This issue includes “Bishops and Territory: The Case of Late Roman and Byzantine North Africa” (Anna Leone); “A Conflicted Heritage: The Byzantine Religious Establishment of a War Ethic” (J. A. McGuckin); “Hoards and Hoarding Patterns in the Early Byzantine Balkans” (Florin Curta and Andrei Gândilă); “Light, Color, and Visual Illusion in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus” (Michael Roberts); “At the Edge of Two Empires: The Economy of Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (650s–800s CE)” (Luca Zavagno); “China, Byzantium, and the Shadow of the Steppe” (David A. Graff); “‘And So, with the Help of God’: The Byzantine Art of War in the Tenth Century” (Robert S. Nelson); “The Image of the Virgin Nursing (Galaktotrophousa) and a Unique Inscription on the Seals of Romanos, Metropolitan of Kyzikos” (John Cotsonis); “Marching across Anatolia: Medieval Logistics and Modeling the Mantzikert Campaign” (John Haldon with Vince Gaffney, Georgios Theodoropoulos, and Phil Murgatroyd); “The Moral Pieces by Theodore II Laskaris” (Dimiter G. Angelov); “Mary Magdalene between East and West: Cult and Image, Relics and Politics in the Late Thirteenth-Century Eastern Mediterranean” (Vassiliki A. Foskolou); “Byzantine Houses and Modern Fictions: Domesticating Mystras in 1930s Greece” (Kostis Kourelis); and “The White Monastery Federation Project: Survey and Mapping at the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (Dayr al-Anba Shinūda), Sohag, 2005–2007” (Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom and Elizabeth S. Bolman with Mohammed Abdel Rahim, Saad Mohammed, Dawn McCormack, Tomasz Herbich, Gillian Pyke, Louise Blanke, Tracy Musacchio, and Mohammed Khalifa).

From the veils of the first-century Jewish temple, to the Orthodox iconostasis, to the tramezzi of Renaissance Italy, screens of various shapes, sizes, and materials have been used to separate spaces and order communities in religious buildings. Drawn from papers presented at a recent Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies symposium, the contributors to this volume use a variety of perspectives to approach the history of religious screens and examine the thresholds that they mark. Focusing on the Middle Ages and Renaissance in the East and West, the volume includes discussions of screens in Egypt, Byzantium, the Gothic West and Italy. Some authors argue that screens, and particularly the one marking the threshold between the sanctuary/choir and nave, were conduits rather than barriers. Other authors emphasize the critical role of screens in dividing the laity and clergy, men and women, the pure and impure.

This volume provides new research on the history of religious screen and important insights into the many ways in which the sacred and profane are separated within ecclesiastical contexts.