1st Edition

Women, Family and Society in Byzantium

Edited By Cécile Morrisson, Angeliki E. Laiou, Rowan Dorin Copyright 2011
    292 Pages
    by Routledge

    Angeliki Laiou (1941-2008), one of the leading Byzantinists of her generation, broke new ground in the study of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire. Women, Family and Society in Byzantium, the first of three volumes to be published posthumously in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, brings together eight articles published between 1993 and 2009. Demonstrating Professor Laiou's characteristic attention to the relationship between ideology and social practice, the first five articles concern the status of women as evidenced through legal, narrative, hagiographical, and archival sources, while the final three investigate conceptions of law and justice, the vocabulary and typology of peasant rebellions, and the and the form and evolution of political agreements in Byzantine society.

    Contents: Preface; Introduction, Joëlle Beaucamp; Part I Women in Byzantine Law and Practice: Sex, consent and coercion in Byzantium; Marriage prohibitions, marriage strategies and the dowry in 13th-century Byzantium; The evolution of the status of women in marriage and family law; Women in the marketplace of Constantinople, (10th-14th centuries); Family structure and the transmission of property. Part II Law, Politics and Society: Law, justice and the Byzantine historians: 9th-12th centuries; Peasant rebellion: notes on its vocabulary and typology; The Emperor's word: chrysobulls, oaths and synallagmatic relations in Byzantium (11th-12th centuries); Index.

    Biography

    Angeliki E. Laiou (1941 - 2008) was Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History at Harvard University, USA.