diff --git a/IPython/frontend/qt/console/pygments_highlighter.py b/IPython/frontend/qt/console/pygments_highlighter.py
index ef964d0..677e050 100644
--- a/IPython/frontend/qt/console/pygments_highlighter.py
+++ b/IPython/frontend/qt/console/pygments_highlighter.py
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ class PygmentsHighlighter(QtGui.QSyntaxHighlighter):
     def __init__(self, parent, lexer=None):
         super(PygmentsHighlighter, self).__init__(parent)
 
-        self._document = QtGui.QTextDocument()
+        self._document = self.document()
         self._formatter = HtmlFormatter(nowrap=True)
         self._lexer = lexer if lexer else PythonLexer()
         self.set_style('default')