Thrones, Dominions: Identity, Authority, and Visible Things in the Medieval Mediterranean

At the quarter mark of the twenty-first century, public debates are focused on the possibilities and pitfalls posed by pluralistic societies. The United States and many other countries are grappling with troubling and complex questions regarding the relationship of religion and political power; competing sources and loci of authority; the dynamics of cultural translation and appropriation; and the degree, implications, and limits of shared cultural horizons. This article explores how visual and material practices illuminate concerns about similar issues in the later medieval Mediterranean. Specifically, it traces the manipulation and meanings of a common decorative sign—the six-pointed star, also known as the Star of David, Seal of Solomon, and/or hexagram, prominent in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim visual and material cultures—in works produced for both Jewish and Christian patrons by a fourteenth-century Catalan painting workshop. It argues that though the clientele, physical location, and working conditions of this workshop suggest that Jews and Christians had common cultural horizons and, at least at times, congenial relations, the artistic deployment of the sign highlights mounting anxieties around power and authority in late medieval Iberian society, which led to the breakdown of a particular, fleeting moment of precarious coexistence. I conclude with reflections on the afterlife of the six-pointed star, which attests to the enduring impact of medieval visual legacies and their potentially dangerous effects.