Ideas of textuality are in many ways the key to understanding medieval culture, in which the world was conceptualized as a text, or even as a book, a second book of God to supplement his first, the Bible. The notion influenced views of, as well as the production and organization of, actual texts. The articles of this book scrutinize various means by which writers (both Latin and vernacular), manuscript illuminators, and exegetes (Christian and Jewish) establish texts as authoritative, or, in certain instances, challenge or subvert textual authority. The book may justly claim not only to substantiate, but also to carry further, and occasionally contest, current scholarship within the field, even as it undertakes to grapple with some of that field's unanswered riddles.