My PhD thesis examines, for the first time, a type of image, where figures are depicted in the confines of the letter form, looking out at or engaging with their accompanying texts or images (throughout described as ‘head initials’). In a series of four case studies, this research investigates the potential role and function of these image types in illuminated devotional manuscripts made in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century France and England. While each manuscript’s contents and decorative programme vary, each shares the collective desire to improve the laity’s spiritual edification and bring them closer to God by providing a deeper understanding of divine truths and mysteries.

This research also considers the concurrent changes in theology and developments in optical theories as a framework to examine the iconography of head initials. During this period, medieval theologians began to think and preach that vision occurred through a reciprocal relationship between an external object and a viewer. A process that fundamentally required the viewer’s soul to actively participate and judge visual forms within the mind’s eye and interior senses. By examining these contemporary developments, this research sheds light on how scholastic understandings of vision may have informed artists’ decisions to develop and use this iconographic type within the four case studies.

This thesis argues that the rise in popularity and sustained use of head initials alongside devotional texts, emphasised this new perception of vision, with images no longer being static representations, but active and receptive within the devotional correspondence between image and viewer. It seeks to ask scholars to look again at these case studies of head initials and their ability to encourage spiritual meditation beyond the page, as forms of instruction to facilitate access to God.