Gender, Society and Economic Life in Byzantium

Variorum
Angeliki Laiou
ISBN: 0860783227
price: $122.95   hardcover

The studies in this volume reflect the author's interest in history as it was lived: not only the social and economic structures, but the men and women, collectively and individually, who made them function.
Laiou finds the role of women in Byzantine economy and society to be much more important than had been believed; their participation in trade and manufacturing is established, as is the role of aristocratic women in the economic affairs of the household. The question of female literacy is also discussed.
Two studies on the Byzantine family, based in large part on the legal sources, examine the formation of matrimonial ties as well as the practice of divorce and concubinage in the 13th century. The second part of the volume is focused on the economy of exchange in Byzantium between 1204 and the fall of the Empire.
Laiou places Byzantine trade and manufacturing in the context of the economic developments of the eastern Mediterranean. She concludes that, whereas the activities of Byzantine and Greek merchants were much more considerable than scholars had thought, they were subordinated to the needs of the Italian-dominated trade system, while Byzantine manufacturing declined.
Contents: Preface; The role of women in Byzantine society (with addendum); Observations on the life and ideology of Byzantine women; The festival of "Agathe": comments on the life of Constantinopolitan women; "Concensus facit nuptias--et non": Pope Nicholas I's Responsa to the Bulgarians as a source for Byzantine marriage customs; Contribution à l'étude de l'institution familiale en Epire au XIIIe siècle; The Byzantine aristocracy in the Palaeologan period: a story of arrested development; The Byzantine economy in the Mediterranean trade system 13th-15th centuries; The Greek merchant of the Palaeologan period: a collective portrait; In the medieval Balkans: economic pressures and conflicts in the 14th century; Quelques observations sur l'économie et la société de Crète vénitienne (ca. 1270-ca. 1305); Händler und Kaufleute auf dem Jahrmarkt; Index.