Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society by Garland Lynda Neil Bronwen. & Lynda Garland

Author:Garland, Lynda,Neil, Bronwen. & Lynda Garland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2013-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Regarding Women on the Throne: Representations of Empress Eirene

Bronwen Neil

Introduction*

Eirene of Athens – wife of Emperor Leo IV and mother of Constantine VI, imperial regent, and later sole empress – is a complex and enigmatic figure, who has only recently attracted scholarly attention.1 Her period of sole rule (797–802) coincided with the coronation of Charlemagne as ‘Emperor of the Romans’ in St Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Day, 800. Our sources for the coronation, a momentous event in western history, are limited and ambiguous, consisting mostly of Frankish chronicles.2 It has become a commonplace that one of the reasons behind Charlemagne’s coronation was the anomaly of Eirene’s rule. This belief is based on the claim found in several Frankish chronicles that for the five years when Eirene held the Byzantine throne as sole ruler it was in fact vacant, thus ‘making way for the claim that the Empire of the Romans could be reconstituted under Charlemagne’.3 Some modern scholars, as we will see, have ascribed the same negative attitude towards female rule to Pope Leo III (795–816).

Other western sources, as we shall see, claimed that Eirene was a usurper, who stole the throne that rightfully belonged to her own son. On the Byzantine side, the reliable and contemporary account of the Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor confirms that Eirene had Constantine’s eyes gouged out in 797, to pave the way for her own accession to the throne.4 She then sent her son, now disqualified from rule, into exile, where he died perhaps as a direct result of his wounds.5 The same Greek source, however, celebrates her achievements in the sphere of orthodox religion. For her defence of icons and iconophiles against her iconoclast husband Leo IV, the Byzantine church subsequently made Eirene a saint.6

The disjunction between the eastern and western views of Eirene highlights a problem that has plagued scholarship in both Byzantine and medieval history, namely, a reluctance to consider both halves of the Roman world synchronically. Nelson rightly makes a plea for ‘a more comprehensive, and comparative, European cultural history that takes in east and west’.7 The history of gender presents a unique opportunity to do this kind of analysis, Nelson avers, since it ‘has always been able to transcend disciplinary sectionalism and the arbitrary divides of academe’.8 Taking up Nelson’s challenge to medieval historians and Byzantinists, I examine the different representations of Eirene in the sources (including Frankish chronicles, council acta, papal letters, Byzantine historiography, coins and imperial records), looking for evidence of gender stereotyping that has passed down, unquestioned, into contemporary scholarship. Eirene is variously portrayed as an evil, conniving plotter against her own son; a ruthless, ambitious, and domineering woman, easily deceived by unscrupulous advisers; a manipulator of marriage alliances, both her son’s and her own; a generous benefactor to the people of Constantinople, and a pious champion of icons. I wish to focus on the question of whether Eirene was regarded as a ‘real emperor’ in Roman, Frankish and Byzantine sources. As a subsidiary question,

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