Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

The early Christians, owing to their Jewish proclivities, had felt an unconquerable repugnance to the use of images, and their religious worship was uniformly simple and spiritual. As the Greek influence spread throughout the Church, however, there developed a veneration of the Cross and of the relics of the saints. Then it was thought that if the relics were esteemed, so much the more should be the faithful copies of the persons of the saints, as delineated by the arts of painting and sculpture. In course of time, by a natural development, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy, and the Christian's prayer before the image of the saint ceased to distinguish between the counterfeit presentment and the saint it was designed to portray. As healing power was attributed to many of the images and pictures, the popular adoration of them grew. Thus, by the end of the sixth century the worship of images was firmly established, especially among the Greeks and Asiatics. Many pious souls began to see that this idolatry of the Christians hardly differed from the idolatry of the Greeks, and that they had no potent arguments against the assertions of Jews and Mohammedans that Greek Christianity was but a continuation of Greek paganism. Consequently, a reaction began, which reached its culmination in the reign of Leo the Isaurian, who, because of his active hostility to images, was surnamed Leo the Iconoclast. His measures were severe, and he introduced a movement which involved the East in a tremendous conflict of one hundred and twenty years.

Leo's son, Constantine V.,--Copronymus,--was a more cruel and determined iconoclast than his father; but into his own family circle he was destined to introduce a member who was to set at naught the efforts of father and son and restore the worship of images to its former flourishing estate. Copronymus himself had had three wives, the most prominent of whom was a barbarian, the daughter of a khan of the Chazars; but for the wife of his son and heir, Leo IV., he selected an Athenian virgin, an orphan of seventeen summers, whose sole endowment consisted in her beauty and her personal charms. As in the case of Athenais, nothing is known of the antecedents of Irene. Who her parents were, what was her education, how many years she lived in her native city--these are questions of idle speculation.--Her imperial career shows that she was a woman of remarkable beauty and fascination, of highly trained intellectual gifts and Hellenic temperament, and from this we are led to infer that she had in her youth the best instruction her native city afforded.

The nuptials of Leo and Irene were celebrated with imposing splendor, and the new princess rapidly became an important influence in the life of the palace, winning the regard of her father-in-law and acquiring an indisputable ascendency over her feeble husband. Irene, though a Christian, inherited the idolatry and the love of images and ritual of her ancestors; but during the remaining years of the reign of Copronymus and the four short years in which her husband occupied the throne she repressed her zeal, and by clever dissimulation hid her devotion to the cause of the image worshippers.

Leo left the Empire to his son Constantine VI., a lad of ten years, with the empress-dowager Irene as sole regent and guardian of the Roman world. During the minority of her son Irene discharged with vigor and assiduity all the duties of public administration and enjoyed to the full the irresponsible power of her office of regent. She took advantage of her power to restore the worship of images and thus won the favor of a large faction of the populace and the clergy. She endeavored to bring up her son in such a way that he should continue to be subservient to her, and as he approached the age at which he should assume the reins of government, Irene showed no disposition to yield up her power.

Even when Constantine became of age, he was excluded from state affairs. He had been betrothed to Rotrud, daughter of Charlemagne; but Irene, for the sake of her own power, had broken off the match and compelled him to marry one of her favorites, who was distasteful to him. The maternal yoke, which he had so patiently borne, finally became grievous, and Constantine listened eagerly to the favorites of his own age who urged him to assert his rights. He was finally persuaded to do so, and succeeded in seizing the helm of state. His mother vigorously resisted, but was overcome and compelled to go into seclusion for a time; but Constantine at length pardoned her and restored her former dignity. Irene, however, had by no means relinquished her ambition for sole power, and availed herself of every opportunity to discredit the prince and enhance her own popularity.

Constantine became enamored of one of his mother's maids of honor, Theodota. With the insidious purpose of making him odious to the clergy, who discountenanced divorce and second marriage, Irene encouraged him to put away his wife, Maria, and marry Theodota. The patriarch Tarasius, a creature of the empress-mother, acquiesced in the emperor's wishes, and, though he would not perform the ceremony himself, he ordered one of his subordinates to celebrate the unpopular bans. The affair created great scandal among the monks and was injurious to the prestige of the emperor.

A powerful conspiracy was secretly organized for the restoration of the empress. At length the emperor, suspecting his danger, escaped from Constantinople with the purpose of arousing the provinces and the armies so that he might return to the city with sufficient force to overwhelm the conspirators and establish beyond question his power. By this flight the empress was left in danger, because of the possible exposure of the plot and the indignation of the populace. She acted with her customary shrewdness and duplicity. Among those about the emperor were some who were involved in the conspiracy; so, while appearing to be making ready to implore the mercy and beg the return of her son, she sent to these men a secret communication in which she veiled the threat that if they did not act, she would reveal their treason. Fearing for their lives, they acted at once with the boldness of desperate criminals. Seizing the emperor on the Asiatic shore, they conveyed him across the Hellespont to the porphyry apartment of the palace, the chamber in which he was born. The son was now completely in the power of the mother, in whom ambition had stifled every maternal emotion. In the bloody council called by the traitors she urged that Constantine should be rendered incapable of holding the throne. Her emissaries blinded the young prince and immured him in a monastery. As a blind monk Constantine survived five of his successors; but his memory was revived among men only by the marriage of his daughter Euphrosyne with the Emperor Michael the Second.

For five years Irene enjoyed all the delights and experienced all the bitterness of absolute power. Her crime called down upon her the execration of all the best among mankind, but dread of her cruelty prevented any open outbreak against her. She carried on the movement for the restoration of images, and by her outward piety she caused men to overlook the heinous nature of her crimes. Her reign was noted for its external splendor and the strong influence she exerted on all affairs of state. She offered marriage to the Emperor Charlemagne of the West, but he repelled with repugnance all overtures from the unnatural mother and reminded her that her intrigues had prevented the union of his daughter with the Emperor Constantine. In fact, her accession brought about the final severing of all bonds of union between the eastern and western divisions of the Roman world. Pope Leo regarded a female sovereign as an anomaly and an abomination in the eyes of all true Romans, and he brought to an end all claims the Byzantine dynasty might have on Italy at least, by creating Charlemagne Emperor of the West.

These years of power were troublous ones to the wicked queen, because of rebellions abroad and palace intrigues at home. She had surrounded herself with servile patricians and eunuchs, whom she enriched and elevated to the highest offices of state; but her own example had fostered in them ingratitude and duplicity, and, while they showed her every outward mark of deference, they secretly conspired for her downfall and their own elevation. The grand treasurer, Nicephorus, won over the leading eunuchs and courtiers about the person of the empress, and the decision was reached that he should be invested with the purple. Never was Irene more queenly than in the manner with which she received the intelligence of her fall. When the conspirators informed her that she must retire from the palace, she addressed them with becoming dignity, recounting the revolutions of her life, and accepting with composure her fate. She gently reproached Nicephorus for his perfidy and reminded him that he owed his elevation to her, and she requested the proper recognition of her imperial standing and asked for a safe and honorable retreat. But the greed of Nicephorus would not grant this last request; he deprived her of all her dignities and wealth, and exiled her to the Isle of Lesbos, where she endured every hardship and gained a scanty subsistence by the labors of her distaff. Irene survived the change of her fortune for only one year, and in 803 died of grief--destitute, forsaken, and lonely.

Because of her wickedness Irene's name is perpetuated in history among the Messalinas and the Lucrezia Borgias. Because of her religious orthodoxy she was canonized as a saint,--a striking instance of how outward conformity to religion covers a multitude of sins.