Latin Mnemonic verses combining the Ten Commandments with the Ten Plagues of Egypt transmitted in Late Medieval Bohemia
Abstract
A study on three different mnemonic poems summarizing the Decalogue and the Ten Plagues of Egypt, which were transmitted in late medieval Bohemia. The verses discussed are neither the most beautiful nor the most thought-provoking creations of the Middle Ages.
Although they shed little light on the transformation of devotion, they form an integral part of devotional literature-a topic difficult to approach and grasp, especially in the late Middle Ages, when these writings are numerous, closely interrelated and not very original. But even the lack of originality-the repetition-has a function: it is a sort of meditation, a rumination that serves to inculcate the basics of the Christian education.
These ways in which memory was supported may seem obscure at first, but it was believed that the more striking images would be imprinted into one's heart more deeply-and this might be one of the reasons why the combination of the commandments with the cruel and harsh plagues was so successful and popular: combining the commandments with vivid plague imagery would have facilitated the process of recollection. The primary aim of these verses was neither aesthetic nor hermeneutic, but rather, moral.
They were the means used to reform the actual behavior in the eyes of God and one's fellow men and thus their material aspects-the clumsy, disorganized, incoherent and obscure way of their transmission was of little concern to the medievals.