The Anxious Image: Figuration and Falsification in Medieval Iberian Charters

This study focuses on the unusual phenomenon of illustrated charters in northern Iberia during the central Middle Ages. These parchments are highly exceptional in their incorporation of figures of donors and even narrative scenes depicting ritual acts of conveyance. The essay considers this imagery as an extension of the diplomatic authority invested in clerical scribes and the signa (graphic signatures) they inscribed on charters as signs of personal identity. Crucially, the illustrations in question almost never appear on original charters made at the time of a given act; they were instead added to documents that were either later copies, interpolated copies, or outright forgeries. These figurative elements seem to have emerged out of an anxiety regarding the absence of the charter’s ostensible author, whose effigy provides a feigned presence to “author-ize” the accompanying text.