Medieval religious images may have been designed to evoke sound in the minds of viewers, according to a new study examining the Harley Roll, a medieval English scroll depicting the life of Saint Guthlac. The research argues that medieval audiences experienced sacred imagery in immersive, multisensory ways that blended sight, sound, memory, and emotion.
“Spiced incense on the air, song reverberating off stone, flare of light on gold, the hope of the divine brushing human skin, healing body and soul. It is hard to overstate the intense sensory experience of medieval English saint’s shrines. From the lowly stone marker to the bejewelled and towering reliquary, the sacred centres of saint’s cults were locations of physical, mental, and spiritual immersion. They were environments structured to shape multisensory engagement with their respective saint, with one of the most important sensory avenues being sound.”
A new study by Britton Elliott Brooks argues that medieval religious images were never truly “silent.” Instead, they could evoke imagined soundscapes in the minds of viewers, creating immersive experiences that blended sight, memory, and sound. The research focuses on the Harley Roll, a medieval English scroll depicting the life of Saint Guthlac, and suggests that pilgrims and worshippers may have mentally “heard” winds, hammering, animal cries, and demonic noises while viewing its images.
Published in the journal Religions, the study combines medieval studies, sound studies, and neuroscience to explore how medieval audiences interacted with sacred imagery.
Brooks, an Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Languages and Cultures, explains that “Unlike today, books in the medieval period were extremely expensive, and many people could not read Latin, the primary language of the church. For ordinary people such as farmers or fishermen, sound rather than text was the primary way they engaged with spiritual life.”
The study centres on British Library Harley MS Y.6, known as the Harley Roll, a scroll created around the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. The manuscript contains eighteen illustrated roundels depicting the life of Saint Guthlac, an Anglo-Saxon saint who abandoned a warrior’s life to become a hermit in the marshlands of Crowland in eastern England.
Brooks argues that the Harley Roll was likely connected to efforts at Crowland Abbey to revitalise Guthlac’s cult and attract pilgrims. The manuscript’s imagery was designed not simply to tell stories visually, but to immerse viewers in familiar sensory environments.
One of the clearest examples comes in a scene showing Guthlac travelling by boat through the fens to Crowland. Earlier written accounts describe the journey only briefly, mentioning little more than a fishing skiff travelling through marshland. The Harley Roll, however, transforms the episode into a vivid sensory experience.
British Library Collection: Harley MS Y.6, Roundel 4
The artist depicts a clinker-built boat cutting through swirling water while a square sail billows overhead. Brooks notes that medieval viewers would likely have mentally associated the scene with familiar sounds: water striking a wooden hull, the splash of poles entering the marshy water, the creak of ropes, and sails snapping in the wind.
For people living in medieval eastern England, river travel was an ordinary part of life. Brooks points out that waterways served as “lifelines” in medieval England, and pilgrims travelling to Crowland Abbey may themselves have arrived by boat. This made the imagery particularly resonant, linking the saint’s experience to their own.
Another scene depicts Guthlac building his hermitage. Earlier texts describe only a small dwelling, but the Harley Roll transforms the scene into the construction of a Romanesque chapel complete with labourers, arches, and stonework reflecting the architecture of the twelfth century.
British Library, Harley MS Y.6, Roundel 5
The illustration evokes a recognisable medieval soundscape: hammers striking stone, ropes creaking through pulleys, and builders hauling materials into place. Brooks notes that Crowland Abbey itself underwent repeated rebuilding after destructive fires, meaning such construction sounds would have been deeply familiar to medieval visitors.
The study also explores how medieval depictions of demons relied heavily on imagined sound. One dramatic scene in the Harley Roll shows Guthlac surrounded by animal-headed demons attempting to spiritually assault him.
British Library, Harley MS Y.6, Roundel 9
The accompanying medieval texts describe the terrifying noises these creatures made: wolves howling, ravens croaking, serpents hissing, horses whinnying, oxen lowing, and boars grunting.
“Imagine sitting alone in the dark and hearing a beast roaring outside,” Brooks says. “It would be terrifying. The interesting thing is that the attack is not physical, but purely sonic.”
The Harley Roll visually reinforces this idea. The demons surround Guthlac with open mouths and accusatory gestures, but they do not physically strike him. Instead, Brooks argues, the image encourages viewers to imagine the cacophony mentally, allowing the attack to become immersive even in silence.
Some of the creatures depicted are particularly intriguing. One demon appears ape-like, despite apes not belonging to the traditional Guthlac story. Brooks connects this choice to medieval bestiary traditions, where apes often symbolised deception and the devil.
The study explains these effects through the framework of “predictive processing,” a theory in neuroscience suggesting that the brain constantly predicts sensory experiences based on past memories and associations. When people view an image strongly connected with sound—such as a hammer striking stone or a sail whipping in the wind—the auditory cortex may become slightly activated even in silence.
Brooks combines this approach with the concept of the “sound milieu,” which describes sound as an immersive relationship between the source of a sound, the listener, and the environment around them. Medieval images, he argues, participated in this process by encouraging viewers to recreate familiar soundscapes in their minds.
The article also expands beyond the Harley Roll itself. Brooks suggests that medieval religious experiences often combined imagery, architecture, ritual, and music into a single sensory environment.
At Crowland Abbey, monks composed liturgical sequences celebrating Saint Guthlac around the same time the Harley Roll was produced. Brooks proposes that sung performances and visual imagery may have worked together to create deeply immersive devotional experiences.
The study further argues that this phenomenon was not limited to saints’ lives. Brooks examines the Harley Psalter, another famous medieval manuscript, and shows how its illustrations of storms and battles could similarly evoke imagined sounds. In one scene, horses cry out, spears strike shields, and thunder crashes across the page through visual cues alone.
British Library Collection: Harley MS. 603, f. 69r
Brooks believes such multisensory interpretation was central to how medieval people encountered art and sacred spaces. “When people came to a religious center, they were usually hoping for a miracle, often seeking healing,” he explains. Such environments, he says, “provided rich avenues for the faithful to seek contact with the saints.”
The research also reflects Brooks’ broader interest in reconstructing the sensory world of the medieval past. He notes how his own experiences shaped his understanding of the North Sea environment central to Guthlac’s story: “I grew up in Hawaiʻi, where the ocean is clear, warm, and sandy, and it is very different from the North Sea. Walking along its muddy, silty shorelines, where your boots sink with every step, gives you a completely different tactile sense of the environment. That experience changes how I read the sources.”
Britton Elliott Brooks’ article, “Material Aurality: Sound Milieu(s) in the Guthlac Roll,” is published in Religions. Click here to read it.
Medieval religious images may have been designed to evoke sound in the minds of viewers, according to a new study examining the Harley Roll, a medieval English scroll depicting the life of Saint Guthlac. The research argues that medieval audiences experienced sacred imagery in immersive, multisensory ways that blended sight, sound, memory, and emotion.
“Spiced incense on the air, song reverberating off stone, flare of light on gold, the hope of the divine brushing human skin, healing body and soul. It is hard to overstate the intense sensory experience of medieval English saint’s shrines. From the lowly stone marker to the bejewelled and towering reliquary, the sacred centres of saint’s cults were locations of physical, mental, and spiritual immersion. They were environments structured to shape multisensory engagement with their respective saint, with one of the most important sensory avenues being sound.”
A new study by Britton Elliott Brooks argues that medieval religious images were never truly “silent.” Instead, they could evoke imagined soundscapes in the minds of viewers, creating immersive experiences that blended sight, memory, and sound. The research focuses on the Harley Roll, a medieval English scroll depicting the life of Saint Guthlac, and suggests that pilgrims and worshippers may have mentally “heard” winds, hammering, animal cries, and demonic noises while viewing its images.
Published in the journal Religions, the study combines medieval studies, sound studies, and neuroscience to explore how medieval audiences interacted with sacred imagery.
Brooks, an Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Languages and Cultures, explains that “Unlike today, books in the medieval period were extremely expensive, and many people could not read Latin, the primary language of the church. For ordinary people such as farmers or fishermen, sound rather than text was the primary way they engaged with spiritual life.”
The study centres on British Library Harley MS Y.6, known as the Harley Roll, a scroll created around the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. The manuscript contains eighteen illustrated roundels depicting the life of Saint Guthlac, an Anglo-Saxon saint who abandoned a warrior’s life to become a hermit in the marshlands of Crowland in eastern England.
Brooks argues that the Harley Roll was likely connected to efforts at Crowland Abbey to revitalise Guthlac’s cult and attract pilgrims. The manuscript’s imagery was designed not simply to tell stories visually, but to immerse viewers in familiar sensory environments.
One of the clearest examples comes in a scene showing Guthlac travelling by boat through the fens to Crowland. Earlier written accounts describe the journey only briefly, mentioning little more than a fishing skiff travelling through marshland. The Harley Roll, however, transforms the episode into a vivid sensory experience.
The artist depicts a clinker-built boat cutting through swirling water while a square sail billows overhead. Brooks notes that medieval viewers would likely have mentally associated the scene with familiar sounds: water striking a wooden hull, the splash of poles entering the marshy water, the creak of ropes, and sails snapping in the wind.
For people living in medieval eastern England, river travel was an ordinary part of life. Brooks points out that waterways served as “lifelines” in medieval England, and pilgrims travelling to Crowland Abbey may themselves have arrived by boat. This made the imagery particularly resonant, linking the saint’s experience to their own.
Another scene depicts Guthlac building his hermitage. Earlier texts describe only a small dwelling, but the Harley Roll transforms the scene into the construction of a Romanesque chapel complete with labourers, arches, and stonework reflecting the architecture of the twelfth century.
The illustration evokes a recognisable medieval soundscape: hammers striking stone, ropes creaking through pulleys, and builders hauling materials into place. Brooks notes that Crowland Abbey itself underwent repeated rebuilding after destructive fires, meaning such construction sounds would have been deeply familiar to medieval visitors.
The study also explores how medieval depictions of demons relied heavily on imagined sound. One dramatic scene in the Harley Roll shows Guthlac surrounded by animal-headed demons attempting to spiritually assault him.
The accompanying medieval texts describe the terrifying noises these creatures made: wolves howling, ravens croaking, serpents hissing, horses whinnying, oxen lowing, and boars grunting.
“Imagine sitting alone in the dark and hearing a beast roaring outside,” Brooks says. “It would be terrifying. The interesting thing is that the attack is not physical, but purely sonic.”
The Harley Roll visually reinforces this idea. The demons surround Guthlac with open mouths and accusatory gestures, but they do not physically strike him. Instead, Brooks argues, the image encourages viewers to imagine the cacophony mentally, allowing the attack to become immersive even in silence.
Some of the creatures depicted are particularly intriguing. One demon appears ape-like, despite apes not belonging to the traditional Guthlac story. Brooks connects this choice to medieval bestiary traditions, where apes often symbolised deception and the devil.
The study explains these effects through the framework of “predictive processing,” a theory in neuroscience suggesting that the brain constantly predicts sensory experiences based on past memories and associations. When people view an image strongly connected with sound—such as a hammer striking stone or a sail whipping in the wind—the auditory cortex may become slightly activated even in silence.
Brooks combines this approach with the concept of the “sound milieu,” which describes sound as an immersive relationship between the source of a sound, the listener, and the environment around them. Medieval images, he argues, participated in this process by encouraging viewers to recreate familiar soundscapes in their minds.
The article also expands beyond the Harley Roll itself. Brooks suggests that medieval religious experiences often combined imagery, architecture, ritual, and music into a single sensory environment.
At Crowland Abbey, monks composed liturgical sequences celebrating Saint Guthlac around the same time the Harley Roll was produced. Brooks proposes that sung performances and visual imagery may have worked together to create deeply immersive devotional experiences.
The study further argues that this phenomenon was not limited to saints’ lives. Brooks examines the Harley Psalter, another famous medieval manuscript, and shows how its illustrations of storms and battles could similarly evoke imagined sounds. In one scene, horses cry out, spears strike shields, and thunder crashes across the page through visual cues alone.
Brooks believes such multisensory interpretation was central to how medieval people encountered art and sacred spaces. “When people came to a religious center, they were usually hoping for a miracle, often seeking healing,” he explains. Such environments, he says, “provided rich avenues for the faithful to seek contact with the saints.”
The research also reflects Brooks’ broader interest in reconstructing the sensory world of the medieval past. He notes how his own experiences shaped his understanding of the North Sea environment central to Guthlac’s story: “I grew up in Hawaiʻi, where the ocean is clear, warm, and sandy, and it is very different from the North Sea. Walking along its muddy, silty shorelines, where your boots sink with every step, gives you a completely different tactile sense of the environment. That experience changes how I read the sources.”
Britton Elliott Brooks’ article, “Material Aurality: Sound Milieu(s) in the Guthlac Roll,” is published in Religions. Click here to read it.
Click here to see more images from the Guthlac Roll
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