The Byzantine Lady: Ten Portraits, 1250-1500

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