Cleofa Malatesta

1420 – died 1433) was an Italian noblewoman and the wife of Theodore II Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea, brother of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor.

[1] She married Theodore Palaiologos in Mystras on January 21, 1421,[2][3] or sometime in 1422[4] in an arranged marriage that was part of an initiative of her uncle, Pope Martin V, to join Western (Roman Catholic) with Orthodox nobility, who in this way hoped to gain political alliances against the Ottoman Turks.

Yet another piece of music praising Cleofa, the ballata Tra quante regione was composed in the 1420s by Hugo de Lantins to celebrate her marriage to the Byzantine prince.

After some difficult years of marriage, she finally gave in to local pressures and allowed it to be believed that she had converted to the Eastern rite.

Her death was commemorated with speeches by Bessarion, later to become a cardinal in Italy, and in a eulogy written by the eminent Greek neoplatonic philosopher Gemistus Pletho.