«Todos los secretos del corazón designa la mano». Quironomía y quirología en el Trismegistus I (Artículo XXI) de Caramuel

Abstract

The Spaniard Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz was one of those prolific expatriates writing and publishing their works in seventeenth-century Europe. His sometimes intricate writings, full of quotations in languages as diverse as Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German and Spanish, are the result of a life spent in several countries, fulfilling various ecclesiastical duties (Archbishop of Otranto, Bishop of Vigebano, etc.). In a pre-encyclopaedic style, popular among those contemporary writers who felt curious about the rising rationalist viewpoints (Athanasius Kircher, Marin Mersenne), Caramuel, in his Trismegistus theologicus, explores the art of manual rhetoric, alternatively mentioned as chironomy and as chirology. This manual rhetoric is only one aspect of an ampler and more ambitious gestural rhetoric falling between oratory and what could be described as an acting treatise.

Keywords

• gesture
• natural idiom
• mnemotechnic
• hand
• chirology
• chironomy