A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Irene
IRENE,
Empress of Constantinople, was an Athenian orphan, distinguished only by her accomplishments, when, in 769, at the age of seventeen, she was married to Leo the Fourth, Emperor of Constantinople. She was banished by her husband on account of her attachment to image worship, of which the Greek church disapproved. On the death of Leo, in 780, she returned to Constantinople, and was associated in the government with her son Constantine the Sixth, then only ten years of age. Artful and cruel, Irene deposed her son in 797, and caused his eyes to be put out, and then reigned alone. On this occasion, she entered Constantinople in state, with a splendid retinue. She made Charlemagne, then Emperor of the West, a proposal of marriage, in order to preserve her Italian dominions from his grasp, and the marriage treaty was actually concluded, when Nicephorus, chancellor of the empire, conspired against her, seized her in her bed, and banished her to a nunnery in the Island of Lesbos. She was here so reduced, as to be forced to earn a scanty subsistance by her distaff, and died in the same year, 802. During her reign she submitted to be tributary to the Saracens. She governed under the direction of two ambitious eunuchs, who were perpetually plotting against each other.