theater of remembered virtues

August 06, 2007

Theater of remembered virtues: a Reformation-era virtual space [BLOG]

There are centuries of virtual worlds in texts before the advent of digital spaces. Today's case is a Counterreformation* document, a late 16th-century manuscript called Theatrum virtutum divi Stanislai Hosii (The Theatre of the Virtues of the Venerable Stanislaus Hosius). It's a tribute collection to Stanislaus Hosius, a ardent antiprotestant cleric. Notice that each poem, each image fits into a larger scheme of a virtual space, a palace of virtues.



Compare with the long theater of memory/art of memory tradition. Interesting to think about great memory master Giordano Bruno, active, then burned at the stake, around the same time as this book's assemblage.

Compare, too, with the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, which creates an elaborately realized virtual space.

*How important is the Reformation in the history of information? The printing press revolution opens it up. Strategies responding to early modern information overload, such as the cyclopedia, exit from the other side.