Metaphors of reading have long been applied to the interpretation of medieval sculpture. In his celebrated 1831 novel, Notre Dame, Victor Hugo described the sculptures adorning medieval churches in terms of writing, as having an intelligible message. An enthusiastic student of medieval monuments, Hugo was constantly in contact with leading archaeologists, who often likened medieval images to language as well. Central to the approaches of Charles Cahiers, Adolphe Didron, and Charles Martin, among others, was the grounding of their interpretations of medieval art in texts, especially Biblical and exegetical. Contemporary developments probably lent force to this interpretive model. The improvement in mass printing techniques over the course of the nineteenth century, accompanied by the tremendous expansion of a literate public, resulted in reading became increasingly naturalized as a human activity in Western Europe. Yet the application of reading metaphors to the interpretation of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture was likewise more than a modern projection onto the past, for medieval authors made similar comparisons. Gregory the Great (540–604) influentially defended religious art on the grounds that it functioned analogously to religious texts, especially for the illiterate, and thereby tacitly acknowledged that reading works of art is a profitable exercise that could advance religious understanding.

The church father was silent, however, on the precise mechanics of how images were to be read. This question, we are increasingly aware, is important because modes of reading texts vary dramatically from community to community. The twenty-first-century reader, for example, is typically silent as he or she progresses through a text in a largely linear fashion. With respect to twelfth-century monks, Ivan Illich and Jean Leclerq, among others, have identified in their reading practices a pervasive engagement with the physicality of the text.