10 - From Ego to Imago: Mediation and Agency in Medieval France (1000–1250)

Summary

In 600, Gregory the Great (d. 604) wrote to the iconoclastic bishop of Marseille, Serenus, that images (picturae) in churches allow those who do not know letters (litteras) to learn something of sacred history (historia) by seeing (visione) and reading (lectione) on the walls what they are unable to grasp in written texts. In his letter, Gregory gave much evidence of his belief in the supremacy of the written word over the painted image. He repeatedly cast the non-literate as ignorant simpletons (ignorantes, idiotae) and virtual pagans (gentes). Though recognizing the image to be functionally analogous to script when the capacity for reading Scripture was wanting, he nevertheless denied concrete images any of the sacrality that imbued the Bible. He held that the contemplation of religious images might lead to the adoration of God, but that the power to do so was not inherent in the image itself. For Gregory, the effect of an image was limited by what corporeal vision could offer, a mere sensual grasp of material forms. It was the historia painted upon religious images, it was the vision of sacred history (visio historiae, visio rei gestae) which engaged spiritual seeing and feelings (ardor compunctionis), and led to proper adoration, that of the Triune God. Centuries later, Guillaume Durand, bishop of Mende, wrote in the Rationale divinorum officiorum (1285–1292) that ‘images seem better to be able to move the spirit than scripture, which is why, in the Church, we show more reverence to images than to books’.