What’s in a name?

“A saint, after she blinded her son?”, Maurizio exclaimed, while he was looking at the golden coin and contemplating. “Irene (ΕΙΡΙΝΗ), a beautiful name, which literally means ‘bringer of peace’ . She didn’t always bring peace to the Byzantine empire!?”, Maurizio said. ‘No, there were a lot of wars being fought”, explained Theophylactos.

“However, she is remembered for one big achievement. Within the Byzantine church there was a conflict going on about the veneration of statues and icons. There were church officials, but also army officers who wanted to destroy all statues and icons of saints, so that the people couldn't worship them anymore. But other people argued that an icon is not an end, but a means of venerating God or saints. Irene ended this sixty years of ‘iconomachy’, that tore the empire apart.”Historical facts based on Garland , L., Byzantine empresses, woman and power in Byzantium ad 527-1204 (London 1999) and Kotsis, K., ‘Defining Female Authority in Eighth-Century Byzantium: The Numismatic Images of the Empress Irene (797–802)’, Journal of Late Antiquity 5:1 (2012) 185-215. Moreover, there is a Greek document about her holy life, a so-called vita, in the library of the Vatican, dating from the eleventh century, namely BHG 2205 (or Vat.Gr.2014). BHG stands for Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca

“But how did she do that?”, asked Maurizo. “Like emperor Constantine the Great”, Theophylactos continued, “Irene organized a Council in Nicea with all dignitaries of the church in 787. As a reward she was declared a saint in the Byzantine church.”

“Irene wasn’t just a name with a meaning”, continued Theophylactus. “This empress uses her name as the personification of peace. She wanted to bring peace to this country: that’s the message she wants to convey to us.”Kotsis, K., ‘Defining Female Authority in Eighth-Century Byzantium: The Numismatic Images of the Empress Irene (797–802)’, Journal of Late Antiquity 5:1 (2012) 200-201

‘I see that there is also another name on the coin: basilissa. What does that mean?’, asked Maurizio.