Contents: Preface; Women and the Religious Life: Women; Byzantine women, saints' lives and social welfare; Women and iconoclasm; Women and Mt. Athos; Empress Theodora Palaiologina, wife of Michael VIII; Sanctity and Hagiography: Female sanctity in Byzantium; Family cults in Byzantium: the case of St. Theodora of Thessalonike; The posthumous miracles of St. Photeine; The Byzantine cult of St. Photeine; Old wine in new bottles: the rewriting of saints' lives in the Palaeologan period; Monasticism: An introduction to Byzantine monasticism; A comparison of the monastic experience of Byzantine men and women; The Byzantine family and the monastery; Healing shrines in late Byzantine Constantinople; Nunneries: Women's space in Byzantine monasteries; Affirmative action in the 13th c.: an act of John Apokaukos concerning the Blachernitissa Monastery in Arta; Late Byzantine nuns: by choice or necessity?; Bluestocking nuns: intellectual life in the convents of late Byzantium; Indexes.