When Thomas Hoccleve addresses the relationship between images and texts he begins with the eyes. He emphasizes that, on the most basic level, reading and writing rely on seeing. After decades of copying texts, medieval clerics often faced spending their final years with ruined vision and a diminished capacity for continued scribal work. Unsurprisingly, the strain of such work on the eyes was a common grievance of professional copyists. One cleric gripes that “writing weighs one down. It brings dimness to your eyes, curves your spine, twists your ribs and your stomach, sends pain shooting through your kidneys,” and so on. Hoccleve, a lifelong bureaucrat and Privy Seal scribe, was also intimately acquainted with the ocular effects of textual labor:

His body bears the marks of his scribal work. As he explains, hours of staring “upon the sheepes skyn” lead to an aching back, an upset stomach, and, most notably, ruined eyesight.