ABSTRACT

Byzantine Empresses provides a series of biographical portraits of the most significant Byzantine women who ruled or shared the throne between 527 and 1204. It presents and analyses the available historical data in order to outline what these empresses did, what the sources thought they did, and what they wanted to do.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part |2 pages

Part I From stage to statecraft

chapter 1|29 pages

Theodora, wife of Justinian (527-48)

chapter 2|19 pages

Sophia (565-601 +)

part |2 pages

Part II Regents and regicides

chapter 3|12 pages

Martina (?615/16-41)

chapter 4|22 pages

Irene (769-802)

chapter 5|14 pages

Theodora, restorer of orthodoxy (830-67+)

chapter 6|17 pages

The wives of Leo VI (886-919)

chapter 7|10 pages

Theophano (c. 955-76+)

chapter 8|23 pages

Zoe Porphyrogenneta (1028-50)

part |2 pages

Part III Empresses as autocrats

chapter 9|7 pages

Theodora, the last Macedonian (1042-56)

chapter 10|12 pages

Eudokia Makrembolitissa (1059-78+)

chapter 12|11 pages

Maria of Antioch (1161-82/3)

chapter 13|15 pages

Euphrosyne Doukaina (1195-1203)