This chapter attempts to reconstruct the textual history of the Latin–Greek glossary known as Hermeneumata Celtis, from antiquity to the year 1495, when the Humanist Conrad Celtis transcribed the work from a medieval antigraph that was subsequently lost. The thematic glossary of Hermeneumata Celtis is unique among other extant bilingual glossaries because it was supplemented, at some time in Late Antiquity, with the inclusion of Greek words and definitions culled from a Greek alphabetical lexicon similar to Hesychius (but possibly earlier). Other increments came from contamination with other thematic glossaries; the most recognisable points of contact are with what modern scholars call the Hermeneumata Montepessulana.

The initial editions and, more importantly, the first reproductions of the few extant Latin papyri introduced a novel approach to our understanding of writing and provided new interpretative tools that generally remain relevant well beyond the Roman period. This brief reflection discusses several technical terms used to describe significant graphic features from the Roman era. The author maintains that a specialised vocabulary – essential in any discipline aspiring to scientific rigour, such as palaeography – is both a fundamental tool and a product of a systematic methodology and critical analysis.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians contains instruction for women to veil their heads when praying or prophesying in the assembly (ekklēsia). In this chapter, I argue that, like other women in the first-century Mediterranean world, Corinthian women most likely veiled and unveiled for a variety of reasons having to do with beauty, comfort, status, virtue, and piety, not solely for theological, exegetical, or liberative purposes.

The third-century Christian writer Origen of Alexandria used the image of the veil to describe the relation between the “letter” of the biblical text and its hidden, spiritual meaning. Origen constructed an allegorical theory of biblical interpretation that relied on the imagery of the veil to illustrate the hiddenness of truth. His biblical interpretations consistently privileged the unveiled Christian “spirit” of the text over what he called the Jewish “letter” – the veiled “flesh” of the text.

Jacques Derrida’s contribution to the book Veils, jointly authored with his friend Hélène Cixous, is, in part, a meditation on his tallit – the Jewish prayer shawl – that was given to him as a boy. Derrida turns to the tallit as a contrast to the veil. The tallit opens an avenue for him to critique the traditional and widespread trope of truth as that which is veiled and that which calls out for unveiling. This epilogue focuses on Derrida‘s affectionate description of his tallit–the yellowing, familiar, soft, singular tallit that resists knowing.

This chapter examines the representation of textiles, curtains, drapery, and other architectural veils in early Christian art from the earliest Christian frescoes to the catacombs and sarcophagi of the fourth and fifth centuries, to the mosaic programs of sixth-century Ravenna and Rome. I argue that one of the ways that veiling increasingly signified in late antiquity and early Byzantium was to intimate mystery, sacrality, and hiddenness while hinting at the promise of revelation and discovery.

For fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa, veils became part of the way to describe the soul’s pursuit of divine love and union. This chapter examines how the numerous veils of the biblical book known as the Song of Songs become the threads with which Gregory weaves not only his mystical reflections on the soul’s unrelenting desire for God but also his description of the allegorist’s pursuit.