Saint Irene

Byzantine empress (r. 797-802)

• Born: c. 752
• Birthplace: Athens, Byzantine Empire (now in Greece)
• Died: August 9, 0803
• Place of death: Island of Lesbos, Byzantine Empire (now in Greece)

Irene was the first woman to rule the Christian Roman Empire as sole authority, and she was instrumental in temporarily halting iconoclasm. Her reign saw the emergence of two distinctive European cultures, one centered on Rome and the Atlantic states in the west and the other centered on Constantinople and the east.

Early Life

Historians know little about Irene’s life before her marriage to Leo, crown prince of the Byzantine Empire. Her hometown, Athens, boasted a glorious past, and Irene was well connected with a local family of aristocrats. In Byzantine times, however, Athens had become a rather ordinary port town, and the empire swarmed with notable families eager to marry into the ruling family. A stranger to the capital, Constantinople, Irene was in her mid-twenties and orphaned by her parents and had few clear allies at the court. Whatever qualities brought Irene to wed Leo, she emerged dramatically after his death as a decisive, inspiring, versatile, and occasionally ruthless leader.

Life’s Work

At the time Irene arrived in Constantinople, Emperor Constantine V Copronymus (r. 741-775), found himself preoccupied with three interlocking crises that had bedeviled the realm for decades. First came the strategic threats endangering Byzantium. From the Middle East and North Africa, the armies of the ՙAbbāsid caliphs, holding the banners of Islam, regularly invaded Anatolia and the Mediterranean. To the north, Slavs and Bulgarians menaced the European side. The danger of fighting two enemies on two distant fronts threatened Constantinople with constant encirclement. Second, treacheries within Byzantine forces themselves required unceasing vigilance. Ambitious generals, ethnic and regional animosities, and other conflicts within the ranks required Constantine to keep his troops busy at war or circulating among garrisons. Third, a monumental religious controversy kept the Byzantine state, church, and society in constant turmoil. That struggle was the Iconoclastic Controversy .

Icons are paintings depicting Christ, Christian saints, and Biblical scenes. Illustrated by monks, Eastern Orthodox Christians display icons in churches, homes, monasteries, and public places to remind themselves of God’s presence. They are used in worship, in private devotions, and for educational purposes. Although the use of icons in worship reflected a long-standing practice in Byzantine Christianity, some in the empire viewed them as idolatrous and wanted all icons removed and destroyed. These “icon-breakers” were called iconoclasts; icon defenders were called iconophiles or iconodules. In 726, Emperor Leo III (r. 717-741) ordered the destruction of every icon in the realm. Despite resistance from bishops, monks, and commoners, and even the condemnation of the pope, Leo made iconoclasm official state policy. His son, Constantine V, went even further. At the Council of Heiria (754), he forced Church leaders to declare icons heretical and started a vicious persecution to impose iconoclasm by force. Bishops, priests, monks, and nuns went to jail and into exile; some were blinded, mutilated, or executed. Constantine not only purged the Church of iconophiles but the state and officer corps as well, using iconoclastic reform as a justification to restructure the military. Ironically, however, whether from ignorance or indifference, he missed one significant iconophile within his own household: Irene, his daughter-in-law and wife of his heir. At his death, Constantine left Byzantine secure from outside threats but seething within from his brutality.

Young and insecure, Constantine’s son, Leo IV (r. 775-780), tempered his iconoclasm with caution. Besides the angry factionalism generated by his father, Leo inherited ambitious brothers and uncles ready to challenge him at any misstep. Thus, in 776, with vivid displays of committed support from the generals and hierarchy, he crowned the six-year-old Constantine VI as his heir. Military victories raised his prestige and allowed Leo to make some gestures of reconciliation toward iconophiles throughout the Church and society. Persecution of monks, one of Constantine V’s most controversial policies, ceased. How Irene’s affection for icons and monastics played in Leo’s moderation went unrecorded. In 780, Leo and Irene broke over the volatile issue of iconoclasm, a break both public and nasty. The emperor discovered that several courtiers had smuggled icons into the palace for Irene’s private devotions. Always alert for potential conspiracies (as any emperor had to be), the queen’s subterfuge enraged him. He had the courtiers whipped in the streets, jailed several iconodule clergy, rebuked Irene, and banished her from his personal quarters. Then, that September, Leo contracted a sudden fever and died. Irene was now empress.

Instead of stepping quietly aside as most Byzantine queens had done, Irene declared herself regent for the child Constantine VI and pointedly reminded courtiers, nobles, clergy, and soldiers of their recent oaths. Because Constantine was only ten, Irene could also entitle herself coemperor. Even before the end of 780, conspirators concocted a scheme to depose Irene and Constantine in favor of Leo’s brother, Nicephorus. The empress responded with speed and theatrics. She arrested all five of Leo’s brothers and compelled them to become priests, thereby barring them for life from the throne. Energetic and decisive, her enemies completely off balance, Irene began salting her supporters throughout state service and within the officer corps. Resounding victories in the Balkans and a truce with Muslims in Anatolia strengthened her domestic hand as well. All these successes steeled her resolve to launch a political, religious, and cultural revolution greater than any war the destruction of iconoclasm.

The official restoration of icon veneration in the Orthodox Church required careful but deliberate action. Irene sensed that devotion to the spirituality that icons embodied remained broad and deep throughout the Byzantine Empire, despite the violent intimidation of the clergy, the bureaucracy, and the public by three consecutive iconoclast emperors. The iconodules were cowed but not converted. Letters to Pope Adrian I, a militant opponent of iconoclasm, indicated that Rome and the Latin churches would happily join in a council to endorse a return of the icons. Still, more than fifty years of imperial religious policy could not be repudiated overnight. Therefore, the empress waited several years, steadily replacing high-level iconoclasts with loyal iconophiles and phasing out enforcement of anti-icon regulations.

In 786, Irene and Constantine inaugurated the Council of Constantinople with the intention of reversing the 754 Council of Heiria. The Council of Constantinople declared iconoclasm a heresy and made icon imagery standard again in the eastern churches. However, mobs of soldiers and others opposed to Irene broke into the conference, set off street protests, and forced her to cancel the council. Undaunted, Irene rotated loyal troops and officers into the more manageable city of Nicaea while eliminating intractable iconoclasts and disgruntled soldiers. The next year, in the autumn of 787, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea gave Irene what she wanted. More than 350 bishops as well as attending priests, monks, and civil servants declared iconoclasm a heresy and made icon veneration again a legitimate expression of Christian worship. The only real dissent at the council came from a minority of iconophiles who wanted the defeated iconoclast clergy treated as criminals and punished severely. These irreconcilables resented Irene’s merciful declaration that, after due submission and repentance, former iconoclasts would remain in holy orders and even keep their posts.

Despite their cooperation at Nicaea, Irene’s and Constantine’s position soured rapidly. Constantine reached his maturity in the same year of the holding of the second Nicene council. However, a proposed marriage between Constantine and Rotrude, daughter of Frankish and Lombardian king (and later Holy Roman Emperor) Charlemagne, fell through despite Irene’s efforts, and he married instead a local nobleman’s granddaughter. On top of that embarrassment, military reverses in Anatolia, Bulgaria, and Italy eroded Byzantine prestige. Finally, Irene clearly had no intention of respecting the tradition to step aside so the adolescent Constantine might become sole emperor. In 790, a dispute between Irene and Constantine over a courtier escalated into a showdown between the two, and Byzantine generals forced a solution. They made Constantine VI sole emperor but allowed his deposed mother rooms at the palace instead of exile, prison, or worse. Totally inept and incompetent, Constantine brought his mother back as coruler two years later.

However, mistrust and paranoia between Constantine and Irene continued to polarize both state and military, with Constantine increasingly coming off the loser. His wars in Bulgaria were unsuccessful. When dissident soldiers tried a second time to raise his priest-uncle Nicephorus to the throne in 793, Constantine had Nicephorus blinded and his other uncles mutilated. Troops throughout Anatolia mutinied and the revolt went on another year. What role Irene played in these affairs is unclear, but blame fell entirely on her son. In 795, Constantine abandoned his first wife to marry his mistress, an act that made the emperor the head of Byzantine Christendom an adulterer under Orthodox canon law. Compounding frictions with the Church, the emperor increasingly displayed pro-iconoclast sympathies, attitudes guaranteed to horrify his mother. In June, 797, perhaps appalled over Constantine’s reckless incompetence or just unable to contain her ambition, Irene and her supporters staged a coup. They captured her son, imprisoning him in the palace. On August 15, in the same room in which he was born, the plotters blinded Constantine. Traumatized, abandoned, and shut away, Constantine died shortly thereafter. Irene was now sole ruler of Byzantium and surrounded by dangers. New conspiracies arose from the male partisans of Leo’s family. Defeats in the Balkans and Anatolia sharpened the dangers created by mutinies. The support of the Church and the public vacillated. Iconoclasm was not dead, female rule had no legal precedent, and horror at a mother complicit in the murder of her own son unleashed waves of revulsion despite disgust at Constantine’s character.

Ever determined, Irene moved briskly. She insisted on the title emperor, not empress. She cut taxes and tariffs, raised salaries, and stimulated trade. Irene became a lavish patron of the churches and monasteries, founding schools for training clergy and civil servants. Protection money to buy off Bulgarian chieftains and Muslim invaders kept the peace. Conspiracies were crushed ruthlessly, but executions kept to a minimum. Irene’s prestige nonetheless eroded. Financial burdens resulting from her personal largesse and tax concessions merged with the humiliating weight of tributes paid to foreign enemies, creating a profound economic and military crisis. At some time in 799, she contracted an unknown illness that debilitated her legendary stamina. Her weariness provoked another plot that she barely managed to contain. An unexpected challenge from abroad came in 800 Charlemagne’s coronation as Roman emperor.

Charlemagne and Irene had bumped heads before, when Charlemagne blocked the marriage of his daughter to Constantine VI in 787. Then, involving himself in religious issues, he denounced both the Council of Heiria and the second Nicene council, often in language that alarmed Pope Adrian and flirted with iconoclasm. Charlemagne belittled the Byzantine emperors as “mere kings” and declared that no woman (in this case, Irene) could lawfully rule a state or preside over religious councils. In 794, despite Pope Adrian’s strenuous efforts to talk him out of it, Charlemagne staged his Council of Frankfurt and had more harsh words for the Byzantines. Thus, when Pope Leo III crowned him emperor on Christmas Day, 800, the implications for the Byzantine Empire and for Irene were chilling Charlemagne now seemed to claim the leadership of Christian Europe.

Instead of confrontation, however, emissaries between Charlemagne and Irene raised the idea of reconciliation through marriage. Their union would unite political Christendom, strengthen both rulers against domestic enemies, and settle a vast range of frictions between Rome and Constantinople. Irene, whether from inspiration, desperation, or romantic motives, apparently favored the proposal; her courtiers, clergy, and officers did not. In October, 802, as Charlemagne’s representatives prepared to discuss marriage details with Irene’s people, the plotters occupied the palace and arrested the empress. Poised in defeat, Irene accepted her overthrow without resistance. The new emperor, Nicephorus I (r. 802-811) exiled her to a convent on the island of Lesbos, where, in 803, she died.

Significance

Assessing Irene is controversial. In general, she has received usually positive acclaim for her joint reign with Constantine VI, especially for her handling of religious conflicts and military affairs. Nonetheless, iconoclasm enjoyed a resurgence for several decades until eliminated decisively in 843 by another iconophile empress, Theodora. Her reign also marked the accelerated separation of western Europe from eastern Europe, most notably in the creation of a distinctive and independent imperial state by Charlemagne.

Byzantine Emperors: Syrian (Isaurian) Line, 717-802

Reign

• Emperor

717-718

• Sulaimān and ՙUmar II lay siege to Constantinople

717-741

• Leo III the Isaurian (the Syrian)

726-843

• Iconoclastic Controversy

741-775

• Constantine V Copronymus

754

• Ravenna lost to Lombards

775-780

• Leo IV the Khazar

780-797

• Constantine VI

786-809

• Reign of Hārūn al-Rashīd

787

• Council at Nicaea sanctions icons

797-802

• Saint Irene (regent, 780-790)

800

• Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne as emperor

Bibliography

Garland, Lynda. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, A.D. 527-1204. New York: Routledge, 1999. Explores the history of the empresses of the Byzantine Empire. Includes a chapter on Irene. Map, extensive bibliography, index.

Herrin, Judith. Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. Studies women in Byzantine politics. Includes a chapter on Irene. Maps, extensive bibliography, and index.

James, Liz. Empresses and Power in Early Byzantium. New York: Leicester University Press, 2001. Surveys the governmental and political history of the reigns of empresses of early Byzantium, setting the stage for Irene’s time.

Norwich, John Julius. Byzantium: The Early Centuries. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994. First of a three-volume history of Byzantium. Pages 366-382 focus on Irene, but the author’s depiction is harsh and unflattering.

Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State. Translated by Joan Hussey. Rev. ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969. A classic English-language Byzantine history. Comprehensive study of the empire from the early fourth to the mid-fifteenth century.

Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997. A lucid depiction of political, military, cultural, and religious contexts for Irene’s life and work.

Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. A history of the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church. Maps, bibliography, and index.