* Paul Nelles is Associate Professor of History, Carleton University, Ottawa. 1 *24.xii.1517 Burgos; SJ 1541 Rome; †20.xii.1576 Rome (DHCJ, IV, 3168-69). 75 LIBROS DE PAPEL, LIBRI BIANCHI, LIBRI PAPYRACEI. NOTE-TAKING TECHNIQUES AND THE ROLE OF STUDENT NOTEBOOKS IN THE EARLY JESUIT COLLEGES Paul Nelles * How did early Jesuits take notes? For an order in many ways defined by the collection and circulation of information, the question of note-taking techniques is of some importance. Did Jesuits, for example, receive explicit training in note- taking? The Jesuit colleges offer an ample arena in which to explore this problem. During the first pedagogical experiments of the 1540s an informal “house style” of note-taking developed in the colleges, largely under the guidance of the first secretary of the Society, Juan de Polanco. 1 Student notebooks were employed at all levels of study. Called predominantly–amidst a host of variations–libros de papel (Spanish), libri bianchi (Italian), or libri papyracei (Latin) in the multilingual environment of the early Society, student notebooks constituted crucial instruments of learning in the intellectual life of the colleges. Note-taking, easily overlooked within the highly structured Jesuit curriculum, provided the foundation for drills and exercises undertaken inside the classroom and out. Like other aspects of Jesuit pedagogy, the use of notebooks would become normalised over the course of the 1550s and 1560s through written guidelines for the colleges and circular memoranda. These sources reveal a culture of note-taking indebted to scholastic learning methods which aimed at the rapid comprehension of texts through summary and drill, and which valued the cognitive appropriation of course material over verbatim mastery.