Current discussions of medieval script have adopted the terms ‘graphicacy’ and ‘performativity’ in seeking to convey the empowerment of physical letters. Few theorists have acknowledged that there is a Latin term which expresses this empowerment: the word character. Character is the stamp which determined the shape of a letter and ensured that it embodied a particular sound. Ancient writers on grammar distinguished three features of a letter: its name (A, B, C), its shape or character, and its power, that is, the sound which it conveyed. ‘Character’ expresses the way in which the shape of a letter ensured that it conveyed a distinct and particular sound. But the term character had a far greater range of meanings, and denoted the symbolic worth of the letter, especially to a Christian audience. Because it was used to express an intrinsic essence, a power which could be transferred by a particular shape, and which might be the essential stamp of a personality, the term character revealed the special potency of the letter, the inherent force of its specific shape and the possibility that such a force might be transmitted by the use of that shape. The word character (with or without an ‘h’ in Latin) offers a classical parallel to the terminology of graphicacy. Herein lies its value, for a term that stands outside our categories of distinction can bridge, and consequently challenge, the imposition of those categories.

The original meaning of ‘character’ was a brand or stamp, used for marking livestock. The agricultural writer Columella, Tribune of Syria in AD 35, explains that January is the time to brand lambs. That is also how the word is used in a story told by Gregory of Tours, and in the Visigothic law code, though there it is horses rather than sheep which are branded. Brands were also used to mark wooden barrels and leather goods, and metal brands used by the Romans have survived. Isidore of Seville used ‘character’ for the marks stamped on weights and coins. In addition to horses and sheep, slaves and soldiers were also branded, as Vegetius records, so that the marking of the catechumen with a cross on his forehead at baptism may be seen as a comparable branding.