2 - Learning to Read in Texts and Images

Summary

The first of the liberal arts and the starting point for study was grammar. In his Metalogicon, John of Salisbury borrowed Isidore of Seville's definition of the art as ‘the science of speaking and writing correctly’. At the same time, in creating one of the richest accounts of the art from the twelfth century, John developed Augustine's description of grammar as the key to learning, presenting it as both the foundation for and gateway to further study. Yet learning some Latin was probably as far as many students progressed in their formal education. Indeed John of Salisbury acknowledged that grammar ‘alone, of all the branches of learning, has more utility than show’. The close relationship between literacy and learning was paralleled in many images of the personified art of Grammar, the art most frequently represented as a teacher, with a book, rod and pupil. These attributes of the classroom were also associated with teachers in other images of schooling, which were to be found in manuscripts, sculpture and stained glass. None of the surviving scenes purported to show contemporary events. Instead, in addition to the personifications of Grammar, teaching scenes presented episodes from the lives of saints and biblical history. In these images the pupils were usually identified as young; in images at the start of the book of Proverbs Solomon often instructed his son, whilst the saints received instruction in early scenes of their lives. Although medieval writers were divided on the precise age at which schooling should begin, many adopted the idea set out in earlier sources that childhood (pueritia) and adolescence (adolescentia) were particularly good times to study. In the surviving images students learn more than basic literacy at the knees of their teachers, as they are also schooled in discipline and moral behaviour, both elements associated with the study of grammar in contemporary texts. Yet whilst particular iconographic elements were associated with teaching in a range of contexts, depictions of both the allegory of Grammar and other teaching scenes varied considerably. The images offered an alternative form of reading through a visual exploration of the art of letters, which, depending on the location and context in which they appeared, could be understood by audiences with varying degrees of literacy.