ABSTRACT
This chapter explores relationships between words, images, and cognition. Prudentius reports that Maura's visions were induced by three images a crucifix, a Madonna, and a Maiestas. The statue of Theoderic has long since vanished. The Tricassin crucifix was apparently still extant albeit in terrible condition in 1779 but it, along with the other two images, is gone. Images and concepts are formed at the opposite poles of mental activity: imagination and reason. Concepts distill structures from perceptual images and thereby stifle their dynamic dimension. Imagination weaves association around perceptual images that reveals their hidden life, fertility, and movement. In a state of reverie, as Bachelard might put it, Walahfrid's disembodied mind is playing with an image and with the images prompted by it. The sounds Maura heard in her mind were the sounded rather than imaged precipitates of what appears to have been her experience of the images as dynamic, living realities.
