Hrabanus Maurus, Liber de Laudibus Sanctae Crucis
A manuscript of Hrabanus Maurus's Liber de Laudibus Sanctae Crucis, a ninth-century Latin poem in praise of the Cross, copied around 1050 and held in a Swiss collection. Its picture is a page of carmina figurata, where verse is written in shaped blocks of letters forming a cross and a diamond-shaped medallion, with brown, green and blue ink on cream parchment. A designer could take from it the idea of text arranged as a geometric image, with letters on a grid forming a cross motif.
