objects, episodes and occurrences. In first depictingrecent events to himself, the missionary could then decide what best to report to Rome. For thecompilation of the quarterly letters, Polanco advised that a journal or memorial be kept in whichbriefly and in note form such things would be entered as they occurred. Material could then beselected from this memorial when writing to Rome.53

Jesuit visual culture was readily exported to the overseas missions. Jesuit missionariesroutinely employed images when converting (or attempting to convert) non-Christians,

50 Polanco, circular letter to the society (27.VII.1547), inSancti Ignatii de Loyola Societatis Jesu fundatoris epistolae etinstructiones, edited by M. Lecina, V. Agust and D. Restrepo, 12 vols (Madrid: Gabriel Lpez del Horno, 190311), vol.1, 545: Qu siente l de todo el processo de su obra. y para esto sentir no livianamente, sera bien que cada da, lomenos algunos en la semana, mirase cada uno, como de un lugar alto, toda su obra cmo proede, cmo se gana pierdetierra, qu medios le sean mejores para el servicio de Dios, y as qules se devran tomar, continuar, dexar, mudar;y de lo que siente sera mayor gloria divina, haga lo que puede segn su commissin, scriva, conferindolo con elPadre prepsito para que le ayude con su pareer.51 Quoted in J. Correia-Afonso,Jesuit Letters and Indian History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 19.52 M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by S. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press,1984), 134.53 Epistolae et instructiones, vol. 1, 549: y esto ser fcil haziendo un memorial, en el qual se vaya asentando lo que se

va haziendo con la ayuda divina, en breve y por puntos, escrito como a de yr; y quedando en casa tal copia memorial,fil ser sacar de all lo que se ha de escribir ac.


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sometimes adapting Christian iconographic traditions to local artistic practices.54 The visualculture of the society permeated other aspects of missionary life as well. To begin with, manyJesuits kept journals in which to record their own spiritual visions while on mission. FrancisXavier, who served as a spiritual director to other Jesuits in the Indian mission, frequently recom-mended keeping a record of spiritual experience. When reminding Gaspar Barzaeus, another

member of the Indian mission, of the importance of humility, Xavier advised:What you should do most of all while meditating on these points is to note very attentively the thingswhich God our Lord gives you to feel within your soul, writing them down in a little book, andimpressing them upon your soul, for their fruit consists in this.55

These notes would then provide, Xavier instructed, a firm foundation for further reflection uponthe Indian mission. Xavier again recommended the use of written notes to another Jesuit: I there-fore urge you to write down your spiritual experiences and to hold them in the highest esteem,humbling yourself more and more, so that the Lord may grant you increase.56 A few fragmentsremain of the spiritual diary kept by one Jesuit missionary in New France, Jean de Brbeuf. The

diary is replete with accounts of Brbeufs visions, including an intellectual or imaginary visionin which Brbeuf saw an enormous horde of demons coming towards me in order to devour me,or at the very least bite me, but none were able to injure me. Brbeuf further described thedemons: those who came first were similar to unusually large horses, but they had long, wavymanes like those of rams and goats. I do not remember the appearance of the others.57 Accus-tomed to record their own spiritual visions in minute detail, missionaries such as Brbeuf werewell equipped to describe the new worlds in which they lived.

When everything was strange, new and, indeed, noteworthy, techniques of visualization andnotation served important cognitive functions. The Jesuit art of observation is to be situated in thedeliberately created space between seeing and writing. To illustrate, we can explore the observa-tional habits of Jesuit missionaries in New France. The two principal figures of the early Jesuit

mission were Paul Le Jeune and Brbeuf.58 In letters the famous Relations sent to Europeonce a year according to the rhythm of the sailings of the French merchant fleet, reference is occa-sionally made to a journal or mmoire out of which material had been selected. At one point inhis annual letter for 1634, for example, Le Jeune transcribed some of the things I noted in mymmoire. A few years later another Jesuit in New France, writing home to his brother, copiedout part of the little journal he had kept since his arrival.59 Apart from such passing mention, itmight seem that little is left of missionary notes in theRelations.

54 See F.-M. Gagnon,La conversion par limage (Montral: Bellarmin, 1975); G.A. Bailey,Art on the Jesuit Missions inAsia and Latin America, 15421773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).55 Xavier to Barzaeus (614.IV.1552), in The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, translated by M.J. Costelloe (St.Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 401.56 Xavier to Antonio de Heredia (4.X.1552 ca.), inLetters and Instructions, 4201.57 Excerpts from Brbeufs spiritual diary were transcribed soon after his death (likely with a view to his canonization)by another Jesuit on the New France mission, Paul Ragueneau; inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 7, 476: Die augustivicesima prima, vel vicesima secunda aut vicesima tertia, sub examen vespertinum conscientiae et litanias Virginis,visione intellectuali vel imaginaria visus sum mihi videre ingentem catervam demonum ad me venientem, ut me devorar-ent, aut saltem morderent, sed nullus potuit mihi nocere. Et hi quidem qui praeibant similes erant equis inconsuetaemagnitudinis. Sed erant crine crispo et oblongo, tanquam hirci et caepellae. Coeterorum figurarum non memini [].58 On Le Jeune, see Y. Le Bras,LAmrindien dans les Relations du pre Paul Lejeune (16321641) (Sainte-Foy: Lesditions de la Huit, 1994), and Pioffet,La tentation de lpope dans les Relations des jsuites; on Brbeuf, see R.Latourelle, tude sur les crits de Saint Jean de Brbeuf, 2 vols (Montral: ditions de lImmacule-Conception, 1953),and Gilles Thriens introduction in Brbeuf, crits en Huronie, edited by G. Thrien (Montral: Lemeac, 1996).59

F. du Peron to J.-I. du Peron (27.IV.1639), inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 4, 216 Voicy comme un petit journaldepuis mon arrive.


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A few traces of such everyday writing nonetheless remain. Le Jeune had arrived in Qubec inJuly 1632, and his account of the voyage across the Atlantic together with a few preliminaryimpressions of New France were sent back with the returning ships in August. This letter wasprinted the same year by Cramoisy in Paris, most probably without Le Jeunes knowledge.60 Hedispatched his first full letter one year later. This too went to press, and at this point Le Jeune in

all likelihood still had no idea that he was writing for a wider public. The letters of both 1632 and1633 proved popular enough that portions were pirated in the periodical Le mercure franois.Though the success of theRelations in print had evidently caught Le Jeune off guard, he quicklyadapted his letters to the demands of a wide reading public. By 1634, he had begun to divide the

Relations into chapters on specific subjects (on conversions, baptisms, food and drink, forms ofgovernance, burial customs and so on), in the manner of Riccis account of China and Jos deAcostasNatural and Moral History of the Indies. The Relations consequently offer carefullycrafted, worked up material, all presented in the direct, observational style which contributedgreatly to their wide appeal. Yet this change in format clearly made Le Jeune uneasy. While suchthematic focus enhanced the readability of theRelations, it also meant that much of what occurredin the New France mission was excluded. Le Jeunes solution was to conclude with a final chapter

stuffed with miscellaneous entries. TheRelation for 1634, for example, finishes with a chapterwhich Le Jeune described as a mmoire, in the form of a journal, explaining that what I writein this journal has no other order except that of time.61 One year, he remarked that this last chap-ter would continue to grow, as by now had become custom, until the departure of the ships.62

These final chapters of theRelations are by no means notes, and though their inclusion may wellhave been gestural in part, the chronological arrangement, the sometimes choppy style and therandom nature of the entries locates them in the gap between the measured tone of much missionreporting and the field notes of the missionary. Another year, Le Jeune noted that I have jottedthis Relation down hastily, now in one place, now in another; sometimes upon the water, at othersupon the land.63 Thus, the journal for 1634 is stuffed with remarks on climate, geography,plants, animals and Montagnais culture. Le Jeune discusses childrens games, describes the

narrow sleds used through the densely wooded terrain in wintertime, offers remarks on localpractices of natural medicine, furnishes a translation of a Christian prayer into Montagnais andrecounts his narrow escape after being stranded on an ice floe in snowshoes. Even then, at onepoint he apologizes for omitting a thousand particulars.64

Close descriptions of carefully observed phenomena abound in these sections of theRelations.In 1635 Le Jeune recorded an account of an elk hunt. He offered the following description of theelks antlers:

60 P. Le Jeune,Brieve Relation du voyage de la Nouvelle-France (Paris: Cramoisy, 1632). On the publication history oftheRelations see Campeaus remarks inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 297, 403; L. Pouliot,tude sur les Relationsdes Jsuites de la Nouvelle-France (16321672) (Montral: Collge de lImmacule Conception, 1940), 1617; and J.C.McCoy,Jesuit Relations of Canada 16321673. A Bibliography (Paris: Arthur Rau, 1937).61Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 665: cechapitre [] nestant quun mmoire en forme de journal; and 678: Ce que jescris dans ce journal na point dautresuitte que la suitte du temps [] Cest dire que, quittant une remarque, je passeray une autre qui ne luy a point derapport, le temps seul servant de liaison mon discours.62Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1637, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 639: Ilreste tousjours quelque chose dire que le temps ou le sujet ne permettent pas destre insr dedans les chapitres de laRelation. Cest pourquoy je dresse ce journal la fin, qui se grossit ordinairement jusques au dpart des vaisseaux.63Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 307: Jaytrac fort la haste cette Relation, tantost en un endroit, tantost en un autre; quelquefois sur les eaux, dautre fois sur laterre.64

Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 722:Jobmets mille particularitez, pour tirer la fin.


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I carefully examined the head of this animal. Its antlers had grown only as long as the horns of an ox,for it was still young. These antlers were covered with hair, quite thin, and almost equally thickthroughout.65

Observations on other matters proliferate: a description of a local variety of plum, an account ofa muskrat hunt and the time of a lunar eclipse the night of 27 August.66 Le Jeune furnishes awealth of detail in these sections of theRelations. His account of the beaver, for example, reviewsthe methods used to construct a lodge, describes the lodges hydraulic system, explains how thebeaver overwinters beneath the ice, and furnishes precise dimensions of two dams.67 It is easyenough to picture Le Jeune at the waters edge, notebook in hand, carefully recording his find-ings. Yet much of what the Jesuit missionaries recorded could not have been the fruit of direct,immediate notation. Rather, the bulk of what was actually seen, heard or otherwise encounteredin New France could only have been recorded after the fact. Though the observational processbegan with the initial encounter of an object or event, the crucial stage lies in the recall and nota-tion of what had been seen. Rigorously schooled in techniques of memory and visualization,Jesuit missionaries were adept at knowing through mental picturing.

To comprehend better the role of recall in the observational process, we can consider how theNew France Jesuits handled aural experience. Much of the information in theRelations is in factderived from oral reports of local Huron and Montagnais. At one point Le Jeune writes that allthat I shall say regarding the savages, I have either seen with my own eyes, or have taken fromthe mouth of natives.68 Beyond this, theRelations spill over with reports of conversations anddebates between the Jesuit missionaries and their local interlocutors, frequently offered as directquotations. As the missionaries became more fluent in Montagnais and Huron, early impressionsof the impoverished nature of indigenous languages gave way to open admiration. In order toimmerse himself in the language, Le Jeune had spent the long, cold winter of 1634 travelling withthe Montagnais. I will now show, wrote Le Jeune, how this language is gorged with rich-ness.69 After reporting one long speech made by a Montagnais military leader, he noted that the

governor of New France himself had conceded that a Roman senator could not have spoken withmore eloquence.70 Brbeuf quoted at length filling a full seven pages of Cramoisys octavoedition of the 1636Relation a harangue made by the Huron leader Aenons, arguing that it couldpass for anything found in Livy.71 As Carlo Ginzburg has noted, in placing long speeches of thiskind in accounts of the overseas missions, Jesuit writers self-consciously followed the model ofclassical historians, notably Thucydides, who habitually included invented speeches in theirnarratives.72 In New France, Le Jeune and Brbeuf routinely and liberally laced their letters withformal harangues, snippets of dialogue and extracts of conversations all presented as directspeech. In Europe, meanwhile, as Anthony Grafton has shown, controversy raged over thelegitimacy of inserting such speeches in works of history.73

65Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1635, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 66: Jeconsidray particulirement la teste de cest animal. Il avoit pouss un bois de la longueur seulement des cornes dunboeuf, car il estoit encore tout jeune. Ce bois estoit tout velu, assez mince et dun grosseur quasi gale partout.66Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1635, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 6483.67Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France, en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 2489.68Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 539: Toutce que je diray touchant les sauvages, ou je lay veu de mes yeux, ou je lay tir de la bouche de ceux du pays [].69Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 645.70Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 284.71Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 37582.72 C. Ginzburg,Rhetoric, History, and Proof(Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), 736.73

A. Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2007), 3461.


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Let us consider the example of a particularly long harangue made by a Montagnais warriorcome to offer an Iroquois prisoner to the French at Quebec. The harangue begins true to form:

Listen, Frenchmen, I am going to chide you, for what else could be done by a big animal like me, whohas the boldness to speak in the presence of captains? If I were a captain, I would have the right tospeak; I am only a dog, yet I must speak, and have a friendly quarrel with you.

Le Jeune related the rest of the harangue and then concluded: this is about the sum of hisspeech.74 When reporting another such harangue, he repeatedly attested to its veracity, claimingthat this is very nearly the speech of this barbarian, and that I add nothing to the discourse ofthis savage; he touched upon all these arguments and several others, which he reasoned out verygravely in his own language.75 What I wish to draw our attention to is that Le Jeune does not infact claim to offer a verbatim account of these episodes. Though harangues are presented as directspeech, Le Jeunes avowed concern is to portray accurately the thrust of the argument and toconvey its main elements. This point is driven home by Brbeuf when introducing the longharangue of the Huron leader Aenons:

I shall do him wrong to put it here, for I shall not give it the grace it had in the mouth of this captain;no matter, one will still see his ideas, which I have set down, as I think, almost in their order.76

Like students in the Jesuit colleges recapitulating the lecture, Le Jeune and Brbeuf aimed tocapture the essence of what had been said, providing their readers with a forceful transpositionrather than a direct translation of words uttered across the Atlantic. Both Le Jeune and Brbeufhad extensive experience in the Jesuit pedagogical system. Prior to arriving in New France, LeJeune had studied at Jesuit establishments at La Flche, Paris and Rouen, and had himself taughtat the societys colleges at Rennes, Bourges, Nevers and Caen. Brbeuf, for his part, had bothstudied and taught at the Jesuit college at Rouen. The colleges, as Allan Greer has shown, were

ideally suited to equip Jesuits with the intellectual and spiritual tools required in the missions.

77

For those trained in the colleges, the recall of information delivered orally was second nature. Aswe have seen, Jesuit students leaned heavily on their notes in mentally rehearsing the lecture, incommitting it to memory and in preparing for oral recapitulation exercises. In the missions, thehabit of daily writing facilitated recall of the days events and created a record of observation. Weare accustomed to privilege the visual in analysing the cognitive practices of observation, and aswe have seen, the Jesuits own ability to process what they witnessed stemmed partly fromingrained habits of imaginative visualization. But the Jesuit case also reveals the relatively highepistemological value which could be assigned to aural competencies in the early modern period.The manner in which aural phenomena were handled in the missions draws our attention to thefundamental role played by memory and recall in Jesuit observational practice.

74Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 2945:Escoutez, Franois, je vous vais tancer, car que pourroit faire autre chose un gros animal comme moy, qui prend la hardi-esse de parler devant des capitaines? Si jestois capitaine, jaurois droit de parler; je ne suis quun chien. Si faut-il que jeparle et que je vous fasse une querelle d amiti [] Ce fut peu prs le sommaire de son discours.75Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 282:Voila peu prs le discours de ce barbare; 283: Je nadjouste rien au discours de ce sauvage, il toucha toutes ces raisons,et plusieurs autres qu il dduisit fort gravement en son langage.76Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1636, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 3, 379 : Ilme fit ce discours; mais je luy feray tort de le mettre icy, car je ne luy donneray pas la grce quil avoit en la bouche dece capitaine. Nimporte, on verra tousjours ses penses, que jay ranges, mon advis, peu prs dans leur ordre.77 A. Greer,Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5988.


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332 P. NELLES

The observational culture of the Jesuit missionaries ripples constantly beneath the surface ofthe Relations. To conclude, we can consider a couple of episodes which reflect a consciousawareness of specific observational practices in the mission to New France. The first bears uponthe role of observation in the accumulation and collation of knowledge. In concluding his letterfor 1633, Le Jeune apologized for its length and for including little information on the indigenous

population of New France. We should recall that 1633 was still early in the mission to NewFrance; the native languages had yet to be mastered, and the Jesuits were struggling to gain a foot-hold within aboriginal communities. Le Jeune voiced extreme scepticism towards those whoclaimed to have knowledge of indigenous peoples:

Much confidence is given in these first beginnings, as I have said, to the reports of those who arebelieved to have had experience among the savages. One eye-witness is worth ten who speak fromhearsay. I have observed that, after having seen a practice common to two or three savages, it is atonce attributed to the entire nation. The argument made from the enumeration of parts is faulty, if itdoes not comprehend all or the greater part. Add to this that there are many peoples in these countrieswho agree in a number of things, and differ in many others. So that, when it is said that certain practicesare common to the savages, it may be true of one nation and not true of another. Time is the father oftruth.78

Though he duly emphasizes the epistemological value of eye-witness testimony, Le Jeunes realpoint is about observational expertise. True knowledge of the Montagnais was to be built up notonly out of the accumulation of particular experiences and observations, but would also dependon the collation and comparison of data in order to ascertain its certainty and its validity or, toharness the Scholastic terminology employed by Le Jeune, its universality. Almost half acentury earlier, Alessandro Valignano had made a similar point about unskilled European observ-ers of the Japanese. He complained of those who, having chanced upon some noteworthy trifle,then wrote in such a way that it seemed to be practiced by all universally, and that which was

done in one place alone appeared common to all of Japan.

79

For both Valignano and Le Jeune,the ability to differentiate particulars was key to the observational process.Our second example bears upon the epistemological value assigned to the mission notebook

itself. One night during the long winter of 1634, the sky had inexplicably brightened withsustained intervals of some kind of lightning. The lightning had occurred a few hours after thedeath of the recently baptized Montagnais convert Sasousmat, who had expired at the Jesuitestablishment in Qubec City. Some of the French accompanying the Jesuits considered thelightning as evidence that the mans soul had risen to heaven though Le Jeune himself is carefulto report this as a belief of others, distancing himself from such a providential interpretation. LeJeune recounted that a great light appeared at the windows of our house, rising and falling threetimes. The episode was extraordinary, outside the normal range of observable natural phenom-

ena. The local Montagnais were frightened by the lightning, as it was unseasonal; some took it as

78Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1633, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 484: Onse fie beaucoup en ces premiers commencemens, comme jay dit, au rapport de ceux quon croid avoir prattiqu lessauvages. Plus valet oculatus testis quam decem auriti. Jay remarqu quaprs avoir veu quelque action commune deuxou trois sauvages, on lattribue incontinent toute la nation. Largument qui se fait du dnombrement des parties estfautif, sil ne les comprend toutes ou la plus grande partie. Ajousts quil y a quantit de peuples en ces contres qui convi-ennent en plusieurs choses et diffrent en beaucoup dautres; si bien quand on dit que les sauvages ont coustume de fairequelque action, cela peut estre vray dune nation et non pas de lautre. Le temps est le pre de la vrit. The phrase plusvalet oculatus testis quam decem auriti is a legal maxim ultimately derived from Plautus, Truculentus, 2,6,8.79 Valignano to Mercurian (1579), in A. Valignano,Historia del principio y progresso de la Compaa de Jess en lasIndias Orientalis (154264), edited by J. Wicki (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1944), 482: E altri final-

mente perch quel poco di bene che se ritrovava in un solo lo scrivevano di tal maniera che pareva che corresse tra tuttiin universale, e quello che si faceva in un loco solo pareva che gi era corrente per tutto il Giappone.


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a portent of further deaths to come in Sasousmats family. Indeed, occuring in the dead of winter,such an inexplicable brightening of the night sky came many months after the normal season ofthe aurora borealis. What is striking about Le Jeunes account is the manner in which he estab-lishes the empirical reality of the phenomenon by referencing the notebook in which herecorded the event. Le Jeune himself had been absent from the French settlement at Qubec; it

was in fact Brbeuf who had attended the death of Sasousmat. Le Jeune writes:I was then I who am writing this some forty leagues from Qubec, in the cabin of the brothers ofthe deceased; and this light appeared there at the same time and at the same hour, as we have sinceobserved, Father Brbeuf and I, by comparing our notes.80

Le Jeunes account is striking for its deliberate and explicit appeal to notes as an impartial empir-ical record. More intriguing still is the reliance on multiple participants in the observationalprocess, and the hint of collaboration.

Notes and notebooks played a variety of spiritual, practical and empirical roles in the earlymodern missions. Above all, the process of note-taking helped to order and codify experience,

shaping transitory phenomena experienced in highly specific settings into objects of knowledge.As Lorraine Daston has argued, one of the general functions of lists, tables and notes in the earlymodern period was to fragment the continuum of experience into a mosaic of particulars.81 TheJesuits self-consciously employed techniques of recall, visualization and notation in order toparticularize the fabulous new worlds they entered, constructing new cognitive protocols out ofdeeply engrained devotional and pedagogical practices. Contemplative techniques engaged manyof the cognitive practices demanded by the new empiricism: the ability to focus the attention, todisengage sensory experience from its subjective environment and to differentiate and describethe object of knowledge. In this context notes functioned not simply as a record of things seenand heard, but as a tool for reconstituting the field of experience in the minds eye.

Carleton University, Ottawa

80Relation de ce qui sest pass en la Nouvelle-France en lanne 1634, inMonumenta Novae Franciae, vol. 2, 545:Jestois pour lors moy qui escris cecy quelques quarante lieues de Kbec, dans la cabane des frres du dfunct.Cette lumire sy fit voir mesme temps et mesme heure, comme nous lavons remarqu depuis, le Pre Brboeuf etmoy, confrontans nos mmoires.81 Daston, Perch i fatti sono brevi?, 758.

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