The sun was darkened for seventeen days AD 797. An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Celestial Phenomena between Byzantium Charlemagne and a Volcanic Eruption

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»The sun was darkened for seventeen days« (AD 797). An Interdisciplinary

Exploration of Celestial Phenomena between Byzantium, Charlemagne,

and a Volcanic Eruption

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller and Ewald Kislinger*

Pre-print, post peer review, published in: medieval worlds • No. 17 • 2022 • 3-58,

https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022s3

The blinding of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI in Constantinople in August 797 and

his overthrow by his mother Eirene, who then ruled as the first female »emperor« of the

Eastern Roman Empire until 802, was used as legitimation for the coronation of the Frankish

king Charlemagne as emperor of the Romans on 25 December

800,

by contemporaries

in Western Europe. Some observers in the West may have even interpreted the downfall of

the Eastern Roman emperor and his replacement by a woman as sign of an impending

collapse

of the Roman Empire and the entire world order, as already expected (based on

chiliastic cal- culations). We equally find indications of apocalyptic expectations in

Constantinople, where

Constantineʹs blinding was linked with a spectacular celestial

manifestation of divine dis- approval

–

a darkening of the sun for 17 days. In this paper,

this obfuscation of the sun is

compared with the description of other atmospheric and

climatic phenomena in the 8th and

9th centuries, as well as before and after this period. In

addition, natural scientific data is used to disprove earlier hypotheses on the physical

background to this event and to present a more probable scenario (i.e., the impacts of one

or more volcanic eruptions) for the dark-

ening of 797 and other phenomena, which provided

a peculiar »atmospheric« framework for

the interpretation of the events between the

downfall of Constantine VI and the coronation of Charlemagne by contemporaries.

Keywords: Byzantine history, early medieval history, Carolingian Empire, astronomy,

vulcanology,

climate history, medieval Mediterranean, moral meteorology

* Correspondence details: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Institute for Medieval Research/Department for Byzantine

Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Hollandstraße 11-13/4, 1020 Vienna, Austria, email:

Johannes.Preiser-

Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at. Ewald Kislinger, Department for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,

University of Vienna,

Postgasse 9/3, 1010 Vienna, email: Ewald.Kislinger@univie.ac.at.

The Blinding of Emperor Constantine VI, the Reign of Empress Eirene and the

Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne

According to the Chronographia, a historical work written by the contemporary witness-

es Georgios Synkellos and Theophanes,1 on 15 August (or more probably 19 August)

797, Constantine VI,2 son of Leon IV (r. 775-780)3 and emperor of the Byzantine (Eastern

Roman) Empire, was overthrown and blinded in Constantinople.4 This mutilation was

committed at least with the consent, if not by the order of his mother Eirene,5 who became

his successor. Her position was secured by Constantineʹs maiming since the loss of his

eyesight disqualified him for the throne. Eirene had already ruled for her underage son in

the years 780 to 791, until conflicts emerged between mother and son when he reached the

age of majority. Now she became the sole basileus (in Byzantine Greek: emperor).6

Already the masculine form (basileus) indicates that Eirene, as the first female ruler of

Byzantium, had a difficult stand- ing in public opinion; additionally, she faced severe

problems with regard to foreign affairs.7 Her own overthrow in October 8028 is to be seen as in

some way connected with the cor- onation of the Frankish king Charlemagne as emperor

in Rome in 8009, which called into question the sole claim of Byzantium (as »New Rome«)

to the imperial title.10 In turn, some Western sources were of the opinion that a woman

could not be emperor and the imperial

That the mostly separately studied (and edited) historical works attributed to Georgios Synkellos and to Theophanes

should be regarded as one historiographical project (initiated and mostly written by Georgios Synkellos and fi-

nalized by Theophanes) to a much a higher degree than in earlier research was recently impressively illustrated by

Torgerson, Chronographia.

Speck, Konstantin VI.; Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene; Wickham, The inheritance of Rome, 270-273. PmbZ, no.

14583 (accessed on 21 May 2021: db.degruyter.com/view/PMBZ/PMBZ14853). As Speck, Konstantin VI.,

307-308, has already demonstrated, the date specification in the Chronographia cannot be correct, and the

blinding of Constantine VI must have taken place on 19 August 797. See also Rochow, Byzanz im 8.

Jahrhundert, 268; Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene, 90-99 (also on the general sequence of events).

Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene, 1-33. PmbZ, no. 15401 (accessed on 21 May 2021:

db.degruyter.com/view/PMBZ/ PMBZ15401).

Theophanes, Chronographia, vol. 1, ed. de Boor, 472, 15-18; Rochow, Byzanz im 8. Jahrhundert, 269.

Speck,

Konstantin VI., 302-308, 325; Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene, 268-273; Brandes and Haldon, Byzantium

ca. 600-1000, 40-41. On blinding as a penalty in the Byzantine Empire in general, see Herrin, Blinding in

Byzantium; Speck,

Konstantin VI., 725-726 (notes 164 and 165).

Several monographs and book chapters have been published concerning the reign and personality of Eirene:

Barbe,

Irène de Byzance; Bergamo, Irene; Runciman, The empress Eirene; Hiestand, Eirene Basileus;

Herrin, Women in Purple, 53-129; eadem, Unrivalled Influence, 194-207; Garland, Byzantine Empresses,

73-94; Brandes, Irene und

das Kaisertum. See also PmbZ, no. 12537 (accessed on 21 May 2021:

db.degruyter.com/view/PMBZ/PMBZ12537).

It is quite significant, that Eirene, in two law amendments, calls herself πιστὸς βασιλεύς / pistos basileus »faithful

emperor«: Burgmann, Die Novellen der Kaiserin Eirene, 16-24, 26. On her coins, we find the abbreviations βας´ and

αγο(υ)στ´, which may be read as basileus (male) or basilissa (female) and augustus or augusta; see Grierson,

Catalogue of

Byzantine Coins, vol. 3, 347-351, esp. 340-341 (class 1 dating from 780-790). See also Speck,

Konstantin VI., 324-325.

The empress had constant problems with the Arabs in Asia Minor, but the situation was rarely as dramatic as in

the periods before. In the west, however, the Byzantines lost a battle against a Frankish-Langobardic coalition in

788 and had to acknowledge the Carolingian supremacy in Benevent in 798. Treadgold, A History of the

Byzantine State, 423-424; Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene, 156-166; Kislinger, La Longibardia minor e Bisanzio,

591-607.

Theophanes, Chronographia, vol. 1, ed. de Boor, 476, 3-27; Annales regni Francorum ad annum 803, ed. Pertz

and Kurze, 118; Herrin, Women in Purple, 98-99; Garland, Byzantine Empresses, 86; Rochow, Byzanz im 8.

Jahrhundert,

276-278; Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene, 288-291; Bergamo, Irene, 115-116.

Nelson, King and Emperor, 361-363, 380-385; Fried, Karl der Große, 484-495.

Sarti, Frankish Romanness, 1040-1058; Stouraitis, Byzantine Romanness, 123-139; Kislinger, Diskretion bis

Ver- schleierung, 271-312. On the background and infrastructure of communication, see McCormick, Origins

of the European Economy, 887-899.

An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Celestial

Phenomena

medieval worlds • No. 17 • 2022 • 3-58

Roman throne should therefore be considered vacant after the blinding of Constantine VI in

August 797.11 Eirene’s position of power was already criticized in the Carolingian polemics

against the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 in the Libri Carolini. There, Theodulf of Or-

léans not only quoted relevant passages from 1 Corinthians in which the silence of women

in church affairs is decreed, but he even evoked the example of Ataliah, a queen of Israel in

the Old Testament, who »justly« paid for her interference in the cult of the temple with her

death. Looking ahead or looking back, after the blinding Constantine VI, an even more dra-

matic parallel to Eirene could have been identified, since Ataliah had ordered the murder of

various members of her family.12 Furthermore, in a letter to Charlemagne, the scholar Alcuin

argued that after the blinding of the emperor in Constantinople and of Pope Leo III in Rome (in

799), only he (Charles) was left to preserve the »threatened salvation of the churches of

Christ« (tota salus ecclesiarum Christi).13

Also drawing inferences from Alcuinʹs statement, scholars such as Richard Landes

have

hypothesized that the information about Constantineʹs fall arrived at Charlemagneʹs

court in an atmosphere already full of apocalyptic fears. Based on older calculations that the

creation

of the world could be dated to 5199/5200 BC, some contemporaries in the Latin

Christian West expected the dawn of the 7th millennium of the world in the year AD 800

and thus the end of times. Landes assumes that in the Frankish Empire, before and

during the reign of Charlemagne (768-814), the meaning of the year 6000/800 was

deliberately concealed in

textual tradition. Tacitly, however, the conversion to a chronology

after the birth of Christ was promoted to avoid the potentially disastrous turn of the millennium.

Accordingly, the date 25

December 800 was selected for Charles’s coronation as emperor,

symbolizing the assurance

of the continued existence of the Roman Empire and world

order.14 Against this background, the »coup d’état« of Empress Eirene in 797 would have

been interpreted by Charlemagne and his entourage as another sign of the impeding fall of

the Roman Empire (construed according to 2 Thessalonians 2.6 as the power that holds back

the dawn of the last days). Out of this grew

a necessity to renew the Roman Empire in the

West, and hence Charlemagneʹs coronation.

Landesʹ interpretation is not universally

accepted in scholarship. A controversy exists

concerning how widespread such apocalyptic

assumptions were among the scholars of Latin

Europe or in the immediate retinue of

Charlemagne.

Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the

blinding of Constantine VI was likewise

related to a symbolic manifestation of divine volition

Annales Laureshamenses, ed. Pertz, 38: tunc cessabat a parte Graecorum nomen imperatoris, et

femineum imperium

apud se habebant (»and because at that time the imperial dignity had ceased on the part of

the Greeks and they had

female rule«).

Opus Caroli regis contra synodum III, 13, ed. Freeman and Meyvaert, 385-387. See also Noble, Images,

Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians, 158-206, esp. 185-190.

Epistolae Karolini Aevi 2, no. 174, ed. Dümmler, 288. See also Höfert, Kaisertum und Kalifat, 396.

Landes, Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled, esp. 181-203.

Landes, Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled, 201: »Just as Augustine and Jerome’s contemporaries could see

Rome’s sack through the lens of II Thessalonians, so too could Alcuin and Charlemagne view a woman’s

usurpation of the imperial throne in Constantinople as the signal that the Fourth Empire had fallen and that

Antichrist had been unleashed—and, in fact, Eirene’s coup occurred in 797 AD, or, according to AM II, in the last

five years of the final millennium.«

See also Fried, Endzeiterwartung, esp. 396-398; Brandes, »Tempora periculosa sunt«, 49-79; Möhring, Der

Welt- kaiser der Endzeit, 25-26, 136-143; Schieffer, Neues von der Kaiserkrönung, 24; Palmer, Apocalypse

in the Early Middle Ages, 4-21 (summing up the debate) and 130-158 (discussing the theories of Landes and

Brandes and of their critics); Fried, Karl der Große, 437-439, 462-465, and Wozniak, Naturereignisse im

frühen Mittelalter, 713-716.

in Constantinople.17 The Chronographia reports for the Byzantine year AM (annus mundi)

6289 (1 September 796-31 August 797), that after Constantine’s blinding the sun did not

shine in its usual ways for 17 (ιζ´) days.18 This the people of Constantinople considered a sign

of celestial disapproval. The Chronographia says:

About the 9th hour they blinded him [Constantine VI] in a cruel and grievous manner

with a view to making him die at the behest of his mother and her advisers. The sun

was darkened for seventeen days and did not emit its rays so that ships lost course and

drifted about. All said and agreed (καὶ πάντας λέγειν καὶ ὁμολογεῖν) that the sun with-

held its rays because the emperor had been blinded. In this manner his mother Eirene

acceded to power.19

Some Byzantine apocalyptic texts, which were probably composed during Eireneʹs reign,

may suggest an even more intense debate and negative interpretation of the emperorʹs

blinding and Eireneʹs ascent to power. These texts took up earlier prophecies about the reign

of a woman as sign of the impeding end of time and connected them with descriptions of

a sinking of Constantinople in the sea and a transfer of imperial power from Byzantium to

Rome.20 One of these texts, the so-called »Apocalypse of (Pseudo)Leon of Constantinople«,

even refers to an »empress called Eirene« in this context.21

The Byzantine East mostly used a different calculation for the creation of the world, resulting in a date of c. 5500

BC (most commonly 5508 BC). Thus, the dawn of the 7th millennium of the world had been expected already for

the time around AD 500, when a series of calamities in the reigns of the emperors Anastasius I (r. 491-518)

and

especially Justinian I (r. 527-565) were partly interpreted as apocalyptic omens; see Brandes, Anastasios ὁ

δίκορος,

24-63; Meier, Das andere Zeitalter Justinians; Meier, The ›Justinianic Plague‹, 267-292; Preiser-

Kapeller, Der Lange Sommer, 38-50 and 59-73. However, a number of apocalyptic texts from the 8th to the

9th centuries suggest an expectation of an end of times during these decades, at least in some circles of

Byzantium; see Ubierna, L’apoca- lyptique byzantine, and Brandes, Traditions and expectations, 290-293, as

well as below

Theophanes, Chronographia, vol. 1, ed. de Boor, 472, 18-22: ἐσκοτίσθη δὲ ὁ ἥλιος ἐπὶ ἡμέρας ιζ´ καὶ οὐκ ἔδωκε

τὰς ἀκτῖνας αὐτοῦ, ὥστε πλανᾶσθαι τὰ πλοῖα καὶ φέρεσθαι, καὶ πάντας λέγειν καὶ ὁμολογεῖν, ὅτι διὰ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως

τύφλωσιν ὁ ἥλιος τὰς ἀκτῖνας ἀπέθετο. The use of the passive verb form ἐσκοτίσθη

eskotisthē (»was darkened«)

indicates superior, i.e., divine will as the cause of the event.

The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, transl. Mango and Scott, 648-649; Kountoura Galaki, A light in the

dark- ness, 143-158.

See the »Seventh Vision of Daniel«, dated to the late 5th century AD and preserved in an Armenian translation

(La Porta, The Seventh Vision of Daniel, 428 und 431), and the »Diegesis of Daniel«, dated to the 8th or

9th centuries, Berger, Die griechische Daniel-Diegese, 14-15 and 91-92. See also DiTommaso, The

Armenian Seventh

Vision of Daniel; Berger, Das apokalyptische Konstantinopel; Ubierna, L’apocalyptique

byzantine. For a most re-

cent overview on apocalyptic texts in Byzantium, see Congourdeau, Textes

apocalyptiques; Brandes, Traditions

and expectations; and Kraft, An inventory of medieval Greek apocalyptical

sources (also for the dating of the texts discussed above). On the interpretation of natural phenomena in these

texts, see, most recently, Kraft, Natural di- sasters in medieval Greek apocalypses. On the general (ab)use of

various forms of prognostication, also in political

discourse, see Brandes, Kaiserprophetien und Hochverrat, and

now Grünbart, Prognostication.

L’apocalisse apocrifa di Leone di Costantinopoli, cap. 15, ed. Maisano, 89-90. On the possible dating of the

core of this text to the early 9th century (and its later adaptation in the 12th century), see Brandes, Sieben

Hügel; Berger, Das apokalyptische Konstantinopel; Congourdeau, Textes apocalyptiques; Ubierna,

L’apocalyptique byzantine; and now Kraft, An inventory of medieval Greek apocalyptical sources. Regarding the

handling of apocalyptic expectations in the Chronographia, Torgerson, Chronographia, 37, observes: »Readers

of the Chronographia found in the work not only an authoritative account of all past time but a definitive

adjudication of time’s end as the meaning behind the chronology of the Roman emperors. Accordingly, we find

the Chronographia completely uninterested in anything resembling apocalyptic prophecies or calculations, and

yet deeply invested in making meaning out of the time at hand through the figures of apocalyptic typologies.«

An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Celestial

Phenomena

medieval worlds • No. 17 • 2022 • 3-58

Interestingly, even the Chronographia, which otherwise tried to preserve a positive image

of Eirene, linked Constantine VIʹs blinding with the events leading to the imperial coronation

of Charlemagne since immediately after the description of this event we read:

In the same year, too, the relatives of the blessed Pope Adrian in Rome roused up the

people and rebelled against Pope Leo, whom they arrested and blinded. They did not

manage, however, to extinguish his sight altogether because those who were blinding

him were merciful and took pity on him. He sought refuge with Karoulos, king of the

Franks, who took bitter vengeance on his enemies and restored him to his throne,

Rome, falling from that time onwards under the authority of the Franks. Repaying his

debt to Karoulos, Leo crowned him emperor of the Romans in the church of the holy

apostle Peter after anointing him with oil from head to foot and investing him with

imperial robes and a crown on 25 December, indiction 9.22

This narrative links is also evident in the oldest manuscript tradition of the Chronographia.

Arguably, the chroniclers intended to contrast the brutal blinding of Constantine VI with the

more »merciful« one of Pope Leo III; the two events, however, did not take place »in the same

year« of AM 6289. Leo III was blinded on 25 April 799, that is AM 6291.

In order to bring

the narrative on Leo III to a conclusion, the Chronographia further adds the reference to

the crowning of Charlemagne, which took place on 25 December 800, that is AM 6293.

This reference is later repeated in the Chronographia under the correct year AM 6293

which suggests that the authors were informed about the actual chronology of the events in

Rome. Nevertheless, they put the blinding of Constantine VI and of Leo III »in the same

year« to serve their narrative strategy, culminating in the coronation of the Charlemagne

as a con-

sequence of the «darkening« of imperial power in Constantinople and papal power

in Rome (somehow similar to the above-mentioned argument put forward by Alcuin).26 Such

adapta-

tions of the chronology of events to the purposes of the narrative are quite

common in the Chronographia,

also for celestial phenomena during the reign of Eirene

and Constantine VI (see below).

Theophanes, Chronographia, vol 1, ed. de Boor, 472,23-473, 4; The Chronicle of Theophanes

Confessor, transl. Mango and Scott, 649.

See, for instance, Christ Church MS 5, folio 298v (late 9th century). Accessed on 20 August 2022:

digital.bodleian.

ox.ac.uk/objects/e873ecff-7b8d-4826-a1dd-62e4e2ac1c8f/surfaces/227ac1b7-b02b-4ca9-

af02-967b692dae79/. On the actual marking of narrative units in the Chronographia, which is often distorted

by the organization of the text in modern-day editions and translations, see Torgerson, Chronographia, 39.

PmbZ, no. 4239/corr. (accessed on 21 May 2021: www.degruyter.com/database/PMBZ/entry/PMBZ15397/html).

See

also Speck, Konstantin VI., 353-354; Rochow, Byzanz im 8. Jahrhundert, 270; Torgerson,

Chronographia, 258-259.

»In this year, on 25 December, indiction 9, Karoulos, king of the Franks, was crowned by Pope Leo. He intended to

make a naval expedition against Sicily, but changed his mind and decided instead to marry Eirene. To this end he

sent ambassadors the following year, indiction 10.« Theophanes, Chronographia, vol 1, ed. de Boor, 475, 10-15;

The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, transl. Mango and Scott, 653. On the probability of actual plans of a

marriage between Eirene and Charlemagne, see Kislinger, Diskretion bis Verschleierung, 276-278, 305-307.

Torgerson, Chronographia, 258-260.

Torgerson, Chronographia; Kislinger, Diskretion bis Verschleierung, 274, n. 5. See also the excellent study by

Jankowiak, First Arab siege of Constantinople, who demonstrates how a first Arab siege of Constantinople dated

in scholarship to the years 674-678 erroneously emerged from a rearrangement of events actually taking place

in the late 660s by Theophanes.

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»Thesunwasdarkenedforseventeendays«(AD797).AnInterdisciplinaryExplorationofCelestialPhenomenabetweenByzantium,Charlemagne,andaVolcanicEruptionJohannesPreiser-KapellerandEwaldKislinger*Pre-print,postpeerreview,publishedin:medievalworlds•No.17•2022•3-58,https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022...

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