page_title: Women in the Byzantine Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Women in the Byzantine Empire
context_page_description: Women in the Byzantine Empire played an important role, but many details of their lives are a matter of debate. Numerous sources paint a picture of the Byzantine patriarchal society in which women did not have independent significance and were imprisoned in a gynaeceum. For a long time, the attention of historians was attracted only by prominent Byzantine women, mainly the Empress, especially the wife of Emperor Justinian I Theodora, who had a significant influence on the events of the first half of the VI century.
  The scientific study of the legal and economic status of women in the Byzantine Empire began in the second half of the 19th century and is currently intensively ongoing. The subject of study is both women in general and related issues of family and property law. The scarcity of surviving sources leads to diverse assessments of the place of women in Byzantine society. With the development of gender studies in the 1970s, there is a tendency to revise early views, according to which this role was not significant.
context_section_description: Women in the Byzantine Empire played an important role, but many details of their lives are a matter of debate. Numerous sources (chronicles, legal texts, hagiographic literature) paint a picture of the Byzantine patriarchal society in which women did not have independent significance and were imprisoned in a gynaeceum. For a long time, the attention of historians was attracted only by prominent Byzantine women, mainly the Empress, especially the wife of Emperor Justinian I Theodora, who had a significant influence on the events of the first half of the VI century.
  The scientific study of the legal and economic status of women in the Byzantine Empire began in the second half of the 19th century and is currently intensively ongoing. The subject of study is both women in general and related issues of family and property law. The scarcity of surviving sources leads to diverse assessments of the place of women in Byzantine society. With the development of gender studies in the 1970s, there is a tendency to revise early views, according to which this role was not significant.
caption: Empress Theodora with her retinue. Mosaic of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, VI century
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