Title: Was art really the ‘book of the illiterate’?
Abstract: Abstract Pictures are used in churches so that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books (codicibus). What writing (scriptura) does for the literate, a picture does for the illiterate looking at it, because the ignorant see in it what they ought to do; those who do not know letters read in it. Thus, especially for the nations [gentibus], a picture takes the place of reading. … Therefore you ought not to have broken that which was placed in the church in order not to be adored but solely in order to instruct the minds of the ignorant.1
Publication Year: 1989
Publication Date: 1989-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 243
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