Maria of Alania - Life After Leaving The Throne

Life After Leaving The Throne

After her dethronement and a period at a monastery, Maria lived in the Mangana palace, where she organized "an alternative court" as mother of the co-emperor and mother-in-law designate of the emperor's eldest daughter. Despite being officially a nun and wearing a veil, this transition made little difference to Maria's lifestyle and she continued her usual charitable activities, including donations to the Georgian monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos, and the building of a convent named Kappatha at Jerusalem with her mother Borena. Maria's commanded great wealth and owned the Mangana palace, as well as the Hebdomon Monastery, the burial place of Basil II. She was also patron of numerous literary figures, including Theophylact of Ohrid, future Archbishop of Bulgaria, and a Georgian neo-Platonist John Petrici.

Read more about this topic:  Maria Of Alania

Famous quotes containing the words life, leaving and/or throne:

    School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them.
    Ivan Illich (b. 1926)

    Hilary Clinton’s great sin was that she left the nicely wallpapered domestic sphere with a slam of the door, took up public life on her own, leaving big feminist footprints all over the place, and without so much as an apology.
    Patricia J. Williams (b. 1942)

    I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre.
    George Berkeley (1685–1753)