Viewing texts: Word as image and ornament in medieval inscriptions

The aim of this network is to examine texts as art. It will focus on the inscriptions that were frequently inscribed or painted on monuments of architecture in the middle ages. Long, prominent inscriptions are found on Christian and Islamic monuments from around the Mediterranean. These texts are well known and have often been examined by scholars in the past, who have sought to exploit the information they contain to help date monuments or identify their patrons or builders. Such texts have not, however, been viewed as art. Yet in many cases, the way in which the inscriptions were written means it is unlikely that they were ever designed to be read simply as blocks of text by those that viewed them. The size of the script used, the (lack of) legibility, the location (often high up or in out-of-the way locations), or simply the length of the text all indicate that the actual textual contents were only one element in the make-up and design of the inscription. Instead such texts served a series of different purposes, and the aim of this project is to explore those non-literary uses of texts.

In a series of workshops over the next two years, this project will bring together a group of scholars who work on all fields of medieval studies from western Europe through to the Caucasus in the east: their expertise covers Latin Europe, Byzantium, Armenia and Georgia, Seljuq Turkey, and Fatimid and Ayyubid Egypt and Syria. They all have interests in monumental inscriptions, but have viewed them from different perspectives; all, however, have a shared interest in the viewing as much as the reading of texts. The network will share its research into the visual uses of text, which is currently dispersed among the different cultural and religious divisions which separate research in the humanities. The core members of the group (who have all been approached informally for their willingness to participate) will be invited to three workshops at which different aspects of this research project will be discussed. The first workshop will examine ways of approaching texts as ornaments, and consider how they can be viewed as decoration on a building rather than simply being read. The second meeting will consider the interaction between the texts and the monuments they appear on. It will explore performative aspects of texts - how the layout and arrangement of texts affects the ways in which buildings are viewed and in which people move around them. It will also consider the ways in which texts institutionalise and affect communities' memories in public spaces, by putting particular texts in particular places. The final workshop will consider the ways in which multi-lingual texts can be viewed rather than read: how viewers would react to those texts in scripts and languages they could not read or recognise, and also at informal texts, such as graffiti which affect the appearance and interpretation of the buildings to which they are affixed.

A further aim of this network is to explore the medieval interactions between the Christian and Muslim worlds. In the light of recent tensions between these major faiths, we believe it is important to explore the history of their cultural exchanges in more detail. The ways in which these faiths,both of which are based around the Word, have used writing in their buildings is an important aspect of this relationship. In particular around the Mediterranean there have been many centuries when these different religions have lived in the same territorial regions and shared experiences in the ways texts have been used to ornament and orchestrate buildings are an important means of exploring how There are many elements that were shared between medieval cultures over the ways in which they exploited the non-textual aspects of texts.

A project such as this requires a broad range of expertises that no single scholar could master, and so is particularly suitable for a network.