Irene: empress, regent, usurper, saint

A Venetian merchant from the thirteenth century, Maurizio Orseolo, stayed in Constantinople because of his trading activities with the Byzantine Empire. For his goods he got paid with jewelry and some silver and gold coins. A woman was depicted on one of the golden coins. Irene, he read to the left of her face. “Who was she?”, he asked his attendant Theophylactos, a high ranking Byzantine officer, knowledgeable in the field of Byzantine history.Maurizio Orseolo and Theophylactos are fictitious names.

“Well, she was a Byzantine empress from the last quarter of the eight century, and a contemporary of the Frankish king Charlemagne. She had a very eventful life: she, an orphan, was - perhaps after a beauty contest - selected as wife and empress for the future emperor Leo IV; after his death she became regent for her son, the later emperor Constantine VI. When Constantine was crowned emperor, she became a powerful empress-mother. Unfortunately, mother and son didn’t go along very well. The result: she overthrew her son and blinded him.”

“So she ruled by herself the Byzantine empire for five years, until she was overthrown herself. The reason was a proposal of Charlemagne and Pope Leo, asking Irene to marry emperor Charlemagne, thus reuniting the two halves of the former Roman empire. Irene appeared to be happy to consent, but the Byzantine bureaucracy shuddered at the idea.”

“Nevertheless, she is also a saint!”, Theophylactos said.