Verina Kalonou - or Irene of Athens
The inspiration for the main character of Born in the Purple
There’s no point mincing words - the Roman Empire was very patriarchal. As with most cultures at that point in history, women enjoyed very few freedoms. Though as is the case with all things, the exception was class: wealthy women had a Gynaeceum (the woman’s quarters) built in their houses, where women’s business was conducted and children were educated. Women were confined to this part of the house, generally, unless supervised. Though a segregated part of the house that women were retained doesn’t sound great to our modern ears, the power in the home lived in the Gynaeceum and monumental decisions were likely decided there as well.
Women of storied bloodlines in the Roman Empire made their indelible marks on history, as well as in the Gynaeceum. None more so than Irene (Εἰρήνη; Eirene) of Athens, of the Sarantapichaina1 (Σαρανταπήχαινα). If she had not been claimed imperium and crowned herself Empress in her own right, the Holy Roman Empire and Germany, the Schism of Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and even Europe as we know it today would likely not have existed.
Irene was born into a prominent family of Athens, the Sarantapichos’, and married Emperor Leo IV, eldest son of Constantine Copronymus2. At the end of Pascha (Easter), on All Saints’ Day 769, it was arranged that she cross the Bosphorus in a Roman galley festooned with silk streamers. Cheering crowds welcomed her and her marriage to Leo. She was 14.
It wasn’t to be all silk and flowers, however. The Iconoclasm3 was in full swing, and staunch iconoclast Leo would often come into conflict with his wife Irene, a committed iconophile. In 780, he discovered two icons hidden in her belongings, smuggled into the palace by members of his own staff at her behest. He was furious4. The servants responsible were executed and his chamberlain was flogged. After that, the couple became estranged, and Leo refused to share the marriage bed with Irene.
Whatever enmity existed between them, it was not to last long. In September of that same year, Irene gave the news that her husband was dead. Apparently, the emperor had demanded that a crown be placed on his head, and upon the crown touching his head, boils broke out all over his scalp. They burst and led to infection, then death. Of course, it’s easy to assume that Irene offed him herself, and many contemporaries likely did.
But no one questioned her. Not publicly, anyway. Irene’s nine-year-old son, Constantine VI, was crowned emperor, with his mother as regent. Of course, there were those that saw her as a weak-willed woman; an easy target. A conspiracy formed almost immediately to replace Irene and the boy-emperor with one of Leo’s half-brothers, Nikephoros. Now 25, however, Irene would not sit by and wait to be replaced. She handled the conspirators deftly and bloodlessly by naming them as monks, and having them tonsured, which disqualified them from the throne5. Irene had them perform communion for her in a grand ceremony in the Agia Sofia, letting everyone know who was the boss.
Irene appointed eunuchs to key positions in the court, men who would not blanch at feminine leadership. She won over influential aristocrats and key church figures with her iconophile sympathies, and tried to rescind the policy of iconoclasm, lifting the ban on the veneration of icons. To this end, she had the ecumenical patriarch organize an ecumenical council to deliberate the policy. But soldiers in the capital loyal to the ideals of Leo IV, the iconoclast, stormed in and prevented the clergy from deliberating, and the council had to be dissolved.
She wouldn’t be stopped. The troops were dispatched to Anatolia on the pretext of battle with the Arabs, and once they were there, she dissolved them and replaced the men in the capital with loyal troops of her own. The following year, she summoned a new council and the prohibition of icons was lifted.
Relations with the Franks and the Frankish king Charlemagne at this time were amicable, and Constantine VI was to be married to the king’s daughter. If that had happened, the East and West may have been united once more. But relations with the Franks soured, and the marriage was broken off.
Constantine, nearing his late teens and increasingly resentful of his domineering mother, wanted to escape her shadow and rule in his own right. He formed a conspiracy with patrician friends of his - but Irene had no intention of surrendering power to her son. She discovered the conspiracy and summoned her son to the throne room, slapped him across the face, and confined him to his quarters. His co-conspirators were exiled.
Irene reached too far, however, when she insisted that the army uphold her as the Autocratess of the Romans, above her son. She miscalculated. They chafed at her demand and rose up in mutiny, seizing the palace and freeing Constantine, whereupon they installed him as the Autocrator. Irene was confined to her palace overlooking the Sea of Marmara.
But Constantine VI, having had no experience in the job, made a series of miscalculations and military blunders, losing ground to the Arabs, and he lost support in the army. He also abandoned his wife and married another woman, losing support within the Church as well. Sentiment drifted back to Irene, who was remembered fondly as a competent administrator.
In May 797, Constantine was leaving the Hippodrome when his tagmata6 were attacked by soldiers loyal to Irene. He fled across the Bosphorus but was captured on the Asian side, and brought back to the Great Palace. On his mother’s orders, he was dragged into the porphyry room7 and had his eyes gouged out, though it is unclear whether he died of his wounds8.
Irene declared herself Basileus9 and Autocrat of the Romans. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.
On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, knelt at the altar for communion, whereupon Pope Leo III placed a golden crown on his head, and proclaimed him Karolus Magnus, Emperor of the Romans. The pope and his new emperor claimed that because a woman held the title of Emperor, the throne was actually vacant. Still, it soured relations for centuries between the Eastern Romans and the upstart Holy Roman Empire in the West, and they would never come together again.
On the 31st of October, 802, Irene was overthrown by a bureaucrat: Logothete tou genikou10 Nikephoros (unrelated to her husband’s half-brother, also named Nikephoros), and exiled to Lesbos. She died in poverty a year later.
Verina Kalonou11’s trajectory on the throne follows a similar path to Irene’s: she’s overthrown by a bunch of bureaucrats. But like Irene, she doesn’t take it lying down. You’ll have to wait for Born in the Purple to come out to find out how, but I’ll say that she doesn’t shy away from doing the hard things. I can’t promise any eye-gouging (though that is in the first book of the series, The Thirteenth Dynasty, which will be coming out soon(TM).)
I drew most of my information from Theophanes’s excellent Chronographia as translated by Mango, as well as the inimitable Richard Fidler’s Ghost Empire. Please do let me know if you find these semi-long-form breakdowns of individual people and events in the Eastern Roman Empire to be interesting.
NCK
It’s exceedingly hard to find a definition for Sarantapichaina, and I’m no Ancient Greek speaker. From what I’ve been able to find, Sarantapichaina is the feminine form of the word Sarantapichos, which means “forty bars”, a measure of the height of old statuary that was considered to be the greatest of all statuary - gargantuan statues that towered over all they looked upon. I don’t know this for sure, but Pallas Athene outside the Acropolis of Athens (before it was knocked down) was probably considered to be Sarantapichos.
“Shit-named”. He was given this moniker after Iconophile detractors spread the rumor that he shit himself as a baby at his christening, which is just about the likeliest thing to happen to a baby. Poor guy.
The Iconoclasm was a religious conflict between those who believed that icons were blasphemous, as they saw that people venerated icons and not the Faith - as noted in the commandments - and those that believed that icons were invested with Faith, and saw no problem with worshipping them because they believed they were worshipping God. I’m massively oversimplifying here, by the way.
Leo IV had banned the veneration of icons at this point. He reportedly considered it a massive betrayal.
I’m unsure if tonsuring fell under the definition of ‘disfigurement’ of the time, which disqualified claimants to the throne. Though it is a compelling argument for Nikephoros’s inability to rule. But more likely, monks could not claim imperium through rulings of the Orthodox Church, and thereby they could not be emperor.
The emperor’s personal guard.
The paneled purple marble room where emperors were born and died. Irene had given birth to Constantine VI there.
Theophanes doesn’t remark on him afterward, though, only to say that afterwards an eerie darkness fell on Constantinople for seventeen days, so it’s assumed that he died.
Emperor - the male form.
Master of Imperial Revenue. The Finance Minister and Treasurer, basically.
Daughter of Kalon.