From the late ninth until the mid-fifteenth centuries, the densely-settled countryside of the Salento in the southern Italian region of Apulia endured remarkable political and social transformation. Byzantine government (c. 870–1071) brought Greek-speaking immigrants and ecclesiastical reform; these were followed by the onset of the Black Death and an attendant agrarian crisis. With the rise of mendicant preaching came persecution of the Jewish community, which could trace its origins to northern Italy, Provence, and Catalonia and, later in the fifteenth century, to the Balkans. After 1492, when Ferdinand II of Aragon expelled them from his Iberian territories, Jewish settlers also arrived from Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia. In addition to the region's religious and cultural diversity, the “Terra d'Otranto” (as the Normans called it) comprised a complex linguistic landscape. Only gradually did Italian become the established written language of southern Italy. In 1442, the fortunes of the Salento changed again with the institution of a new Aragonese dynasty in Naples.

This time frame and these events define the parameters of Safran's study, yet they hardly capture the myriad challenges that confront the scholar of medieval southern Italy. Generally identified as the “heel” of the Italian “boot,” the Salento's shifting borders and diverse religious and cultural profile have also played out in modern times. In the traditions of tarantism (in the dance known as the pizzica), for example, old forms live on. The Jewish community can now also trace its roots back to the 1940s when inhabitants of the displaced persons' camps stayed on. Yet the visual and material record at the heart of this study defies simple classification or comparison, let alone physical reconstruction. It is to Safran's very great credit, thanks to the inclusive scope of her evidence (inscriptions, paintings, graffiti, tombstones, and ritual objects), along with her eye for detail, that we have an authoritative answer—or set of answers—to the question of Salentine identity as articulated not only in language and image, but also in ritual.

In her introduction, she succinctly sets out her aims after establishing her terms: “art,” “identity,” and “medieval Salento.” The author is attentive to typological variety among material artifacts and across the visual record, as well as to texts (Greek, Hebrew, and Latin), all the while highlighting the anthropological resonance of her findings. This interdisciplinarity pays rich dividends through the early chapters (“Names;” “Languages;” “Appearance;” “Status;” “The Life Cycle”), and also, especially, in the last three (“Ritual and Other Practices in Places of Worship;” “Rituals and Practices at Home;” and “Theorizing Salentine Identity”). The reader encounters strata of evidence resembling the appearance and constitution of conglomerate rock, layered yet heterogeneous, adjacent yet not always intersecting, much like the lives of the Salentine people themselves. In this light, it is to Safran's credit that she has taken to heart Fredrik Barth's conclusion of over four decades ago that, as she puts it, “culture is defined by liminal individuals on the cultural peripheries, where identity is constantly being negotiated” (222). The Salento, for her, is just such a periphery, but one for which, following Barth, she argues that proximity brings at least the possibility of intersection, of intermarriage, and conversion. The sharing of two rites, Orthodox and Roman, in double-apsed basilicas is one such example, as is the administering of both leavened and unleavened bread by an Orthodox archpriest.

The Salento as a cultural periphery also allows for distinctive artistic iconographies. At the Cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata in Otranto, for example, the pavement portrays Psalms 148–150 in praise of the Lord and, through him, the Norman ruler, with an emphasis on the liturgy of Easter. Several figures depicted in the pavement (which bears Latin inscriptions) belong to a Greek linguistic and Orthodox liturgical setting. Here, we see Earth and Ocean embodied by a griffin and Thalassa, and the personification of Kairos (Opportunity) as a winged male nude (225). In the rock-cut church of Santi Stefani at Vaste, which is a central monument in Safran's analysis, Greek texts and Roman rites cohabit. In the apse, the prophet Zechariah's vision of the Temple menorah and olive trees is juxtaposed with John the Evangelist and the Woman of the Apocalypse from Revelation, suggesting to the author the existence of a Greek homily. By the fourteenth century, when the Woman of the Apocalypse came to be identified as Mary, only Proclus, the fifth-century archbishop of Constantinople, in his second homily, “On Incarnation,” linked Mary with Zechariah. For him, Mary was herself a golden menorah and, like gold, she was beyond natural processes of decay. As Safran argues, this iconography derives from a specifically southern Italian tradition as indicated by the origins of the only extant manuscript containing Proclus's second homily (now in the Vatican library). About sixteen kilometers northeast of Vaste was Otranto's famous, large menorah, described by Jacobus of Verona in 1346. This is a case of “interpictoriality”: “Not only did this citation make the modest rock-cut church an imitation of the cathedral and of the house of God (the Jewish Temple and the Tabernacle) that preceded it; it also made Vaste and Nociglia, home of Santi Stefani's principle patrons . . . part of an ongoing dialogue with the numerous Jewish inhabitants of the Salento” (229).

Safran's study draws on a database (“Sites in the Salento with Texts and Images Informative About Identity,” 239–336) that is organized alphabetically by location and preceded by a helpful map. Here we might find a bone amulet of a rudely-gesturing hand; devotional and didactic graffiti; funerary inscriptions; frescoed episodes, such as the Departure of Mary Magdalene from Palestine (Plate 11) and Mary Escorting Jesus to School (Plate 12); a sarcophagus; sundial; and a synagogue dedication. This extremely useful resource is essential to the whole and, together with the 20 color plates, makes for absorbing browsing. The objects and texts gathered here fully illustrate the author's final reflections on the fragmentary character of historical data, and yet the mosaic-like “textured microhistory” that they invite.