16th century AD

(34.) Unfortunately, the inscription with classical lettering carved into the tomb lid does not seem contemporaneous with the sarcophagus. It appears to have been added and was first recorded by Mellini (103). A few years later, Luchino (46-47) noted that the verses were "sopra il suo sepolcro" (on/above her tomb). The inscription reads: "Ut genere et forma ac regno praedivite sic et/ Virtutum maritis pietatisque inclyta laude,/ Hoc sua dum vitae immortali restituantur,/ Ossa adservari voluit Matilda sepulchro" (Just as renowned with praise for her lineage and beauty and wealthy realm as for the merits of her virtues and piety, Matilda wished that her bones be preserved in this tomb until they should be restored to eternal life). The inscription was probably added in the 16th century, for it lacks the medieval abbreviations, rather thin letters with uniform thickness of strokes, an "M" with splayed shanks, and other traits common to quattrocento classical inscriptions. Instead, the square proportions of the l ettering with regular sizing and spacing as well as the varied thickness of ascenders and descenders lend the inscription on Matilda's tomb a more "Roman" appearance than the one of 1503 on Lucrezia's tomb. On Renaissance epigraphy, see, for example, Giovanni Mardersteig, "Leon Battista Alberti a la rinascita del carattere lapidario romano nel Quattrocento," ltalia Medioevale e Umanistica 2 (1959): 285-307; and Armando Petrucci, Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture, trans. Linda Lappin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), with further references.

(35.) New York, the Pierpont Morgan Library ms 492, fols. 104v-105r. On the manuscript, sea George Warner, Gospels of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany 1055-1115 (New York: Privately printed for the Roxburghe Club, 1917), 35-36, pls. XX, XXI; Angelo Mercati, "L'evangeliario donato dalla Contassa Matilde al Polirone," Atti e Memorie della R Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie Modenesi, 7th ser., 4 (1927): 1-7; Hansmartin Schwarzmaier, "The Monastery of St. Benedict, Polirone, and Its Cluniac Associations," in Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, ed. Noreen Hunt (London: MacMillan, 1971), 123-42; Quintavalle (as in n. 27), 252-56, 535-44, no. 85; and In August Company: The Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993), 78-80, no. 7.

(36.) Mercati (as in n. 35), 14: "ut ab ipsa prenominata die usque ad mundi finem, donec domus ista in Dei servitio perduraverit, panis et vinum, reliquusque unius monachi victus, sicut singulis apponetur fratribus, pro ea cotidie in principali mensa studiosissime ponatur, et ad elemosinam assidue tribuatur, quatinus, dum ipsa vixerit, divina dementia ab omnibus eam semper adversitatibus tueatur, et ad bonum atque felicem presentis vite finem perducat, et in futura misericoridiam [memoriam, according to Rinaldi et al. (as in n. 36), 232] ei fatiat sempiternam. Anniversarium quoque obitus sui diem tam principaliter et festive per omnia celebrandum constituit, sicut solitum est pro magnis monasterii huius abbatibus fieri." "That from the same day aforenamed [Apr. 6,1109], until the end of the world, so long as this house shall endure in the service of God, bread and wine and the rest of the pittance of one monk, just as it shall be set before the several brethren shall most studiously be laid for her every day upon the principal table and be perpetually assigned for alms, in order that, so long as she lives, the divine clemency may always shield her from all adversities and may bring her to a good and happy end of this present life and in the future life may procure for her everlasting mercy [memory?]. [Abbot Alberic] also ordained that the anniversary of her death shall be celebrated in as high and festal a manner in all other respects as is customary for the great abbots of this monastery." Translation by Warner (as in n. 35), 35. On this document, see also Luchino, 22-23; Schwarzmaier (as in n. 35); Rossella Rinaldi, Carla Villani, and Paolo Golinelli, eds., Codice diplomatico polironiano (961-1125) (Bologna: Patron, 1993), 231-34; and Giuseppe Sissa, "II culto ala Contessa Matilde nell'abbazia di San Benedetto Po," Civilla Mantovana, n.s., 16 (1987): 13-16.