The Byzantine Empire was not only the setting for such colossal artistic works as the Basilica of Hagia Sophia. There was a less kind side, present every time an emperor was deposed. The custom, in that case, was to blind the fallen monarch. Irene of Athens (c. 750-802), the first woman to be empress in her own right, took this practice so far that she did not hesitate to apply it to her own son.
Irene arrived in Constantinople very young, in 769, after being chosen to marry Leo IV for reasons that we do not know well, although we can assume that they must have had some connection with her belonging to the aristocratic Sarandapequis family. This lineage, at that time, controlled a large portion of central Greece. Did the imperial family need an ally?
When that young woman from the provinces entered the palace, she was placed in the care of a group of ladies-in-waiting, who took it upon themselves to update her on court protocol. But surely her presence was not well received by some of her in-laws: her husband’s five half-brothers, known as “the Caesars”, excluded from the succession. None of them must have welcomed the birth of the long-awaited heir, the future Constantine VI, with enthusiasm. In the years that followed, they would all engage in enthusiastic plotting for power.
At that time, Byzantium lived in full religious controversy. Leo IV had aligned himself with the iconoclasts, in favor of eliminating religious images. Irene, on the other hand, seems to have secretly practiced the veneration of icons. According to some sources, this would have been, from the beginning, her tendency in matters of faith.
However, the British historian Judith Herrin, her biographer, questions this theory in Women in Purple (Taurus, 2022). In her opinion, it is unlikely that she would have been chosen as the future emperor’s wife if she professed iconodulia. For the iconoclasts, that meant falling into idolatry. Therefore, if Irene had meant herself in this sense, she would have disqualified herself as a would-be empress.
Therefore, the legend that claims that Leo IV stopped sleeping with his wife when he discovered that he did not share his firm iconoclastic convictions is not true. This theory seemed plausible due to the fact that the couple only had one child. Why such short descendants when all the monarchs wanted to ensure the succession with numerous offspring?
Herrin speculates that the Sovereign had some knowledge, however primitive, of how to avoid pregnancy, or that a complication from childbirth prevented her from conceiving again. According to the historian, “her infertility remains a mystery, which cannot be resolved by proposing that Leo IV voluntarily decided not to have sexual relations with her.”
When the emperor died in 780, Constantine VI was still a minor. Irene went on to occupy the regency, with which she had much greater political power. However, now she had to face the threat of her brothers-in-law, “the Caesars”. The greatest of them all, Nicephorus, claimed the throne, but his conspiracy was discovered and crushed.
Nicephorus was punished, like his brothers, with the obligation to become a cleric. That implied that he could not marry and, therefore, he would have no legitimate children to succeed him. The empress, contrary to what her brothers-in-law had supposed, was not a weak woman, but a fearsome enemy who was going to fight for her interests with all her might.
Irene showed that she had an iron hand, not only when defending her son’s rights, but also when facing an extremely complicated international situation in the face of military pressure from other peoples, such as the Arabs or the Bulgarians. Her inexperience played a trick on her here, getting involved in combat on too many fronts at once, which ended with disastrous results.
When it came to governing, he had the support of a team of eunuchs of proven competence. Regarding religious issues, she was conciliatory and tried to overcome the division between iconoclasts and iconodules. It is likely that she, regardless of her theological convictions, wanted to put an end once and for all to an internal confrontation that had considerably worn down the Byzantine forces. We do not know her personal position, but it does seem clear that she used questions of faith as an instrument to reinforce imperial authority.
In theory, as regent, her mission was to be a representative of her son. In practice, he achieved a position of prominence. It is evident, for example, in some coins where it is she, and not Constantine, who wields the sceptre, a symbol of royal authority. In addition, at the Second Council of Nicaea (787) she achieved that her figure had priority over that of the young monarch. He exercised, in practice, all the power and he had no intention of handing it over to a boy who, already at seventeen, was beginning to think that the time had come to rule for himself.
The emperor, anxious to act without restrictions, tried to rebel. He thought it appropriate to remove the eunuch Estauracio, the right hand of Irene, his prime minister. Unfortunately for him, he misjudged the move and ended up humiliated. Her mother ordered her advisers to be stopped, in which she saw some wicked people who sowed discord between her and her son. Determined to give a good lesson, she had Constantine flogged and placed under house arrest. Thereupon, she tried to secure the support of the army.
The maneuver, however, only succeeded in putting Byzantium on the brink of civil war between forces loyal to the empress and those in favor of her son. After a situation of extraordinary tension, the soldiers acclaimed Constantine as sole emperor.
The game seemed to have come to an end. The son had won and his parent, a prisoner, had lost. Or not? She, far from giving up, tried to recover her position as empress. It did not seem like an entirely impossible goal, for the Empire was in inexperienced hands, incapable of achieving the necessary victories against external enemies. Perhaps for this reason, Constantine ended up seeking Irene’s advice and restored her privileged position as empress mother to her.
He made a tremendous mistake: he gave facilities to a woman who continued to aspire to hold power alone, for which he did everything he could to win support with which to isolate him politically.
Finally, on August 19, 797, the Empress made the most drastic decision of her life and ordered her son to be blinded. Until her death five years later, she would reign alone. Although she was female, in legal documents she used her title, basileus, in the masculine. As Judith Herrin says, it seems that her presence on her throne did not cause a particular scandal in the Byzantine world. Although Byzantine society had an indisputable patriarchal nature, Irene has long been winning wills to support herself in government.
In Europe at the time there was only one emperor, the Byzantine. So when Charlemagne assumed the imperial title, Irene felt insulted. However, the sovereign of the Franks negotiated with her a possible marriage. Did he dream of reuniting the two halves of the ancient Roman Empire? It is unclear what actually happened, but it seems that Irene seriously considered her idea, convinced that a powerful ally would help strengthen her position.
In Constantinople, however, the idea that a foreigner could intervene in government affairs aroused deep concern. One of the eunuchs that made it up, Aecio, who had intrigued so that his brother Leo was designated heir, then understands that he will never seize power. That is why he promotes a rebellion against Irene, which will be overthrown without bloodshed and confined to the island of Lesbos, where he will die shortly after.
