The Sign at the Cross-roads: the Matthean Nomen Sacrum in Anglo-Saxon Gospel Books

Before Alfred the Great

Carol A. Farr

Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 16, 2009

In Insular gospel books, the nomen sacrum (Incarnation Initial) at Matthew I.18 is nearly always conspicuous. Formed with the Greek letters Chi rho iota to abbreviate the genitive Christi in the text following Matthew’s list of the ancestors of Christ, the enlarged and decorated nomen sacrum is considered one of the distinguishing features of gospel manuscripts from Britain and Ireland between the late seventh and early ninth centuries. In scripture, the nomina sacra, or sacred names, are abbreviations of divine names such as Jesus, Christ, Lord, or God. Art historians and palaeographers often refer to the nomen sacrum at Matthew I.18 as the Chi-rho, as it will be called here, but in fact it is not the true Chi-rho known from the story of Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge, which is formed with a Chi or cross with the rho intersecting it (Chi-rho monogram) or topping it (staurogram) to form an emblem of the first two letters of the name ‘Christ’ spelled in Greek.1

In some early systems of gospel chapter divisions, the Chi-rho begins a chapter.2 Early western gospel books of all origins usually emphasize the division at the nomen sacrum in some way, such as with rubricated, gold or enlarged script.3 However, a tradition of graphic articulation by conventional means and the initial’s status as the beginning of a chapter do not account for the degree of emphasis usually given to it in Insular manuscripts. Art historians such as Professor Karl Werckmeister,4 Professor Suzanne Lewis,5 and Dr Jennifer O’Reilly6 have written iconographic interpretations of the Chi-rho in the Book of Kells (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 58, fol. 34r), connecting elements of its design and iconography with cosmological symbolism of the rhombus or lozenge shape which elaborates the four-pointed shape of its Chi letter. Werckmeister, Lewis and O’Reilly have found texts in patristic and Insular exegetical and scientific writings on the cross-shaped frame of heaven and four-sided cosmic structure, many of which interpret these quadripartite shapes as Christological figures.7 Some of their discussion applies to Anglo-Saxon examples and other Irish examples, for that matter.

I, however, am going to look at ways in which the Chi-rho in gospel books connected with eighth- and early ninth-century Anglo-Saxon contexts can be seen to function as a sign in its textual context: its position between the descent of Christ and the Nativity. I will focus on the Matthean nomen sacrum of the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, fol. 29r; Figure 1), the Stockholm Codex Aureus (Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, MS A. 135, fol. 11r; Figure 2) and the Barberini Gospels (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. lat. 570, fol. 18r; Figure 3). The sign that I speak of here is not strictly a symbol but refers to modern semiotic theory, such as that of C. S. Peirce, who categorized things which stand for other things (that is, signs) into three types.8 The categories refer to the nature of the relationship between the thing signified and the thing signifying it. They express how the sign works, instead of simply saying that it stands for something else. Peirce called his first category of sign iconic, meaning a sign which somehow resembled the thing it stood for (such as a portrait), the second indexical, a sign having some sort of association with what it indicates (such as a sneeze with a cold or a bullet hole with gunfire), and third symbolic, where the relationship was conventional or arbitrary, such as a horseshoe for good luck. Nevertheless, what I am going to say is not just an artificial application of modern theory. The idea of signs which function in different ways was a part of classical learning which formed the educational background of church fathers, being especially prominent in the works of Augustine of Hippo and, to an extent, of Bede. In De doctrina christiana, Augustine, like Peirce, distinguishes between types of signs. For him, there are two types: natural signs, which are given without the will to signify, such as paw prints signifying the existence of a dog or smoke signifying fire, and intentional signs, which are intentionally given to express meaning. Intentional signs may pertain to the different senses: most to hearing, some to sight, and fewer to the other senses. Quickly dismissing natural signs as irrelevant to his discussion, Augustine

78 Carol Farr

Figure 1. London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, fol. 29r (Lindisfarne Gospels, Matthew I.18). By permission of The British Library.

Figure 2. Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A. 135, fol. 11r (Stockholm Codex Aureus, Matthew I.18). Stockholm: Kungl. bibl., MS A 135.

79The Sign at the Cross-roads

directs his attention to intentional signs because signs given by God belong to this category, as do the signs in holy scripture.9 Seen this way, the signs of scripture read or heard as words are a temporal incarnation of the non-temporal discourse of God. In order to gain some kind of access to the perfect knowledge – non-temporal illumination – one must be prepared to negotiate the inferior bridge provided by temporal signs.10

To show how the Anglo-Saxons may have read the Chi-rho in particular ways, I will relate the Matthean nomen sacrum of the three Anglo-Saxon gospel manuscripts to textual structuring known from manuscript evidence and to some texts of Augustine and Bede, as well as to the

ways in which the letters are emphasized. I will analyse the ways in which the nomina sacra functioned as signs in Anglo-Saxon gospel manuscripts and how their function and significance seem to have changed in the periods and contexts in which the manuscripts may have been created and used. The Chi-rho’s position in the text motivated its emphasis with enlarged script and decoration. There can be no doubt that the articulation of Old Latin gospel texts into chapters and the Vulgate text into Eusebian sections caused the rubrication or other emphasis of this text in early manuscripts from Continental centres which would have served as models for Anglo-Saxon gospel books.11

Figure 3. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Barberini latin 570, fol. 18 (Barberini Gospels, Matthew I.18, incipit). © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican).

80 Carol Farr

However, these systems, including this particular Eusebian section, are inconsistent. Some chapter divisions fall at the Chi-rho, others at the beginning of the next sentence Cum esset. The Eusebian section sometimes is marked in manuscripts at either place as well, and can be marked at Cum esset, even when the line beginning Xpi autem is rubricated.12 This can be seen clearly in a late seventh- or early eighth-century gospel manuscript which is attributed to St Denis (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 256, fol. 15r).13 The line Xpi autem generatio is in red, but the Eusebian section is marked as beginning at cum esset on the line below (Figure 4).14 Moreover, in a manuscript which probably was written in Italy, in the seventh or eighth century (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 17226, fol. 15r),15 a numeral I in the left margin seems to indicate the first chapter of an Old Latin chapter series at XPI autem gene, which is written with a red pigment (Figure 5), even though the chapter list for Matthew has its incipit at cum esset.16 The Eusebian section, however, is indicated with faint numbering below the chapter number, but this could be taken to indicate the section beginning at the medial point in the line below, at cu[m] esset, which is also indicated to the right, apparently as a lection, by the carefully drawn red cross with dots in the angles of its arms.17 Of course, any of the marginal markings could have been added years after the manuscript’s gospel text was written, but these examples show that graphic emphasis on the text Xpi autem was not always because the scribe was simply copying a straightforward system of textual divisions. The Insular tradition of treating the ancestry of Christ

text as a separate book, with the Gospel of Matthew’s incipit at the nomen sacrum, must have been an important reason for the Insular emphasis.18 In the Lindisfarne Gospels and the late eighth-century Cutbercht Gospels (Vienna, Österreichische nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1224, fol. 22r), the rubricated inscription, Incipit evangelium secundum mattheum, above the Chi rho iota, indicates that this is the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel.19 If we look at this text as a temporal sign system to be interpreted by reading, however, it can be seen that, in a sense, this tradition may also have addressed a problem of ambiguity. Augustine speaks of this type of problem in De doctrina christiana, about the beginning of the Gospel of John. He says: ‘When words used cause ambiguity in Scripture we must first determine whether we have mispunctuated or mispronounced them.’20 He gives as an example the heretical punctuation of the beginning of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was.’21 The reader who possesses the rule of faith (or orthodoxy) realizes this reading is incorrect because it denies that the Word (Christ) is God: it says there is no Trinity.22 A comparable difficulty might arise in reading the descent of Christ in Matthew I.1–18. In Matthew, the ancestors are divided into three groups of fourteen (Abraham to David, David to the deportation to Babylon, the deportation to Babylon to Christ). The grouping is stated without a verb, relying on the reader to supply erant correctly: ‘there were fourteen generations’. In an unarticulated text, the reader could mispunctuate, continuing to include Christi in the sentence, so that it would end saying, ‘there were fourteen generations of Christ’. While not incorrect grammatically, this reading would interfere with the unequivocal statement of the Incarnation in the correct reading: Christi autem generatio sic erat.

Figure 4. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, latin 256, fol. 15r (Paris Gospels, Mt. I.18). Cliché Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Figure 5. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, latin 17226, fol. 15r (Gospels from North Italy, Mt. I.18). Cliché Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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The graphic layouts of this text in Insular gospel manuscripts, along with the tradition that the gospel text begins at this point, can be seen as a way of insuring the orthodox reading of Matthew’s statement of the Incarnation. Even in the uncial manuscript, Codex Bigotianus (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 281 + lat. 298, fol. 8v), which has been attributed to an Anglo-Saxon centre in Southumbria (possibly Worcester, last quarter of the eighth century),23 the generations are laid out so that the undecorated nomen sacrum begins the next page (Figure 6). In an eighth-century, possibly Northumbrian gospel book (British Library, Royal MS 1. B. VII, fol. 15v),24 having sparse decoration in a per cola et commata double column layout, the column below the end of the generations is left blank to place the nomen sacrum at the top of the next text column (Figure 7). Dividing the text at the nomen sacrum makes the sense

units clear and creates graphic emphasis on its statement of the Incarnation. The tenth-century inscription of an Old English manumission document in this theologically pregnant gap in Royal 1. B. vii probably was not simply fortuitous.25 The Chi-rho occupies a significant position in yet another way. The genealogy in Matthew was sung in the monastic liturgy or Office during Matins of Christmas day and in the secular liturgy before the Te Deum, where its importance was emphasized by the liturgical greeting, Dominus vobiscum.26 It is not known how early it was sung in the Christmas liturgy, but some evidence is offered by the existence of neumes dating from the ninth century, the earliest surviving on any text, in the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke (which was sung at Epiphany) in Carolingian gospel manuscripts.27 This and the fact that neumes were added, possibly in

Figure 6. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, latin 281, fol. 8v (Codex Bigotianus, Mt. I.18). Cliché Bibliothèque nationale de France.

82 Carol Farr

the tenth century, to the Lucan genealogies in two early gospel manuscripts which almost certainly would have been in use in Insular or Anglo-Saxon monasteries – the Durham (Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A. II. 17, fol. 74v) and Oxford St Augustine Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. MS D. 2. 14, fols. 78v–80r)28 – suggest that the Matthean descent of Christ may have been sung in early Anglo-Saxon monasteries at Christmas. The nomen sacrum would not have been sung, but the text following it, starting at Cum esset desponsata mater eius, almost certainly was read as a gospel lection for the Vigil of the Nativity.29 It is possible that in some churches or monasteries in Anglo-Saxon England the lection would have started with Xpi autem, based on the marking of pericopes in some mainly north Italian gospel books, whose lection systems seem to have had an influence on the graphic articulation of gospel texts in Insular manuscripts.30 Moreover, the sixth-century Neapolitan section of liturgical notations in the Gospels of Burchard of Würzburg (Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Mp. th. f. 68) may indicate the lection for the Vigil of the Nativity to begin at Xpi autem. The Burchard Gospels represents one of the few surviving sources from which we derive our knowledge of gospel lections in Anglo-Saxon England.31

A link between north Italian lections beginning with Xpi in Matthew I.18 and Insular emphasis on the Incarnation initial is suggested by a hitherto unnoticed lection marking in a late seventh- or early eighth-century gospel book which belonged to the library of Bobbio in the Middle Ages (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS I. 61, fol. 2r). Probably within a century of the manuscript’s being written, a marginal notation ‘In vigilis natale dni’ was added just to the left and above the Xpi in early uncial script. While the gospel manuscript itself could have been written in Ireland or at Bobbio, the lection note is in an Italian uncial script, no later than the eighth century.32 Even though such marginal notes are unavoidably ambiguous, no interlinear cross or graphic articulation exists to suggest that the lection would have begun at cum esset, which falls in the same line of script as the Chi-rho. If the pericope read at Bobbio in the eighth century began at that point instead of the more usual one, then it is possible that some Irish and other Insular communities would have shared that tradition of liturgical reading. In any case, the Chi-rho would have been at a cross-roads between two sections performed – one sung, one read – in connection with one of the most important feasts of the year. It is positioned between two ways of hearing signs of the Incarnation. Moreover, the written word of scripture was understood as a form of the Incarnation. It was a temporal, physical sign of the non-temporal and incorporeal, of which Augustine speaks in a way similar to Peirce’s explanation of his ‘interpretant’ or the abstract concept of the material thing expressed in the sign (the ‘representamen’). For Augustine and Peirce, signs operate through a three-fold scheme: the physical thing that is

signified, the abstract idea of the thing, and the sign for the idea. Augustine compared this triad with the Trinity, the scriptural sign (in the sense of words of scripture) being the Incarnation of the Word.33 Furthermore, the Matthean Chi-rho is itself, as will be seen momentarily, a visual sign not only of Christ’s name but also a kind of iconic sign of his Incarnation. Bede, in his Expositio on the Gospel of Luke, says that Matthew’s list of the ancestors of Christ gives a sign (sacramentum) in the number of their names, which total forty.34 Here he is giving, almost word for word, an interpretation from the De consensu evangelistarum of Augustine, who elsewhere defines sacramentum as a sign of sacred things.35 Bede and Augustine point out that Matthew concludes his list stating that there were fourteen generations in each of three periods, as described above. Thus Matthew counts twice the ancestor Jechonias, who precedes and follows the Babylonian deportation. This would make the total generations according to Matthew forty-two, but Matthew does not state this explicitly because the sacramentum is expressed in the number forty. Moreover, the repetition of the name Jechonias at the transmigration into Babylon, mentioned twice (Matthew I.17), signifies a ‘change of direction’ in the list’s structure, creating a ‘corner’. This signifies the Incarnate Christ, who is the ‘cornerstone to all who believe in him’.36 Bede and Augustine then explain further how the number forty is a sacred sign of the Incarnation of Christ: This number denotes the period in which, in this age and on this earth, it behoves us to be ruled by Christ in accordance with that painful discipline whereby ‘God scourges’, as it is written, ‘every son that He receives’ and of which also an apostle says that ‘we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God’.37

Forty is the number of the days, under Christ as king, that believers fight against the devil, following the model set down in the forty-day fasts of Moses and Elias and the forty days during which Christ was tempted in the desert. These fasts in turn are themselves signs of the temptation of believers after the Incarnation, a condition endured by Christ when he became mortal.38 Bede continues quoting Augustine, to point out simpler ways in which the number forty functions as a sign of the Incarnation on the earth. Earthly temporality has four seasons, but Augustine elaborates further, pointing out that it is also the number of the divisions of the world: East, West, North, South. The number forty, both writers say, is the product of the earth number four by ten, also a cosmic sign because ‘the number ten is made up by adding the several numbers in succession from one up to four together’: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. That there were forty ancestors of Christ, enumerated forward from Abraham or in ‘descending order’, tells us, if we read the sign correctly, that in the harmony of the gospels, Matthew intended ‘to set forth Christ as descending with the object of sharing this mortal state with us’. Thus the genealogy of Matthew signifies ‘the taking of our sins upon Himself by the Lord Christ’,

83The Sign at the Cross-roads

while Luke’s ‘ascending order of the ancestors’ signifies the ‘abolition of our sins by Christ’.39

Bede’s interpretation, excerpting Augustine’s longer one, unifies the themes of Incarnation and Crucifixion, with the cosmic quadripartite shape of the Chi in the context of the Gospel of Matthew. Possibly Bede’s articulation of the idea coincides with the elaboration of the Chi-rho in Insular

gospel books with visual signs of world or cosmos, such as the rhombus shape at the centre of the Chi in the Book of Kells. Among surviving examples, rhombus and square shapes begin to appear in the centres of the Chi around the mid- to late eighth century. Earlier examples such as the Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 57, fol. 23r), Echternach Gospels (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale

Figure 7. London, British Library, Royal 1. B. vii, fol. 15v (eighth-century gospels from Anglo-Saxon England, Mt. I.18). By permission of The British Library.

84 Carol Farr

de France, lat. 9389, fol. 19r), Lichfield Gospels (Lichfield, Cathedral Library, MS s.n., p. 5) and Lindisfarne Gospels lack them, but besides the Book of Kells in later examples, the Chi in the Cutbercht Gospels displays a square at its centre, while that in the St Gall (St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 51, p. 7) and the Barberini Gospels have rhombus shapes created by outlining the intersection of the bars of the Chi.40 The Chi-rho in Barberini (Figure 3), as in Kells, is surrounded by a universe of living forms, including a tree inhabited by birds which recalls the Eucharistic and Resurrection symbolism of vinescrolls. Hidden within the tail of the Chi is a human face, which seems to indicate that the Chi is to be seen as a sign of Incarnation within the world. While the bizarre animals present a challenge to the reader of signs, especially the human-headed, winged quadruped within the rhombus, the curvilinear motifs of the trumpet spirals circles are grouped in fours within circles at the terminals of the letters. The terminals of the Chi in the centre of the folio bear encircled trumpet-spiral patterns formed by four bird heads. Susan Youngs has suggested the cosmic symbolism of the four spirals in the centre of the carpet page before the Gospel of Luke, in the Lindisfarne Gospels, f. 138v.41

In the other surviving Chi-rho in a highly decorated Tiberius group manuscript, the Stockholm Codex Aureus, the nomen sacrum is surrounded by curvilinear ornament of the ‘Celtic’ tradition, combined with animal figures, pairs of dog-like quadrupeds and birds echoing the X-shape within it (Figure 2). The goat and deer sheltering under the upper arm of the Chi and nibbling vines within

the bow of the rho are reminiscent of antique images of spring, abundance and paradise.42 The Irish De ordine creaturarum, written at the end of the seventh century, elaborates Augustine’s sign of the four seasons into a sign of the Passion and Resurrection.43 Although the animals of the Chi-rho in the Codex Aureus and Barberini are typical of the Tiberius style, they could be part of a mid- to late eighth- and ninth-century trend of emphasizing the multivalent significance of the nomen sacrum. In the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Chi-rho is made magnificent as a sign of Christ, an iconic sign in the shape of the Incarnation, inviting the skilled viewer to glimpse through it to divine knowledge. The later eighth-century Codex Aureus and the possibly later still Barberini Gospels present the Chi-rho as a sign which invites the viewer to see the multiple levels of its significance. The Chi-rho does not fit neatly into Peirce’s modern categories of icon, index and symbol, but it signifies in all those ways as the shape of God’s sacramentum. Being able to read the signs in an orthodox way, in order to access divine truth, was certainly important to the Anglo-Saxons, as it was to all other orthodox Christians. But for them and the Irish, conscious of their position at the edge of the earth, it was especially important to be integrated into the Christian world and thus into the Incarnation, the body of Christ. For them, the nomen sacrum, in its liminal position between the texts of the generation of Christ and the Nativity and statement of the Incarnation, was a sign of God of the utmost importance.44

Notes 1. Kellner 1968; Cabrol 1936; Nordenfalk 1970, 41–56. 2. Bruyne 1914, 500. 3. McGurk 1961, 118. 4. Werckmeister 1967, 147–73. 5. Lewis 1980, 139–59. 6. O’Reilly 1998a; 1998b, 66–94. 7. See also Farr 1995. 8. Peirce, ‘Chapter 3: The Icon, Index and Symbol’, in Hartshorne

and Weiss 1932, 156–73; Silverman 1983, 14–25; Corrington 1993, 117–66.

9. Augustine, De doctrina christiana I.ii, II.i–xlii, Martin and Daur 1962, 3–4, 32–77; Robertson 1958, 8–9, 34–78.

10. Irvine 1994, 178–89, 257, 267–71. The world signum/sign is used in the Bible and in exegesis to refer to many types of sign, including miracles, gestures, baptism, eucharist and objects, parables and persons having typological or allegorical significance. Augustine wrote his De doctrina in part in recognition of the complexity of signs and the difficulties encountered in dealing with their shifting categories, as well as, and in order to, read them correctly. In Confessionum, Augustine speaks of the angelic experience of the non-temporal book of heaven (described as the skin, perhaps meaning vellum, which God unrolled like a scroll across the firmament) in which physical and therefore temporal signs do not exist. Angels ‘read the book’ constantly and instantaneously, Confessionum libri XIII XIII.xv, O’Donnell 1992, 190–1.

11. Eusebian sections are a system of division of the gospel texts traditionally attributed to Ammonius of Alexandria but now

thought to have been devised by Eusebius, who used the system in his canon tables. See Alexander 1978, 25.

12. The third Eusebian section of Matthew begins at Christi autem, see Fischer, Gribomont, Sparks and Thiele 1969, Vol. 2, 1527. The numeral V in the Eusebian notation indicates its listing in the fifth canon table.

13. Martimort 1992, 24. 14. Cf. Bruyne 1914, 500. 15. Lowe 1950, 42 (no. 667); Vezin 1987, 58. 16. Bruyne 1914, 500. 17. Lowe 1950, 42, relates the marginal crosses to lections. 18. O’Reilly 1998a, 77–81. 19. See Alexander 1978, illustration 183, for the Cutbercht Gospels. 20. Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.ii, Martin and Daur 1962,

77; Robertson 1958, 79. 21. Augustine, De doctrina christiana III.ii, Martin and Daur 1962,

77–8; Robertson 1958, 79. 22. Parkes 1993, 67. 23. Brown 1996, 120. 24. Brown 2003, 56, 167–8, dates Royal MS 1. B. VII, second quarter,

eighth-century. 25. See O’Reilly 1998b, 77, on the importance Insular exegetes placed

on the first word of the ‘book of generations’, Matthew I.1–17, Liber, which has multiple meanings of ‘book’, ‘freeing [of souls]’ and ‘offspring’ or ‘generations’ and ‘sonship [of Christ]’. Perhaps the freeing of a slave recorded at this point also made reference to this significance.

26. Hughes 1982, 62. In the modern calendar, it is read for the Vigil of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; on the possibility of its having

85The Sign at the Cross-roads

been read as a lection for this feast in churches in Ireland and Britain in the seventh through ninth centuries, see Breen 1995, 2–4.

27. Verey 1980, 34; Hiley 1993, 361–72. 28. Verey 1980, 34; Farr 1997, 85–6. 29. Klauser 1972, 43, 90, 127, 140, 169, for seventh- and eighth-

century Frankish and Roman lections for the Vigil of the Nativity. Further evidence that the narrative of the Nativity usually began at cum esset can be seen in Bede’s homily for the Vigil of the Nativity (Hurst and Fraipont 1955, 32–6) and the incipit of the feast’s pericope in the Godescalc Evangelistary (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. lat. 1203, fol. 4r), illustrated in Nees 2002, 183.

30. Godu 1936, in the table following col. 882, lists Codex Rehdigeranus (no. 6); Milan, Ambr. C. 39 inf. (no. 1); Codex Forojuliensis (no. 4); and Codex Valerianus (no. 3); see also Morin 1893, 249; 1902; Beissel 1967, 491; Farr 1997, 150.

31. Beissel 1967, 121; see also the comments of Lenker 1999, 152; 1997, 106, 140, 298, 394–5.

32. Lowe 1938, 25, no. 350, with plate showing the lection note, 24. I am most grateful to David Ganz and Michelle Brown for their personal comments on the palaeography of the lection note.

33. De doctrina christiana II.ii–iv; De Trinitate XV.vii.13, x.19–xi.20, Mountain 1968, 485–9; Confessionum Libri XIII X.vii–xvii, XI.ii–viii, xi, XIII.xv.16–18, O’Donnell 1992, 123–9, 148–52, 190–1; Markus 1996, 27–9, 34–5, 96–7, 101–4; Irvine 1994, 187–9; Peirce, ‘Chapter 3: The Icon, Index and Symbol’, in Hartshorne and Weiss 1932, 156–73; Peirce, ‘On the Nature of Signs’, in Kloesal 1986, 66–8. Peirce, however, believed that ‘thoughts are themselves signs which stand for other objects of thought’, in that he saw all things as an interwoven system of signs (‘Chapter 7, Of Logic as a Study of Signs’, in Kloesal 1986, 83).

34. Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio I.iii.23–4, Hurst 1960, 88–9.

35. Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum II.iv.9, Weihrich 1904, 90. For examples of Augustine’s use of sacramentum, see Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum II.ix.34, Daur 1985, 119; De civitate Dei VII, 32, Dombart and Kalb 1955, 213;

De catechizandis rudibus XXVII.liii, Bauer 1969, 175–6; In evangelium Ioannis tractatus LXXX.x.3, Willems 1954, 529; Contra Faustum Manichaeum XIX.xi–xvii, Zycha 1891, 509–15; Contra Maximinum haereticam episcopum Arianorum libri duo II.xxii.3, PL, 42, 794–5. He uses it in several places in De doctrina christiana to refer to the church’s sacraments of baptism or communion, even though he uses the word more generally in other contexts and with the meaning of ‘sacred sign’. In general in early Christian Latin, sacramentum means a sign of something sacred and closed to ordinary perception, expressed in Greek as mysterion (mystery). See also Markus 1996, 71; Stock 1996, 9; Ó Carragáin 2005, 123 and 167.

36. Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum II.iv.8–11, Weihrich 1904, 88–94; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. I, Vol. 6, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org/fathers2/; Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio I.iii.23–4, Hurst 1960, 88–90.

37. Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum IV.viii.24–7, Weihrich 1904, 88; Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio I.iii.23, Hurst 1960, 88.

38. Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum IV.ix.30–2, Weihrich 1904, 90; Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio I.iii, Hurst 1960, 88–9.

39. Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum IV.ix, Weihrich 1904, 90–1; Bede, In Lucae evangelium expositio I.iii, Hurst 1960, 89.

40. Werckmeister 1967, 147–8 and plate 40, connects the insertion of the rhombus in the Chi letter of St Gall Stiftsbibliothek, MS 51, p. 7, and the Book of Kells along with its proportionally increased size with the development of it as an image of the heavens.

41. S. Youngs, in this volume. 42. See, for example, the pavement mosaic from Carthage, showing

the estate of Dominus Julius, Musée du Bardo, Tunis, and the apse mosaic of San Apolinnare in Classe, Ravenna, in Nees 2002, 25 and 73, illustrations 14 and 73.

43. Liber de ordine creaturarum, XI.i–vii, Díaz y Díaz 1972, 168–72. See also Dekkers and Gaar 1995, 400–1, no. 1189.

44. I wish to thank Susan Youngs, Michelle Brown and Fred Orton for reading this paper and for their suggestions.

AbbreviationsCCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout)CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna)EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile (Copenhagen)PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844–64)

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