Anna Notaras

Anna Notaras (Greek Ἄννα Νοταρᾶ; died 8 July 1507) was the daughter of Loukas Notaras, the last Megas Doux of the Byzantine Empire.

She left Constantinople prior to fall of Constantinople in 1453, settling in Rome and avoiding the massacre of her family. 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 first printing presses for Greek books in Venice (in 1499).

In their correspondence with her, the council of Siena referred to her as widow of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI (1449—1453), but this was untrue. There is no mention of such a marriage in any other contemporary source, especially in the writings of George Sphrantzes, his chancellor.

References

• The Immortal Emperor, by Donald Nicol.
• The Fall of Constantinople 1453, by Steven Runciman.
• Short Biographical Lexicon of Byzantine Academics Immigrants to Western Europe, by Fotis Vassileiou, Barbara Saribalidou.

Further reading

• Klaus-Peter Matschke, "The Notaras Family and Its Italian Connections", Dumbarton Oaks Papers: Symposium on Byzantium and the Italians, 13th-15th Centuries, 49 (1995), pp. 59-72.
• Silvia Ronchey, Un aristocratica Byzantina in fuga: Anna Notaras Paleologina. online copy at Academia.edu