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Abstract
The Uta Codex is a luxury evangeliary produced ca. 1025 for the Niedermunster nunnery in Regensburg, of which Uta was abbess. This collection of Gospel pericopes is preceded by four full-page frontispieces illustrating the Hand of God, Uta dedicating the codex to the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and St. Erhard (patron saint of the nunnery) Celebrating the Mass. Four evangelist portraits accompany the liturgical readings selected from each Gospel. The lavish miniatures are non-narrative illuminations that carefully manipulate images, Latin tituli, and geometric schemata to produce complex statements of visual exegesis.
This study examines the historical background to the production of the manuscript and situates it within the monastic context of early eleventh-century Regensburg. The codex commemorates Uta's activities to reform the Niedermunster nunnery; the monastery of St. Emmeram, in which the book was produced, was itself a center of the Gorze reform movement. The next five chapters are detailed studies of the individual frontispieces. By combining pictures and texts from a wide range of sources, the makers of the Uta Codex constructed paradigmatic exemplars for the monastic viewers to meditate on toward their goal of achieving eternal union with God.
The following chapter discusses the use of Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Ottonian art in the composition of the frontispieces. Special consideration is given to the geometric schemata, which served a propaedeutic function and were meant to signify the unity of the Christian cosmos. The interweaving of images and texts found in the miniatures is the result of the intellectual preoccupation associated with such important monastic centers as St. Emmeram.
The concluding chapter investigates Uta's own role in the production of the manuscript, its liturgical use, and its meaning to the nuns of Niedermunster. The book functioned both to record a carefully constructed view of the nunnery's past and to serve as an injunction to future abbesses to preserve the reforms initiated under Uta. The Uta Codex is thus an important witness to the function of art within the context of monastic reform and education, and is a key monument of Ottonian art, spirituality, and intellectual culture.