Analysis Of Piety And Power In Byzantium

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In the section of “Piety and Power in Byzantium”, Moore discusses the role of Byzantine women’s financial patronage and veneration of religious icons had on the molding of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Byzantium. Moore mentions that Empress Helena (ca. 248-ca. 330) was the “first Christian imperial patron” (Moore 2015, 69) because she was responsible for the “construction of more than thirty churches in the Holy Land as well as churches in Rome” (69). Empress Helena and her financial patronage set the precedence for other empresses and wealthy women to fund the construction of other religious institutions. The veneration of icons came to be an important facet of Eastern Orthodoxy through empresses and wealthy women’s advocacy for them. Although