A widowed nun disguised as a man under the monastic name Eufemianos, who lived in the 8th and the early 9th century. She lived in men’s monasteries at Olympus, Bithynia, and then in Constantinople and the Bosporus. Anna (Eufemianos) was proclaimed saint after her death; she is celebrated on October 29.

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Eirene Palaiologina was the elder sister of Emperor Michael VIII. She was born before 1220 and died in 1284. She was married to the pinkernes John Kantakouzenos and had four daughters, while after the monarch’s death she became a nun under the name Eulogia. She expressed some political ambitions and tried to influence her brother’s policies. However, as a fanatic opponent of the union of the Churches, she finally disagreed with him.

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Theodora’s lineage was related to the eminent Byzantine families of the Doukai, Komnenoi and Angeloi. Theodora was born in around 1240 and passed away in 1303. She was the spouse of Emperor Michael VIII, with whom she had seven children. In certain incidents she appears to have been active politically. After Michael’s death she renounced her husband’s policy who sought to bring about the union of the Western and Eastern Churches. She was devout, making donations to monasteries and renovating...

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Member of the nobility during the Palaiologan period, born in around 1240 in the Empire of Nicaea; died in 1300 in Constantinople. She was a person of varied interests: an author and member of the closed circle of scholars of the Palaiologan Renaissance, she maintained a book-copying workshop in the monastery of St Andrew which she had restored, while she also participated actively in the political and ecclesiastical debates of her time.

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