Authorizing the Toledo moralized Bible: exegesis and the gothic matrix

Abstract

In the pages of illuminated manuscripts one regularly encounters reflexive images — scenes of authors, painters, scribes, and readers engaged in creating and consuming books. The images in question are diverse in both form and content. They may be miniatures, figured initials, or marginal scenes. They depict every aspect of book production from the preparation of parchment to the presentation and reading of the finished manuscript. I This body of imagery has much to tell us about attitudes toward reading and writing in the premodern era. Creation and donor images (for lack of better terms) reveal shared assumptions and beliefs about the unique experience of reading illustrated books. They frame the texts or books in which they appear and create bonds between readers, writers, and artisans. Conversely, their physical proximity and conceptual relation to texts alter the manner in which historical readers understood them. In short, these images shape the overall reading experience of manuscripts in unique ways, and although they often masquerade as social realities or transparent historical documents, these images are more aptly seen as a mixture of artistic convention, ideological assertion, and pictorial fantasy.