Maria Lekapene: Empress of the Bulgarians: Neither a Saint Nor a Malefactress

The book presents the biography of Maria, daughter of Christopher Lekapenos (the eldest son of emperor Romanos I). For about 35 years, she was the tsaritsa of the Bulgarians at the side of her husband, Tsar Peter (927-969). Her character is but dimly visible in the sources; interestingly, the few sources that do mention her are almost exclusively of Byzantine provenance. Most scholars who have dealt with her life-usually as a side note to studies on Peter’s reign-saw in her a representative of the interests of Constantinople and a propagator of Byzantine culture. Some have gone so far as to call her a Byzantine agent at the Bulgarian court. In this book, the first monograph on Maria ever to have been written, Miros?aw J. Leszka and Zofia A. Brzozowska construct a balanced narrative of the tsaritsa’s life and her role in tenth-century Bulgaria through meticulous analysis of primary sources, putting aside biases. The publication is supplemented by a translation of the fragments of the Hellenic and Roman Chronicle of the second redaction devoted to Maria and Peter.