2024

“From the minbar to the tabernacle: the transcultural journey of the Andalusian eucharistic doors”

This essay deals with a series of tabernacle doors with Islamic ornamentation and Latin eucharistic inscriptions, made in Christian Andalusi lands ca. 1300–1500, which illustrate the extent of the assimilation of the cultural heritage of al-Andalus by Iberian Christian kingdoms. The origins of this type of tabernacle door are analyzed in connection with the conversion of the Great Mosques of al-Andalus in the thirteenth century, and aspects of the doors’ ornamentation and possible symbolic dimensions are addressed. Further, the doors are compared with similar woodwork produced by interreligious contacts in other regions, emphasizing that certain transcultural phenomena had a global scope in the medieval Mediterranean.