This richly illustrated volume offers a portrait of the varied and still unfamiliar world of medieval Spain.

Spain, 1000–1200: Art at the Frontiers of Faith tells a nuanced story of the dynamic and interconnected medieval Iberian Peninsula while celebrating the artistic exchange among Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the region during the Middle Ages. This Bulletin emphasizes the variety and richness of the Museum’s holdings of medieval Iberian artworks which include mosaics, frescos, architectural decorations, manuscripts, textiles, ivories, and metalwork. Exploring how artists in medieval Spain drew from many sources of inspiration and navigated religious differences in their art, this text underscores the complexity of interfaith interaction during a pivotal era in Spanish history.

In analyzing the early medieval architecture of Christian and Islamic Spain, Jerrilynn Dodds explores the principles of artistic response to social and cultural tension, offering an account of that unique artistic experience that set Spain apart from the rest of Europe and established a visual identity born of the confrontation of cultures that perceived one another as alien. Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain covers the Spanish medieval experience from the Visigothic oligarchy to the year 1000, addressing a variety of cases of cultural interchange. It examines the embattled reactive stance of Hispano-Romans to their Visigothic rulers and the Asturian search for a new language of forms to support a political position dissociated from the struggles of a peninsula caught in the grip of a foreign and infidel rule. Dodds then examines the symbolic meaning of the Mozarabic churches of the tenth century and their reflection of the Mozarabs' threatened cultural identity. The final chapter focuses on two cases of artistic interchange between Islamic and Christian builders with a view toward understanding the dynamics of such interchange between conflicting cultures. Dodds concludes with a short account of the beginning of Romanesque architecture in Spain and an analysis of some of the ways in which artistic expression can reveal the subconscious of a culture.