ABSTRACT
Rhetoric, the art of persuasive public speaking, largely determined the ways words were used in public in Byzantium; in writing, the type of text being constructed determined what rhetorical technique was considered appropriate. The period in Byzantine history when the association between text and picture came under the greatest scrutiny was during and shortly after Iconoclasm. The rhetoric about images during Iconoclasm affected the making of images after Iconoclasm in some profound ways. That manuscripts, in particular, were affected by the rhetoric of Iconoclasm was in their format. The Rossano Gospels is a de luxe sixth-century manuscript produced somewhere in the Greek-speaking world. The similarities between pages in the Rossano Gospels and in the Khludov Psalter are fairly clear. The format is different, and the relationship between words and images, which is relatively simple and direct in the Gospelbook, has become far more complex in the Psalter.
