Abstract

Writing on the heart is a frequent and often vivid image in medieval literature and art. Saints' legends describe martyrs receiving divine inscriptions in hearts that are later opened and read by others. Sermons and poems liken the heart to a book where the believer writes God's commands or where Christ writes the story of his own Passion. In the secular lyric and romance a different passion inscribes itself on lovers' hearts, sometimes by way of love letters and usually anticipating the bodily writing of sexual intercourse. In the realm of visual art medieval painters depict hearts as books , and late-medieval scribes actually produced heart-shaped manuscript codices, examples of which still survive