Ada Lovelace, Anna Komnene and me

Today is Ada Lovelace day when we celebrate, well, female geeks. Tonight is the Finding Ada Unconference, where people talk for about 5 minutes on a heroine of their choice. Mine is the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene (Comnena in Latin), who lived in "interesting" times and was a serious polymath to boot.

Finding Anna

Anna was born in 1085, into the purple (ie into the Byzantine royal family) in Constantinople (now Istanbul, for the real tech geeks among you). To recap, in 1071 Byzantium fought and badly lost the battle of Manzikert, which resulted in them losing most of their Asian provinces to the Turks. To recapture them, the Byzantine Empire decided to take the very risky step of writing to the barbarous (by Byzantine and Arab standards of the time) Western nations for military assistance. Thence starts the Crusades which kicked off in 1091.....

I first met Anna via The Alexiad, the history she wrote at age 55 of the efforts of her father (the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I)'s attempts to rescue Byzantium from the results of Manzikert, reconquer their Eastern provinces from the Turks, and to "manage" the Crusaders to ensure they fought the Turks (Saracens) and didn't pillage the still wealthy Byzantine Empire instead.

Educating Anna

Although, she was carefully trained in the study of history, mathematics, science, and Greek philosophy, Anna’s parents banned her from studying ancient poetry (whose glorification of lustful gods and unchaste women they deemed inappropriate and even dangerous for a young woman of her class to study). Despite her parents' attempts to restrict her, Anna furtively studied the forbidden poetry with one of the imperial court’s eunuchs. Thus, Anna received an extraordinary education that undoubtedly made her one of the most educated women of her time. (From Wikipedia)

A Byzantine Plot

In her youth Anna took part in the standard Byzantine plot and counter plot to get her husbands (both of them) onto the Throne as her father aged. Her knowledge of medicine was of a level such that she was choosing the treatments for her father when he died. She was finally sent to a nunnery when her second husband withdrew from one of her plots to depose her brother for him. Anna said that "nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman." Today we'd probably say she had balls, whereas her husband....wanted to live (failed emperor pretenders lives were generally nasty, brutish and short)

Get thee hence to a Monastery - Anna as Nun

Take one very intelligent and high energy woman and give her not a lot to do, and what do you get?

Firstly an excellent history of the times - the Alexiad - which is accurate, insightful, gossipy and human at the same time and also gives you an excellent insight into women's mindset then.

Secondly, in the Alexiad she writes a lot about the technology, science and medicine of her day - it is invaluable firstly as a record, but also its clear she had a very good grasp on how it all worked. Take her views on Astrology (she was very interested in Astronomy ).

The discovery is fairly recent, and the science of it was not known to the ancients. For this method of divination did not exist in the time of Eudoxus, the greatest of all astronomers, neither did Plato have any knowledge of it, and even the astrologer, Manetho, had not brought it to perfection. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. I do not mention this for the sake of boasting, but to prove that during my father's reign many of the sciences made great progress, as he honoured both philosophers and philosophy itself, but towards this teaching of astrology he showed some hostility, I believe because it tended to make people of a guileless nature reject their faith in God and gape at the stars.

Anna and the Crusaders

Anna's views on the corruption, depravity and rapacity of the Crusaders is a joy to read and a good counterpoint to received Western views, she was deeply sceptical of the wisdom of involving the West and the Pope in the fight against the Turks. (Though there is a clear subtext that she fancied the Norman leader Bohemond). She was eventually proved right as in 1204, 50 years after she dies, the 4th Crusade decided to sack Constantinople rather than fight Turks, which did far more damage to Byzantium than Manzikert did

There is a very approachable book on Anna Komnene called "Anna of Byzantium" by Tracy Barrett, that's the picture above.