ABSTRACT
This book has focused as far as is possible on wom en’s choices, on women as actors, on wom en’s power. The question which has been waiting in the background concerns the nature of the constraints on their power, which could be characterised as patriarchy. But patriarchy as a concept is ahistorical, and has been rejected in this book for that reason as an explanation of wom en’s power or lack thereof. A m ore useful statem ent is that Byzantium was a maledom inated society, for male dom inance is a description, not a valuejudgem ent. Male dominance is beyond doubt, and a woman-centred viewpoint cannot alter it. A glance at an em peror list reveals the truth: only two women over the whole of Byzantine history held supreme power in their own right. This fact does no t m ean that women could no t rule: many women were regent for their sons for many years and would have taken decisions as an autocrat. But it does m ean that women could not be seen to rule, that Byzantium could no t easily conceive of supreme power in the hands of a m em ber of the female sex. There were two reasons for this. At the level of ultimate political legitimisation, the Byzantines’ religious ideology that the em peror was the representative of Christ on earth defined power-holding as male. This view upheld the strain of misogyny which prevailed in certain segments of the population. Then, the Byzantine attitude that women could no t lead armies1 m eant that women would always be at a disadvantage in a military
society, where military success was of overriding practical importance because of the need to maintain the borders of the em pire against the incursions of many varied barbarians. Ideologically, the cour age which was the supreme imperial virtue was given its purest expression on the battlefield. These two precepts held good over the whole of Byzantine history and are central to an understanding of it. They could indeed be classed as patriarchal. But the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be considered as a whole and together to advance knowledge of the nuances of Byzantine history, and to avoid ahistoricity.
