Over the last two decades the study of memory in medieval texts has become a burgeoning field of enquiry, not least through the publications of Mary Carruthers and other scholars in her wake. This volume has the great merit of surveying the question of what mnemonic traditions were available in the medieval period as a whole, but focusing in particular on their application within Franciscan (with some Dominican) preaching in the later Middle Ages. While there is an unfortunate awkwardness of repetition in the title, the book itself makes a substantive contribution to the study of mendicant preaching. The author's particular theme is the contribution made by images (verbal and visual) in helping to recall virtues and vices within preaching. Their role was not so much to make a preacher remember a sermon, as to help his audience remember what had been said. This is what moderns might call good pedagogy. In the case of sermons, of which a vast number survive from the medieval period, looking out for the mnemonic strategies involved helps us understand why a good sermon was always appreciated, whether to read or to listen to.

In an opening section, Rivers explores memory techniques themselves in the High Middle Ages. The most widely known throughout the medieval period was that of the Ad Herennium, advocating recollection of a series of places (loci), each with a corresponding image. Quintilian advocated an improved system in his Institutio oratoria, with greater emphasis on divisio and compositio. While it might seem from a classical perspective that there was little opportunity for the skills of public speaking in the early medieval period, rhetorical skills simply transformed into a religious and homiletic context. Even if the original classical systems were not directly studied themselves, they shaped methods of recollection that became widely used in the twelfth century, perhaps most influentially in the writing of figures like Hugh of St Victor.

Rivers shows how the discovery of the full range of Aristotelian writings in the thirteenth century transformed preaching techniques, although not always in the same way in the two major mendicant orders. Franciscan preaching, strongly shaped by Augustinian theories of illumination, were not as conservative as is sometimes assumed. Of great interest is Rivers's exposition of a treatise De modo addiscendi by the thirteenth-century Franciscan, Guibert of Tournai. She shows how his idea that memory could take the place of books was itself shaped by Victorine tradition. Far from being hostile to classical learning, Guibert was being rigorously practical in his attitudes. Similarly helpful is her analysis of other Franciscan writers such as David of Augsburg, as shaped by Cistercian meditative techniques. Interpreting the four ‘Last Things’ (death, judgement, hell and heaven) as images to help one recall the benefits of God opens up a rich way of interpreting a vast body of medieval writing and imagery. Another little-known Franciscan text that she uncovers is the Ars praedicandi of Francesc Eiximensis, a fourteenth-century Catalan friar who opened up his readers to vernacular preaching, adapting ancient principles of mnemonic craft to the needs of his audience.

As Rivers explains, the development of elaborate mnemonic techniques, coupled with increasing appeal to classical imagery, was not without its critics. She none the less helps to situate the classicising interests of a group of English mendicants in the early fourteenth century (like the Franciscan John Ridevall and the Dominican Thomas Holcot). Their enthusiasm for images of pagan divinities reflected their use of an ancient mnemonic technique, adapted for ethical instruction. Their ‘classicism’ is thus not based on love of antiquity for its own sake, but on their desire to enable their listeners to distinguish between right and wrong behaviour. One of the figures at whom she looks is Pierre Bersuire, a Franciscan who became a Benedictine and a friend of Petrarch. Although her study does not extend far into the fifteenth century, she effectively helps to situate the mendicant inspiration of the classical renewal customarily identified with Petrarch. Her volume closes with a chapter on the enormously influential sermon collection Dormi secure attributed to Johannes von Werden, a German Franciscan from around 1400. His fondness for creating images to help with preaching helped to inspire much religious art, but would ultimately generate hostility from those who complained that such images ultimately detracted from a spiritual end.

Rivers attaches a much small chapter on memory precepts in Italian preaching that introduces the teaching of a Dominican, Giovanni di San Gimignano, from the early fourteenth century, and comments briefly on the preaching of Bernardino of Siena, but without the depth of familiarity that is to be found in her chapters relating to northern Europe. The two-page conclusion is disappointingly slim for such a solid survey, particularly when compared to the richness of the introductory survey of the arts of memory. This does not take away, however, from the richness of what this volume has to offer. The study of medieval preaching is a field that is still in creative expansion, and there is still much to discover. This volume offers substantive research into a rich world of largely unstudied authors, helping to explain what made a good sermon. A field currently sold in universities as ‘communication studies’ has a rich history within medieval preaching, a literary genre worthy of close attention.