Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society

by Bronwen Neil

Gender was a key social indicator in Byzantine society, as in many others. While studies of gender in the western medieval period have appeared regularly in the past decade, similar studies of Byzantium have lagged behind. Masculine and feminine roles were not always as clearly defined as in the West, while eunuchs made up a 'third gender' in the imperial court. Social status indicators were also in a state of flux, as much linked to patronage networks as to wealth, as the Empire came under a series of external and internal pressures. This fluidity applied equally in ecclesiastical and secular spheres. The present collection of essays uncovers gender roles in the imperial family, in monastic institutions of both genders, in the Orthodox church, and in the nascent cult of Mary in the east. It puts the spotlight on flashpoints over a millennium of Byzantine rule, from Constantine the Great to Irene and the Palaiologoi, and covers a wide geographical range, from Byzantine Italy to Syria.

The introduction frames the following nine chapters against recent scholarship and considers methodological issues in the study of gender and Byzantine society. Together these essays portray a surprising range of male and female experience in various Byzantine social institutions - whether religious, military, or imperial -- over the course of more than a millennium. The collection offers a provocative contrast to recent studies based on western medieval scholarship. Common themes that bind the collection into a coherent whole include specifically Byzantine expectations of gender among the social elite; the fluidity of social and sexual identities for Byzantine men and women within the church; and the specific challenges that strong individuals posed to the traditional limitations of gender within a hierarchical society dominated by Christian orthodoxy.

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Bronwen Neil is the Burke Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical Latin at ACU Brisbane, and acting director of the Centre for Early Christian Studies in first semester, 2012. In the eleven years since she received her doctorate from Australian Catholic University, Dr Neil has made significant achievements in the study of early Christian history. Her publications reflect a rare command of a broad range of areas, including Greek and Latin text edition, Byzantine theology, the cult of martyrs, hagiography and bishops of Rome in the fourth to ninth centuries. An Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-2005) resulted in a monograph published by Brepols in the new series Studia Antiqua Australiensia (2006). In 2009 Dr Neil published Leo the Great in the Routledge series The Early Church Fathers. Dr Neil’s expertise has been recognised by invitations to contribute various chapters to books and Festschriften and several articles to encyclopediae and dictionaries, including Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception (vols. 2 and 3, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011) and the forthcoming Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press). She is currently completing a book (with P. Allen) on Crisis Management in Late Antiquity: The Evidence of Episcopal Letters, and another on the letters of Pope Gelasius I (492-496).