Brown, Amelia. “Psalmody and Socrates: Female Literacy in the Byzantine Empire.” In Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society, edited by Bronwen Neil and Lynda Garland, 57–76. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
In this paper, Brown investigates the presence and importance of literate women in the Byzantine Empire. She uses hagiography, biography, history, and fiction, among other sources, to illuminate the prevalence and influence of female literacy in the Greek-speaking world from the fourth to fifteenth century. Brown acknowledges the limitations of her literary sources, but argues that “there is enough information to perceive some radical changes in women’s literacy over the one thousand years of the Byzantine Empire” (59).
Brown follows a chronological approach in what follows. She begins from the fourth century, in which the Byzantine Empire was mostly a continuation of Roman and earlier Hellenistic culture and traditions. Boys and some girls learned the alphabet, words and sentences before eventually progressing to the works of Homer, Euripides, Menander, and Demosthenes – all part of the εγκύκλιος παιδεία (general education). Byzantine education combined this heritage with the trivium and quadrivium of the Latin West, along with a few Christian texts. Brown is particularly interested in how the rise of Christianity affected female education. On the one hand, Christianity emphasized the text and therefore encouraged literacy; on the other, some Christians rejected Classical texts as pagan. The Life of Macrina exemplifies the “ambivalent effects of Christianity on education” (60).
Christianity was important for expanding women’s access to literacy in a number of ways. For example, the Life of St Matrona describes the importance of the convent in women’s education. In Nisibis, the abbess apparently “read from the Scriptures to the assembled sisters, and to women of the community” (63). Nuns like Eulogia, Thomais, and Egeria are probably the most important female writers of late antiquity. Outside the church, women did read; Brown cites Hägg’s work which suggests that women read ancient Greek novels by Heliodorus and Xenophon. There were also some non-Christian female writers, such as Faltonia Betitia Proba, although they mostly wrote letters. Hypatia of Alexandria was notably well-educate, including in sciences and mathematics. But Brown cautions that letters “by” women may in fact have been dictated to scribes.
From the sixth to eighth centuries, Brown argues that education, including female literacy, suffered tremendously. Cities and their literate populations shrank, partly because of invasions, while the Iconoclasm and Justinian’s moves against pagans were quite devastating. Brown argues that the “low point in Byzantine literacy” (65) came at the beginning of the Iconoclasm and the height of Arab invasions. What education women did receive now used “the Bible and the Psalms as the basic teaching texts” (67).
Brown next turns to the “Macedonian Renaissance,” which began in the ninth century. The number of well-educated men and women increased significantly, partly because of the use of paper instead of papyrus, the end of Iconoclasm, and the invention of minuscule. As a result, there were a number of new texts both religious and secular. Theodosia, Thekla, and Kassia were all nuns who composed hymns. Kassia’s remain important until today. There were also some female saints from outside Constantinople who were literate, including Febronia (in Nisibis) and Elizabeth the Wonderworker. Women also learned to read and write for secular purposes; Brown mentions that some women participated in trades that require literacy, such as shop-keeping and book-copying. Michael Psellos describes in detail how he provided for the education of his daughter, Styliane, before she died at the age of nine. Even in this funeral oration, though, Psellos praises his daughter for spending an equal amount of time at the loom as at her letters.
Next Brown shifts to the Comnenian period, which includes the most famous Byzantine literate woman of them all: Anna Comnena. The number of women who could read and write, especially among the aristocracy, continued to grow. Brown points to detailed legal documents concerning women as indications that even non-Constantinopolitan women were often literate. Education beyond this level was less accessible, though. Even Anna Comnena had to study the classics in secret, because her parents “feared the moral effects of a classical education” (72). Nevertheless, she acquired enough knowledge to brag of in the Alexiad.
Finally, Brown turns to the period between the Fourth Crusade and the Fall of Constantinople. She uses typika of convents to indicate that many nuns were assumed to be literate. Indeed, some typika even provide for libraries in convents as well as the education of novices and even nuns’ daughters. Turning to other sources, Brown notes that Ibn Battuta and other travel writers recorded “large numbers of women in the retail trade” (74). This period also had increasing contact with the West. Some erotic literature, such as the Greek romance Livistros and Rodamni, were apparently written for female audiences and combined both Greek and Latin influences. Brown points to two upper-class women who are notable for their erudition: Theodora Raoulaina and Irene-Eulogia Choumnaina. Although most women remained illiterate, Brown points to these two Palaiologans as examples of the most educated Byzantine women – who, she suggests, “undoubtedly helped to spread Greek literacy along with the more famous men” (75).
Brown concludes with the simple observation that there were always fewer literate women than men in Byzantium, but that the numbers of both fluctuated with the size of the upper class. Nuns and Christianity also played important roles in the evolution of women’s literacy throughout the Byzantine Empire. Brown’s survey of the evidence seems fairly comprehensive and it is certainly interesting to gather the scattered records of individual literate women. However, there are quite a few statements that would have been worth exploring and arguing more strongly for. For example, is it true that women were part of the Greek exodus to Italy? If yes, how so? How did attitudes and social norms towards female literacy evolve throughout the period? Were women always marginalized to the same extent? Was there a conscious effort to avoid educating women, or was widespread illiteracy the inevitable result of Byzantine society? These and more questions would be fascinating to answer using Brown’s research as a solid foundation.