Anna Notaras

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Anna Notaras (Greek Άννα Νοταρά) was the daughter of Loukas Notaras, the last Megas Doux of the Byzantine Empire. She left Constantinople between 1440. and 1449. and went to Rome with her two sisters, so she avoided fall of Constantinople and massacre of her family^[1]. In Italy, with the fortune her father had wisely invested abroad, she became the center of the Byzantine expatriate community in Venice. She established, with two others (Nikolaos Vlastos and Zacharias Kalliergis), one of the very first printing presses for Greek books in Venice (in 1499). A patron of arts she was one of the co-founders of the first Greek typing press in Venice. In their corespondence with her, council of Siena referred to her as widow of the last byzantine emperor Constantine XI (1449—1453), but it wasn't true, since it has no mentionig of it in any other contemporary source, especially in writings of George Sphrantzes,his chancellor.

[edit] References and notes

• The Immortal Emperor, by Prof. Donald M. Nicol.
• The Fall of Constantinople 1453, by Sir James Cochran Stevenson (Steven) Runciman.
• Short Biographical Lexicon of Byzantine Academics Immigrants to Western Europe, by Fotis Vassileiou, Barbara Saribalidou.
• Byzantium: Decline and Fall & A Short History of Byzantium, by John J. Cooper, the 2nd Viscount Norwich.

[edit] See also

• Byzantine scholars in Renaissance