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This chapter examines some of the roles of women in early medieval Byzantine society. It follows three particular avenues of approach, devised as a means of identifying the positions, activity, and authority of women in Byzantine society. The first is to pick up chance references to female activity in the sources written by men, especially those that occur spontaneously in narratives unconnected with women, incidental remarks, and stray observations. The second seeks to document the ingenuity with which women exercised their limited legal rights and is therefore dependent upon the case law that survives—the Peira (Teaching) of Eustathios Romaios is the outstanding example. The third approach attempts to outline the significance of ecclesiastical institutions and Christian beliefs for women, an area in which female subjectivity is perhaps most closely revealed. The overall aim of these avenues is to illuminate a practical reality rather than a legal ideal.

This chapter examines the development of the different forms of religious commitment expressed by women who lived in the Byzantine Empire between the sixth and eleventh centuries AD—a development predicated on their gradual exclusion from displays of public religiosity. Over this long period, as the church consolidated its organization through an administration grafted on to Roman imperial government, the ecclesiastical hierarchy of male bishops effectively excluded women from prominent public positions. This development can be traced through canonical rulings laid down at ecumenical and local church councils, which defined the Christian practice appropriate for women. It is also documented by women's participation in religious activities as recorded in a variety of sources, especially the lives of female saints.

This chapter surveys the pattern of the female life cycle that defined most possibilities for women in Byzantium, and explores elements of maternal education, together with the alternative that allowed women to opt out of procreation by dedicating themselves to Christ. It concludes that maternity obviously demanded a certain competence, which was passed through the generations by oral traditions; mothers, grandmothers, and other female relatives might have a profound influence. Within feminine monasteries, abbesses exercised a spiritual maternity over their younger nuns. But for the great majority who had no choice in the matter, maternal roles were constructed and reconstructed at every period, reinforcing the links between mothers and daughters and according women in Byzantium an unrivalled influence.

This chapter discusses the place of icons in worship, their character, and the way they came to symbolize the holy and mediate between earth and heaven. In particular, as icons became a vivid focus of devotion, they began to embody human relations with God the Creator and Ruler of the entire Christian world. It is argued that women played a notable part in this developing cult of icons. The chapter concentrates on some features of Late Antique Mediterranean culture, shared by Jews and Gentiles, pagan and Christian alike. These provided a common social experience within which the artistic evolution of the Christian church took place. In particular, the first part of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of funerary art, for this represents one of the most striking ways whereby Christians transmitted pagan rituals and artistic forms to their new faith. The second part examines some of the reasons for the preservation of these forms, once assimilated to a Christian mode, when they came under attack in the East. It asks how much that response informs us about the role of women in the cult of icons.

This chapter analyzes the cultural heritage, the imperial precedents, and variety of visual models on which powerful Byzantine empresses could draw. In particular, it demonstrates that by the eighth and ninth centuries there were significant resources available that might permit imperial authority to adopt feminine forms. The reason for this chronological framework lies in the prominence of two empresses, Irene and Theodora, during the periods of iconoclasm (roughly calculated from 730 to 843). Both reversed bans imposed on the veneration of icons. Irene set a precedent by summoning the Seventh Ecumenical Council held in 787, which justified icons and restored them to a central position in the church, while Theodora is commemorated as a saint for her role in ending the second phase of iconoclasm in 843.

This chapter investigates the education of Byzantine princesses in general. It examines the preparation they received in order to fulfill their specific tasks, in addition to acting as ambassadors for Byzantium, and thus securing the alliances of cooperation or at least peace, which was the aim of formal diplomacy. Clearly, no two Byzantine princesses were ever the same. But within the formal diplomatic requirements of the term, they had to conform to certain expectations, to meet certain criteria, to fit a preconceived model. Here, the chapter considers the parameters of this model and then tries to discover how well Theophano fitted them.

From classical times onward, one of the basic tasks of women was to take care of the household lares, representatives of the ancient gods, whose presence was felt to protect and assist the family. In every dwelling with a hearth female members attended these deities with appropriate rituals. In the form of statuettes, often gilded, as well as framed wooden panel paintings, local deities occupied a prominent domestic space long into the Christian era. When the family converted to Christianity the ancient household gods were replaced by Christian icons, which took over the same role and protected the same space. It seems likely that women's responsibility for, and devotion to, the household protectors was transferred from the old deities to the new Christian God. Although there is no direct evidence for a removal of the older representations in order to institute new ones, when icons are later found in a domestic setting, they are in precisely that part of the home that is the particular preserve of women. It is this association between domestic cult and the veneration of icons in Byzantium that this chapter explores.

This chapter considers moments when the Byzantine court appeared to contain many empresses. In the political ideology of the Byzantine Empire, there was place for only one ruler, the emperor “crowned by God” and blessed by the church, who united all his subjects within the known world, oikoumene. And while many conflicts and civil wars were fought over the succession, once an emperor had been crowned in Constantinople his authority was greatly enhanced over the imperial court as well as his uncrowned rivals. As the structures of imperial court life evolved, two factors materialized into greater significance: the presence of an empress, usually the emperor's wife, became essential to court rituals; and an empress had to take charge of the female sector of the court. When two women were elevated to the same position of empress, it was necessary for one to be designated as the official holder of the title, which could provoke immense rivalry.

This chapter examines what the late seventh-century canons can tell us about “femina byzantina.” In 692 the Council in Trullo, convened by Justinian II, met in the same domed hall of the Great Palace where the Sixth Ecumenical Council had been held ten years earlier. More than two hundred bishops from most parts of the empire under secure imperial control assembled in Constantinople to fulfill their given role: to issue disciplinary canons necessary to protect and secure correct observance of the Christian faith. Ecclesiastical concern about women can be observed in three distinct but overlapping areas: church services, monastic life, and society at large. Such concern was of course constant in medieval societies. But at the end of the seventh century it was intensified by many different regulations, all directed toward the promotion of suitable Christian behavior.

This chapter presents a 2009 lecture titled “We Are All Children of Byzantium”, given at the 19th Annual Runciman Lecture at King's College London. The lecture discussed the gendered character of the imperial court in Constantinople, which brought into focus a set of forces from Roman law to Greek education and Christian monogamy that permitted the quite exceptional, continuous influence of women at the center of the Byzantine Empire through its 1,100 years. Although the empire shared an overwhelmingly patriarchal culture and forms of male domination and female marginalization found in all premodern societies, women can frequently be seen to exercise power. How was it that women so often exercised influence over the millennial empire?

This chapter examines the issue of whether women could rule in Byzantium. It does so by concentrating on the period when Empress Irene was officially at the head of the imperial government, as regent for her young son from 780 to 790, and later as sole ruler. In the five years from 797 to 802 Irene ruled alone, an unprecedented event in the history of Byzantium. Irene was selected to marry Leo, the eldest son of Emperor Constantine V in 769, when both bride and groom were in their teens. Fifteen months later she gave birth to their son, named Constantine after his grandfather. In 780 Leo died, and Irene assumed a more prominent role as the empress-mother who formed the regency with the patriarch and other members of the administration. For the next decade she appointed officials to lead the armies, to govern and tax the empire's regions, to run the civilian administration and conduct diplomatic relations with foreign powers.

The rulers of Byzantium had a specific burial place, which had been established by Constantine I—the imperial mausoleum later attached to the Church of the Holy Apostles. The eponymous founder of the city was the first to be laid to rest in the mausoleum he had constructed, which was probably finished by his son Constantius II. By the sixth century so many emperors had joined him there that Justinian constructed another mausoleum similarly attached to the church for his own burial. A record compiled in the tenth century and attached to the Book of Ceremonies preserves an identification of some of these tombs in the two imperial mausolea. A slightly fuller Latin version is also preserved and was studied by Philip Grierson in 1962. From this document it is possible to find out which emperors and empresses ended up in the most desirable tombs in the capital. The survival of this information, when put together with other historical records, makes it clear that imperial bones were often moved around. This chapter traces some of their most surprising journeys.