326 Pages
by
Routledge
326 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
After an introductory general essay on the life cycle and status of women in Byzantine society, this volume focuses on female religious life, with particular emphasis on the role of convents - as spiritual sanctuary, refuge for women in need, or provider of charitable services. Several essays compare Byzantine nunneries with male monasteries, pointing out the relatively small size and lack of... Read more
Contents: Preface; Women and the Religious Life: Women; Byzantine women, saints’ lives and social welfare; Women and iconoclasm; Women and Mt. Athos; Empress Theodora Palaiologina, wife of Michael VIII; Sanctity and Hagiography: Female sanctity in Byzantium; Family cults in Byzantium: the case of St. Theodora of Thessalonike; The posthumous miracles of St. Photeine; The Byzantine cult of St. Photeine; Old wine in new bottles: the rewriting of saints’ lives in the Palaeologan period; Monasticism: An introduction to Byzantine monasticism; A comparison of the monastic experience of Byzantine men and women; The Byzantine family and the monastery; Healing shrines in late Byzantine Constantinople; Nunneries: Women’s space in Byzantine monasteries; Affirmative action in the 13th c.: an act of John Apokaukos concerning the Blachernitissa Monastery in Arta; Late Byzantine nuns: by choice or necessity?; Bluestocking nuns: intellectual life in the convents of late Byzantium; Indexes.
Biography
Alice-Mary Talbot
'The interest of this very homogenous book rests on the original research.' Revue d’histoire Ecclésiastique
