Allusion and elusion: writing on the Cloisters Cross

Abstract

This article focuses on one of the most intensely ‘graphic’ artefacts produced during the Middle Ages in Western Europe: the so-called Bury St Edmunds Cross or Cloisters Cross. As this fascinating object has been thoroughly studied in many aspects, especially epigraphically, it can seem presumptuous to go back to one of the best-known artefacts of medieval art and epigraphy. This article, however, does not pretend to discuss the content of the texts or the exceptional nature of the object, but rather the graphic and pragmatic means used to compose a discourse of great theological richness around it. In essence, it returns to the degré zéro of the analysis of the cross, to address what it materially means ‘to combine’ writing and image. Starting from the example of the Cloisters Cross, the article applies this kind of ‘low-regime’ analysis to painting, sculpture, stained glass, mosaic, and any artform where the encounter of texts and images is the result of planning, adapting, and composing gestures that reflect the semiotic and aesthetic ambitions of visual creation during the Middle Ages.