Byzantine Empresses (Garland) - 9780415146883

Title: Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527-1204

Author: Garland, Lynda

Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis; Publication Date: 1999

Hardcover; ISBN: 9780415146883

Volumes: 1; Pages: 368

List Price in Hardcover: $140.00 Our price: $160.99

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The first extended work in the field since Charles Diehl published his Figures Byzantine more than ninety years ago, Byzantine Empresses provides much-needed historical data in an accessible and up-to-date form.

Using a chronological approach, Lynda Garland provides a series of biographical portraits of the most significant Byzantine women who ruled or shared the throne between 527 and 1204. She presents and analyzes the available historical data in order to outline what these empresses did, what the sources thought they did, and what they wanted to do. Revealed are stories of imperial women who had considerable resources, such as powerful patronage, their own courts of women, eunuchs and ministers and who wielded an enormous amount of influence, such as total government control and the power to issue coinage and decrees.

Lavishly illustrated, Byzantine Empresses provides an immense contribution to the study of women in Byzantine civilization.

Reviews

"This book opens up the field effectively to further work and manages to marshal together a great range of types of sources from a daunting chronological spread."--The Medieval Review

"Byzantine Empresses is a useful and important book."--Cloelia

"This was a book waiting to be written. ... Overall, this is an unusual case of a book being as good as its blurb claims. It is not the last word on everything, but is often the first one, a great achievement."--Barry Baldwin, University of Calgary, June 1999

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