The contribution of Xavier Barral's work to the knowledge of woven and embroidered images in medieval art is astonishing. His studies of the embroidery of Bayeux and of the Creation carpet in Girona, among others, make it possible to measure the importance of textiles in the staging of monumental décors during the Middle Ages, and to conceive the specificities of a visual world generated by the intersection of strands and threads, a composite image, in a special relationship between backgrounds and figures. Many of these objects which have received better attention thanks to the pioneering analyses of Xavier Barral also show, in conjunction, superposition or complement of images, inscriptions naming or commenting on the scenes and characters, and which participate in the creation of the visual discourses. While they have often been the subject of descriptions and commentaries, little has been said about what "weaving a text" means from the point of view of the medieval written culture. What does the common etymology textus for "text" and "textile" reveal for the anthropology of writing, the study of material culture and the history of art of the Middle Ages? This contribution to the Mélanges offered to Xavier Barral proposes some paths of reflection for a better understanding of this epigraphic documentation.