34. Anna Komnene — Europe's First Female Historian

AMY: Hey, everyone! Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes, here with Kim Askew, and Kim, are you ready to hop into the wayback machine today?

KIM: Um yeah, sure, why not? How far back are we going, though? And does it require costumes or anything

AMY: I don’t know about costumes, but it’s pretty far back. It’s the year 1148?

KIM: Oh, wow. So I can just wear a sheet or something, I don’t know. 

AMY: Yeah. Toga! Toga! We are going to be talking about a female Byzantine historian.

KIM: Oh, okay, well, wake me when it’s over, then.

AMY: No! I mean, granted, it does sound coma-inducingly boring when I say that, but I promise you, this lost lady is worth discussing. (And because it’s a mini, we don’t have to get too deep into it, right? We’ll just do the fun stuff. Because she’s got some hints of Cersei Lanister from GAME OF THRONES if you want to know the truth.) 

KIM: Oooh, well, I love Cersei, so...

AMY: Her name was Anna Komnene. She was a political player who was extremely ambitious (almost to a ruthless degree). She was an intellectual juggernaut who had soap-opera-worthy family drama, and all of that prompted her to put pen to paper to tell HER version of the family history in her 15-volume epic work, The Alexiad.

KIM: Are you serious? Fifteen volumes!? Stop it! I hate to break it to you, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to sit down and read this one. I can’t, no...God bless you, Anna, but no. No.

AMY: I know. Truth be told, I’m certain I will not read it, and I’m guessing our listeners won’t either. That’s fine. Let’s just own it. (Actually, I tried listening to a recording of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire last summer and it almost killed me. Did I tell you that?)

KIM: No, but I’m not surprised, and I’m proud of you for attempting it, anyway. Way to go.

AMY: So no, I’m not going to be eagerly diving into the 15-volume Alexiad either, but I definitely think this lost lady is worth getting the 411 on… and by 411, I mean all the juicy stuff.

KIM: Okay, well, you know I was kind of joking about not being interested. I mean, hello… she wrote something called The Alexiad? Am I saying that right? And good for her! I mean, we have enough epic stories written by men, I… you know, I am curious, actually. So let’s do it.

AMY: And she actually modeled The Alexiad after a lot of the classic Greek epics — she was a fan of those.

KIM: I figured, from the name.

AMY: Yes. I will say, it does sound like it might be a more engaging bit of reading than you might at first suppose. In The Paris Review Edmund White said: “Anna exhibits her learning and talent like a peacock splaying his feathers, and the work is all the better for it, turning what could otherwise have been dry hagiography into an engaging document of a crucial era.” Apparently she was pretty funny and snarky at times in the books...

KIM: That sounds promising, but maybe the Cliffs Notes version would be better for us.

AMY: Okay. So how about we just first explain why she wrote it, and also where she wrote it, because she took this project on while she was holed up in a female convent where she had been exiled. She had been banished by her younger brother when she was in her mid-to-late 30s, basically.

KIM: Why did he do that to her? Oh, man, and it just makes you think of all the women who probably got exiled to a convent back then. That is so unfair!

AMY: Well, he kind of had an excuse, because she tried to kill him. 

KIM: I’m sure he deserved it.

AMY: Well, maybe. Here’s where the Cersei Lannister stuff comes into play. 

KIM: Okay, tell me more. I’m really getting curious now.

AMY: Let’s back up a little bit. So Princess Anna Komnene was the eldest child of Emperor Alexio and Empress Irene. Their home was the Great Palace of Constantinople. 

KIM: Oooh, so, basically modern-day Turkey is where we’re talking about right now?

AMY: Yeah, but back then it was kind of an eastern extension of the Roman Empire. It had some Greek influence in there too, but they would have seen themselves as “Roman.” (I don’t believe the term “Byzantine” was even a thing until later in history.) But I don’t know, I’m not a historian so don’t quote me on that. But anyway, Anna is the oldest child, and her dad had really only just claimed the throne a few years prior to her birth. He had wrested it away from another ruler who was basically running the empire into the ground. So Alexio, her dad, swoops in and sort of saves the day and begins “making Byzantium great again,” to steal the tag line line we’d all love to forget. As a little girl, Anna was betrothed to another “junior emperor,” so he was going to wind up being emperor and they were going to kind of be “emperor and empress” together. The tradition back then was that the young girls would go off and live in the boy’s household, so her future mother-in-law is basically responsible for raising her when she is, like, a pre-teen. And that mother (unbeknownst to Anna’s parents) obtained a tutor for her to teach her mathematics, literature, history, medicine, astronomy, military affairs and philosophy. Okay, so this is a time when little girls were really only being taught things like “courtly etiquette,” so this was major that this woman took this up.

KIM: Oh my gosh! It was her mother-in-law… I thought you were going to say she did something terrible to her or something. (Nothing against mother-in-laws, but you know, historically, you hear things.) So I wasn’t expecting that. But good for her mother-in-law! That’s incredible! Tell me more.

AMY: So Anna taught herself to read Greek on her own, and she read “The Odyssey” in secret, actually, because her parents were really opposed to her reading anything about polytheism. So she snuck that under the covers at night, sort of thing.

KIM: I’m loving her. I’m loving her! She sounds great!

AMY: I know. But a little snafu happens in that her betrothed, the man that she’s supposed to marry … he was supposed to be next in line for the throne; he ended up dying before they could get married.

KIM: Not that surprising, given the time.

AMY: Right, exactly. So, as luck would have it, they have another eligible bachelor lined up for Anna. When she was 14-years-old she married another guy named Nikephoros. (And we’ll just call him “Nick,” because it’s easier.) So she’s now got another husband. The fiance that had died was supposed to go on to become the emperor, and she was going to rule alongside him, and now these plans are kind of thwarted. And yet, in Anna’s mind, the plans have not changed. She’s still, in her head, thinking, “Oh, yes — the throne is going to be mine.” But, when her father winds up being on his deathbed, her little brother John — he was already kind of seen by the world as the rightful heir at that point, although Anna, when she was born, had been presented with this royal diadem at birth, which basically signified “Yes, you are going to take over” — so you can see where the conflict is getting set up here. The dying emperor, Alexio, he did want his son, John (Anna’s younger brother) to succeed him, but Anna’s mom, Empress Irene, she thought it was Anna’s for the taking. She believed Anna was the presumptive next in line, and of course, cue the palace intrigue now, right? So Anna and her mom start plotting. The only problem is that Anna’s husband, Nick, (Nikephoros) he’s like, “Uh-uh, ladies. Count me out. I am not helping you guys with this.” And Anna is furious. She thinks he’s a total wimp. She even says, “Nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman.”

KIM: Oh my god, Lady Macbeth is happening! 

AMY: Mm-hmm. So, while their dad is on his deathbed, Anna’s brother kind of pulls a shady move as well, because he goes in to give his dad a hug on his deathbed and surreptitiously swipes the emperor’s ring from his finger, which must have infuriated Anna.

KIM: Wait. This is a real story?

AMY: Yes! So you can see why she’s pissed and is like, “I’m getting him out of the way.” She really felt like she had been cheated out of her birth right, and she tried for a year to wrest control from her brother, but her plots ended up being exposed. John found out she was plotting against him and he exiled her to the convent (which I guess there are worse things he could have done in that situation. I guess she’s lucky she just got away with the convent.) But I mean, we thought things were bad with the British royal family, right? This is way more drama.

KIM: Yeah. Seriously, wow. So it’s hard to think that as a woman in that era she would have even been considered as a potential ruler. Do you know if women were given that kind of power at that time?

AMY: Probably not because like we said, she was really not supposed to be getting any formal education. But her dad, in his lifetime, had deemed her qualified to take on that sort of leadership role. Like I said, she was kind of helping counsel him in some ways. And at one point, he had put her in charge of a huge orphanage and hospital which had the capacity to hold 10,000 patients. So she was basically a hospital administrator and she taught medicine there and at other hospitals. (She apparently was an expert on the treatment of gout in addition to all the other things she could do.) 

KIM: Oooh, Henry VIII could have used her in his court!

AMY: Totally. Totally.

KIM: Okay, so after this coup that you told us about goes bad, goes horribly wrong, she’s cooped up at the convent. So you mentioned Cersei Lannister before, but I’m thinking Circe, the witch, who was banished to an island, sounds a lot like this character, also, who was banished to a convent. But how does this lead to her writing this epic history?

AMY: Well, she’s got time on her hands right? But she doesn’t even start this book project for two more decades; she waited until she was 55 years old to start writing it. Some say that this was a book that her husband Nikephoros (I call him Nick) — some say he first started it and she took it over after he died. But generally-speaking, the work is really attributed to her. She basically tells the history of her father’s reign, with all kinds of anecdotes about the crusades…different battles that he was involved in. She has a lot of great detail. She writes all about the political landscape at the time. Basically it’s considered a really prime historical document for his reign. Historians today are like, “Thank god she wrote this.” Her agenda, though, was to depict her dad as one of the great men of history and to denigrate her brother (and anyone else that she considered her enemies). So it was not an impartial bit of scholarship, but it is really a remarkable bit of scholarship nonetheless

KIM: Revenge is a dish best served in a 15-volume…[laughing]... I would think revenge would best be served in a pamphlet, but...

AMY: She definitely had an axe to grind. But it’s considered a landmark work of history from the Middle Ages. She wrote it in Greek. It took her a decade to write. 

KIM: She was in a convent, too. What else was she going to do? I mean…

AMY: Mm-hmm. There was one line in The Paris Review article I mentioned earlier that sort of gave a little hint of what the books are like, and I have to read this one little passage from The Paris Review article: “Bohemond of Taranto, for example, wins Anna’s horrified admiration for successfully escaping his enemies by playing dead in a coffin all the way from Antioch to Rome with a deceased chicken hidden on his person. The putrid stench convinced anyone brave enough to take a peek that Bohemond really was a rotting corpse.” So she’s giving us that kind of color, those kinds of stories.

KIM: I wasn’t expecting it to be like that. I thought it was going to be, “So-and-so begat so-and-so…” like the Old Testament, almost.

AMY: You really probably do want somebody to just distill the best bits for you. Some historians over time have theorized that Anna could not have written it all on her own, which, honestly, how many times have we heard that?

KIM: Oh, yeah, exactly. And even Shakespeare, so whatever. C’mon, everyone. 

AMY: And actually, since we mentioned The [Rise and] Fall of the Roman Empire earlier, the author of that, Edward Gibbons, he had some things to say in The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire about Anna Komnene. He likens her to Lady Macbeth, as you did, for trying to do away her brother. He really does not paint her in a very favorable light. She’s heralded today, however, for being the first female historian.

KIM: She’s literally playing with the hand she’s dealt. I mean, if a man did that, no one would think twice of it. I have nothing but respect for her.

AMY: And yeah, she wrote this incredible tome. She had this incredibly interesting life story, on top of it, and so I just think that makes her special and worth discussing today, even if we never do lug the 15 volumes out of some library, which we’re never going to do.

KIM: Noooo. It won’t be my next beach read, but yeah, I’m very interested about her story and I think other people would want to hear it.

AMY: And listeners, if you, like Kim, are looking for something a little more light, breezy and fun, we’ve got just the books for you. It’s a collection, actually, by author Maud Hart Lovelace, whom we’ll be discussing next week — it would be no exaggeration to call her book series “literary comfort food.” 

KIM: Absolutely. Known as the “Betsy-Tacy” books, this coming-of-age series is centered around Lovelace’s own upbringing in Minnesota. They are so charming, and we’ve got an equally charming guest joining us to discuss them! New York-based culture writer and editor Sadie Stein is joining us for the conversation. (I’m so excited!) And we had just so much fun geeking out with her over Maud Hart Lovelace. We can’t wait for you to check out this episode.

AMY: Until then, don’t forget to rate and review us or spread the love on social media! Help us turn “I’ve never heard of her” into your new favorite author!

KIM: Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.