Theodora Doukaina (), renamed Anna (1058– after 1075), was a Byzantine princess and dogaressa.
Life Born in Constantinople, Theodora Doukaina was the second daughter of Byzantine emperor Constantine X Doukas by his second wife, Eudokia Makrembolitissa. After 1071 she became the wife of Domenico Selvo, Doge of Venice, who received the title of protoproedros at the occasion.
As she is mentioned as alive in the work of Michael Psellos (1075), it is assumed she died after this last date. It is not known if she had children, and she is not mentioned otherwise.
Confusion with Maria Argyropoulina Peter Damian, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, wrote a chapter entitled "De Veneti ducis uxore quae prius nimium delicata, demum toto corpore computruit" ("Of the Venetian Doge's wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away.") about an unnamed Byzantine princess whose manners"she scorned even to wash herself in common water, obliging her servants instead to collect the dew that fell from the heavens for her to bathe in. Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. Her rooms, too, were so heavy with incense and various perfumes (...)" (Damianus as cited by ) he considered scandalously lavish and which brought to her a horrible death as a divine punishment.
This woman has been mistakenly (since Damian died 1072) identified with Domenico Selvo's wife by later Venetian chroniclers (incl. Andrea Dandolo and Marino Sanuto the Younger) followed afterwards by various modern authors;such as Romanin (Storia documentata di Venezia), Molmenti (la Dogaressa), Staley (The Dogaressas of Venice), Kretschmayr, Henisch (Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society), Pertusi (Venezia e Bisanzio) etc however since the work in which Damianus' chapter is contained is dated ca 1059 it refers probably to Maria Argyropoulina who had died a half century before.Hodgson, p.192Nicol, pp.46-47
Notes
Bibliography
Hodgson, Francis Cotterell. The Early History of Venice: From the Foundation to the Conquest of Constantinople, A.D. 1204. G. Allen, 1901. pp. 191–192 ()
Works confusing Theodora and Maria Henisch, Bridget Ann (1976), Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society Staley, Edgcumbe (c1910), The Dogaressas of Venice