José María de FRANCISCO OLMOS

Original title: Las mujeres y el poder supremo en Bizancio, siglos V-XI. Aproximación numismática

Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages

Keywords: 5th-11th centuries, Byzantium, Empresses, Numismatics.

This paper studies the evolution of the role of Byzantine women in relation to the Empire government, with special attention to the numismatic evidence. The analyzed period goes from the beginning of the Empire in the 5th century to the middle of the 11th, with a detailed analysis of those reigns that seem most significant in the evolution of this issue, that is those of Pulcheria, Irene and the sisters Zoë and Theodora, with whom women finally became able to assume the government in their own names, without any shade of fiction, as seen on the previous cases.