Gregor von Feinaigle

Engraving with the portrait of Gregor von Feinaigle.

Gregor von Feinaigle OCist (born August 22, 1760 in Überlingen , † December 27, 1819 in Dublin ) was a German mnemonic and Roman Catholic monk.

Life

Feinaigle was born on August 22, 1760 in Überlingen . Little more is known of his early life, except that he entered the Cistercian monastery of Salem on Lake Constance . Due to the Napoleonic invasions, he had to flee the monastery with the other monks and became a traveling professor in Karlsruhe , Paris , London , Glasgow and Dublin . Feinaigle visited Paris in 1806 and gave public lectures on local and symbolic memory, which he called the "new system of mnemonics and methodology". He was accompanied by a young man who acted as an interpreter. Count Metternich , the Austrian ambassador, and his secretaries followed the entire course of the lecture and spoke in praise of the system, which, although novel in its application, is based on the thematic memory of the ancients, as described by Cicero and Quintilian . Feinaigle was exposed to a lot of criticism and sarcasm in the press and was ridiculed on stage by Dieulafoy in a farce entitled "Les filles de mémoire, ou le Mnémoniste". In response, on February 27, 1807, he gave a public demonstration to an audience of about two thousand people. He did not appear himself, but was represented by twelve or fifteen of his students who presented his art. He then went on a lecture tour through different parts of France. In early 1811 he came to England and lectured at the Royal Institution and the Surrey Institution in London, as well as in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The fee to attend a course of fifteen or sixteen of his lectures was £ 5. 5Sh., And this sum was paid by a large number of students, for Feinaigle made a secret of the details of his method and was consequently denounced in some circles as an impostor. However, he gained many loyal followers. Rev Peter Baines, later Bishop of Siga, introduced his system of mnemonics and also his general curriculum to the Benedictine College of Ampleforth, Yorkshire, and a society of gentlemen established a school at Aldborough House, near Mountjoy Square, Dublin, which was under Feinaigle's personal supervision and was run according to his principles. He died in Dublin on December 27, 1819.

Works

The largest exhibition of his system is in The New Art of Memory (1812). John Millard, assistant librarian at the Surrey Institution, was the editor of this work, according to Thomas Hartwell Horne, Millard's brother-in-law, who helped him with notes on Feinaigle's lectures. Further treatises on the system were:

• Notice sur la Mnémonique, ou l'art d'aider et de fixer la Mémoire en tout genre d'études, de sciences, ou d'affaires, par Grégoire de Feinaigle, Paris, 1806; and
• Mnemonics or practical art of memory for self-teaching after the lectures of Herr von Feinaigle, Frankfurt am Main, 1811.

In folk culture

Gregor von Feinaigle is considered by some to be the origin of the word "finagle", which means "to cheat or cheat; use cunning, deceitful methods", such as "... seedy stockbrokers who cheat their customers of their assets".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Feinaiglian Institution, Dublin Michael Quane Dublin Historical Record Vol. 19, No. 2 (March 1964), pp. 30-44.
2. ^ The New Art of Memory, founded upon the principles taught by M. Gregor von Feinaigle, and applied to Chronology, History, Geography, Languages, Systematic Tables, Poetry, Prose, and Arithmetic. To which is added some account of the principal systems of artificial memory, from the earliest period to the present time; with instances of the extraordinary powers of natural memory , London, 1812; 2nd and 3rd editions, with numerous additions, and a portrait of Feinaigle, 1813.