Anna Comnena

Greek Historian and Scholar

1083-1148

Anna Comena is often considered the world’s first female historian, being an historian of the fortunes of the Comneni family. Her works were an important source of information about the reign of her father, Alexius I, Emperor of Constantinople, detailing the daily life at court, the behavior of her family, and the exchanges between the Byzantines and western crusaders during the first crusades.

Anna Comnena was born in 1083 to Alexius Comnenus and his wife Irene. As was the custom for a Byzantine princess, Anna received an excellent education. She studies the Greek classics, history, geography, mythology, and philosophy. When she was young, she was given a crown and until the birth of her brother, it was expected that she would become empress at the death of her father.

In 1907, Anna married historian Nicephorus Bryennius. With the encouragement of her mother, Anna joined ranks conspirators to seize the throne for her husband. When the attempt failed she was forced to retire from court and after her husbands death she joined her mother in a monastery devoted to learning that her mother had founded.

It was in this monastery that Anna employed her acquirements in composing a history, in fifteen volumes, of the life and reign of her father. She entitled this work “The Alexiad”. Eight of these books were published by Haeschelius in 1610 and the whole fifteen were published as a Latin version in 1651. In 1670, Charles du Fresne published another edition with historical and philological notes. Anna’s own observations are valuable because she was eyewitness of these events. Her personal knowledge and the close acquaintance with public affairs made up much of the history, but she also used diplomatic correspondence from the imperial archives. Anna Comnena has been accused of partiality in this work, in which the actions of her father appear to greater advantage than in the writings of the Latin historians, who, it is not impossible, might have cherished prejudices against a Greek emperor. The truth probably is found somewhere in between the two different accounts.

In her works, Anna showed great contempt toward Western crusaders. Her father had sent the first enjoys to Pope Urban I, asking for help in haling the Turkish raids. When the first crusaders came, Alexius found they din not want to take his advice and instructions. Instead of becoming heroes, rescuing the Byzantines from the Muslim threat, they often became looters and destroyers. Looting and raiding for supplies became the norm.

Many male scholars doubted if this fifteen volume history was indeed penned by Anna Comnena. They had a low view of women and many felt that the elegance with which Anna described the life and actions of her father and the strong and eloquent manner in which she had written them were above the capacity of the “average” woman. Today it is accepted that Anna did indeed write the history and she is lauded for her descriptions given of countries, rivers, mountains, towns, sieges, battles, the reflections upon certain events, and the judgment she passes on human actions. It is agreed that she was skilled in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and mathematics and that she must have possessed a knowledge of law, physics, and religion - studies very rare and uncommon for women of her day.