Inscribing Presence

In Messages de Pierre, Vincent Debiais suggests that the “context” is one of the crucial elements of the study of epigraphy and its mise en place. Semantically and conceptually context could have different meanings. In the case of inscriptions, it could be understood in the first instance from the perspective of space: the context of an inscription is very much the space in which it is located—the space it occupies, its support—and its visual, structural and topographical environment. Yet context cannot be understood exclusively as the material setting of script: it could also be impalpable referring, for example, to the cultural milieu, in terms of ideas or concepts embedded within the script.1 In epigraphy, script and space are strictly intertwined. Letters and words populate a defined surface, for instance a slab, creating an inscribed space. At the same time, the built environment is activated by these words. Words and inscriptions have the potential to determine and characterise the viewing experience and, through it, the functions and meaning of a given space. The relationship between text and context takes on a specific connotation in relation to saints and their mortal remains. For example, painted or carved texts narrate saints’ lives, often complementing hagiographical visual cycles; inscriptions mark saints’ burials and celebrate their memory, sacralising and transforming monumental cityscapes.2 Relics and holy bodies, as Patrick Geary argues, carry “no fixed code or sign of its meaning” by themselves, therefore inscriptions, either on altars, church walls or in the shining tesserae of mosaics, identify these remains, and through the