Teodora Petralifina di Arta e la propaganda agiografico-politica nel Despotato d'Epiro

Theodora Petraliphina, scion of a prominent Byzantine lineage from Macedonia, married despot Michael II Doukas of Epirus (1230-1267/1268 ca.) in the early 1230s. Except for five years during which she was temporarily abandoned by her husband and left wandering in the Epirote countryside, Theodora assisted Michael II in the government of the Despotate until the latter’s death and, together with him, founded several churches and monasteries throughout the country. The despotissa spent her widowhood as a nun in the monastery of St. George, in the city of Arta, where she was buried after her death in odour of sanctity. Theodora’s relics soon became an object of veneration by the local population and, during the following decades, the ruling family, as well as the city’s aristocracy, tried to foster her canonization through the embellishment of the church and by promoting the completion of her hagiography. The recognition of Theodora’s sanctity within the Despotate and in the Byzantine world was surely a matter of prestige for the dynasty and the archons of Arta, but also reflected the changes that occurred in the political ideology backing the Epirote monarchy. As the dream of recovering Constantinople was gone with the conquest made by Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259-1282), the despots needed to justify the existence of their realm in a different way and they did it mostly by emphasising the deeds of their ancestors and the nobility of their lineage. Presumably they believed that creating a dynastic saint like Theodora would have produced a useful tool for their political propaganda.