Il dotario dell’imperatrice Teofano e il Laterano

There is no overemphasis in stating that the purple and gold dower charter issued by Emperor Otto II to his Byzantine bride Theophanu on the occasion of their marriage in Rome on 14 April 972 was a true masterpiece of tenth-century art and one of the most impressive media of symbolic communication within the Euro-Mediterranean space at the end of the first millennium. A detailed examination of the external and internal features of this charter points out a complex process of conceiving, designing and producing it, on the basis of a wide array of possible inspirational models of different origins. This charter required an interplay of various and sophisticated competencies and skills, which makes the scrinium of the Lateran papal palace the most likely place where the dower charter could, in most of its parts, have been composed.