Pentecost in the Codex Egberti (c. 980) and the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert (late tenth century) : the visual medium and the senses

As depictions of the Holy Spirit appearing to Christ's followers and filling them with speech, images of Pentecost engage critical themes in medieval visual culture : the relationship between image and epigraph (titulus), and the visualization of ruach (pneuma, spiritus) and the senses. This article examines two miniatures of Pentecost in Ottonian manuscripts, the Codex Egberti (ca. 980) and the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert (late tenth century). These case studies show two differing visual interpretations of Pentecost in the context of the Ottonian debate concerning "spiritual seeing" and demonstrate the ways that artists invoked the senses other than sight in order to create images of mystical experience.