Cleofa Malatesta

Cleofa Malatesta da Pesaro (also Cleofe, Cleopa or Cleopha) (fl. 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. She was a daughter of Malatesta dei Sonetti, Count of Pesaro, and Elisabetta da Varano. She married Theodore Palaiologos in Mystras on January 21, 1421, or sometime in 1422 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.