Boncompagno da Signa (c. 1170-1240), teacher of rhetoric at the University of Bologna, includes this curious list in his treatise on memory. On the one hand, anything may indeed serve to improve natural memory, and the authors of late medieval treatises on the art of memory, in accordance with their primary source, Rhetorica ad Herennium, always stressed that one should search for one's own tools, those suited to one's own mind. On the other hand, strategies for memorizing changed throughout the Middle Ages and there are discernible patterns in the character of the methods, as well as periods of special interest in mnemonics. The most distinguished period is the late Middle Ages and early modern era (especially the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), when practical mnemonics flourished primarily at universities and in the context of preaching alongside the rediscovered and reshaped art of memory. Mnemonic tools of this time are far more systematic and logically structured than before, even though they still frequently surprise the modern reader as being confusing and impractical.

Biblical mnemonics form a special group which cannot be easily separated from biblical retellings. It may seem that mnemonics should serve as pure memory aids, while retellings would strive to offer interpretation as well. But they are much more closely interrelated: both often include interpretation, and both often serve primarily to help readers remember the contents of the Bible. Only Late Antique biblical retellings (e.g., by Cyprianus, Sedulius Scotus, or Arator) might be seen as a specific type, since their main aim was to put the correct content (the Bible) into the appropriate form: Virgilian poetry.