The Empress Theophano
Byzantium and the West at the Turn of the First Millennium

A volume of essays on the Byzantine princess Theophano who died as empress of the Ottonian Empire in 991.

Adelbert Davids (Edited by)

9780521524674, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 August 2002

364 pages, 13 b/w illus. 1 map
23 x 15.4 x 2.4 cm, 0.597 kg

"...this book presents the evidence failry and sheds some welcome and unaccustomed light on the tenth century in both East and WEst." Warren Treadgold, Speculum

The Byzantine princess Theophano, who came to the West in 972 to marry the Ottonian emperor Otto II, died as empress of the Ottonian Empire in Nijmegen in 991. In commemoration of this event a group of distinguished scholars met in 1991 at the castle of Hernen in the Netherlands with the aim of discussing various issues and aspects of Theophano's background in Byzantium, her life in the West, and her impact on society at the turn of the first millennium. This volume brings together in carefully edited form a group of the papers and proceedings from 1991. Each contribution helps to place Theophano in a broad cultural and historical context. The historical, intellectual and artistic background of her age are described, and there are essays on her education, her surroundings, and on the image of noble women in the middle ages.

List of illustrations
Contributors
Preface
Abbreviations
1. Theophano divina gratia imperatrix augusta: western and eastern emperorship in the later tenth century Karl Leyser
2. Theophano, the western empress from the east Odilo Engels
3. Theophano: an empress reconsidered K. Ciggaar
4. Theophano: considerations on the education of a Byzantine princess Judith Herrin
5. The education of the daughters of the nobility in the Ottonian empire Johanna Maria Van Winter
6. Marriage negotiations between Byzantium and the west and the name of Theophano in Byzantium (eighth to tenth centuries) Adelbert Davids
7. A marriage too far? Maria Lekapena and Peter of Bulgaria Jonathan Shepard
8. The image of women of the nobility in the German chronicles of the tenth to the eleventh centuries P. Bange
9. Ottonian intellectual culture in the tenth century and the role of Theophano Rosamond McKitterick
10. Froumund's Greek: an analysis of fo. 12v of the Codex Vindoboniensis Graecus 114, followed by a comparison with a Latin-Greek wordlist in MS 179 Auxerre fo. 137v ff W. J. Aerts
11. The art of Byzantium and its relation to Germany in the time of the empress Theophano Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosigne
12. Imperial art in Byzantium from Basil I to Basil II (867–1025) E. Voordeckers
13. Did Theophano leave her mark on the Ottonian sumptuary arts? H. Westermann-Angerhausen
14. The palace of Nijmegen in the tenth and early eleventh centuries Bert Thissen
15. The so-called 'women's gallery' in the medieval church: an import from Byzantium Hiltije F. H. Zomer
16. The human and economic context L. F. Genicot
17. The palace and the monastery in Byzantine spiritual life, c. 1000, A. J. Van Der Aalst.

Subject Areas: Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]