Byzantine Women
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Byzantine Women

Varieties of Experience 800-1200

Lynda Garland, Lynda Garland

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eBook - ePub

Byzantine Women

Varieties of Experience 800-1200

Lynda Garland, Lynda Garland

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This volume brings together a group of international scholars, who explore many unusual aspects of the world of Byzantine women in the period 800-1200. The specific aim of this collection is to investigate the participation of women - non-imperial women in particular - in supposedly 'masculine' fields of operation. This new research across a range of disciplines attempts to provide an analysis of the activities of and attitudes towards Byzantine women in this period. Using evidence from sources as diverse as tax registers, monastic foundation documents, twelfth-century novels, historical texts, art history and the writings of women themselves, such as the hymnographer Kassia and the historian Anna Komnene, these papers elucidate the context in which Byzantine women lived. They emphasize the variety of female experiences, the circumstances that shaped women's lives, and the ways in which individual women were perceived by their society. Contributions focus on women's dress, their participation in the street life of Constantinople, their appearance in Byzantine fiscal documents, their monastic foundations, their engagement with entertainment at the imperial court, and the way heroines are portrayed in the Byzantine novels. Analysis of the writings of the hymnographer Kassia, the networking of Mary 'of Alania' and the ways she overcame the disadvantages of being a foreign-born empress, and the family values reflected in Anna Komnene's Alexiad, draw attention to specific problems. All these aim to expand our understanding of the circumstances that shaped women's lives and expectations in the Middle Byzantine period and to analyze the range of women's experiences, the roles they played and the impact they made on society.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351953719
1
Changing Functions of Monasteries for Women during Byzantine Iconoclasm
Judith Herrin
King’s College London
Although monasticism is often presented as a bastion of orthodoxy in Byzantium, and its members as valiant opponents of heresy, celibate communities like all parts of the Orthodox Church were pressured to conform to imperial definitions of theological belief. This was a more serious institutional problem for monasteries founded and controlled by emperors, but it affected all those that were within the reach of imperial officials.1 Even the bishop of Rome, residing far from Constantinople (New Rome), could be subjected to humiliating treatment as Pope Vigilius was in the sixth century or Pope Martin in the seventh. Indeed, Pope Martin and St Maximos the Confessor and his two companions were put on trial and sentenced to exile. The three monks were also mutilated (Louth 1996: 3–18). In circumstances of imperial pressure the abbots of monasteries normally gave their approval to whatever change was decreed, whether in canons issued by oecumenical councils or edicts promulgated by individual rulers. It required great courage to oppose official theology publicly in Byzantium and often led to death.
Monastic institutions were also used for purposes which had little to do with the original inspiration of those seeking to pursue the ascetic life. The basic principle that no person should be forced to adopt the celibate life of the monastic was regularly overridden, for example when impoverished parents forced their unmarried daughters to enter nunneries. St Basil had drawn attention to this and urged the obvious solution – to provide dowries for such girls. At a time when the concept of a regular prison system was barely known outside of Constantinople and confiscation of property, loss of title and exile remained traditional punishments, monasteries also served as places where rebels and usurpers, unsuccessful emperors, rejected suitors and political rivals might be kept.2 Already in sixth-century Italy Pope Gregory I records concern over nuns, clerics and lay people, who had been condemned by ecclesiastical and civil courts to serve periods of penance in monasteries (Guillou 1983). Their stay was financed by the economic resources which they controlled prior to their convictions. Gregory documents clear abuse by the monasteries in question; they deprived their ‘prisoners’ of food and clothing, which he describes as the basic necessities of life. In Byzantium also isolated rural monasteries were regularly fortified and urban foundations well protected by high walls like castles, so they could provide a secure jail for convicted murderers, assassins, political opponents and less dangerous enemies of the ruling party.3
The detention of political opponents in monasteries assumed more formal patterns at the end of the seventh century: after the coup d’état mounted by Apsimar-Tiberios in 698 Emperor Leontios was mutilated and sent to be kept under guard in the monastery of Delmatou (Dalmatou), the oldest in the city.4 Similarly, in May 713, Artemios-Anastasios ordered that Philippikos should be blinded and thus rendered incapable of ruling. Then the new emperor sent him to the same foundation (mone tes Dalmatou) where he appears to have lived for several months before he died. This pattern was particularly suited to sudden changes of political regime when rebels who successfully usurped the throne needed to dispose of the rulers they had replaced and their families. Of course, several appreciated the dangers of resisting the new regime and sought a refuge in monastic ‘retirement’. In 715 Patriarch Germanos persuaded Artemios-Anastasios to adopt this strategy and he secured the much lesser punishment of exile to Thessaloniki, while two years later it was successfully repeated for Theodosios III.5
In exceptional cases the punishment was extended to women. After the coup d’état of Phokas in 602, the wife and daughters of the previous ruler Maurice were imprisoned, first in a private house and later in a nunnery in Constantinople. In 606 Constantina was tortured until she revealed the names of conspirators against Phokas; she and her daughters were then killed (Theophanes AM 6095, 6098–9). Both female and male relatives of deposed rulers, military supporters of unsuccessful revolts and their wives, as well as deposed patriarchs, bishops, monks and their female supporters, who had led the opposition to official policy, might find themselves so restricted. Ecclesiastical law also required that if a married priest was elevated to a bishopric, his marriage had to be dissolved and his wife had to agree to enter a nunnery far away from her husband’s new see.6 In a similar fashion to that described by Pope Gregory, the bishop also had to provide her with sufficient wealth to ensure that the institution received economic support and compensation for her enforced retirement which was intended to last her lifetime.
Monasteries in medieval Byzantium thus served a range of functions as well as perpetuating the traditional aims of asceticism. Imperial intervention and pressure to conform was well established long before 717 when Leo III gained the throne. Since the seminal analysis by Ihor Ševčenko (1977), the fate of monks and nuns under iconoclasm has been debated within the novel understanding that many voluntarily supported the official policy between 730 and 787 and again between 815 and 842. Naturally the surviving sources emphasize the resistance and heroism of iconophiles yet many members of monastic communities must have accepted imperial iconoclast decrees. Indeed, the wholesale replacement of groups antagonistic to iconoclasm by favourable ones is a distinct feature of the ninth-century period of persecution documented by the correspondence of St Theodore.7 From exile he created a virtual community of the Stoudios brethren scattered in different regions, a tribute to the strength of the monastery’s identity which had been taken over by an iconoclast group loyal to Emperors Leo V and Michael II.
In the light of the rapid changes of ecclesiastical policy that had already accounted for many abuses of monastic institutions it is instructive to re-examine the history of new foundations during the eighth and ninth centuries (Huxley 1988: 11–24, for the period of Iconoclasm). Among dedicated Christians monastic foundations continued the pattern of the oldest motivation, namely the family decision to embrace a spiritual lifestyle. This was manifested by the parents of St Theodore of the Stoudios in about 783 when Theodore’s uncle Platon founded Sakkoudion on family property in Bithynia and his father and brothers retired to it, while Theodore’s mother Theoktiste and his previously consecrated sister adopted the monastic life together with some kinswomen. In his encomium for his mother, Theodore states that there was no monastery, nor spiritual guide for them, so Platon persuaded the women to live ‘as if in a lavra’ (
Image
). Both parts of the family thus embraced an ascetic existence.8 But the later history of these monasteries exemplifies a major difference between them – the ephemeral nature of female foundations. Sakkoudion, which was later moved to the Stoudios area of the capital, became an outstanding beacon of disciplined celibate practice for men. In contrast, the monastic cells occupied by Theodore’s mother and sister have no history whatsoever. Indeed, the Greek expression suggests a very informal arrangement which probably did not survive their deaths.
Within other families ascetic commitment often had to wait for the death of a father or husband. Although Stephen and his sister joined monastic communities during the lifetime of their parents it was only after their father’s death between 730 and 754 that Stephen could sell the family property in Constantinople and establish a monastery on Mt Auxentios. He then brought his mother and another sister to the community at ta Trikhinareai on which his own foundation depended (Auzépy 1997: paras. 11–12, 16; 1999: 82–3). The Lives of several devout women recognised as saints during the period under discussion confirm that the opportunity to realise their religious calling was only practical after the death of their male relatives. St Athanasia of Aegina had to wait until her second husband retired to a monastery before she could do the same.9
Another typical instance is recorded in the Life of St Anthousa, who manifested her commitment to the ascetic life from an early age and was guided by her spiritual director to found a house for women on an island in the middle of a lake near Mantineon in Paphlagonia (Talbot 1998: 13–19). After the death of her spiritual father Sisinnios, many of his monks came to live on the shores of the lake and put themselves under her authority. As the leader of this double monastery Anthousa attracted a crowd of iconophiles who are said to have numbered 900. After the Council of Hiereia (754) Constantine V ordered the saint and her nephew who was in charge of the monks to conform to his iconoclast decrees but after barbaric tortures the persecution was abandoned and St Anthousa was sent into exile. Later she predicted the safe birth of twins to the emperor’s third wife and in gratitude Empress Eudokia named the female child Anthousa and donated numerous villages and offerings to the community. The double monastery was spared further attacks even though it did not conform to the emperor’s iconoclast requirements (Mango 1982).
One curious consequence of Empress Eudokia’s patronage of the monastery is that her daughter named Anthousa after the saint also pursued a religious calling and persisted in the same iconophile tradition. She entered the monastery of Eumenia (possibly Homonoia), otherwise unknown, in the capital (Talbot 1998: 23–4). Several other nunneries mentioned in the Lives of eighth- and ninth-century saints indicate a considerable number of undocumented female houses: a nun of the monastery of Kounin (Life of Ioannikios, para. 44); the nun of a distinguished family from the region of Kountouria, whose daughter was cured by Ioannikios (para. 46); the abbess of Kloubiou and her daughter, who later inherited the role (paras. 57–8) (Talbot 1998: 302, 304–5, 322–5). During the reign of Leo V, a rich woman transformed her house in Constantinople into a nunnery where she lived with her three daughters and maids (Huxley 1988: 12). These brief mentions are all we know about the communities, some of which are not even identified by name.
Although Anthousa’s foundation is better documented than many nunneries, it illustrates the difficulty of studying the history of female monasticism in Byzantium. From the Life of St Romanos, who was sent on a mission in 771 by Anthousa and was captured and martyred by Arabs, we learn a little about how it functioned. We may assume that the monks and nuns commemorated the death of their founder and Sisinnios, said prayers for the well-being of their souls, and marked their anniversaries with philanthropic distributions to the poor. These functions were widespread in all medieval societies. But the foundation charter (typikon) of this famous double monastery with some record of the founder’s intentions has not been preserved. And most of the evidence for female communities that does survive relates to women of high status with wealth of their own.
Nevertheless, when a nunnery is established it normally creates opportunities for others. Young and old may join and perform the monastic routines expected of those who dedicate themselves to the religious life. So in tracing the proliferation of foundations by those in the upper echelons of Byzantine society, the history of anonymous and poorer women is enriched. Whether these unnamed nuns became literate and were enrolled in the ranks of monastics with official responsibilities (oikonomos or sakellarios, for example), or merely swept the church, removed the burnt candles and guarded the doors (thyroros), they participated in the life of the nunnery. And they lived by the same regulations which ensured that all participated in the monastic life, chanting the offices, fetching firewood, assisting in the kitchen and caring for the elderly. Evidence from a later period documents the role of the ekkkesiarchissa, who trained the nuns in ecclesiastical chant and taught the younger ones to read.10 It is clear that wealthy recruits were expected to perform the most menial tasks and abbesses might be quite strict with women of high status.11
Tantalising references in the work of female hymnographers reveal the existence of otherwise unknown communities and dedicated nuns who performed the liturgy and sang the hymns composed by their most skilled members. Much mythology surrounds the figure of Kassia, celebrated as one of the very few Byzantine female poets (Rochow 1967: 5–29; Topping 1982/83; see Silvas in this volume). Although she is supposed to have taken part in the beauty contest organised by Euphrosyne for her stepson Theophilos, the story can not be taken at face value. Later historians like to present her retirement from the world as a result of her failure to please the young emperor, but she must have been first and foremost a dedicated nun. Kassia became famous for her liturgical poetry and hymns and her name became attached to a monastery in the Byzantine capital.12
While her writings were particularly celebrated she was not the only female monastic with such gifts: Theodosia also wrote hymns in praise of Ioannikios the iconophile hero of the ninth century and Thekla’s verses in praise of the Virgin Mary exalted the position of women and encouraged their all female houses (Topping 1982/83: 102–7; 1994/95). These three unusually creative nuns contributed to the development of hymnography which occurred during the iconoclast period and came to fruition after 843. Thekla is perhaps most significant in that she wrote for nuns who performed her hymn dedicated to the Theotokos with its “exclusively feminine perspective” (Topping 1982/83: 105). Joseph the Hymnographer and others promoted the development of chant for men at the same time.
Unspecific references in the correspondence of St Theodore also reveal many iconophile abbesses and lay women, praised by the saint for their support of the persecuted monks. He writes appreciatively of their courage in taking food and comfort to those in prison, and of their steadfastness under threat which is stronger than that of some men.13 Frustratingly for the historian, no details of the nunneries under their control are given: the names and geographical locations do not add much to the history of female monasticism. Yet his praise must reflect a notable strength in nuns and often highly placed secular women which is not always paralleled among monks and laymen. So the devotion of women to their icons and to those who were persecuted for refusing to remove and destroy them may have a base in gender differences, but it also seems more than likely that many communities changed sides just as bishops did – political loyalty and survival were probably stronger than theological definition in ninth-century Byzantium.14
An alternative pattern of patronage by the wealthy can be obser...

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