3 - Telling Tales: Art for the Illiterate

Summary

Despite the growth in schooling in the twelfth century, the literate remained a minority. Nevertheless some of those who had received academic training used imagery to attempt to convey ideas about education to the wider population. In doing so they engaged in long-running discourses about the role of imagery in teaching both the literate and the illiterate, and the interpretation of art and architecture. In particular, images of fables connected with teaching survive in sculpture on church buildings across northern France and beyond, as well as in medieval manuscripts. In these scenes animals are given human characteristics to underline particular (usually negative) qualities of students and, occasionally, teachers. Some of the images are closely related to texts in a tradition stretching back to Aesop, Avianus and Phaedrus, but others have no obvious textual parallels. Thus the designers of images of stories associated with teaching probably also drew on oral traditions. Although the subjects of the images vary, the characters and contexts in which these scenes appear suggest that they were designed to convey messages about the wisdom of knowing one's place and using learning responsibly. These ideas seem to have been directed at both those involved in education and those excluded from formal schooling.

In the year 600 Pope Gregory the Great wrote for a second time to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles regarding the use of images. He famously declared,

it is one thing to adore a picture, another through a picture's story to learn what must be adored. For what writing offers to those who read it, a picture offers to the ignorant who look at it, since in it the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it they read who do not know letters; whence especially for gentiles a picture stands in place of reading.

Although the extent to which pictures can be a substitute for text has been questioned, Gregory's statement was frequently quoted and referred to in twelfth-century writing about church decoration. Moreover, Gregory was cited in support of a wide range of opinions about art, although most authors followed the former Pope in commenting on biblical imagery displayed in churches.