Rogatrix atque donatrix: the silver cover of the Berta Evangeliary (Vatican, S. Maria in Via Lata, MS. I 45) and the patronage of art by women in early medieval Rome

Abstract

A luxury silver manuscript cover in the Vatican Library bearing an inscription identifying the patron as a nun named Berta offers the opportunity to investigate the patronage of art by women in early medieval Rome. The cover housed an evangeliary that served the female monastic community of SS. Ciriaco e Nicola in Via Lata founded in the tenth century by the family of Prince Alberic of Rome (d. 954). This paper argues that the cover was a product of Roman monasticism that had personal and liturgical significance for the nun Berta, who was a scion of the monastery's founding family.

The Dower Charter of Otto Ii and Theophanu, and the Roman Scriptorium at Santi Apostoli

“…32 Appropriately, the main narrative scene depicts the Annunciation to Mary, the original 'ancilla Domini' (Luke 1:38), while the other cover displays a cross. The dates proposed for the manuscript have ranged between the late ninth and early eleventh centuries, 33 but Laura Marchiori (2012) has made a compelling case for the mid-tenth century, identifying the Bertha in question as Alberic's known sister of this name. Santi Ciriaco e Nicola is known to have been a wealthy house, owning a number of properties in the hinterland of Rome (Hamilton, 1970: 206-7), and as the cousin of the founders, half-sister of Pope John XI, and the aunt of Pope John XII, Bertha would certainly have had access to the requisite resources.…”