“Holy to the Lord”: The Material Conversion of the Cammarata Finials

Abstract

This article sets out to trace the trans-religious journey of two objects in the western Mediterranean at the end of the fifteenth century. The expulsion of Jews from all Spanish territories in 1492–1493 instigated the movement of objects from Jewish to Christian hands. Among these were a pair of Torah finials that belonged to the Jewish community of Cammarata, Sicily, where they were set on top of the rods around which the Torah scroll was rolled. These two finials were sold in Sicily and, through a chain of merchants and ecclesiastics, arrived at the Cathedral of Palma and were incorporated into the local Christian liturgy, a process that continued well into the twentieth century. This article analyzes the use and performance of the finials in their different liturgical settings and examines their conversion from Jewish ceremonial objects to ecclesiastical implements. It concludes with a discussion of temporality in studying converted objects, a factor that played a key role in the finials’ migration between socio-religious contexts and resulted in the creation of multifaceted objects.

Keywords

• liturgical art
• Sephardi art
• mobility
• Cammarata
• cathedral of Palma
• conversion