Building on the previous chapter, the goal here is to summarize and explain to the reader the conventions followed by Byzantine illustrators when illuminating Gospel lectionaries, particularly focusing on initials, marginalia, and miniatures. The chapter explains how the formulaic opening lines of the Gospels were illustrated and what types of images were selected for the initials, all which stress the speech of Christ or the Evangelists. The chapter also articulates how these types of illustrations (initials, marginalia, and miniatures) operated differently from one another and were tasked with carrying different types of information for users. Defining the relatively strict and cohesive rules by which which scribes and illuminators played with the written text and images allows the reader to better appreciate diversions and exceptions that were complexly deployed to comment and reflect on the meaning of the text.

Using error as a method of looking at initials and marginalia, this chapter considers how artists and scribes went against expected word and image play in the manuscript to reflect on the process of reading and recitation – and the confusions and misunderstandings that could potentially ensue. By focusing on several case studies, the reader is walked through the various interpretations that marginalia and initials deployed and how these (at times conflicting) understandings were generatively put into question and undone by subtle variations in color and placement. The goal of this chapter is to show how illuminators worked alongside the text to generate an illustrative program that was surprising and complex in ways that demanded the concerted attention and focus of readers as they chanted the Gospel text.