Anna Notaras was the daughter of the last Megas Doux of Constantinople, Loukas Notaras. Her father is remembered both for his court rivalry with George Sphrantzes and his opposition to Emperor Constantine’s policy of ‘reuniting’ (subverting) the Orthodox church with the Latin church – better the Turkish Turban than the Latin Mitre – he is said to have proclaimed but he was clearly under no illusions as to what the Turkish Turban in his city would actually mean.
It is often claimed that Anna was placed in Italy before the fall by her father, along with much of his wealth, but this is incorrect. There was a substantial Notaras fortune held mostly at the Bank of St George in Genoa but also some in Venice at this time but it was the grandfather of Anna - Nicholas Notaras - who put it there. Nicholas was a merchant of some renown who developed close business ties with the Genoese in the early decades of the 15th century. He was granted Genoese citizenship - a crucial point later for Anna and her sisters. His son Loukas does not appear to have dabbled in business but stuck to politics. The capital sums in Italy were not added to following Nicholas's death, but nor were they drawn upon. It appears the Notaras family kept their Italian nest egg as a rainy day fund.
It makes little sense to suppose Loukas Notaras would send his daughter Anna off to Italy alone before the fall. Politically it would have appeared very badly for the figure-head of Anti-Unionism to be openly stashing his children with the Latins. It would also have shown a lack of confidence in the ability of his Basileus and the city walls in diffusing the crisis.
The other reason we can be pretty sure Anna did not arrive in Italy before 1453 is her absence from the extensive legal documentation that grew up in the last months of that year and the subsequent two over the claims on the Notaras assets frozen within the bank. Once the fate of the megas doux was made public in Italy (in quite exaggerated style by Nicholas Sagundino, first in Venice in December 1453, then in Rome the same month, then Naples in January 1454), several legal cases were brought by claimants who said they were creditors of Loukas Notaras, seeking payment of debts. The fact that the Notaras family had both Genoese and Venetian citizenship and the size of the fortune caused those governments to become involved. Thus we see orders for ambassadors to Adrianople to ascertain the fate of the children and we see later correspondence talking of two daughters and a son (these being Maria, Theodora and Jacob). There is mention of another sister trying to ransom them (and this can only be Helena). There is no word of Anna. If she had been in Italy, firstly she would have surely begun drawing on the assets in Genoa (presumably prior to the summer of 1453) and secondly there would have been mention of her in at least one of the discussions on the frozen assets but there is not. She is entirely off the historical radar from 1453 until surfacing in Italy in 1459.
Thierry Ganchou, Byzantine Historian at the Sorbonne, is of the belief that Anna was probably sent out of the city shortly before the siege began but rather than Italy it was a refuge closer to home. Her elder sister Helena had married into the Gattilusio of Ainos, just along the Marmara coast. As tribute payers to the Ottoman sultans, Ainos was spared from attack (until 1456 but that is another story). If Ganchou is correct, then Anna and her sister Helena would then have been working in tandem to secure the release of Maria and Theodora (achieved in 1456 at the cost of 700 ducats). Helena was drive out of Ainos in 1456 by her brother-in-law and when she sought help from Mehmed II, he used it as a pretext to capture the city for himself. At this point, we can only presume Helena and her sisters headed for Italy - where the case of their family fortune was coming to a conclusion.
Another tantalizing possibility is that Anna was still in the city during the siege and somehow escaped in the collapse. This might at first appear fanciful but Byzantine historian Nevra Necipoglu mentions a record of 2 people named Notaras listed on the passenger manifest of a Genoese ship that escaped on that final fatal morning. Could one of them have been Anna?
Whatever the truth of her movements in those years, we know that she ended up in Italy (Rome at first and later Venice) and that the great Notaras fortune came into her control. Unlike some of the other surviving Byzantine nobles, such as Constantine’s wastrel brother Thomas Palaiologos, she did not spend her exile squandering it. Instead, Anna Notaras became a pillar of the Greek exile community.
Venice embraced a great many of Constantinople’s refugees but with only a pragmatic warmth. The Republic, now painfully aware of the growing threat the Turks posed to their own interests, was quick to use Greek and Albanian stradiots in its long war from 1463 to 1479 and the rollcall of these mercenaries reads like a who’s who of late-Byzantine noble houses but within la Serenissima, the Venetians were less keen on overt Greek-identity, in particular the Orthodox church which was the very core of Byzantine identity.
It was Anna who petitioned the Republic to allow the construction of an Orthodox church within Venice (something not granted until 1539) and when the Council of Ten prevaricated, it was Anna who badgered them into a compromise. She was granted permission to build an oratory within her own sizable Casa and hold Orthodox services within it from 1475. There the flame of Greek Orthodoxy in Venice flickered until San Giorgio dei Greci was finally built, almost a hundred years after the fall. To this day, three of its treasured icons were gifted to it from the estate of Anna Notaras, who had brought them with her from Constantinople.
Anna’s efforts did not end with her preservation of her religion. It is believed she was a close friend of Cardinal Bessarion, perhaps – as historian Donald Nicol speculates – it was into Bessarion’s care that the young Anna was first placed by her father in 1453. Bessarion is rightly famous for the hoard of Classical Greek manuscripts and books in his collection (donated in 1468 to the people of Venice). Anna too played an important role in the preservation and dissemination of ancient knowledge salvaged from the fires of her city. In 1470 she acquired a 12th century manuscript Catena of Job written for the Grand Duke of Cyprus.
Later, in 1499, the first exclusively Greek printing press in Venice began operation under the direction of Zacharis Kalliergis. The first product off the press was the Etymologiucum Magnum and the dedication at the front thanks the ‘most modest lady Anna, daughter of…Loukas Notaras’ who had defrayed its cost. Nicholas Vlastos is often credited with patronising the Greek printing presses of Venice but Vlastos was the factor of Anna Notaras – he was merely an agent for the noble, wealthy lady.
Her work towards preserving the Byzantine / Greek identity through the first turbulent decades of its exile extended beyond the academic and religious sphere to the material as well. Another of her projects was an attempt to create a self-ruled Byzantine colony within Italy. In around 1472 she began negotiations with the Commune of Siena to take possession of the old castle of Montauto and the lands surrounding it.
A draft contract was made which allowed Anna to oversee 100 Greek families in a self-governing community. It is unclear exactly why the project never progressed beyond this point but one point of interest from the negotiations is the fact that Anna is referred to as Anna Notaras Paleologina and from this grew the legend that she had been betrothed to the last Emperor. In reality, the styling in the contractual document was likely a political ploy to give the commune the polish of imperial legitimacy.
She never married, nor became a nun – a somewhat unusual position for a woman of that era but given her wealth she had no material need to make a marriage and appears to have enjoyed her independence. The Byzantine scholar Thierry Ganchou makes a persuasive case that her reticence to marry might have stemmed from the fact any potential husband would be a step-down from the Byzantine Emperor she had once been promised to. Ganchou is one who does not dismiss the possibility that Loukas Notaras did intend his youngest daughter to marry Constantine XI, even if a formal betrothal is never recorded by the court chronicler, George Sphrantzes. It is certainly worth noting that her lack of husband in 1453, when her older siblings had already been married off, raises questions.
Like her father, Anna appears to have been fiercely loyal to her Greek faith and refused to even learn Latin much less recognise the church union, a point noted by one diarist at her death in 1507. There are no firm dates for her birth, but she would have been at least seventy years old and had outlived not only the other notable exiles of her era but the bane of her youth, Mehmed II. Her achievements demonstrate that men and institutions in fifteenth century Italy were capable of working with and indeed for women under certain circumstances.
Much of what we know of her stems from the several legal cases she undertook in Venice against her sister-in-law (Zabeta). Among other complaints, she accused Zabeta of stealing a prized copy of Petrach which had been autographed by Thomas Palaiologos.
Her achievements in the fields of politics, religion, book printing were noteworthy by the standards of anyone in that era, the fact they were achieved despite the social disadvantages of her sex suggest she was a woman of quite extraordinary character.
