Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages examines the religious and political power communicated in late antique and early medieval graphic signs (third through tenth centuries), including christograms, monograms, carmina figurata, and the sign of the cross, which appear in a variety of media from coins, jewelry, and lamps to manuscripts, monumental inscriptions, and mosaics. As Ildar Garipzanov indicates in the introduction, the authors employ the term “graphic sign” in a broad sense, as defined by Henry Maguire in the volume as a visual motif “that stands in for something or someone else in a literal or direct way,” and carries metaphorical meaning(s) in addition to the literal (224, cf. 2).

The twelve essays that comprise this multidisciplinary collection are organized into three sections: “Graphic Signs in Manuscript Culture,” “Graphic Signs in Public Spaces and Everyday Material Culture,” and “Graphic Signs on Material Objects of Status and Authority.” Graphic signs are considered in European, Byzantine, and North African contexts; the contributors trace the ways in which graphic signs had the ability to invite viewer response and, in turn, affect their environments. Illustrated with one hundred forty-two figures, tables, and diagrams (varying in quality), one of the distinct contributions of this book is that it brings together discussions of graphic signs that usually remain siloed by academic discipline.