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The Empress Irene the Athenian
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2022
Extract
In these days of women’s liberation it must be a matter of satisfaction for the ladies of Athens to reflect that during the long Byzantine period the two most eminent native-born Athenians were both of them women. There was, in the early days, the scholar Athenai’s who became the pious empress Eudocia, and, in the high Byzantine era, Irene, the first woman in recorded European history to reign as a sovereign monarch. It is Irene whom I wish to discuss, as I think that she has been rather shabbily treated by historians. Her reign was a period of ecclesiastical, constitutional, diplomatic and economic importance, with herself at the centre of it all. Yet, so far as I know, no one has ever published a monograph on her or on her reign or given it more than cursory treatment. It must be admitted that the reason for this is not disapproval or contempt for the empress, but simply the inadequacy of the source material. Apart from the seventh oecumenical council, which is fully documented, the events of the reign are covered by one original source only, the Chronographia of Theophanes.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978
References
Bibliographical Note
The only original source that deals at all fully with the reign of the empress Irene is the chronicle of Theophanes. Theophanes had his strong prejudices, against the iconoclasts and, later, against Irene’s successor, Nicephorus. But he was a conscientious and, as far as one can tell, a reliable recorder of facts. With regard to Irene he was writing about what had occurred in his own lifetime. His attitude towards her was a trifle equivocal but honest. He approved of her religious policy but was uncomfortable about her ambition and her dealings with her son. He can be accepted as a dependable witness for the reign. There are further references to the reign in the Lives of Theophanes, of the future patriarch Nicephorus I and of Theodore the Studite, and in Theodore’s early letters. None of them add very much to our knowledge. Later chroniclers all follow Theophanes.
The proceedings of the seventh oecumenical council are given fully in Mansi’s Concilia, volume 13, and are well summarised in Hefele’s Histoire des Conciles, edited by Ledere, volume 3, chapter 2. Such of the Acts and official documents of the reign as have survived are given in Zachariae von Lingenthal’s Jus Graeco-Romanum, volume 3, in Dolger’s Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des Oströmischen Reiches, volume 1, (nos 339-59), and in Grumel, Les Regestes des Actes du Patriarchat de Constantinople, volume 2. For the wars on the eastern frontier the most useful Arabic chronicler is Tabari, who wrote about a century later but copied earlier chronicles. For Charlemagne’s coronation and its relation to Byzantium there is a useful discussion in P. Charanis, Studies on the Demography of the Byzantine Empire, (Variorum Reprints) chapter 22, which summarises the various views of historians on the question. There is no satisfactory study of Irene’s economic policy, though her successor’s counter-policy has been much discussed. See Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine Empire, trans Hussey, pp 166-8. I think that no one has tried to understand Irene’s aims.
1 Tonsured in this context means the shaving off of the beard, not a monastic tonsure.
2 The ‘Penaiotikoi’ troops were the European troops, not (as Bury and others have supposed) the Asiatic.