Between León and the Levant: The Infanta Sancha’s Altar as Material Evidence for Medieval History


In the Museo de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro in León, Spain, an intriguing portable altar is on display. Its multicolored stone and long inscription detailing the material objects enshrined within invite an analysis of the artwork in terms of materiality and mobility. This article addresses the multiple questions raised by the altar, shifting away from a straightforward interpretation of patronage by Sancha of León-Castilla (ca. 1095–1159), whose name is inscribed on its face. Conceptualizing the altar as a multilayered object that can be placed within Sancha’s network of connections facilitates our understanding of this exotic artifact between León and the Levant.


Introduction1
"Queen Sancha, [daughter] of Raimundo, silvered me." So begins the inscription on a portable altar that is kept at the Museo de la Real Colegiata de San 1 For their stimulating comments, I would like to thank the participants of the conference The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Muslim-Christian Interchange (19-20 May 2017, held at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University), and those attending the icma-sponsored session The Treasury of San Isidoro de León and Its Global Connections (4th Forum Medieval Art, Berlin-Brandenburg, 20-23 September 2017). I am also grateful to Eduardo Álvarez Aller for sharing his unpublished paper on Sancha's altar with me. Special thanks go to Jaroslav Folda and Warren Woodfin for their thoughts on the stone and the inscription, and above all to Therese Martin, who introduced me to Iberia, Sancha, and her altar. I am also indebted to her and to the anonymous reader for helping to improve my text. This article was written during my postdoctoral fellowship Isidoro de León (Figure 6.1).2 The "queen" is Sancha of León-Castilla (ca. 1095-1159), daughter of Queen Urraca of León-Castilla (r. 1109-1126) and Count Raimundo of Burgundy (d. 1107), and the elder sister of King Alfonso vii of León-Castilla (r. 1126-1157).3 Her altar has a long inscription detailing its date of consecration, the name of the bishop who blessed it, and an extensive list of relics. For medievalists, the story told by this altar is assumed to be a familiar one: the patron, Sancha, appears to have commissioned a personal portable altar that she eventually gave to her favored institution, San Isidoro de León. According to the Liber miraculorum beatissimi Isidori, written by Lucas of Tuy between 1221/ 24 and 1239, she presented vessels and vestments from her chapel to San Isidoro when she felt her death was near.4 Indeed, in this the earliest ( extensive narrative text about the monastery, Sancha is presented as a devout donor who divided a piece of the True Cross among four crosses newly made of silver and gold. The largest of these, decorated with fragments of the Holy Sepulchre as if they were pearls, she gave to San Isidoro.5 Yet, closer analysis of the portable altar suggests a much more complicated history than the clear-cut patronage story outlined above. The present article addresses questions raised by a close examination of the altar's inscription, iconography, style, and exotic altar stone. Rather than claiming to provide definitive answers, the responses to these questions seek to deepen our understanding of the complexity of medieval objects by analyzing the altar's multilayered meanings.6 This moveable artifact is studied within the context of a network of actors who crossed regional boundaries to favor their chosen institutions. Before locating Sancha and the altar within a web of persons and places, first the seemingly simple altar itself needs to be complicated. This object is less straightforward than it seems, a composite work in which inscription, iconography, and materiality function together. I begin by analyzing each element as separate though interconnected pieces of the puzzle. This approach to an Parts of the World: Strategic Collecting for an Iberian Treasury," in this volume. On the Liber miraculorum beatissimi Isidori, see Patrick Henriet, "Hagiographie et politique à León au début du XIIIe siècle. Les chanoines réguliers de Saint-Isidore et la prise de Baeza," Revue Mabillon. Revue internationale d'histoire et de littérature religieuses, nouvelle série 8 (1997): 53-82, at 58-59. For an example of a chapel, its use, and its importance to a ruler, see Chpt. 3 in this volume by Ana Rodríguez, "Narrating the Treasury: What Medieval Iberian Chronicles Choose to Recount about Luxury Objects." 5 "Y así, habida a dicha reliquia muy preciosa de Ligno Domini, mandó hacer la bienaventurada reina cuatro cruces de oro, y de plata, e hizo partir por partes y asentar en las dichas cruces aquella gran reliquia del madero del Señor, el cual, no solamente los hombres, más los ángeles adoran con mucha reverencia [...] Dió a la dicha iglesia de San Isidro, su esposo, la mayor de aquellas santas cruces, en la cual, demás y allende el Ligno Domini, había hecho ingerir muchos pedazos del sepulcro de Nuestro Señor y están engastados en ella a manera de perlas; la segunda cruz dió a la iglesia de la siempre Virgen Santa María, que es la iglesia catedral de la ciudad de León, y allí hace Nuestro Señor por aquella su santa cruz muchos y espesos milagros; la tercera cruz dió al monasterio de los gloriosos mártires San Facundo y San Primitivo; la cuarta cruz y menor, conviene a saber, aquella que había sido probada por el fuego en la manera susodicha, guardóla para sí en su tesoro. artwork is part of the art historian's traditional métier; although not the only way to study medieval artifacts, it helps to illuminate why iconography, style, and material should matter to all medievalists.

A Written Testimony in Silver: Whodunit?
Inscribed artifacts hold a special place in the heart of the (art) historian.7 They seem to promise that the text can tell us all we need to know, often providing names of artists, patrons, and recipients, and highlighting, for example, that women played important roles in the creation of artworks in Middle Ages.8 Some inscriptions contain dates referring to manufacture, donation, or consecration, which support a geographical and chronological analysis and help us to recognize developments in ideas and cultural tastes. A number of inscriptions reveal why they were commissioned, offering an insight into the patrons' (and the artists') preoccupations, thus shedding light on medieval mentalities.9 Reliquaries may be inscribed with lists enumerating the holy remains enshrined within, serving as inventories. In many cases, the inscriptions lend authority to the artworks, since they confirm in writing both making and existence.10 In fact, inscriptions can be such rich treasure troves of information that it is easy to forget that they are not necessarily reliable testimonials. It is important to keep in mind that these inscribed words were visually presented to their audience in a deliberate way.11 The portable altar of Sancha offers a case in point. The commencement of the niello inscription is positioned on the altar's face, above and below the stone, in relatively large Caroline lettering on silver ground:  It is significant that Sancha is not styled infanta but regina, an honorary title that can be found in her charters from 1147-1148 onwards.13 This makes the portable altar the earliest surviving testimony to the use of the queenly title by the ruler's unmarried sister, which would transfer just a few years later from silver to parchment. The inscription associates "Regina Sancia" with Raimundo of Burgundy, her father, who held jurisdiction as count over parts of Portugal and Leonese Extremadura through his marriage to Urraca, the eldest daughter of King Alfonso vi (r. 1065-1109).14 The choice to include only the count's name on Sancha's altar is unusual; in the contemporary documents issued by the infanta, she is routinely connected to both her father and mother, or to her brother the emperor, or to all three of them together. With the exception of a single charter,15 she is never styled the daughter just of Queen Urraca or of Count Raimundo, nor are her parents ever presented without their titles. Would a royal princess, who habitually displays such emphatic dynastic selfawareness in her charters, choose to refer to her only non-royal family member on her portable altar? I will return to this question below in the context of the remainder of the inscription and the question of the origins of the altar. If we were to accept at face value the statement connecting Sancha to the altar as the person who had it made of silver, our story could end here. However, as Elizabeth Carson Pastan and others have emphasized, scholarship on patronage entails more than a straightforward search for the person commissioning or donating artworks; rather, it includes the dynamics among all parties involved.16 In fact, the very inscription suggests a more complicated history. The use of the word "silvered" (like gilded or deauratus) appears in several medieval inventories of treasuries, but I have found no other example where the object describes itself as being silvered.17 Through its inscription this object explicitly acted as a participant in the creation of a network of relationships that included the artist, Sancha, her chaplain, God, the canons of San Isidoro, and their treasury.18 After the altar speaks in its own voice in the opening phrase, the rest of the inscription shifts to third person: "this altar was dedicated by the venerable Anselm, bishop of Holy Bethlehem in the name of the holy and undivided [Trinity]." The ending of this first part of the inscription is noteworthy since the final word, trinity, does not appear on the face of the altar; rather, it is the first word on the front edge, pulling the reader along to the continuation of the passage (Figure 6.2).19 Did the designer of the text know that there would be no space on the front for this word, or was its placement left to the silversmith? Perhaps the author favored the rhythm of "bethllee" and "idividue." Or it may have been that the specific word that had to follow "holy and undivided" was so evident to the reader that nothing was thought of relegating "trinity" to the next plane. What is clear, however, is that in order to actually read the word trinity and complete the dedicatory sentence, the altar needed to be held and manipulated.
Beyond this verbal displacement that gives evidence of manual movement, the most intriguing elements in the first section of the inscription are its dating and its consecrator. In Iberia the Hispanic era is the most commonly employed dating system until the thirteenth century for both inscriptions and charters, including those at San Isidoro, making the "Anno Domini Incarnationis" stand out for an object that has been assumed to be of Spanish manufacture.20 Even rarer is the presence of the indiction-referring to a fifteen-year cycle used in 17 For context, by contrast with the ubiquitous use of the Hispanic era, suggests that the designer of the altar's inscription hailed from elsewhere. The specific date in 1144 that is commemorated on the portable altar is 25 July, and it is most unlikely that this was chosen at random as it is the feast day of St. James the Great, whose shrine at Santiago of Compostela attracted many pilgrims in this period. The connections between Compostela and the rulers of León-Castilla were tight, though not unproblematic.25 It remains unclear, however, whether this specific feast was chosen because St. James was the most prestigious saint on the Iberian Peninsula, or because the patron or owner felt a special veneration for him. The feast day combined with the Anno Domini and indiction may indicate that the maker of Sancha's altar was unfamiliar with the Hispanic era but well informed about the greatest saint in Spain.
Further, the name of the bishop who consecrated the altar also supports the idea that the object was not necessarily a Leonese or even an Iberian product. In order for altars, including portable ones, to be used during mass, they needed to be consecrated by a bishop.26 Sancha's altar was blessed not by a local Iberian bishop but by the "venerable Anselm, bishop of holy Bethlehem." In 1915); and Giles Constable, The Abbey of Cluny: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Eleven-Hundredth Anniversary of Its Foundation (Berlin: Lit. Verlag, 2010). In French inscriptions, however, the use of indiction appears to be less common than in documents, according to Robert Favreau, "La datation dans les inscriptions médiévales françaises," Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes 157/ 1 (1999): 11-39, esp. 21-24. For French cultural impact on Iberia in this period, see Mercedes López-Mayán, "Culto y cultura en la catedral compostelana en el siglo XI," in En el principio: Génesis  From the word "Trinity," the silver niello text continues in small lettering along the front edge (see Figure 6.2). The epigraph as a whole, engraved in four separate strips nailed onto the narrow sides of the altar, must be read by first following the upper line on all sides (Figure 6.3, red arrows) and then the lower one ( Figure 6.3, yellow arrows). This means that the inscription cannot be understood unless the altar is held in one's hand and turned around and around, an indication that it was designed to be handled intimately by a single individual.31 27 Jochen Burgtorf, "Bethlehem," in That shrines and their relics were handled is also highlighted by María Judith Feliciano in Chpt. 5 of this volume. She remarks that textiles function as veils in the rituals that concealed, revealed, protected, and exposed the relics at the moment of activation.  Sancha's altar, then, does not contain the usual suspects, such as the apostles, martyrs, and bishops inscribed on the Hildesheim portable altar (Figures 6.4a-b); rather, it has more in common with the types of relics mentioned on the lid of the outsized Arca Santa in Oviedo (Figure 6.5).35 In much more detail than the Arca Santa, however, the collection of relics mentioned on Sancha's altar makes it possible to follow closely in the footsteps of Christ and Mary and to visit sacred places, as pilgrims did when they traveled to the Holy Land, in person or in the mind.36 The inscription presents a chronology starting with Mary's role as mother, then enumerating all the key moments in Christ's life along with the ordeals he had to suffer; it ends with the Virgin's death and the tomb left empty at her assumption. To make these events and places more real, references are made to stones and other tangible objects such as cribs and tables, beds and graves, even roast and honeycomb. They act as signifiers of locations and occurrences, helping to bring them to life and to place the reader at those specific sites. For that very reason, remarks about rocks, tombstones, and stone altars often feature in pilgrims' travel accounts.37 As is well known, this same impulse gave rise to the collecting of stones, sand, textiles, and fluids (tertiary relics or eulogia, blessed objects) that were Christ shall in their prayers remember Liutgerus, who carved me at the behest of Helena, who is also called Gunhild connected to these sacred locations.38 In fact, Sancha's portable altar has more in common with reliquaries that contain stones, wood, or oil than with other portable altars, which usually hold body-part relics from holy individuals. Thus more than merely an inventory, this altar's inscription provides a biblical narrative by presenting materials, especially stones, which had the potential to transport the user from a physical site in Iberia to virtual yet real places in the Holy Land.

The Lamb of God Attacked: Between León and the Levant?
My analysis of the silver-niello inscription-with its unusual dating system, the presence of Bishop Anselm of Bethlehem, and the long list of site relicshas raised doubts about whether the altar was made in León, as has traditionally been assumed, suggesting instead that we should look to the Levant. In the twelfth century and beyond, "made in" labels are the exception rather than the rule. Places of manufacture, be it monastic environments or court workshops, have preoccupied art historians (and sometimes tormented historians) with discussions that tend to focus on style and iconography, which some scholars consider to be limited approaches. However, relationships between style and location do have implications for our understanding of places, people, and the movements of ideas and artworks.39 Whether Sancha's altar was made in León or the Levant might not necessarily impact our appreciation of the object as a portable altar. Yet it obliges us to rethink assumptions about Leonese courtly production and about the connections between Iberia and the Holy Land. Art historians have taken a keen interest in royally sponsored workshops, such as those at Aachen under Charlemagne, at Palermo producing textiles For a detailed analysis of the iconography of other portable altars as well as their function in defining ritual space, see Palazzo, L'espace rituel, esp. Chpt. 6. 43 In personal communications, both Jessica Boon and Ittai Weinryb suggested to me that the stretched-out animal could be a hyena, a deceptive, filthy, and bisexual animal that has been connected to the Jews for its traitorous nature. See Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 144-145.
As Jessica Boon pointed out, perhaps Psalm 21:17 inspired the iconography: quoniam certainly not unusual on portable altars; however, these composite creatures that appear to be made up of different animals are unique. The roaring ones that threaten the Lamb have the tails of lions, the snouts of dragons or wolves, and the pelts of other animals altogether, while below, one of the beasts has the spotted fur of a leopard but not its head or tail. The creature under attack has a ridge of hair running from head to tail, like that of a hyena, but it lacks the large ears typical of this animal, and its tail is unlike any real creature's. By depicting hybrid monsters that were even more terrible than recognizable wild animals, the artist emphasized the beastly nature of would-be attackers of Christ. When the altar is held vertically, the Agnus Dei tramples the beasts below, symbolizing Christ's sacrificial triumph over death, which is also commemorated and celebrated on the altar. The altar was evidently conceived as an object in motion not only in the inscription around the edges, but also in surface ornamentation that must be viewed horizontally as well as vertically. This design must have been intentional because inscription and images are engraved in the same sheet of silver that holds the stone in place. Pelayo Casket, and the Traditio Legis ivory at the Louvre.46 While it is true that the arms of the ivory cross are decorated with the symbols of the four evangelists, there is neither stylistic nor pictorial affinity with those represented on the altar (Figure 6.6). And while the tetramorph and Agnus Dei from the lid of the reliquary casket and on the Traditio Legis ivory reveal an interest in the execution of furs, feathers, and hair, here too the styles differ too much to argue any direct connection between the ivories and the metalwork (Figures 6.7a, b).47 In fact, I can see no stylistic evidence for locating the manufacture of Sancha's altar in León. Rather, given Anselm's episcopal seat in Bethlehem, it seems reasonable to suggest that artists working in the Levant may have made the altar. Although there is scant evidence of goldsmiths working at Bethlehem in the first half of the twelfth century, in Jerusalem, by contrast, a street was named for the goldsmiths whose workshops clustered there.48 Quite a number of True Cross reliquaries were made in Jerusalem; they generally take the form of a doublearmed cross of wood decorated with gilded silver and precious stones. Many were brought back to European lands by elite pilgrims, crusaders, and settlers, while others were presented by the ecclesiastical foundations of the crusader states to affiliated monastic institutions in the west.49 Some Iberian donations of these staurothekai are known, testifying to ties across the Mediterranean.50 And yet, it is not easy to connect the style and technique in which the figures on Sancha's altar have been executed to metalwork produced in Jerusalem. The latter are dominated by medallions in high relief, flower patterns, and pearl motifs, whereas the altar's decoration is incised in gilt silver with niello, resulting in clear contours and crisp details.
In sum, an analysis of the altar's style and iconography cannot by itself solve the riddle of the place of manufacture, nor does it offer any support for the presumed Leonese origin. Rather, it is the unusual aspects of the inscription 46 Álvarez Aller, "El ara de la infanta," 9. 47 For an image of the that suggest that the work was done under the orders of someone far from the politics of early twelfth-century León. Distance would both account for its unusual dating and also offer an explanation for the individual presence of Count Raimundo. According to a general patrilineal logic, Sancha's father would have been the obvious family member to select for inclusion in the inscription. Based on the oddities in the inscription together with its consecration by Anselm of Bethlehem, we can therefore speculate that the altar's maker was from the Levant. If a definitive setting for the origins of the altar must remain an open question for now, it is hoped that bringing this piece to wider scholarly attention will contribute to its future resolution.

Material Matters: Stones Narrating the Life of Christ
The altar's contents, as listed in the inscription, contribute to the exotic nature of this object from a distant land, a spirit also imbued by its multicolored stone slab. Thinking of artworks in terms of their material presence, beyond their function and patronage, reflects a current in scholarship that is attuned to a nuanced understanding of the essential and tangible qualities of objects. These are understood not as resulting from solely artistic or functional processes, but as holding an active potential; that is, materials are recognized as having the ability to affect the beholder's actions and imagination.51 Most surviving portable altars have precious slabs made of porphyry, jasper, alabaster, white marble, or rock crystal. From descriptions in chronicles and in the inventories of church treasuries, the attention paid to altar slabs is evident, due to their association with the body of Christ.52 Comparing the evidence from visual and written sources with the stone in Sancha's altar shows how truly extraordinary its multicolored slab is. This stone has been identified either as red marble or limestone, with the dominant color being read symbolically as though it were porphyry, and thus an affirmation of royal ties.53 Although the reddish color certainly is present, a variety of greens, yellows, and greys are easily visible as well. In fact, the slab is a natural composite of multicolored stones known as breccia di Aleppo, which was quarried under the Romans on the Greek Island of Chios.54 Breccia is uncommon on the Iberian Peninsula, underscoring the probable origin of this object from elsewhere, and it may offer an example of the re-use of valued materials.55 Like other marbles, this colorful and unusual stone was appreciated for its ability to shine brightly after being polished, yet its selection for this altar, with its remarkable collection of relics from places rather than persons, invites a reading of the stone's composite nature in connection to the different holy locations named in the inscription. The conglomerate, exotic appearance of the slab visually reiterates the story told on the altar's edges of many stones and multiple sites, thus serving as an "active agent of meaning" while triggering the beholder's senses.56 The sensorial nature of holy stones is evidenced by a sixth-century pilgrim's account that tells of a deformed stone placed in position by Jesus when he visited Mount Zion. This stone was treated by pilgrims as a relic that could be held, touched, and even listened to because it produced a sound.57 Taking into consideration that some altar slabs were appreciated not just for their costliness or rarity, but because of their unique history, I would argue that the multicolored slab in Sancha's altar was deliberately chosen because it resembles a natural collection of stones encapsulating all the rocks, mountains, and other concrete locations mentioned in the inscription. In this way, the exotic altar stone functioned as a guide to the viewer's imagination by making tangible the inscribed holy sites that were geographically far away yet materially close at hand.58 For the role of material culture in bridging space and time, see Gertsman and Mittman, "Rocks of Jerusalem," 163.

The Altar and the Circulation of People
The altar's remarkable inscription, curious iconography, exotic materiality, and essential mobility work together to evoke both earthly and spiritual Jerusalem, which would have aided Sancha's devotions during her lifetime. But the altar's biography does not stop there. In the early modern period, a legend arose-perhaps sparked by this very object-that Sancha had traveled to the Holy Land. After all, the altar's inscription might lead one to assume that a pilgrimage had taken place during which the material remains of holy sites and persons were collected, and it would have been there and then that Bishop Anselm consecrated the multicolored stone that was enshrined in silver in 1144. Yet nothing in the medieval written record, whether Sancha's charters or the twelfth-or thirteenth-century chronicles that make reference to the infanta, indicates her absence from León-Castilla, much less a trip to the Holy Land.59 Nor is any mention made of a pilgrimage in Lucas of Tuy's Liber miraculorum beatissimi Isidori, which is the most detailed, almost hagiographic, narrative source about Sancha. It seems extremely unlikely that Lucas would have ignored such a significant journey in his fulsome praise of the infanta. 60 In fact, it is not until the sixteenth century that a textual source first bears witness to this tale. Ambrosio de Morales's trip of 1572-1573 through northern Spain at the order of King Felipe ii is the earliest surviving source mentioning Sancha's travels to the Holy Land, although he does so not in his discussion of San Isidoro but rather in his narrative of the monastery of San Pedro de la Espina. Sancha had granted to Bernard of Clairvaux various inheritances belonging to Espina so that he could build a monastery, of which Morales knew because at Espina he read "the foundational charter" (la Escritura de la fundacion), for which he gives no date. 61 The focus in Morales's story is on Bernard of Clairvaux and on the French royal abbey of St. Denis because they help to understand both the foundation of Espina and its relic collection. Although Morales's reference is rather vague and the tale of Sancha's pilgrimage must be legendary, her connection to the abbot of Clairvaux did, in fact, exist: the infanta donated to Bernard certain possessions of the Cistercian monasteries of San Pedro de Espina and Santa María de Aborridos. She also placed the monastery of Toldanus under his protection, concerning which Bernard wrote two letters to Sancha, an indication of direct personal communication between the two.62 This Iberian-French connection, already suggested by the use of indiction in the inscription, invites a positioning of the altar within Sancha's wider dynastic network. Here we might consider other "pathways of portability" for the object's exotic character: perhaps the infanta's interest in the Christian East was part of her father's legacy. 63 Although Count Raimundo never went overseas, his cousin Odo of Burgundy, with whom Raimundo originally had arrived in Iberia, took part in the Holy Land Crusade of 1101. This was just two years after the liberation of Jerusalem and the finding of a part of the True Cross, events that not only led to a more fervent veneration of the Cross, but also made the Holy Land itself a relic to be visited. 64 The crusades also directly impacted the Leonese-Castilian royal family, as Elvira, a half-sister of Sancha's mother Urraca, had accompanied her husband Raymond of Toulouse on the First Crusade in 1096, and she gave birth in the Holy Land to Alfonso Jordan, as his sobriquet indicates.65 Sancha's lifetime saw her father's brother, Guy of Vienne, elected pope at the Abbey of Cluny in 1119, where he took the name Calixtus ii (d. 1124). 66 At the First Lateran Council in 1123 the pontiff proclaimed that those who had promised to take the cross should fulfill their vow before Easter 1124 by going either to the Holy Land or to Spain.67 Even though there is no reference to Calixtus in Sancha's charters, 68 she must have been familiar with his proclamation, especially since the pope also offered an indulgence to those fighting in Hispania for the Christian cause. One of these miles Christi was King Alfonso i of Aragón (d. 1134), Queen Urraca's second husband, who considered himself to be as much a crusader as those going to the Levant.69 All this makes it likely that Sancha would have been aware of the attractions of the Latin East through members of her elite network, such as Bernard of Clairvaux, including her kinship groups. Instead of viewing the relics in her altar as the result of a pilgrimage, it is more fruitful to consider them as reflecting Sancha's interests in a holy landscape that allowed her to remain in her temporal holdings in Iberia while simultaneously making the spiritual iter to Jerusalem.

Conclusion
In the end, Sancha's portable altar, with its seemingly straightforward record of an elite woman's patronage, raises more questions than it answers. In this article I have applied a range of historical and art historical methodologies to the analysis of a twelfth-century object, demonstrating its connections to both León and the Levant and suggesting its impact on later history. This container, made of silver, gold, and a multicolored stone covering holy fragments of multiple materials, offers evidence of the importance of materiality to Sancha and other medieval beholders. A moveable item that encapsulated transportable saintly remains, this artifact invites an assessment of its place within Sancha's web of connections. While the genesis of her altar cannot yet be definitively resolved, my reading shows that the altar's exotic content, together with exoticism as its aesthetic mode, can be understood in relation to the significance of the Holy Land for the elite circles of which Sancha was a part. Yet, for as much as we now know about this object, the altar as a multilayered artifact still fits only too well with Oleg Grabar's assessment that the "most remarkable works of art are those that remain meaningful and intriguing, because somewhat mysterious, to all those who deal with them."70 I can only hope that the venerable scholar would agree.