Bertilla and Berta: the role of St. Giulia of Brescia and St. Sisto of Piacenza in the reign of Berengar I

• Main Author: Cristina Sereno
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Università di Napoli Federico II 2012-10-01
• Series: Reti Medievali Rivista
• Subjects: dotari; regno italico; fisco regio; regine; monasteri; Berta; Bertilla; Berengario
• Online Access: http://www.rmojs.unina.it/index.php/rm/article/view/4792

Of none of the two wives of Berengar I - Bertilla, the first, an aristocratic woman from the Supponids and Anna, the second, a Byzantine princess - have been preserved dower charters; moreover no charter reminds businesses or assets. In the family context of Berengar I emerges, however, one of his two daughters, Berta, who was abbess of the monastery of St. Salvatore in Brescia and later, by his father's appointment, of the monastery of St. Sisto in Piacenza, founded a few decades earlier by Angelberga. Both monasteries were collected in their assets large shares of royal treasury, often in the first instance passed through in doweries of the queens: the curtes and the dependent monasteries were spread across the northern part of the peninsula and, in some cases, they passed the line of the Apennines. It looks like as at the court of Berengar Berta  assumes a role of great importance in the management and safeguarding of the assets of these monasteries.