Introduction: The Visual Languages in Illustrated Lecture Notebooks

The curriculum at the Old University of Louvain (founded 1425) remained that of a typically medieval institution in the early modern period. Students started at the Studium Generale of the Faculty of Arts of Louvain before being (possibly) admitted to one of the higher faculties of medicine, law, or theology. The magister artium title required nine months’ training in logic or dialectic, nine months of physics, four months of metaphysics and ethics, and, finally, three months of rehearsal exercises (repetitiones). In the Artes faculty, students took verbatim notes of the text dictated by teachers during class. Taking and saving notes was a widespread habit among humanist scholars, scientific observers, and travelers. In many early modern universities, the professor spoke at dictation speed, which resulted in fairly reliable copies of the course. It also happened that the text was copied or even bought in advance, on the basis of course notes from previous years.

Louvain’s well-preservedwell-preserved volumes of lecture notes or dictata were often embellished by students with drawings and then engravings. This tradition of illustrating lecture notes flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century, continuing until the mid-eighteenth century. Visual material includes logical diagrams, arborial diagrams, tables, “fill-in-the blank” title pages, humoristic doodles, ornamental initials, landscapes and views of cities, portraits of rulers, geometric patterns, scientific instruments, astronomical representations, anatomical plates, attributes and personifications, religious and mythological narratives, satirical or grotesque figures, frames and cartouches surrounding handwritten titles, drawn head pieces and scrolls, object-shaped text, small devotional vignettes, illustrated colophons or chronograms, and symbols of the four pedagogies.