100 books like The Medieval Craft of Memory

By Mary Carruthers (editor), Jan M. Ziolkowski (editor),

Here are 100 books that The Medieval Craft of Memory fans have personally recommended if you like The Medieval Craft of Memory. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Book cover of The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture

Jamie Kreiner Author Of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

From my list on medieval brainiacs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of the early Middle Ages. There are all sorts of unexpected differences and similarities between modern and medieval life, and things get especially interesting when it comes to thinking about thinking. Our understanding of how our minds work has obviously changed—and so have the ways that we actually use them. Medieval thinkers in Europe and the Mediterranean world struggled with concentration and memory and information overload, just like we do. But they were savvier in dealing with those problems, and these books invite you into the wonderful world of their cognitive practices. You’ll probably find yourself experimenting with many of these techniques along the way!

Jamie's book list on medieval brainiacs

Jamie Kreiner Why did Jamie love this book?

Everything that Mary Carruthers has written is terrific — but this is the book that first showed me how unusual, and how sophisticated, medieval approaches to the mind could be.

The arts of memory that flourished in the high Middle Ages were designed for much more than rote memorization: they helped people internalize what they perceived, then transform that material into something new.

Carruthers presents these techniques so infectiously that you’ll want to try them yourself. It’s not just the practices themselves that are riveting, though. Carruthers also shows how they shaped medieval media culture and how they contributed to the ethical development of the people who practiced them.

The arts of memory weren’t parlor tricks; they were modes of understanding and evaluating the world. Amazing!

By Mary Carruthers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Book of Memory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mary Carruthers's classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in composition, whether of literature, music, architecture, or manuscript books. The new edition will reignite the debate on memory in medieval studies and, like the first, will…


Book cover of Lines of Thought: Branching Diagrams and the Medieval Mind

Jamie Kreiner Author Of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

From my list on medieval brainiacs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of the early Middle Ages. There are all sorts of unexpected differences and similarities between modern and medieval life, and things get especially interesting when it comes to thinking about thinking. Our understanding of how our minds work has obviously changed—and so have the ways that we actually use them. Medieval thinkers in Europe and the Mediterranean world struggled with concentration and memory and information overload, just like we do. But they were savvier in dealing with those problems, and these books invite you into the wonderful world of their cognitive practices. You’ll probably find yourself experimenting with many of these techniques along the way!

Jamie's book list on medieval brainiacs

Jamie Kreiner Why did Jamie love this book?

Lines of Thought reveals the hidden magic of a seemingly simply notetaking device: the horizontal tree diagram, which became especially popular among university students and scholars starting in the thirteenth century.

Upon first glance, you might not be all that impressed by the device: it’s just a combination of vertical lists with horizontal sentence structures! But as Even-Ezra shows, these diagrams accomplished much more than a mere highlighter could.

They turned passive readers into active analysts, distilled long and complex texts into clear and concise schemas, and conveyed new ideas about the material that would have been impossible to communicate through the written text alone.

As a bonus, the book is interlaced with its own horizontal tree diagrams. And who doesn’t love a meta-format?

By Ayelet Even-Ezra,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lines of Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We think with objects-we conduct our lives surrounded by external devices that help us recall information, calculate, plan, design, make decisions, articulate ideas, and organize the chaos that fills our heads. Medieval scholars learned to think with their pages in a peculiar way: drawing hundreds of tree diagrams. Lines of Thought is the first book to investigate this prevalent but poorly studied notational habit, analyzing the practice from linguistic and cognitive perspectives and studying its application across theology, philosophy, law, and medicine.

These diagrams not only allow a glimpse into the thinking practices of the past but also constitute a…


Book cover of The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from Its Origins to Saint Bernardino of Siena

Jamie Kreiner Author Of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

From my list on medieval brainiacs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of the early Middle Ages. There are all sorts of unexpected differences and similarities between modern and medieval life, and things get especially interesting when it comes to thinking about thinking. Our understanding of how our minds work has obviously changed—and so have the ways that we actually use them. Medieval thinkers in Europe and the Mediterranean world struggled with concentration and memory and information overload, just like we do. But they were savvier in dealing with those problems, and these books invite you into the wonderful world of their cognitive practices. You’ll probably find yourself experimenting with many of these techniques along the way!

Jamie's book list on medieval brainiacs

Jamie Kreiner Why did Jamie love this book?

The medieval images that survive today might seem like simplistic or bizarre pictures now. But medieval viewers saw them differently. They treated images as tools for understanding, analyzing, and remembering complex ideas about the world.

Bolzoni works to crack that “code” through the case of late medieval Italy: she illustrates how viewers’ relationships to images changed the more they learned, how preachers communicated with their congregations in ways that listeners would visualize and internalize, and how certain images—like six-winged angels or trees of life—served as effective conduits of information but also as platforms for layered conceptual associations that got increasingly sophisticated the more that authors and audiences thought about them.

This beautiful, fascinating book is well worth seeking out from a library or used bookseller.

By Lina Bolzoni,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Web of Images as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Through her investigation of the mnemonic role of images in vernacular preaching and in mystical texts, Lina Bolzoni moves beyond the traditional art-historical approach to late Mediaeval and Renaissance art which tends to concentrate on style and iconography. She shows how these images were viewed at the time of their creation, and offers new ways of reconstructing their meaning. By bringing her knowledge of rhetoric and the art of memory to bear on the visual arts she opens up new perspectives for the study of religious art and literature of the Renaissance, and shows how these images actually functioned within…


Book cover of Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism

Jamie Kreiner Author Of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction

From my list on medieval brainiacs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of the early Middle Ages. There are all sorts of unexpected differences and similarities between modern and medieval life, and things get especially interesting when it comes to thinking about thinking. Our understanding of how our minds work has obviously changed—and so have the ways that we actually use them. Medieval thinkers in Europe and the Mediterranean world struggled with concentration and memory and information overload, just like we do. But they were savvier in dealing with those problems, and these books invite you into the wonderful world of their cognitive practices. You’ll probably find yourself experimenting with many of these techniques along the way!

Jamie's book list on medieval brainiacs

Jamie Kreiner Why did Jamie love this book?

Early Christian monks in the eastern Mediterranean chalked up many of their mental struggles to demonic interference—and yet their approaches to the problem of attention share some striking similarities to modern psychology.

Graiver makes the case that monks’ talk of demons was not a superstitious diagnosis but a pragmatic one: it helped monks try to strike a balance between monitoring their thoughts and thinking too hard about them, deal with unwanted thoughts before they became all-consuming, and figure how to keep it together when their thoughts were all over the place.

I love that this book takes early monks and modern psychologists equally seriously. And even if you don’t start blaming your problems on demons after reading it, you will still have learned a lot about the promises and perils of attention management.

By Inbar Graiver,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Asceticism of the Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence. At the book's center is a particular…


Book cover of Medieval Women

ffiona Perigrinor Author Of Reluctant Pilgrim: The Book of Margery Kempe's Maidservant

From my list on why you wouldn’t want to travel with Margery Kempe.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’d already published a scholarly book about the household of a medieval widow, who was just a decade older than Margery Kempe and lived sixty miles away, so the time, place, and mindset seemed very familiar. As a Jungian Psychoanalyst I’m interested in how individuals find the central meaning in their lives. Clearly for Margery it was the search for God, although she doesn’t appear to have been a kindly soul. When I read that she twice quarreled with her maidservant, I realised the maidservant could tell her own tale. And so she did, and sometimes it seemed she was dictating it to me! Characters really do speak for themselves... 

ffiona's book list on why you wouldn’t want to travel with Margery Kempe

ffiona Perigrinor Why did ffiona love this book?

Eileen Power was a pioneer in Women’s History and this was the first book I read when I went back to university. It’s an inspiring collection of essays on medieval ideas of women, working women in town and country, education, and nunneries. If you’re planning to write a book about women in the Middle Ages, start your research here.

Power refers to many diverse contemporary texts such as The Goodman of Paris and works by Chaucer and Christine de Pisan, which enabled me (or, which will enable you) to portray authentic detail in my own book. The essay on nunneries, which I drew on for my novel, is a summary of her seminal work on medieval English nunneries. There are also forty-two well-chosen illustrations that complement the text.

By Eileen Power,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Medieval Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Throughout her career as a medieval historian, Eileen Power was engaged on a book about women in the Middle Ages. She did not live to write the book but some of the material she collected found its way into her popular lectures on medieval women. These lectures were brought together and edited by M. M. Postan. They reveal the world in which women lived, were educated, worked and worshipped. Power gives a vivid account of the worlds of the lady, the peasant, the townswoman and the nun. The result is a historical yet intimate picture of a period gone by…


Book cover of Magic in Medieval Manuscripts

Anne Lawrence-Mathers Author Of The True History of Merlin the Magician

From my list on Merlin and magic.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by magic and its history since I was at school. One of my first Saturday jobs was as a shelf stacker in Portsmouth Central Library, and I was delighted to discover that the library had a special collection on the occult and magic. I spent as much time dipping into the books as I did shelving them! That interest was sharpened by holiday visits to places with links to magical people and events in the past – and I am very grateful for the patience of my family. I now research and teach medieval magic at Reading University and enjoy discussing spells and instruction manuals on various types of magic.  

Anne's book list on Merlin and magic

Anne Lawrence-Mathers Why did Anne love this book?

Sophie Page is an expert on magic in medieval Europe and in this book she was given free rein to choose fascinating images from the British Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts. 

As somebody who studies medieval manuscripts myself, and loves them as works of art as well as for the historical records they contain, this book is irresistible. 

It’s a little like being given a guided tour through an exhibition on the subject, by someone who really knows how alchemy and astrology – or even necromancy and sorcery – were performed. 

If you want to know how to summon a demon or uncover hidden treasure, you’ll find places to start in this book! 

By Sophie Page,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Magic in Medieval Manuscripts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Magic existed in diverse forms in the Middle Ages: from simple charms to complex and subversive demonic magic. Its negative characteristics were defined by theologians who sought to isolate undesirable rituals and beliefs, but there were also many who believed that the condemned texts and practices were valuable and compatible with orthodox piety. Magic in Medieval Manuscripts explores the place of magic in the medieval world and the contradictory responses it evoked, through an exploration of images and texts in British Library manuscripts. These range from representations of the magician, wise-woman and witch to charms against lightning, wax images for…


Book cover of Fortune Like the Moon (Hawkenlye Mysteries)

Felicity Pulman Author Of Blood Oath

From my list on medieval murders and mysteries.

Why am I passionate about this?

After enjoying Josephine Tey’s wonderful Daughter of Time, in which she exonerates Richard III from the crime of murdering the princes in the tower, followed by the Brother Cadfael mysteries, I became hooked on historical crimes and decided to try writing them myself! It was quite a challenge researching both the history and the settings from Australia, but the novels became a wonderful excuse for lengthy visits to travel around Great Britain and France. As well as writing the Janna Chronicles, my passion for history has also prompted several other published novels and series, including the Shalott trilogy.

Felicity's book list on medieval murders and mysteries

Felicity Pulman Why did Felicity love this book?

Because my character Janna seeks refuge in an abbey while on her quest to find her father, I found it interesting and instructive to read about Abbess Helewise and life at Hawkenlye Abbey in more detail. I also enjoyed trying to second-guess whodunit as the Abbess and her helpmate, lord of the manor, Josse d’Acquin, solve the many crimes that come their way. And I was intrigued by the supernatural elements introduced by Alys Clare, with the abbey being situated so close to the ancient forest in the Great Weald, and how the two worlds often intertwine. 

By Alys Clare,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fortune Like the Moon (Hawkenlye Mysteries) as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortly before his unexpected coronation, King Richard passed a law letting all of England's prisoners go free. Shortly afterwards a young nun is found, gruesomely murdered. Richard swiftly employs an old military colleague of his, Josse d'Acquin, to unravel this hideous mystery. Who could have wanted to kill this innocent young novice, and, more worryingly, why?

Josse goes to Hawkenlye Abbey to find out the answers to these questions. He is having little success until meets the Abbess Helewise, a woman who quickly proves herself to be his equal, both as an amateur sleuth, and as a figure the community…


Book cover of A Column of Fire

G.J. Williams Author Of The Conjuror's Apprentice

From my list on tempestuous times and crimes of the Tudors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied the Tudor era in high school and have been hooked ever since. It was an era of enormous change. The world was opening up, science was advancing, religion was losing its grip over people, and new ideas were challenging every level of society. Discovery was everywhere–new planets, lands, theories, foods, and trading routes. Society was changing, and women were beginning to have a voice and education. It was also an era of characters–men and some women who made a mark on the world through their wit and wisdom–and some just by being rogues. There are no dull moments in Tudor times.

G.J.'s book list on tempestuous times and crimes of the Tudors

G.J. Williams Why did G.J. love this book?

I love this because Ken Follett is a master storyteller. It spans the Elizabethan era and captures the intrigue, international conspiracies, horrors of religious persecution, and the opening up of the world through trade and exploration.

Yet again, Follett takes you to the town of Kingsbridge and into the world and lives of the characters who live there. You are engaged and invested in them and even feel you know them. I loved the reality, the emotion, the highs of joy, and the lows of sadness. 

By Ken Follett,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked A Column of Fire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Absorbing . . . impossible to resist." -The Washington Post

As Europe erupts, can one young spy protect his queen? #1 New York Times bestselling author Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire.

In 1558, the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, royalty and commoners clash, testing friendship, loyalty, and love.

Ned Willard wants nothing more than to…


Book cover of The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism: 1200-1350

Rik Van Nieuwenhove Author Of An Introduction to Medieval Theology

From my list on medieval theology and spirituality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of Medieval Theology at Durham University, UK, and have published on both medieval theology (especially Thomas Aquinas) and spirituality (especially Jan van Ruusbroec, an author from 14th century Brabant). When I was in my early twenties, I had no interest in Christianity, but I gradually realized that the societal and moral problems of modernity could only be properly addressed by examining a genuinely alternative tradition, namely pre-modern thinkers (if only because postmodern critics of modernity remain all too often beholden to the assumptions of modernity, even in their opposition to them). This explains why I was drawn to medieval theology (and spirituality). 


Rik's book list on medieval theology and spirituality

Rik Van Nieuwenhove Why did Rik love this book?

This is Volume 3 of a major series covering Western spirituality from the era of the Church Fathers to the seventeenth century. Every volume contains a wealth of insights into medieval spirituality (and theology). This series is a monument of scholarship: nothing like this has ever been tempted by any scholar in the English-speaking world—and achieved with so much flair and expertise.

One would buy these books just for the bibliographies alone, even in an age of search engines. This volume covers Franciscan spirituality, women mystics, and beguines, including Hadewijch, Mechthild, and Marguerite Porete. Like the other volumes, it is lucid, informative, and comprehensive. Warmly recommended.  

By Bernard McGinn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Flowering of Mysticism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The year 1200 marked a dynamic turning point in the history of Christian mysticism. New forms of religious life provided the impetus for a new mysticism whose influence continues today. This book documents the spirited dialogue between men and women that made possible the richness of mysticism in the 13th and 14th centuries.


Book cover of Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350

Mayssoun Sukarieh Author Of A Global Idea: Youth, City Networks, and the Struggle for the Arab World

From my list on cities and travelling ideas.

Why am I passionate about this?

My name is Mayssoun Sukarieh. I teach in London( King’s College) and I live in many places, physically at different times of the year, and mentally all the time. This made me fascinated on how ideas translate in different places according to contexts, and what people do with ideas they hear, create, or adopt. I am passionate about the study of power, whether studying elites- but in relation to their effects on other classes, or power of ideas and thoughts specifically ones that are connected to capitalism as an ideology.

Mayssoun's book list on cities and travelling ideas

Mayssoun Sukarieh Why did Mayssoun love this book?

In this important study, Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution, arguing that the modern world economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth-century economy—a system far different from the European world system which emerged from it.

Using the city as the working unit of analysis, Before European Hegemony provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China.

Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony.

By Janet L. Abu-Lughod,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Before European Hegemony as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this important study, Janet Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution and provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the fourteenth century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system
and the rise of European hegemony. She concludes with a provocative analysis of our current world economy, suggesting that we may be moving towards a pluralistic world…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Middle Ages, Europe, and France?

The Middle Ages 429 books
Europe 954 books
France 937 books