This chapter introduces a very different iconographical tradition from the Annunciation scenes in the previous chapter. The kind of decoration discussed here challenges our seemingly clear-cut distinction between text and image. By now it is evident that the medieval page was generally filled with two things: words and decoration. Words make up the text, of course, and are executed with pen and ink, while illustrations, produced with brush and paint, decorate the text. There are medieval manuscripts, however, in which this convention is turned upsidedown: they contain decoration created by words, inviting the reader to read an image. This intriguing scenario blurs the divide between text and illustration, and it challenges how we define both.

Decoration Forming Words

Decorative elements forming readable text are fairly common in medieval manuscripts. High-quality volumes often open with words—or even a full sentence—that are painted with a brush rather than copied with a pen. The Lindisfarne Gospels, which is perhaps the most impressive manuscript that survives from the early Middle Ages (it was made at Lindisfarne on the coast of Northumberland between ca. 710 and 721), is famous for this mix of words and decoration. The page in Figure 53 shows the incipit (the opening line) of the Gospel of Matthew, which is executed with brush and paint: “Liber generationis Iesu Christi filii David filii Abraham” (“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, the son of Abraham”). Trying to read this sentence is like solving a puzzle.

In spite of the fact that it holds words, this decorative page and the others in the book are commonly discussed within an art-historical context, not as expressions of writing (they are prime examples of Hiberno-Saxon art). This magnificent page blurs the boundary between text and image: it presents something to read, but nothing has actually been written, in the traditional sense of the word, with a pen. The intriguing hybridity forced the user to read a painting.

Words Forming Decoration

Much more unusual is a different mix of text and image: instances where a meaningful scene is made out of words. Delightful examples from manuscript production in the West include that of Cygnus, a swan (Figure 54), taken from a ninth-century copy of Cicero's Aratea, on astronomy.