Female Founders in Byzantium and Beyond

This volume addresses various issues associated with patronage in Byzantium and neighbouring states, through the perspective of gender. Although in the 1980s there was some concern with the nature of patronage in Byzantium, and in recent years there been a number of studies on women in Byzantium, the question of the exercise of economic power by women in Byzantium has never been address in a consistent way or in a single volume. This volume does just this. It represents the papers of a conference held in Vienna in September 2008, after selection through peer review. It looks at processes of Stiftung from the founding of a monastery, through the building of a church, to the production of a monumental programme, or individual objects, such as church furniture, icons, manuscripts, ivories, pieces of jewellery or even the "kleine Stiftungen", the gifts -like bread and light-- without which society and the church could not function. It looks at the relationship of different processes: at patronage and exchange as suggested by Rico Franses nearly twenty years ago, at foundation, refoundation and donation, at philanthropy and evergetism. It considers the differences between the patronage of art and of literature, and of the role of personal patronage. It is concerned with the processes in monasteries, the secular church and the world. It identifies the clues for patronage and how far they can lead us: literary accounts of acts of patronage, visual depictions of the act of donation, dedications, portraiture, inscriptions, epigrams and monograms. It discusses whether commission always amounts to patronage and vice versa. Above all it looks at the role of women and the nature of female patronage, the exercise of female power and the particular nature of "matronage", the word coined by Leslie Brubaker. The papers deal with Rome, the Holy Land, Cappadocia, Mt Athos, Skyros, Rus, Macedonia, Zeta, Thessalonike as well as Constantinople, and from the fifth century BC to the fifteenth century AD; it focuses also on objects in Vienna: the Dioskorides, other manuscripts, and ivories. Over forty papers were delivered at the colloquium, and nearly all were submitted for consideration for publication. After peer review 29 remained with introduction and conclusion, amounting to 420 pages, from scholars from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia, Turkey, Hungary, the UK and the US. There is an annotated bibliography on women in Byzantium, and a list of contributors, there will be an index of names of people and places.