What Is Reading?
Figure 1: Holy Family, oak relief altarpiece, Rodsted Church, Sønderup parish (North Jutland), ca. 1500. 100 x 140.5 cm. Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark. © Photograph by Lennart Larsen, The National Museum of Denmark.
A woman sits with an open book in her lap. We have caught her in the act of reading. As her left hand carefully grasps a page of the bound volume to lay it back in place, the index finger of her right hand (now missing, but the tip is visible) slides down the page, guiding her eyes line by line through the text. Who is this woman reading, and where is she doing this? Is she a nun or a beguine, sitting quietly with others in a warm room? A woman with a room of her own quietly meditating on a pious book or perusing a romance? Far from it. Here sits