“A home without books is like a body without a soul”. Albania has been a home for some very special books - 119 Byzantine and Post Byzantine books or fragments of books, covering a historical period from the 6th to the end of the 19th century. These books were saved there from natural and historical disasters, and they served in the everyday life of the Orthodox Church. When believers needed to read the Gospels, the Divine Liturgy, biographies of saints, hymns or church services dedicated to God and saints, or pray to God by music, they would use these books.

     Each book is hand written and richly decorated with gold. The place of their production varies: Constantinople, Epirus, Macedonia, Albania or South Italy. They are living objects, thousands of people’s voices speaking to us through theirs words and images. And the images are of such divine beauty that they called us to bring it to the broader light and let more people to know and enjoy what is preserved in the safe home of these books - in the Central State Archive of Albania in Tirana.

     So, we transferred some pictures from the ancient parchment pages to the modern silk scarf, doing a digital restoration on the way and making our own composition.

     The pictures that we used for the Codex of Berat scarf decorate the book identified as the Codex of Berat no. 4 , written by an anonymous scribe in the 12th century in Constantinople. Whether this luxurious manuscript came to Berat before the Ottoman conquest, or during it, is still to investigate, but what is most important that it was saved there. The oral tradition says that the holy books, housed in the neighborhood of the castle in Berat would be hidden in time of war, or if possible danger was around, and were brought to their natural place, in churches, in peaceful times. The chronicle of Theodoulos tells us: "... Theodoulos, a local priest helped by count Skuripekis, saved 26 books in 1356, when the Serbian army of Dushan was threatening the city.

      Two other Berat codexes, Codex Beratinus I (known also as ‘Beratinus Purpureum’) and Codex Beratinus II (otherwise ‘Aureus Anthimi’), dating respectively to the 6th and 9th centuries, are part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Triqita kindly appreciate the Central State Archive of Albania in Tirana for giving us an opportunity to make this scarf and personally Sokol Cunga for writing this article and guiding us through the world of Codeces.

      We believe the tender touch of silk of Triqita's scarf, Codex of Berat will make you feel the touch of everlasting beauty, dedicated to God a long time ago by the anonymous artists.