Jezuicka ars legendi — Francesco Sacchini, De ratione libros cum profectu legendi (1613)
A Jesuit ars legendi — Francesco Sacchini, De ratione libros cum profectu legendi (1613)

Author(s): Wiesław Pawlak
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The scholars of the Renaissance and Baroque shared the Hugh of St. Victor’s view that “there aretwo main ways of gaining knowledge: reading and reflection, with reading being the primary in theprocess of acquiring knowledge” („Duae praecipue res sunt, quibus quisque ad scientiam instruitur:videlicet lectio et meditatio, e quibus lectio priorem in doctrina obtinet locum”). Thus, one of themost important questions concerning the humanist culture in the early modern period refers to readingpatterns recommended and practised within the respublica litteraria of that time. These models canbe reconstructed among others on the basis of the instruction texts, among which one of the mostwidely-read was a repeatedly published treatise by Francesco Sacchini (1570—1625), an Italian Jesuit,entitled De ratione libros cum profectu legendi (1613). The article presents the contents of this workand the pattern of intensive reading propagated in it, according to which the decisive role was playedby learning precisely, sometimes even by heart, a relatively small collection of model texts treated asthe object of imitation and a source of information (copia rerum et verborum).

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