Irene of Athens
Irene of Athens restored the veneration of icons, blinded her own son, and reigned as emperor rather than empress. She was an orphan from a good Athenian family, chosen by a bride show in 768 for the son of Constantine V, in a family of committed iconoclasts and in a region where images had never stopped being venerated. Her husband Leo IV died in 780 leaving a nine-year-old son, and she governed as regent. Her policy was the reversal of two reigns. She replaced the patriarch, and after a first attempt was broken up by iconoclast soldiers she moved the troops out of the capital and convened the second Council of Nicaea in 787, which distinguished veneration from worship and restored images. Her son Constantine VI came of age and was proclaimed sole ruler by the army in 790, and recalled her within two years, which was the mistake of his life. He divorced his wife, alienated the church, mutilated his own uncles and lost battles, and Irene organised the conspiracy that seized him in August 797 and had him blinded in the purple chamber where he had been born. She then ruled alone for five years and used the masculine title basileus. The papacy treated the throne as vacant on the grounds that a woman held it, which is part of the justification for crowning Charlemagne in 800; a marriage between them was reportedly discussed. She was deposed by her finance minister in 802 and died on Lesbos spinning wool.
- Lived: 752 CE – 803 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: empress, head_of_state, religious_reformer
