Visual Poetry from the 1500s

via PK's BibliOdyssey:

Among his many writings was an interesting collection of poetry - De Laudibus Sancte Crucis ('In Praise of the Cross') - "a collection of twenty-eight encrypted religious poems, rendered before 814 AD. He was said to be the inventor of a cyphering system of 36 lines containing 36 letters evenly spaced on a grid. In this grid, Maurus included figurative images, putting the poems in visual terms. The poem filling the cypher grid was enriched by these smaller images, as most of the letters contained within them created tiny individual poems." Thus his writings could be appreciated at least on one level by the largely illiterate populace.