Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society Edited by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland QUESTIONS OF GENDER IN BYZANTINE SOCIETY For John Melville-Jones Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society Edited by BRONWEN NEIL Australian Catholic University, Australia LYNDA GARLAND University of New England, Australia First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2013 Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Questions of gender in Byzantine society. 1. Sex role--Byzantine Empire. 2. Gender expression-- Byzantine Empire. I. Neil, Bronwen. II. Garland, Lynda, 1955- 305.3'09398618-dc23 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Questions of gender in Byzantine society / edited by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4779-5 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-4780-1 (ebk) -- ISBN 978-1-4094- 7449-4 (ePUB) 1. Sex role--Byzantine Empire--History. 2. Women--Byzantine Empire- -History. 3. Byzantine Empire--Social life and customs. 4. Byzantine Empire--Social conditions. 5. Byzantine Empire--Intellectual life. 6. Byzantine Empire--Religious life and customs. I. Neil, Bronwen. II. Garland, Lynda, 1955- HQ1075.5.B97Q84 2013 305.309495--dc23 2013000828 ISBN 9781409447795 (hbk) ISBN 9781315603339 (ebk) Contents List of Figures vii List of Contributors ix Acknowledgements xi List of Abbreviations xiii 1 An Introduction to Questions of Gender in Byzantium 1 Bronwen Neil 2 Perceptions of Byzantine Virtus in Southern Italy, from the Eighth to Eleventh Centuries 11 Paul Brown 3 ‘Till Death Do Us Part?’: Family Life in Byzantine Monasteries 29 Lynda Garland 4 Psalmody and Socrates: Female Literacy in the Byzantine Empire 57 Amelia R. Brown 5 Changing Conceptions of Mary in Sixth-Century Byzantium: The Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist 77 Sarah Gador-Whyte 6 Ghosts in the Machine: The Lives and Deaths of Constantinian Imperial Women 93 Liz James 7 Regarding Women on the Throne: Representations of Empress Eirene 113 Bronwen Neil 8 The Brides of 1420: Men Looking at Women’s Bodies 133 Diana Gilliland Wright 9 Bearding Byzantium: Masculinity, Eunuchs and the Byzantine Life Course 153 Shaun Tougher vi Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society 10 The Spiritual Valency of Gender in Byzantine Society 167 Damien Casey Bibliography 183 Index 213 List of Figures 6.1 Family tree of Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus Daza 93 6.2 Family tree of Maximian and Constantius 95 6.3 Family tree of Constantine 96 This page has been left blank intentionally List of Contributors Dr Amelia R. Brown is Lecturer in Greek History and Language in the Classics and Ancient History discipline of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She holds a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from Berkeley, and also studied History, Hellenic Studies and Visual Arts at Princeton University. Her research interests include maritime history, Greek religion and ancient sculpture. She is working on a guide to Corinth through the ages. Dr Paul Brown, University of New England, is an independent scholar and adjunct of the University of New England, Armidale, where he taught ancient and medieval history for five years. His primary research interest is cultural, literary and military diffusion, most especially between the Franks, Lombards, Normans and Byzantines, and his work has been published in the Journal of Medieval History. Dr Damien Casey is Lecturer in Theology at the Australian Catholic University, in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy. He holds a PhD on gender differentiation in the work of Luce Irigaray from the University of Sydney, recently published as Flesh Made Word: Theology after Irigaray (2010). His other publications reflect his interest in the intersection between theology and philosophy, from the early Christian centuries to the postmodern age. Dr Sarah Gador-Whyte recently attained a PhD from University of Melbourne on Rhetoric and Ideas in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist, which she is preparing for publication. She has published various articles on rhetoric in Byzantine literature. She is currently employed as a Research Associate in the Centre for Early Christian Studies at Australian Catholic University. Professor Lynda Garland is Head of the School of Humanities at the University of New England, Armidale. She has published widely on Byzantine studies with particular reference to issues of gender. Her current research project is a study of the foundation documents of Byzantine monasteries. Professor Garland is a past president of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies. Professor Liz James is Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex. She has published a book on early Byzantine empresses as well as papers dealing with female imperial power in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, and a range of articles dealing with aspects of Byzantine art. She is the editor of A Companion to Byzantium (2010). x Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society Dr Bronwen Neil is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a von Humboldt-Stiftung Fellow. Her publications include Latin and Greek text editions and translations on the lives of Maximus the Confessor (1999, 2002 and 2003) and Leo I and Martin I, bishops of Rome in late antiquity (2009, 2006). Her research interests include early Christian literature, especially hagiography, and relations between the eastern and western churches in the early Byzantine period. She is current president of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, and Assistant Director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies at Australian Catholic University, Brisbane. Dr Shaun Tougher is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the Cardiff School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University, and co-director of the Centre for Late Antique Religion and Culture at Cardiff. He specialises in late Roman and Byzantine political and cultural history. His publications include The Reign of Leo VI (886–912) (1997), Julian the Apostate (2007), and The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (2008). He is currently completing a study of eunuchs in the Roman empire. Dr Diana Gilliland Wright is an independent scholar living in Seattle, WA. She has taught at Seattle University, and The New School University in New York. Her focus of study is the fifteenth-century Morea and the intersection of cultures there, to appear in the book The Knight and Death: The Kladas Affair and the Fifteenth- Century Morea (forthcoming). Acknowledgements I am grateful to all those who have contributed to this volume, and to those who presented papers at the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies conference which inspired its conception. My co-editor Lynda Garland, as host of that conference on the theme of ‘Gender and Class in Byzantine Society’ at the University of New England in April 2010, has played a most important part in bringing together the papers submitted here. Special thanks to Sarah Gador- Whyte and Dinah Joesoef for careful proofing and editorial work, and to Pauline Allen, Roger Scott and Andrew Stephenson for their valuable advice along the way. All chapters have been peer-reviewed. To our anonymous referees, I am particularly grateful. It is a pleasure to dedicate this volume to Professor John Melville-Jones, who, as Winthrop Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, Perth, has done so much for Byzantine studies in Australia and beyond. Bronwen Neil 24 October 2012 This page has been left blank intentionally List of Abbreviations CFHB Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae CSHB Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae LCL Loeb Classical Library MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PG Patrologiae cursus completus series graeca, (ed.) Jean-Paul Migne (161 vols, Paris: Imprimerie catholique, 1857–66) PL Patrologiae cursus completus series latina, (ed.) Jean-Paul Migne (221 vols, Paris: Imprimerie catholique, 1844–64) PLRE A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale and J. Morris (eds), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Vol. 1, AD 260–395 (Cambridge, 1971) SS Scriptores in folio SSRG Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum SSRGius Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum SRGI Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum et Italicarum SRGN Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum nova series TTH Translated Texts for Historians This page has been left blank intentionally Chapter 1 An Introduction to Questions of Gender in Byzantium Bronwen Neil Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society applies the lens of gender to the study of Byzantine history, from the fourth to fifteenth centuries. Drawing on a wide