Reading and Seeing Faith in Byzantium: The Sinai Inscription as Verbal and Visual “Text”

Abstract

AbstractInscriptions were a significant—and significantly visual—form of religious, political, cultural, and social display in the early By­z­antine period, but scholars have paid little serious attention to the ways in which viewers read and looked at inscribed prose texts that are composed primarily of formulaic phrases. This article analyzes one such Christian inscription, the Greek dedicatory text written in mosaic in the apse of the main church of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, in its religious, political, and visual contexts. By comparing the text with similar inscriptions and other types of texts in the region, including saints’ lives, legal papyri, and the liturgy, and by reading and seeing the text as part of the famous mosaic of the Transfiguration with which it is paired, the article demonstrates the visual and verbal powers of the formulaic inscription, uncovering embedded layers of meaning. The text acted simultaneously as a sacred and a political seal on the building, protect...