Abstract
So we can now say that the end of writing is reading and reading is the recreation of the text in the reader’s mind. The text is never written for its own sake, it is meant to produce an effect on the reader. The texts of Scripture were not written to be preserved or hidden away: these texts were meant to be preached. There is no record of Jesus commanding anyone to write the Gospel but there is a record of his command to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19). Therefore we can take the view that Scripture only serves to transmit an oral message or kerygma. This means, as Walter Ong1 and others have frequently stressed, that orality precedes textuality. It is the oral voice, the ‘living’ voice coming from the ‘mouth’ of God, that is transmitted by the written words of the Bible. This voice as a ‘double-edged sword’ aims to reach the inner ear of the believer rather than to appeal to the eye. This may explain why the formula ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear’ is used with such a conspicuous frequency by Jesus in the Gospels. And also account for St Paul’s classical formulation that ‘faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’ (Romans 10:17). The texts are written to become utterances and they ‘have meaning only in so far they emerge from and are converted into, the extratextual. All text is pretext’,2 says Walter Ong. The text is a medium to transmit the ‘voice’ from the ‘mouth’ to the ‘ear’.
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Notes
Walter Ong, The Presence of the Word (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967)
Walter Ong, ‘Text As Interpretation: Mark and After’, in Semeia 39 (1987): 9.
Clifford Davidson, ‘The Anti-Visual Prejudice’ in Iconoclasm Vs. Art and Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljenholm Nichols, Early Drama, Art and Music Monograph Series, 11 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989), pp. 33–4.
Joseph Gutmann, ‘Deotoronomy: Religious Reform or Iconoclastic Revolution?’ in The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Joseph Gutmann (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977), pp. 5–25.
Jonas Barish, The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice (Berkely and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981).
Cf. Anthony Bryer and Judith Herrin (eds), Iconoclasm, Papers Given at the Ninth Spring Symposion of Byzantine Studies, 1975 (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977)
Quoted by Margaret R. Miles, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. 41.
Quoted by Ernest B. Gilman, Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 36.
Carl C. Christensen, Art and Reformation in Germany (Athens, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1979), p. 25.
Ibid., p. 108. See also, C. Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)
Anna C. Esmeijer, Divina Quaternitatis: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum Assen, 1978), p. ix.
Anton Van Run, in Simiolus 12 (1981–82): 70–77.
Cf. Peter Bloch, ‘Typologische Kunst’, in Miscellana Mediaevalia 6: Lex et Sacramntum in Mittelalter, ed. P. Wilpert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Comp., 1969), pp. 127–42.
M. R. James, ‘Pictor in Carmine’, Archeologia Society of Antiquarians of London, Vol. XCIV (1951): 141–66.
Floridus Röhrig, Der Verduner Altar (Klosterneuburg: Stift Klosterneuburg, 1984; 1st edn, 1955)
Helmut Buschhausen, Der Verduner Altar: das Emailwerk des Nikolaus von Verdun im Stift Klosterneuburg (Wien: Tusch, 1980).
Helmut Buschausen, ‘The Theological Sources of the Klosterneuburg Altarpiece’, in The Year 1200: A Symposium, Introduced by Geffrey Hoffeld (New York: The Metropolotan Museum of Arts, 1975), pp. 119–29.
Cf. Buschhausen, ‘The Theological Sources of the Kloster-neuburg Altarpiece’; see also, Helmut Buschhausen, ‘The Klosterneuburg Altar of Nicholas of Verdun: Art, Theology and Politics’, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXXVII (1974): 1–31.
Avril Henry (ed.), Biblia Pauperum (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987), p. 18.
Avril Henry, ‘Biblia Pauperum’, in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. R. J. Coggins, J. L. Houlden (London: SCM Press, 1990), p. 83.
Eg. G. Schmidt, Die Armenbibeln des XIV Jahrhunderts (Graz: Köln, 1959).
Cf. Avril Henry (ed.), The Mirour of Mans Saluacione: A Middle English translation of Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1986), p. 10.
Adrian Wilson, Joyce Lancaster Wilson (eds), A Medieval Mirror: Speculum humanae salvationis 1324–1500 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1984).
Quoted by Emile Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
Emile Mâle, Religous Art in France. The Thirteenth Century (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), 1986. p. 145 ff.
Jean Paul Derembe, Colette Manhes, Les vitreaux légendaires de Chartres (Paris: Desche de Brouwer, 1988).
M. Cavinnes, The Early Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986.)
Henry, Biblia Pauperum, p. 37. See also Richard Marks, ‘The Glazing of the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, Tattershall (Linc.). A Study of Late Fifteen Century Glass-Painting Workshops’, in Archaeologia, 106 (1979): 133–56.
H. Wayment, F. Wormall, The Windows of King’s College Chapel Cambridge: a Description and Commentary (London: Oxford University Press, 1972)
Michel Pomparet, Les Tapisseries de L’Abbatiale Saint-Robert de Le Chaise-Dieu (Brioude: Editions Watel, 1975).
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© 1992 Tibor Fabiny
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Fabiny, T. (1992). Reading Pictures. In: The Lion and the Lamb. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22113-4_4
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