THE MOST PIOUS IRENE
The revolution which drove Martina from the palace set upon the throne
a boy of eleven, Constans II. The wife whom he afterwards brought to
share his splendour, and by whom he had three children, is not known
to us even by name. We know only that when his crimes, or violent
indiscretions, had rendered him so unpopular that he passed to Sicily,
he sent for his wife and children. The Senators, however, had no mind
to see the Court transferred to Italy. They detained the Empress and
her children, and, as the life of Constans was shortly afterwards ended
by his bath-attendant felling him with a soap-dish, the unknown Empress
sank into complete obscurity.
His son and successor, Constantine IV., had so clear a title to the
charge of brutality that no historian has ventured to dispute it, and
we will trust that the Empress Anastasia, whose features and character
are unknown to us, did not greatly lament the loss of a consort who
could slit the noses of his royal brothers and castrate a noble youth
for deploring the execution of his father. Nor can we think that she
was happier under the reign of his son, Justinian II., since the only
reference to her in the chronicle of his reign is that his favourite
minister, a Persian eunuch, had her flogged in the sacred palace on
one occasion. Her third and last appearance in history is even more
tragic; but a new and quaint type of Empress meantime enters the scene,
and in order to explain her arrival we must glance for a moment at the
adventures of Justinian II.
Attaining the purple at the age of sixteen, Justinian seems at first
to have sinned chiefly by the very natural blunder, in a young man,
of admitting corrupt and extortionate ministers. A usurper then took
advantage of his unpopularity to dislodge him from the throne, and sent
him, with diminished nose, into exile at Cherson, on the Black Sea.
Within a year Justinian had the satisfaction of hearing that his enemy
had been forced by a new usurper to retire, also with diminished nose,
into the tranquil shade of a monastery, and he proposed to regain his
throne. The authorities of Cherson, however, decided to conciliate the
new Emperor, Tiberius III., by sending Justinian to him in chains,
and he fled to the land of the Khazars, who dwelt on the other side
of the Black Sea. The Khazars were a wild Asiatic people, akin to the
Huns, whose manners had been somewhat softened by contact with the
Byzantine civilization, and their king, or _chagan_, not only received
the fugitive with cordiality, but bestowed on him the hand of his royal
daughter.
Theodora--a name conferred on her, no doubt, by Justinian in memory
of the consort of his great predecessor Justinian I.--can hardly
have boasted much beauty, being a Khazar, but she was not without
spirit and character. She presently learned that her father had been
bribed by Tiberius to surrender Justinian, and she warned him of his
danger. Sending, in succession, for the two high officials who had
been charged to arrest him, Justinian strangled them with his own
hands and fled to Bulgaria, leaving his wife and infant daughter in
the care of her father, who very amiably sheltered them. Within a year
the faithful Theodora learned that she was mistress of the mighty city
of the Greeks. Justinian had offered the hand of his daughter, then
one year old, and some more solid advantages to the King of Bulgaria
in exchange for an army, had laid siege to Constantinople, and had,
with a few soldiers, crept through the water-conduit into the town
and taken it. The appalling vengeance he wrought on his enemies and
on the inhabitants, even to the babies, of Cherson may be read in
history. It is, comparatively, an amiable trait in his character that
he did not forget the yellow-skinned princess who had lightened the
dark hours of his exile. She was brought with great pomp to the city,
bringing two children to their truculent father, was crowned Empress,
and enjoyed for a few years the undreamt-of splendour of the imperial
palaces. Happily, she did not live to see the end of her husband’s
savage vengeance. When a storm had threatened the life of Justinian on
the Black Sea, his companions had urged him to disarm the divine wrath
by forgiving his enemies. “If I spare them, may God drown me here,” he
had replied, with more vigour than elegance. His orgy was closed by the
inevitable assassination.
We catch a third and last glimpse of the Empress Anastasia at this
point. The brood of Justinian was to be exterminated, and soldiers went
to the palace of Blachernæ in search of Theodora’s boy. When they burst
into the chapel they found the aged grandmother sitting, on guard,
before the sanctuary. The six-year-old boy clung to the altar with one
hand, and held a fragment of the “true cross” in the other, while his
neck was loaded with the most sacred relics. But Byzantine piety was of
a peculiar nature. The soldiers brushed aside the old lady, stripped
the boy of his relics, took him out to the gate, and “cut his throat
like a sheep.”
Three Emperors followed in six years, and came to violent ends. Then
Leo the Isaurian (717–740) came upon the throne, and inaugurated the
famous crusade of the Iconoclasts, or breakers of images. His wife
Maria is known to us only as having received the title of Empress in
718, as a reward for bringing Constantine Copronymus into the world,
and having scattered gold from her litter among the people as she
was borne to St Sophia for the baptism of that ill-regulated infant.
Another Asiatic princess then comes faintly into view, when, in his
fourteenth or fifteenth year, Constantine marries a Khazar king’s
daughter. The religious chroniclers would have us believe that she
was endowed with much learning and piety, but the only ground of this
remarkable claim is that she did not agree with her husband, as few
women did, about the propriety of breaking the Virgin’s statues. After
eighteen years of patient expectation she ushered a feeble infant,
Leo IV., into the distracted Empire, and quitted it herself shortly
afterwards. The Empress Maria succeeded to her place in the arms of
Constantine in 750, and in 757 she left that very doubtful felicity
to the Empress Eudocia. Eudocia was pious and fertile: it is all that
we know of her. Nearing her first delivery she summoned the holy nun,
Anthusa--whom her husband had had publicly stripped and whipped a short
time before--and, in virtue of her prayers, presented Constantine with
a son and daughter, simultaneously, shortly afterwards. Four other
boys followed, and Eudocia, having behaved as a good Empress ought and
furnished no material to the biographer, followed her two predecessors.
Meantime the famous Irene had entered the story of Byzantine life,
and once more we are in a position to make a satisfactory study of
Byzantine feminism. In the year 768, seven years before the death of
Constantine V., Constantinople was delighted with a succession of
festivities. On 1st April Eudocia was, after ten years of industrious
maternal activity, crowned Empress, or Augusta, in the “banquet-room
of nineteen tables,” with its golden roof and golden vessels, in the
palace. On the following day, which was Easter Sunday, her eldest
sons, Christopher and Nicephorus, were made Cæsars, and her third son,
Nicetas, received the heavy title of _nobilissimus_ (“most noble”),
which gave the six-year-old boy a gold-embroidered mantle and a slender
jewelled crown; so that the procession to church was headed by two
Emperors, Constantine and young Leo, two Cæsars, and a “most noble,”
all flinging gold and silver among the enchanted mob. But Leo was now
approaching his twentieth year and must marry. The idea was mooted
first of asking the hand of the daughter of Pepin the Frank, but it is
said that the Western Christians frowned on the Kensitite heresy of
the Eastern Court. So Constantine then resolved to seek a beautiful
and eligible lady within his own dominions, and it was announced in
the late summer that the prize had been awarded to Irene, the pride of
Athens.
Irene was then a beautiful, talented and spirited girl of seventeen
summers. As she had, apparently, no ancestors, and as Athens had become
at that time a drowsy and almost obscure provincial town, we must
suppose that--as she herself afterwards acted--imperial commissioners
had been sent far and wide to examine candidates for the vacancy.
Irene’s radiant Greek beauty, robust health, and lively intelligence
pleased the officials; an imperial galley brought her to the palace
of Hieria, on the Asiatic side; her qualifications were found to be
adequate. There was one difficulty, and Irene gave early proof of her
skill in casuistry in surmounting it. Not only was Irene a woman--and
all women were on the side of the Virgin--but Athens was conservative
in religion. Constantine demanded an oath, and Irene, with a large
“mental reservation,” to use the elegant phrase of the experts in such
matters, swore on the holy cross that she would not favour the worship
of images.
Her story will turn largely on the question of Iconoclasm, and a
few words on the subject may be useful. The real origin of Leo the
Isaurian’s zeal against statues is obscure. Historians suggest the
influence of the purer religion of Mohammed, but there was no cultural
contact of Mohammedanism and Christianity, and an Isaurian soldier
would hardly be the man to experience it if there were. When we find
that the Iconoclasts went on to reject relics and monasticism and treat
the Virgin in very cavalier fashion, I suggest that it was a Protestant
or Rationalist movement, a spontaneous protest against the excessive
superstition, clerical wealth and monastic parasitism of the time. It
took strong root in the army; and we may assume that the permission
to rifle wealthy churches, rather than any leaning to metaphysics,
explains this zeal for advanced theology among the troops. Constantine,
like his father, pressed the reform ferociously; and as monks and
women were the chief recalcitrants, he fell upon the monks with grim
determination. Their beards were oiled and fired: they were gathered in
masses with nuns, and told to marry each other--as many did: they were
forced to walk round the Hippodrome, to the delight of the mob, arm in
arm with prostitutes. Even the reluctant patriarch of Constantinople
was indelicately mutilated, driven on an ass round the Hippodrome,
under a fire of spittle, and replaced by an obedient eunuch.
This was the Iconoclastic world into which the Athenian girl entered,
armed with a mental reservation. From the palace of Hieria she went, at
the beginning of September, to Constantinople, and her betrothal to Leo
was celebrated in “the church of the Lighthouse.”
Three months later her probation was complete; on 13th December she
received the wonderful crown of the Empresses, with its cascades of
pearls and diamonds, in the gold-roofed banquet-room, and was married
in the chapel of St Stephen within the palace.
Constantine remained on the throne for seven years, and Irene behaved,
and avoided images, with the most exemplary propriety, until, in 775,
the old Emperor joined his father in the eternal home to which the
religious chroniclers luridly consign him. Still for some years Irene
gave no sign of strong personality, unless we may see, as is probable,
her influence in the events of the following year. She had borne a
son in 770, and in 776 Leo was urged to admit this boy to a share of
the Empire. The Emperor was delicate, possibly consumptive, and it
will be remembered that he had five half-brothers, who offered rich
material for intriguing eunuchs and discontented nobles. Irene was
now a young woman of twenty-five, of strong and subtle intellect, and
well acquainted with Byzantine history. Her obvious interest was to
secure the succession for her son and exclude the children of Eudocia.
Leo at first demurred to the crowning of the boy. He submitted that,
if he died, the ways of Byzantium made it not unlikely that the child
would be murdered. He was answered with an assurance that the whole
Court and city were prepared to swear the most solemn allegiance to
his son, and in the spring of 776 he prepared to associate the younger
Constantine in his imperial power. It was becoming difficult in pious
Constantinople to devise an oath sufficiently sacred to be taken
seriously, and Leo exacted that all orders of the citizens should swear
by the cross on its most solemn festival and then place a written
record of their oath on the altar of the great church. On Good Friday,
therefore, the officers, Senators, courtiers and various corporations
of workers and idlers in the city, swore their mighty oath by the cross
to know no sovereign but Constantine VI., and on the following day,
when the last son of Eudocia, Eudocimus, was made a “most noble,” the
written oaths were laid on the altar, to be carefully guarded by the
patriarch--for a few years. On Easter Sunday Constantine was crowned in
the Hippodrome in the early morning, and the glittering procession of
Emperors, Cæsars, and “most nobles,” moved to the church, followed at a
modest distance by Irene and her eunuchs and women.
Twelve months later the imperial family and the higher orders met in
the gorgeous hall of the Magnaura palace for a different ceremony. It
had been “discovered” that the Cæsar Nicephorus had conspired with the
eunuchs and officers, and, when Leo announced the details--there was no
trial--to the audience, it was at once decided that he be degraded to
the rank of the clergy and banished to Cherson. One rival was put out
of the way, and Leo continued to play with his caskets of jewels--his
favourite occupation--and Irene to cultivate her policy of waiting.
In her service was the eunuch Stauracius, a genius of intrigue and
counter-intrigue, whose watchful servants could at any time detect or
manufacture a conspiracy. On one occasion only, towards the end of her
husband’s short reign, does Irene seem to have been indiscreet, though
the indications are rather obscure.
Historians put it to the account of Leo that under him the fierce
persecution of image-worshippers relaxed, but the question might be
raised whether there was much occasion for persecuting. It is said that
Irene secretly venerated images in her apartments and had about her a
group of confidential devotees, waiting for the death of Leo; and the
story runs that Leo, hearing of the conspiracy, forced his way into
Irene’s apartments, and discovered two sacred statues hidden under
a cushion. Whether or no it is true that Irene calmly lied--or made
another mental reservation--and disowned the figures of Christ and His
mother, it is certain that in the last year of his life Leo had a fit
of Iconoclastic wrath, and numbers of palace officials and nobles were
shaved into priests, dragged ignominiously round the Hippodrome, and
forced to exchange the gilded service of the Empress for the austere
service of the altar.
In view of this it is not surprising that, when Leo died a few months
later, there was a faint rumour that Irene had poisoned him; though the
more religious chroniclers tell us that, in his infatuation for jewels,
he had taken from the church the rich crown which Maurice had suspended
over the altars, put it on his sacrilegious head, which at once broke
into fiery carbuncles, and perished miserably. We may take it that the
delicate constitution of Leo IV. came to an end after a reign of four
and a half years (in 780) and the Empress Irene entered upon her long,
prosperous and blood-stained reign.
[Illustration: THE EMPRESS IRENE
FROM AN IVORY PLAQUE IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, FLORENCE]
Constantine VI. was ten years old at the death of his father, and the
administration naturally fell to Irene and her able, if unscrupulous,
ministers. When all allowance has been made for the ability of her
ministers, especially the eunuch-patrician Stauracius, it must be
admitted that the Empress showed conspicuous talent and vigour, and
brought about a wonderful restoration of the stricken Empire. Her
abjuration of the Iconoclastic tenets not only brought comparative
religious peace, in the course of time, but enabled her to strengthen
her rule by friendly relations with the Papacy and with Charlemagne,
whose star was rising in the West. The long and exhausting war in the
East was brought to a close by diplomacy, and the military victories of
Stauracius restored the rule of Constantinople in Greece and Thessaly.
Prosperity brightened the Empire, and it almost returned to the happy
position it had enjoyed under Justinian I. But from this brighter
aspect of the reign of Irene, in which it is difficult to disentangle
her action from that of her ministers, we must turn to events in which
her character is more clearly, if less favourably, seen.
Six weeks had not elapsed since the death of Leo when it was announced
that a dangerous conspiracy had been discovered, the object of which
was to put the royal half-brothers of Leo on the throne. We can well
believe that there was some discontent at the rule of a woman and a
child, and that the feeble sons of Eudocia were ever disposed to listen
to ambitious courtiers, but the discovery was opportune. It removed at
one sweep all who seemed to be in a position to dispute Irene’s rule.
The three Cæsars and the two “most nobles,” and a crowd of nobles and
officers who were suspected of favouring them, were scourged, tonsured
or exiled. Indeed, lest there should be any later error as to the
clerical status of the children of Eudocia, Irene forced them publicly
to administer the sacraments to the people in the great church. It was
Christmas Day, and a vast crowd assembled to see the royal uncles
dispensing the consecrated bread under the eyes of the vigorous Empress
and her son.
The cruel spectacle was resented by many, and Elpidius, whom Irene had
made Governor of Sicily, rebelled. Irene ordered the local officers
to send him in chains to Constantinople, and, when they refused, she
sent a fleet which quickly dislodged him and punished the rebels.
Unfortunately, we read that the “most pious” Empress, as the admiring
chroniclers call her, so far lost her temper as to flog the wife and
children of Elpidius, and drive the innocent woman, with shorn hair,
into a nunnery. A more amiable way of strengthening her throne was
about the same time discovered by some courtier. A marvellous ancient
tombstone was brought to Constantinople, and citizens gazed with awe
on the inscription: “Christ will be born of the Virgin Mary, and I
believe in him. Sun, thou shalt see me again one day under the reign of
Constantine and Irene.” As this stone was certified to have been taken
by a Thracian peasant from the tomb of some prehistoric “giant,” it did
much to discredit the more rationalistic Iconoclasts, who scouted the
virginity of Mary, and the opposition to the divine mission of Irene.
The time was not yet ripe, however, for an open disavowal of the
Iconoclasts; the heresy was too deeply rooted in the army and the
more cultivated circles of the city. Irene thought for a moment of an
alliance with Charlemagne, and begged the hand of his daughter Rotrud
for her son. The offer was cordially received, and Byzantine eunuchs
were sent to initiate the Frankish maiden into the mysteries of the
Greek tongue and Greek etiquette. The fame of Charlemagne now filled
the world, and the young Constantine eagerly looked for the alliance
with his daughter. It would be interesting to speculate what influence
such an alliance would have had on the fortunes of Europe, and there
can be no doubt that Irene committed a criminal blunder in withdrawing
the proposal on what we must regard as selfish grounds. The only
plausible reason that can be suggested is that she feared that her son
might become a monarch in reality as well as name under the influence
of Charlemagne, and she was determined to be at least co-ruler. The
victories which Stauracius had meantime won in Greece and Thessaly
must have given her greater confidence in her own resources. In 783
she proceeded herself with a large army--not forgetting the organs and
other musical instruments of the Court, the chronicler says--to pacify
and restore the province of Thrace.
She now felt strong enough to restore the worship of images. At the
end of the year 783 the Iconoclastic archbishop Paul mysteriously
retired from his see. Irene called a meeting of the notables in the
Magnaura palace, and from the marvellous golden throne she announced
that Paul had been stricken with deep penitence for his opposition
to images and had retired to expiate his sin. She suggested that her
secretary Tarasius should be made archbishop, and the nobles and clergy
faithfully echoed the name of Tarasius. The secretary then protested
that he too had misgivings on the image question, and would take office
only on condition that a Church council was called to decide upon it.
Within a month or two Irene had brought to Constantinople a crowd of
bishops and heads of monasteries, and a fiery discussion proceeded
in the church of the Apostles. The Iconoclasts were, of course, in
a minority. Suddenly the doors were forced, and a troop of soldiers
entered, with drawn swords, and threatened to make an end to Tarasius
and his monks. “We have won; thank God, those fools and brutes have
done no harm,” was the exultant cry of the Iconoclastic bishops--I
translate literally from Theophanes[15]--and the meeting hurriedly
dispersed.
Irene once more resorted to the kind of diplomacy of which she was a
mistress. The rumour was spread that the Saracens were advancing, and
the guards were shipped to the Asiatic side and marched toward the
south. When they had reached some distance from the city, a message
came from Constantinople that the war had been averted, and they
might send their arms or equipment to the capital before returning
themselves. They were then scattered over the provinces and the
metropolitan guards were recruited from the orthodox ranks. The bishops
and monks were convoked again, in the Council of Chalcedon, and in the
last sitting of the Council, which was held in the Magnaura palace, the
cult of images was formally restored.
In the meantime Irene had resumed the work of finding a wife for her
son. If we are right in assuming that she rejected the daughter of
Charlemagne in order that Constantine should not have any strength
independently of her, we can understand her next procedure. One of
those innumerable “lives of the saints” which have transmitted to us
a few precarious fragments of genuine and interesting information
gives us a very romantic version of the rise of the next Empress. In a
remote Cappadocian village dwelt a very pious man who had won a local
reputation for sanctity, and impoverished his family, by his generous
almsgiving. He had three daughters, whose lives and prospects must
have been prosy enough in their rude village until romance entered it
one day in the person of an imperial commissioner. He was one of many
sent all over the Empire by Irene in search of a mate for her son,
and it seemed to him that the daughters of Philaretus corresponded
to the standard given to him--a standard which specified the height
and the size of the feet of the candidates as well as more material
features.[16] They were taken to Constantinople, with numbers of other
candidates for the glass slipper, and Maria, a beautiful maiden of
eighteen, was chosen for the lofty honour. It sounds like a modified
version of the story of Cinderella, but it was not the first time that
obscure maidens had been chosen for imperial dignity on their looks,
and the most reliable authority, Theophanes, tells us that Irene sent
one of her officers into distant Armenia--Maria is variously described
as Cappadocian, Paphlagonian and Armenian--for the obscure girl. She
was married to the Emperor in November 788, but we cannot end, as
story-tellers do, by saying that she was happy ever afterwards.
Constantine was now a youth of eighteen, and had courtiers of his own.
With their aid he perceived that, although rescripts went out in the
names of “Constantine and Irene,” the government was entirely in the
hands of Irene and her ministers. He had keenly desired the daughter of
Charlemagne, and he resented the forcing upon him of a village maiden.
The year following his marriage was one of bitter discontent and secret
whispering. Stauracius, however, or Irene, watched the conspirators
closely, and in January 790 the net was drawn round them. They had
intended to banish Irene to Sicily, and they now found themselves on
the way to Sicily, their backs sore from the scourge and their heads
marked with the odious sign of clerical office. Constantine himself
was flogged, and confined for some time to the palace; it was decreed
that henceforth the name of Irene should precede that of her son; and
a formidable oath was imposed on the troops that they would not suffer
Constantine to rule while she lived.
But the counsels of eunuchs and women, however vigorous they be in
their class, are apt either to fall short of, or pass beyond, the
golden mean in the game of politics. Regiment after regiment took the
oath, until at last the troops in Armenia refused to submit to feminine
rule. Irene sent the eunuch Alexius to persuade or coerce them. They
made him their commander, spread the rebellion among other troops, and
at length an army besieged the palace and dictated terms. Stauracius
was scourged, tonsured and deported to Armenia; Irene was deposed
and had to retire to a new palace--the Eleutherian palace--which she
had built and stored with treasure for emergencies. The lament of
Theophanes at this turn of the wheel, in which he sees the personal
action of the devil, is equal to his naïve praise of all the tricks of
Irene to secure and hold power in the cause of true religion.
In spite of that zeal for true religion, the modern reader will not
have followed the career of Irene up to this point with unalloyed
admiration. She was essentially a casuist, the very embodiment of the
Byzantine religious spirit. Chaste she undoubtedly was, though we shall
presently find her acting in that regard in drastic contradiction to
the teaching of the Church; she was generous, even extravagant, with
money, and she showed a sincere concern for the welfare of her subjects
within the limits of her own ambition; but she betrays from the start
that lack of moral scrupulousness which too often accompanies fervent
piety in Byzantine women, and the bitter disappointment which closes
the first part of her reign will now make her more unscrupulous than
ever.
It was in October 790 that Irene was deposed. Fourteen months
afterwards we find her returning to imperial power and making a fearful
use of it. Constantine had yielded to her pressure and that of the
nobles devoted to her, and again proclaimed that she was Empress and
co-ruler of the Empire. The Armenian troops at once protested against
the change, and, as their commander, Alexius, was in Constantinople
at the time, he was scourged and converted into an _abbé malgré lui_.
An expedition against the Bulgarians failed shortly afterwards, and,
whether the failure did really lead to a conspiracy, or the plot was
invented to serve the purpose of Irene and Constantine, a terrible
clearance was made of their possible opponents. Alexius and Nicephorus
(the uncle of the Emperor who had been made a cleric) had their eyes
cut out; and three other sons of Eudocia were brought from their
clerical homes and had their tongues cut. We must not too readily
implicate Irene in these barbarities. She had not returned to her
former influence and activity, and it was Constantine himself who led
an army against the insurgents in Armenia and made a terrible end of
their rebellion. In view, however, of Irene’s later behaviour, it is
probable that she agreed to, if she did not inspire, these proceedings,
and the authorities assure us that she now began to make selfish profit
of the unpopularity of her son and encourage him in licence.
We have as yet said nothing of the imperial life of the young woman who
had passed from her village home to the palace. The reason is that she
seems to have been one of those admirable Empresses who impress the
chroniclers only when they bear children or suffer misfortune. Maria
had borne two daughters to Constantine, and the year of her misfortune
was at hand. Constantine had never loved his wife and had freely sought
consolation elsewhere; and in the year 794 his eye fell on a charming
lady of his mother’s suite. Whether this lady was too chaste or too
ambitious to admit his passion irregularly, we cannot say, but we have
the emphatic assurance of the authorities that Irene encouraged the
passion, and supported her son in his proposal to divorce Maria, in
order still further to weaken his position. If such an act seem beyond
the range of a mother’s ambition, I can only say that far worse is to
follow.
On 3rd January 795, the unfortunate Maria was deposed from her dignity,
exchanged her imperial robes for the rough black dress of a nun, and,
with shorn hair, passed to a convent; and before the end of the same
year the more fortunate Theodote was transferred from the service
of Irene’s chamber (_cubicularia_) to the imperial dignity. It need
hardly be said that this procedure was violently opposed to the solemn
teaching of the Church, which now regarded marriage as absolutely
indissoluble. The courtly patriarch Tarasius, who had been converted
from a very secular secretary into an archbishop, proved accommodating
enough; he declined to perform the marriage, but he permitted some
enterprising priest named Joseph to do so, and he sanctioned the
transfer of Maria to a nunnery. But the monks of the Empire raised
once more their formidable chant of execration, and showered epithets
on the Emperor and the archbishop. The great monastery of Saccudion,
in Bithynia, was the centre of the agitation, under its vigorous abbot
Plato.[17]
The next move of Irene was to espouse the cause of the monks who
fulminated against her adulterous son and his “Jezebel,” and were
punished for doing so. If we feel a scruple about admitting so
malignant a course in a Christian mother, we must remember that these
things are ascribed to her by chroniclers who are full of admiration
for her piety, and that the tragic end of the story is quite beyond
doubt. Constantine lost ground, and Irene watched her opportunity. It
came in the month of September 796, when mother and son went, with
a large and distinguished company, to take the hot baths at Prusia.
Theodote had remained behind, so as to be near the Porphyra palace, and
she presently sent a message that a son was born. Constantine galloped
in delight to the city, and Irene set to work. By amiable conversation
and secret gifts she won a number of the officers, and the conspiracy
quietly proceeded when they returned to Constantinople. The following
summer Constantine set out against the Saracens, and Irene, fearing
that he might return with glory and renewed popularity, for he was a
skilful and vigorous soldier, determined to strike.
Constantine was recalled to the city by some false intelligence, and as
he went one day (17th June) from the Hippodrome to join his wife (whose
baby had recently died) in the palace of Blachernæ, he was attacked.
He escaped, and fled by boat to the Asiatic side, where Theodote
joined him. The position was now critical, as a number of nobles and
officers were with Constantine, and Irene heard that others were daily
crossing the water. For a moment she trembled and thought of sending
bishops to ask her son to allow her to retire into private life, but
there remained one device. Among the courtiers with Constantine were
some whom she had already compromised, and she sent a secret message
to these men to the effect that she would reveal their perfidy to the
Emperor if they remained with him. The stratagem succeeded. In the
early morning of 15th August the Emperor was brought, bound, to his
palace and lodged in the Porphyra; and there, in the very palace in
which he had been born, his eyes were brutally cut out by the knives
of the soldiers at the ninth hour of the day. Some of the chroniclers
observe that the work was done in such a way that the men really
intended to kill Constantine. That is misleading, since it would have
been perfectly easy to kill him, whereas we know that he lingered in
confinement in the Therapia palace for some years. The truth probably
is that Irene’s casuistry permitted the horrible mutilation, but
forbade the murder, of her son; but her agents probably concluded that
if they accidentally and unintentionally killed Constantine there would
be few tears shed.
It would be difficult to find a parallel to this horrible deed in the
long story of the pagan Empresses, and we press on to the conclusion
of Irene’s reign. For several years she continued to rule the Empire
in peace and prosperity. One or two feeble revolts were made, and more
eyes were cut from their sockets, but the year 799 opened with little
sign of trouble. Decrees went forth in the name of “Irene, the great
king and autocrat of the Romans.” She built convents and established
charitable foundations. She gladdened the hearts of the poor by
remitting taxes and import duties, and scattering money amongst them
as she rode to church in a golden chariot drawn by four white horses,
the reins of each held by one of the highest dignitaries of the Empire.
The Pope blessed her--he had put out the eyes of his predecessor--and
the great Charlemagne sent legates to ask her hand in marriage. And the
blind Emperor lingered in his palace-prison with his faithful Theodote,
waiting for the thunder of Jupiter.
In the year 800 the shadow of the avenger seemed to come over the
palace. Irene had two powerful ministers, Stauracius (who had, of
course, returned from the service of the altar) and Aetius, and their
quarrels filled the palace and the heart of Irene with bitterness. In
799 she had been dangerously ill, and their intrigues had doubled. She
recovered, and Stauracius determined to make a bold attempt to secure
the purple. His conspiracy was discovered, and Irene, holding a council
in the gold-roofed dining-hall, decreed that no military officer was to
approach Stauracius. The sentence seems mild, but the truth was that,
in spite of doctors and priests who lied to him even as he spat blood,
Stauracius was dying. He passed away in June, and Aetius commanded the
palace.
The end came in 802. Aetius had frustrated the proposal of a marriage
of Charlemagne and Irene, who seems to have favoured it (she was still
only in her fiftieth year), because he designed to secure the purple
for his brother and thus maintain his position. But the legates of
Charlemagne lingered in Constantinople, and witnessed the fall of
the great Empress. On the evening of 31st October 802, when Irene
lay ill in her Eleutherian palace, a group of nobles and officers
knocked at the door of the Chalke and summoned the guard. They had,
they said, been sent by Irene to put Nicephorus, the “chancellor of
the exchequer,” on the throne; she wished to forestall Aetius. In the
darkness and confusion they were admitted, and they took possession of
the palace and set guards round the Eleutherian palace. Almost before
dawn the next morning they conveyed Nicephorus to the great church to
be crowned, and, although Irene’s liberality had won the people and
they gathered in the square to damn Nicephorus and the archbishop and
raise cheers for Irene, they were powerless. The nobles and officers
were resolved to tolerate the insolence of Aetius no longer.
Irene, sick and dispirited, was incapable of making one of those
spurts of energy or astute stratagems which had so often saved her.
When the hypocritical Nicephorus came to visit her in her apartments,
she quietly begged that she might be permitted to end her days in her
Eleutherian palace. He had often been a guest at her table and grossly
deceived her; even the nobles were yet to learn what a brute they had
put on the throne. He promised that if she would swear on the cross
to give up the whole of the imperial treasure, she should retire to
her palace. It was believed that treasure was hidden in various places
in that labyrinth of palaces; even the blind Constantine was brought
forth to say in which wall a certain treasure was hidden. Irene swore
her last oath, gave a list of the hiding-places--and was promptly
imprisoned in a monastery she had built on the Princes’ Islands, a
group of small islands, in view of the palace, on the Sea of Marmora.
Constantinople seems to have been deeply moved, and a month later she
was removed to a dismal prison on the island of Lesbos. There, under
a strong guard, rigorously isolated from her friends, she spent nine
miserable months reflecting on the strange career she had run since she
had left Athens in the pride of her youth and beauty. She died on 9th
August 803, and was buried in her monastery on the Princes’ Islands.