AUTHOR COPY Original Article Manual thinking: John Mombaer’s meditations, the neuroscience of the imagination and the future of the humanities Sara Ritchey Department of History, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana Abstract This essay uses recent findings in the neurosciences, particularly the notion of human brain plasticity, as a model through which to understand the goals of later medieval meditative practices. Instructors of meditation, it shows, sought to provide scripts through which a pupil might come to incorporate the subjectivity of another – another person, such as Christ or the saints, or another object, such as a text. These acts of meditative incorporation, of association, were designed ultimately to lead to new ethical, emotional and physical dispositions. The essay examines in particular the instructional works of John Mombaer, Thomas of Cantimpre ´, Berengario of Donadio and Ludolph of Saxony in order to recommend a rethinking of the pedagogy and research methods practiced in contemporary humanistic disciplines. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2012) 3, 341–354. doi:10.1057/pmed.2012.24 In 1494 John Mombaer published the Rosetum exercitiorum spiritualium et sacrarum meditationum (‘Rosary of Spiritual Exercises and Sacred Medita- tions’), a training manual consisting of mental and physical exercises that he devised to assist the canons of Agnietenberg in deepening their devotions. Among the exercises were fairly basic diagrams and word clusters such as the r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2040-5960 postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Vol. 3, 3, 341–354 www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/