The Byzantine Lady: Ten Portraits, 1250–1500

This is a lively collection of ten short, annotated and illustrated biographies of aristocratic ladies of the Byzantine empire in its final years. Some were ambitious mothers; some were unhappy wives; some were nuns or scholars; one became the wife of a Turkish sultan and the stepmother of a famous son; one became the champion of the Greek refugees in Venice after the Turks had conquered Constantinople in 1453. They demonstrate the enterprise of some late Byzantine women in the male-dominated society of their time.