Self-imposed silence aims to keep idle talk at bay and to liberate interior locution. In early seventeenth century English religious emblems silence finds expression first and foremost in a series of images often taken from Antiquity which incorporate various canons of Classical oratory (inventio, dispositio, actio…). Images address the viewer’s emotions primarily. Paradoxically the epigrams also aim to convey silence. Some may be long texts, as in the case of Quarles’ Hieroglyphikes (1638), but all of them use a form of clipped, “attic,” rhetoric inherited from Seneca and Tacitus, against the more florid, emotional style developed by Ciceronian principles. Images and texts combine to produce silent spiritual exercises helping the meditator to have access to the mysteries of the divine
