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

Abstract

Analyses of writing culture in tenth-century Rome have been impeded by an absence of manuscripts and documents that can be assigned unquestionably to scriptoria in the city. This paper will examine the possibility that one such document has hitherto been hiding in plain sight, as it were: the dower charter given by Emperor Otto II to the Byzantine princess Theophanu on the occasion of their marriage in St Peter's on 14 April 972. Usually considered to be ‘Ottonian’, rather than ‘Italian’ or ‘Roman’, this document nevertheless states explicitly that it was undertaken at the Roman church of Santi Apostoli, and this possibility is assessed in light of what is known about that church, the Via Lata region and their connections to the foremost noble family in the city.

Roman Books and the Papal Library in the Early Middle Ages

“…15 Later scholars have accepted implicitly the principle of continuity of Roman uncial from at least the beginning of the seventh century until the early years of the ninth century, even if both the location of some codices to Rome is disputed and the identity of the centres producing books written in this script remains elusive. Thus Paola Supino Martini (1974Martini ( , 1978Martini ( , 1980Martini ( , 2001 and Serena Ammirati (2007Ammirati ( , 2015Ammirati ( , 2020 have both augmented Petrucci's suggestions and discussed the appearance, from the second half of the ninth century, of Caroline minuscule in Roman books (see also Smiraglia, 1989;Schmid, 2002;Osborne, 2021). Some of these, such as the canon law collections now in Düsseldorf and Munich (Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek MS E1: Fig.…”