The Power of Latin: Word-Image-Concept Amalgams in Illuminated Manuscripts

This paper explores the power of Medieval Latin to generate meaning by forging amalgams of words, images and concepts in the mind’s eye of readers-viewers. The process is explored through examples of multi-layered, polysemantic structures encountered in seven illuminated manuscripts dating from the tenth to the fifteenth century. The structures vary from figural poems and critical apparatus to marginalia, speech scrolls and frontispieces. Their spheres of reference range across theology, exegesis and philosophy; Latin and vernacular literature; politics, science, and the Classical tradition. Often blending advanced scholarship, didactic moralisation, devotional fervour, and profane humour, the word-image-concept amalgams demonstrate the role of cognition, emotion and the senses for the creation and appreciation of meaning in Medieval Latin texts.