Jacobus Publicius is one of the forgotten forefathers of systematized mental training.

Until now.

And we sure need him in today’s world.

Whereas many people today reach for brain exercise apps, I recommend you train with his memory wheel technique.

Why?

For one thing, his influence on mnemonic theory was so strong, his book was copied thousands of times.

Other memory experts borrowed his visual alphabet and built upon his memory improvement program.

But there’s nothing quite like the original.

Especially when the focus is on exercises that make both your thinking speed and your memory sharper.

That’s why in this post I’ll explain everything you need to know about this incredible scholar, physician and rhetorician.

This article includes how to get started using his incredible memory and brain training program.

It’s the kind of training that helped people during the Renaissance build beautiful buildings, research the cosmos and usher in many of the innovations we still enjoy today.

Who Was Jacobus Publicius?

And Why Should Memory Students Still Read Him?

Unfortunately, not much is known about Jacobus Publicius other than he was a physician, poet and professor of rhetoric who taught at a variety of universities in the fifteenth century.

You won’t find much more about him than that in The Medieval Craft of Memory, one of the few anthologies where you can read his Ars oratoria, Ars epistolandi, Ars memorativa in English.

Sometimes called Oratoriae Artis Epitoma, this book also shows that he designed a chessboard, including an Alfil piece.

Beyond that, little is known about him.

But his influence was huge.

And the reason we should study him is simple:

It helps us better understand the better known memory improvement books of Robert Fludd and Giordano Bruno.

There’s no question that Fludd’s number-shape images and mnemonic alphabet were heavily influenced by Publicius.

And although we often take Ramon Lull’s memory wheels as the source of influence on Bruno, there’s reason to believe that Bruno copied a great deal of his On the Composition of Images from Publicius.

Influence on Universities

Because Publicius traveled so much to teach at various schools, his book and his teaching instituted memory training in schools.

Although many would have had Rhetorica ad Herennium to draw upon, that famous book is not nearly as high-powered as what Publicius offered those seeking mental training routines.

Plus, we have to take into account the fact that the printing press was relatively new in Europe. As Lynne Kelly puts it in Memory Craft, his was the first of many printed memory guides.

If Publicius really did print the first memory guide in Europe, it would have been a very novel learning resource indeed. Any other memory books at the time would have been by people like Aristotle, Aquinas and Augustine, important texts that copyists would have hand-copied and kept in circulation.

The Publicius Memory Wheel Explained

If you want to know how to use this particular memory wheel, it’s important to begin with what Publicius is not offering.

This matters for one very important reason:

Unfortunately, many people believe that our ancestors used memory wheels as a kind of Memory Palace.

That’s not the case at all. If you want to use Memory Palaces, please go through my full guide on using the Memory Palace technique properly.

You can use memory wheels in a few different ways, ranging from critical thinking and asking questions in a particular order to generating mnemonic images.

It’s for the purposes of training your brain to rapidly come up with mnemonic associations that Publicius offers his memory wheel.

As Clément Poupard has shown in Learning the Art of Memory by Doing, Publicius wanted you to use the memory wheel to train your brain.

In the image above, you can see one kind of memory wheel that Publicius included in his book.

Notice the snake in the center.

It was actually meant to be spun by the person reading the book. That makes this form of the memory wheel a kind of volvelle.

The Uniqueness of Volvelles in Memory Training

Volvelles are charts that operate like analog computers, compressing information into smaller spaces. In this case, the information helps you play a game.

For example, in the image above, the snake’s head faces C and the tail points at F.

You get memory exercise in coming up with mnemonic images by placing vowels between the consonants C and F to create words.

Playing it myself now, I can think of:

• Caffeine


• CEFR (a European language learning framework)


• Cipher


• Coffee


• Cuff

Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t strictly placed the F consonant at the end of each word.

That’s fine. The point is to get in some mental exercise and stretch the mind to play the game as closely as possible to the rules.

For more brain exercises like this that involve words, images and even your body, check out my complete guide to brain exercise.

Although this is just one kind of memory wheel explained, I hope you find it useful. You certainly can use it as a kind of Memory Palace, but that’s not at all the point in the case of Publicius’ book.

What’s Inside Publicius’ Art of Memory?

Publicius left us a few texts.

One is all about rhetoric, focusing on how to persuade people by writing and delivering speeches from memory.

The next part teaches you how to write letters elegantly.

Finally, his Ars Memoritiva (art of memory) takes you through how to use what he considered the best memory techniques.

Although there’s overlap with other memory trainers, such as Peter of Ravenna, the uniqueness of his book on memory boils down to:

• The memory wheel with the movable snake


• His visual mnemonic alphabet


• Descriptions of how to use a chessboard as a Memory Palace

Another unique aspect of Publicius’ work is the woodcut illustrations.

Some people believe these were created for him by Erhard Ratdolt, but I haven’t been able to confirm this as a fact.

Whoever created them, each illus