Although Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity is based on Sean Leatherbury's 2012 doctoral dissertation, it is much more than a revision of that earlier foundation. It is the much-anticipated culmination of a decade of research and a complement to the author's numerous articles that have already distinguished him as one of the leading experts on the iconicity of text in late antiquity.
Inscribing Faith is organized thematically into six chapters, starting with an introduction (chapter 1) that reframes the question of epigraphy around iconicity, medium, and visual presence, not literacy. In doing so, Leatherbury shifts the traditional approach to studying inscriptions away from a methodology that privileges philology and linguistics toward one that views them more expansively as integral components of a larger aesthetic in the construction of architectural space. Text, like figural icons, can be transformed into visual, sacred emblems when embedded in ritual contexts. This was particularly important in early Christianity, where the incarnation of Christ—the “Word made flesh”—provided a justification for the use of images in early Christian art, but it also established a new form of iconicity and living presence for text itself, especially scripture.
In chapter 2, “Material Texts,” Leatherbury is careful to delineate an inscription's “objecthood”—the ability for text to exist and operate as material artifact and physical agent—and its materiality, which is often used to accentuate literary content while engaging the viewer's senses. Whether arranged in mosaic tesserae, chiseled into marble, inscribed on papyrus or parchment, or printed on paper, the analogue written word is always rooted in the materiality of its medium, communicating meaning both linguistically and visually.
Chapter 3, “Framing Texts, Framing Belief,” explores late antique strategies for framing inscriptions, most notably through the tabula ansata motif. The chapter also examines the power to manipulate messaging, which occurred both subtly, such as apotropaic knotwork that offered symbolic protection against malevolent forces, and more explicitly, such as allusions to the Temple of Jerusalem. Late antique inscription frames were almost as important as the text they contained. They signaled the importance of the content, but they also reinforced the relationship between text and image when the inscription was embedded in a larger design aesthetic or iconographical program.
Chapter 4, “Ekphrasis and Experience,” taps into the now-classic field of poetic ekphrasis and imagination in experiencing ancient and medieval sacred space. What is particularly valuable about this chapter, however, is Leatherbury's emphasis on bodily engagement with inscriptions, including circumambulatory or ritualized movement throughout sacred architecture. One of the great limitations and oversights of classical epigraphy occurs when inscriptions are discussed with little to no regard for their original archaeological or experiential context. Leatherbury's insistence on proper contextualization is a welcome corrective for understanding how text, image, and materiality cannot be separated so easily.
The final two chapters, “Embedding Texts into Images” (chapter 5) and “Embedded Prayers” (chapter 6), examine the intimate relationship between text and image in late antiquity. In chapter 5, Leatherbury analyzes the historical and theological role of tituli, comparing extant examples in the archaeological and art historical record with literary descriptions of now-lost pictorial and textual cycles, such as Paulinus's description of the epigrams and tituli at Nola. Equally important in this chapter is Leatherbury's distinction of inscription locations, noting the hierarchical difference and viewer response to tituli placed on pavements, walls, or overhead in apses. Chapter 6 continues the discussion of text-image pairing but narrows the study to the function of prayer in dedicatory and liturgical inscriptions. There is a nice parallelism with chapter 4 in the author's analysis of bodily movement in relation to inscriptional prayers, but the definition of “prayer” is a bit loose at times, with little attempt to parse out differences between prayer, devotion, meditation, or other forms of spiritual expression within sacred space. Leatherbury also discusses inscriptions for Torah niches in synagogues and mihrabs and qibla walls in mosques in chapter 6. Unfortunately, these comparisons are left to the very end of the book, which diminishes their importance as part of a shared late antique phenomenon, and there is little engagement with rabbinical sources or early traditions of the Qur'an or Hadith compared with the Christian literary evidence in the preceding chapters.
The thematic approach in the monograph is successful in establishing both visual and textual typologies as well as promoting a “visual theology” that is too often missing from discussions of inscriptions in sacred space. However, what is lacking from this approach is an established chronology, especially when archaeological investigations have clarified more precise chronological ranges for many of the monuments and mosaics discussed in the book. There is also minimal discussion of architectural and aesthetic renovations that inevitably altered the spatial context of the inscriptions, including phases of building programs. An archaeological foundation for the case studies and comparanda may have helped articulate how inscriptions and their distributive influence functioned across geographical regions and narrower time periods, but this oversight does not diminish the importance of Leatherbury's larger argument on how textual images and pictorial texts were used by diverse religious communities in late antiquity.
And although most of case studies are focused on the Levant, Italy, or North Africa (Algeria and Tunisia), areas such as Libya and the Nilotic regions from Egypt to Ethiopia, the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas, and the Caucasus are often mentioned sparingly, if at all, which is unfortunate since many of those regions are some of the most marginalized in early Christian and Byzantine studies, and all of them have unique epigraphical traditions. A wider geographical examination may have helped layer the nuances in spatial context, materiality, class and status in the use and commission of inscriptions, and local and regional economies of exchange, both for materials and ideas.
To be clear, what Leatherbury has produced is still a remarkably important contribution to the field. These critiques are less about deficiencies in investigative scope than they are a call for scholars to pick up where Leatherbury left off and expand this methodological approach for even greater geographical and chronological specificity.
