Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing

by: Leatherbury, S.V.

Book Description

Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity considers the Greek and Latin texts inscribed in churches and chapels in the late antique Mediterranean (c. 300–800 CE), compares them to similar texts from pagan, Jewish, and Muslim spaces of worship, and explores how they functioned both textually and visually.

These texts not only recorded the names and prayers of the faithful, but were powerful verbal and visual statements of cultural values and religious beliefs, conveying meaning through their words as well as through their appearances. In fact, the two were intimately connected. All of these texts – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan – acted visually, embracing their own materiality as mosaic, paint, or carved stone. Colourful and artfully arranged, the inscriptions framed human relationships with the divine, encouraged responses from readers, and made prayers material. In the first in-depth examination of the inscriptions as words and as images, the author reimagines the range of aesthetic, cultural, and religious experiences that were possible in spaces of worship.

Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity is essential reading for those interested in Roman, late antique, and Byzantine material and visual culture, inscriptions and other texts, and religious life in the ancient Mediterranean.

Table of Contents
List of figures

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Chapter One: Introduction

Writing and reading in the temple

Literacy as red herring?

Chapter Two: Material texts

The colors and surfaces of texts

Colorful texts and their contexts

Glassy words

Precious materialities

Textual materiality and immateriality

Material metaphors

Metallic meanings

Texts in (and of) pieces

Colored texts, colored forms

For the love of materials

Chapter Three: Framing texts, framing belief

Framing the late antique frame

Framing texts in the Roman world: The tabula ansata

Tabulae from sculpture to mosaic

Painted tabulae

Framing in circles

Object frames and Christian innovation

Framing religious experience

Framing frames

Chapter Four: Ekphrasis and experience

Ekphrasis on the move

Reading in motion

Responding to interiors

Reading and voicing voice

Ekphrastic buildings

Chapter Five: Embedding texts into images

The origins and functions of Christian "titles"

Tituli on and off the page

Tituli in the east

From wall to floor: Reading texts underfoot

Viewing sacred speech: The unfurled scroll

From scroll to book

Titles for images?

Chapter Six: Embedded prayers

Prayer in the late antique world

Praying in motion

Motives and modes of prayer

Placing prayers

Sanctifying the interior, part by part

Writing, reading, seeing, praying

Prayers for the faithful

Conclusion: Reading and seeing faith

Index

Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity: Between Reading and Seeing

by: Leatherbury, S.V.

• ISBN-13: 9781032090757 / 978-1-03-209075-7
• ISBN-03: 1032090758 / 1-03-209075-8
• Routledge, London, 2021