Unrivalled Influence

Women and Empire in Byzantium

Judith Herrin

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781400845217
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea medieval

Unrivalled Influence explores the exceptional roles that women played in the vibrant cultural and political life of medieval Byzantium. Written by one of the world's foremost historians of the Byzantine millennium, this landmark book evokes the complex and exotic world of Byzantium's women, from empresses and saints to uneducated rural widows. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, Judith Herrin sheds light on the importance of marriage in imperial statecraft, the tense coexistence of empresses in the imperial court, and the critical relationships of mothers and daughters. She looks at women's interactions with eunuchs, the in-between gender in Byzantine society, and shows how women defended their rights to hold land. Herrin describes how they controlled their inheritances, participated in urban crowds demanding the dismissal of corrupt officials, followed the processions of holy icons and relics, and marked religious feasts with liturgical celebrations, market activity, and holiday pleasures. The vivid portraits that emerge here reveal how women exerted an unrivalled influence on the patriarchal society of Byzantium, and remained active participants in the many changes that occurred throughout the empire's millennial history. Unrivalled Influence brings together Herrin's finest essays on women and gender written throughout the long span of her esteemed career. This volume includes three new essays published here for the very first time and a new general introduction by Herrin. She also provides a concise introduction to each essay that describes how it came to be written and how it fits into her broader views about women and Byzantium.

1

WOMEN IN BYZANTIUM

This 2009 lecture titled “We Are All Children of Byzantium” was designed to introduce a particular feature of Byzantine culture at the 19th Annual Runciman Lecture, a series set up by Nicholas Egon at King’s College London in honor of Sir Steven Runciman. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Matti and Nicholas for their generous support of it. The title was taken from a speech given by Jacques Chirac in Marseille in 2004, which attracted my attention. Happy the country, I thought, whose political leader can make the claim: “We are all children of Byzantium.” France has always had a memory of Byzantium, perhaps because some of its medieval representatives ruled in Constantinople for over 50 years, but also because Louis XIV was determined to elevate his court to a dominant position in French society, and therefore looked back to the ceremonies and ritual movements of the imperial Byzantine court. Today we can trace the shadow of Constantinopolitan practice behind the official proceedings of eighteenth-century Versailles. Under the Sun King’s patronage the first systematic edition and translation of medieval Greek histories was undertaken and the first dictionary of Byzantine Greek produced.

These early studies ignored women unless they caught the attention of chroniclers, usually for inappropriate behavior. Restoring Byzantine women to a level of serious study has proved taxing, and the process may never be complete due to the paucity of evidence. But the struggle to reclaim their contributions to the empire throughout its long history is producing striking results, which are surveyed in a general manner in this chapter. It is published here for the first time and I make no apology for a certain repetition—to combat the misogyny of so many centuries some insistence may be necessary.

THE RUNCIMAN LECTURE was established at King’s College London in 1991 by Nicholas Egon in honor of the historian Sir Steven Runciman. It regularly attracts a large mixed audience, from ambassadors to school-children. On 5 February 2009, when I was honored to give the lecture, a novel element was added by the presence of Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London. A classicist by training, who attributes his blond hair if not his sense of humor to Ottoman genes, he enjoys the second largest direct vote in Europe after the president of France. He’s also responsible for patronizing a scheme, based at King’s, to get Latin taught in the capital’s primary schools.

At the end of my illustrated lecture, “We Are All Children of Byzantium,” he asked a challenging question about the prominence of women in the Byzantine Empire. This was sparked by my emphasis on the significant actions of imperial women, from Galla Placidia, whose fifth-century mausoleum in Ravenna continues to attract crowds of tourists, to Maria/Marta of Georgia, who married Emperor Michael VII in the eleventh century. How did they sustain this high profile, he asked, was there a structural reason?

I believe there is. It lies in 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. This was different from the ancient tradition of powerful wives and mothers like Agrippina and Cornelia, though it was encouraged by Byzantine legal practice, which gave daughters an equal claim with sons on their parents’ wealth. Even though 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. Male historians complained of womanly influence and were too patronizing to mention any female achievements. Some even encouraged a lascivious promotion of imperial gossip. So the mayor’s challenge is clear: how was it that women so often exercised influence over the millennial empire?

First, a cursory glance at the pattern of their prominence. It began with Helena, the mother of the first Constantine, founder of the great walled capital of Byzantium, the city that bears his name, in the fourth century. She went to Jerusalem probably to quell military unrest and organized the building of churches and charitable institutions. Later it was claimed that she had identified the True Cross there. Across the fifth century, Galla Placidia, Pulcheria, Verina, and Ariadne took the stage. In the sixth, the famous Theodora, though raised to the throne from her role as a circus performer, found that as empress she could directly challenge her consort, Justinian, and his advisors. The words “Purple makes a fine shroud” were attributed to her as she inspired the emperor to crush the rebellion from which they were about to flee, and once that was achieved, she put her name to a joint building program that stretched from Sinai to Ravenna and included Hagia Sophia itself. In the seventh century Empress Martina tried to rule with her son; in the eighth when Byzantium again entered a crisis woman played a key role in its resolution. The empresses Irene in 787 and Theodora in 843 each restored the veneration of icons after the two attempts to drive graven images from the art and ritual of Eastern Christendom. Their innovation and determination established models for later women: the empress-regents Zoe Karbonopsina and Theophano in the tenth; the imperial sisters Zoe and Theodora, the Georgian Maria/Marta, and Anna Dalassene, mother of Alexios I, in the eleventh; and Anna Komnene, imperial princess but never empress, in the twelfth. After the Latin interregnum of 1204–61, women regained power with Michael VIII’s recapture of Constantinople, and Anna of Savoy and Helena Kantakouzene perpetuated the exercise of independent feminine influence in the last centuries of Byzantium—a continuous, glittering, and unequaled array of public female authority that can in no way be described as secretive or exercised from “behind the throne.”

How can this be explained? At its heart feminine power was based in the structure of the Byzantine court. The empress not only had her own living quarters managed by her eunuch servants, who held positions equivalent to the emperor’s staff: master of ceremonies; treasurer; guardians of the wardrobe, the bedchamber, the ink pot (for signing documents), the stables, and so on. The empress’s activity also created an imperial feminine version of power embedded in all aspects of court ceremonial, which gave her and her courtiers the opportunity to exercise autonomous influence. For many centuries this courtly hub of empire controlled the procedures that elevated rulers, organized their marriages, set up their liturgical calendars, choreographed their diplomatic receptions, and commemorated their deaths. Every ceremony involved men and women, sometimes separated in parallel activities, often together in male and female patterns of movement. Every emperor needed an empress (only one is known to have managed without a wife), because the empress was required to direct the female half of the ceremonial rituals that dominated court life.

At the same time elite women in the court could enjoy their own incomes from estates inherited and donated at marriage; Byzantine law protected their capacity to own and manage property. They could dispense funds in the construction of churches, monasteries, and poorhouses, and patronize poets, historians, doctors, and theologians, not least because some of them were themselves educated in the seven liberal traditions of classical Greek knowledge. They could invite individuals to dine with them in their private dining rooms and send personal messages to individuals outside the palace. Their independence could become notorious, as Theodora proved in the sixth century, when she protected a bishop condemned for heretical views within her own gynaeceum.

Part of the pleasure of giving a public lecture is the chance to speculate beyond the limits of academic scholarship. I discussed the fifth-century empress Honoria, as an example of the capacity of women educated and trained in the Byzantine court. Her mother was Galla Placidia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius I. During the sack of Rome in 410, the young Galla was captured by Athaulf, the Gothic leader. He took her off to Gaul, where in 414 they celebrated their marriage in great style. Later Athaulf was murdered and Galla was brought back to Rome as part of a new treaty concluded between Goths and Romans. In 417 she was married to a Roman general Constantius, and they had two children: Honoria and Valentinian. And then Constantius died.

Having experienced the loss of her two husbands, Galla seems to have determined to take her fate into her own hands. She must have played a part in her five-year-old son’s promotion to Caesar in 424 and assumed a major role as regent and mother of the future emperor of the West (Valentinian III ruled from 425–55). For the next 25 years she dominated the imperial court at Ravenna and doubtless inspired her own daughter, Honoria.

When Honoria was about 8 years old she was given the title Augusta. This was highly unusual. As empress she grew up with the highest authority accorded to women in the Roman world and coins were struck in her honor. Instead of marrying, however, she lived in her own palace in Ravenna and began to plot against her brother Valentinian III with her steward Eugenius. Valentinian was the junior emperor of the West. When their schemes were discovered, Eugenius was killed and Honoria was exiled probably to Constantinople and forcibly betrothed to a wealthy senator. She then conceived a daring plan to avoid marrying him by calling on none other than Attila the Hun to rescue her. She was able to do this by sending her trusted eunuch servant Hycinthus to the dreaded enemy of Rome with gold and, more important, her own ring. Attila interpreted this as a proposal of marriage and demanded that Theodosius II, the senior emperor in Constantinople, grant him “his bride” and half the Western territories, in particular Gaul, as her “dowry.” He then set out to make good his claim.

The threat was real enough; in 451 and again in 452 Attila advanced against Rome. On both occasions he was held off. Only his unexpected death in 453 released the Western empire from the Hunnic threat. While this story is well known, Honoria’s part in it is frequently underestimated. Her upbringing had familiarized her with the Goths and other barbarian forces threatening the empire, such as the Huns. During the 440s she must have known how effectively Attila had obtained gold subsidies from the imperial government to prevent his devastating military campaigns. She had experienced the ways of the court of Theodosius II, her cousin, both as a child and as an exile, and she had the education, imagination, and resources to put her plan into operation. It would have been dangerous for Honoria to write Attila a letter, but we can be sure that she could have done so and in Attila’s eyes it would have carried imperial authority. In the event, her ring provided sufficient legitimacy for Attila to exploit it as a claim on the empire itself.

Sadly, no one bothered to recount Honoria’s fate after the sudden death of Attila, which is why we can’t be sure of her story. This is true of many empresses who left little impression in the written sources. But others followed in the footsteps of Galla and her daughter and took initiatives to sustain their influence, particularly after the death of their husbands. And empress-mothers like Anna Dalassena in the late eleventh century, or Anna of Savoy in the fourteenth, for example, remained a force to be feared.

Nor did this influence merely reside at the summit. Within ruling circles, female ability to conduct negotiations, to manipulate the different factions within the court, and to influence diplomacy was well recognized. In all such activities, castrated male servants in the tradition of Hycinthus assisted imperial women. Their presence in the court was ensured through a ranked hierarchy of “unbearded men” with specific titles and costumes, ranging from the young page up to the major domo in charge of court ceremonial. It was assumed that they could be trusted to guard the women’s quarters and would not constitute a threat to the ruler, a feature of courtly society shared with ancient Persia and medieval China. It was later adopted by the Ottomans to ensure control of the Sultan’s harem. In Byzantium, however, the existence of this “third sex” allowed women greater privacy from bearded men, facilitated their contact with the world outside the court as well as power battles within it. Eunuch servants were often educated; they could assist in recording and delivering private letters and could undertake the basic education of young princes and princesses. The continuity of instruction in the ancient Greek classics, starting with Homer and progressing through the dramatists, historians, and philosophers, meant that some imperial women were exceptionally well educated and were determined to ensure a similar training for their children of both sexes.

In addition to this structured feature of court life, Byzantine women benefited from the principle of Roman law that all children should inherit equally from their parents. Not only could they insist upon their fair share of property and income, but they also went to court to claim it and to accuse their husbands of squandering their dowries. Byzantine men gained control of the dowry at marriage but were obliged to maintain it, so that if they died first it could be returned to the widow for the rest of her life. In the sixth century the compendium of Civil Law, which enshrined these Roman rights, was compiled on Justinian’s orders, translated into Greek, and then regularly updated. It is common to find accounts of women in legal records. In an eleventh-century tax register from Thebes, the widow Sophronia was a landowner of sufficient prominence that her son-in-law, Michael, was twice identified by his relationship with her.¹ In the early thirteenth century, in a court case from Byzantine Sicily, an heiress claimed that her husband had sold the fields that constituted her own dowry and demanded compensation. In this way, even though the testimony of a woman was not held to be acceptable or reliable, Byzantine women regularly appeared in courtrooms and were recorded in legal documents reinforcing their rights.

While the best-known examples of their influence stem from proximity to the emperor, the empresses themselves often came from obscure backgrounds. From the late eighth to the late ninth century, they were sometimes selected by a so-called bride show. Suitable young ladies from provincial families competed to impress the prince (and his parents) in the hope of marrying the future emperor. After the fashion of Paris, he was then invited to offer a golden apple of betrothal to the most beautiful. The choice was hardly determined by appearances; the court used the technique to cast a wider net in the selection process in order to renew the dynasty. The notion of a “bride show” legitimized the selection of a provincial girl when this suited imperial needs. These events served an important function in binding ambitious families throughout the empire into a closer relationship with the court. Even though only one girl could be chosen for the highest role of empress, parents from all regions aspired to see their own daughter so promoted. And indeed, the benefits of such rapid upward mobility were great: when Maria of Amnia triumphed in the contest, her sisters made good marriages, her parents were housed in a grand palace in the capital, entertained at court, and given lavish presents.

In 769 a young woman called Irene was summoned from Greece to Constantinople to marry the son of Emperor Constantine V. No historian of Byzantium records why she was so favored, but her family may have served an important role within the hinge region between Rome and the Dardanelles. When she arrived in the capital, the populace greeted her as their future empress. In due course her husband became emperor and she ruled with him for five years, and then he died. Their young son Constantine was only ten years old and could not assume his imperial duties for some time. So Irene, the widowed empress, took a leading role in the Regency Council set up to ensure his inheritance, and summoned the council that reversed the policy of iconoclasm. Once he came of age, however, she did not want to give up her power. Eventually, after a series of military quarrels, Irene emerged supreme. She ordered that her own son should be blinded in order to disqualify him as emperor, and proceeded to rule alone for a further five years, twice signing surviving legislation as emperor (only the emperor could issue laws). This is the most extreme example of the feminine exercise of power in Byzantium. While male authors disapproved of it, later empresses could and did aspire to her example of direct rule.

Nonetheless, imperial women were more likely to realize their claims via marriage. Even when the Macedonian dynasty produced only daughters, Zoe and Theodora, they were not able to sustain their rule in the same way as Elizabeth I of England. By marrying, they passed on imperial power to their husbands. But compared to their Persian and Islamic neighbors, Byzantine empresses benefited from the Christian emphasis on monogamy, on marriage as a union until death, that encouraged widows to refuse a second marriage and to extend their control of imperial power. It also placed additional stress on the dynastic family in which the wife of the ruler guaranteed the legitimacy of the imperial heir and the transfer of authority. Although military leaders regularly tried to usurp the position of emperor, and many succeeded, from the seventh century onward a concentrated focus on the idea of dynastic rule elevated the standing of the imperial family. This created greater stability through the peaceful transmission of power from father to son (five generations in the family of Herakleios in the seventh century, four in the dynasty of Leo III in the eighth, five again in the family of Basil I the “Macedonian,” and four following the coup d’état of Alexios Komnenos in the twelfth). Within this dynastic process notable women could wield extraordinary power, usually on behalf of their minor sons but occasionally for their own pleasure.

One intriguing example reveals the significance of dynastic connections in Byzantium. In 821 a military general, Michael of Amorion, seized power and determined to pass his imperial authority to his young son. As his wife had already died he sought another consort who would enhance his position. This led him to select a nun, Euphrosyne. Her mother was Maria of Amnia, which meant that Euphrosyne was the granddaughter of Empress Irene, who had restored the veneration of icons. She had been born in the purple birthing chamber within the palace and was therefore identified as a princess “born in the purple.” When her mother was exiled from Constantinople in 794, after a highly disputed divorce, Euphrosyne accompanied her into a nunnery. She had spent nearly twenty years there when the call came. But as the last living ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Women in Byzantium
• 2. In Search of Byzantine Women: Three Avenues of Approach
• 3. Women and the Faith in Icons in Early Christianity
• 4. Mothers and Daughters in the Medieval Greek World
• 5. “Femina Byzantina”: The Council in Trullo on Women
• 6. Public and Private Forms of Religious Commitment among Byzantine Women
• 7. The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium
• 8. Political Power and Christian Faith in Byzantium: The Case of Irene (Regent 780–90, Emperor 797–802)
• 9. Moving Bones: Evidence of Political Burials from Medieval Constantinople
• 10. The Many Empresses of the Byzantine Court (and All Their Attendants)
• 11. Theophano: Considerations on the Education of a Byzantine Princess
• 12. Toleration and Repression in the Byzantine Family: Gender Problems
• 13. The Icon Corner in Medieval Byzantium
• 14. Marriage: A Fundamental Element of Imperial Statecraft
• Index