Royal Numismatic Society

IRENE DUKAINA
Author(s): Hugh Goodacre
Source: The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, Fifth
Series, Vol. 19, No. 74 (1939), pp. 105-111
Published by: Royal Numismatic Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42661048
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IV.
IRENE DUKAINA.
WIFE OF THE EMPEROR ALEXIUS I.

The marriage of Alexius Comnenus with Irene, the

grand-daughter of the Caesar John Dukas, was destined

to unite the two great feudal families of the Comneni

and the Dukai on the Byzantine throne. Alexius was
a successful young general at the time, and Irene but
a girl of thirteen. Her daughter, the royal historian

Anna Comnena, tells us that she was possessed of

great beauty, with a face (i like the moon rosy cheeks
and blue eyes, and with arms and hands looking as if
they had been carved out of ivory. The marriage was
essentially a diplomatic one, and little love seems ever
to have existed between the ill-assorted pair. It was
not until his later years that Alexius came to appreciate the worth of his wife, and then more as a nurse

than anything else. It is tolerably certain that, upon

finding himself in possession of the throne, he was
prepared to put away his girl-wife and espouse the
notoriously beautiful Maria, the wife of the Emperor
he had supplanted. Had it not been for the chivalrous
action of the young commander of the fleet, George
Palaeologus, who championed the cause of Irene, there
is little doubt but that the Empress Maria would have
found herself for the third time the consort of a

Byzantine emperor. But, even as it was, Alexius

hesitated, and refused to allow his wife to be crowned
NUMISM. CHRON., VOL. XIX, SERIES V. I

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106 HUGH GOODACRE.

with him. Popular feeling, however, ran so high

he had to give way, and Constantinople saw a s
coronation within the space of one week.

The Empress does not figure very prominently i

more active days of her husband's long reign, b

his later years, when he liad become a martyr to g

we see her nursing him with apparent solicitud

devotion. But if we are to believe the story of
death-bed of Alexius which has come down to us,

with devotion to duty rather than to the man. Al

pent-up bitterness of her married life seems to

escaped into the words she is reported to have add

to her dying husband on finding that, during

temporary absence from his bedside, he had con

at the transfer of the imperial signet to his son J

" Husband she is said to have said, " while you

you were full of guile, saying one thing and th

another ; you are no better now that you are dyin

Such, in brief, is the story of Irene Dukaina. A

her husband's death she changed her name to
and retired into a monastery which she had h
built in Constantinople. " Fifteen years later/
Mr. McCabe, to whose Empresses of Constantin
am largely indebted, " when another Irene came
the West to wed the Emperor Manuel, she not
among the crowd of notabilities who welcomed
the city an aged lady whose dark monastic rob
relieved by strips of purple and edges of gold.
she asked the name of the royal nun, she learne
it was the widow of the great Alexius."
It is, of course, useless to look to Byzantine ar
confirmation, or refutation, of Anna Comnena's description of her mother's personal appearance, but the

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IRENE DUKAINA. 107

coinage of the period does provide us with at le

conventional representation of the Empress I

In the British Museum is a billon nomisma

to which a special interest attaches on accou

having once belonged to Sabatier, and having b

sented by him to the Museum " en reconnai

Fio. 1.

la complaisance et des bons procdes de MM. les conservateurs mon gard ". It is a nomisma of Alexius I with
his wife Irene and son J ohn II. At the time of the gift

Sabatier believed the coin to be unique, and he attributed it in his Monnaies Byzantines , vol. 88, pp. 202,
203, to John II with Alexius and another of his
brothers, possibly Manuel. Subsequently, however, he
became aware of another example, this time in gold,
in the Hoffman collection, and he himself described it

in Annuaire de la soc. franc . de num., 1868, p. 292.

From this example, which was apparently in better
condition than the coin presented by him to the British
Museum, it became clear that the nomisma did not
belong to the reign of John II, but to that of his father,

Alexius I, and that the figures accompanying the

Emperor were those of his wife Irene and son John.
Wroth takes his Type 7 in the British Museum CataI 2

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108 HUGH GOODACKE.

logue of Byzantine Coins from Sabatier's descript

the Hoffman coin, and the billon coin presen

Sabatier becomes no. 24 in the list of coins of Alexius I

in the Museum Catalogue (B.M.C. y vol. ii, p. 544).

Both the gold and the billon coins are still exceedingly rare, especially the gold, but I have had the good

Fig. 2.

fortune to become possessed of a specimen in each

metal, and this enables me to make slight corrections
in the description of the coins hitherto published.
In the British Museum Catalogue Type 7 is described

as follows :

Obv . +AAEZICOAC 6IPHNAVTU On 1. Alexius I, bearded;

on r., Irene ; both standing facing, wearing crowns and
long robes, and holding between them patriarchal cross.

Alexius holds mappa (?) in r. Border of dots.

Rev . +KROH0I I(jl)ACTTT On 1., Jahn II Comnenus,

beardless, standing facing, wearing crown and long
robes : in r., labarum ; in 1., globus cr. On r., Christ,
bearded, standing facing, crowning John II, and holding

book of Gospels in 1. IC XC above. Border of dots.

On my gold coin (fig. 2) the legend is missing on the

right of the obverse. This is often found on scyphate

coins, and is possibly due to the tilting of the die on
receipt of an ill- directed blow. The name A A Z I CO A is

quite legible on the left side, and the object held by the

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IRENE DUKAINA. 109

Emperor, which Wroth queries, is unmista

mappa. The reverse legend reads KROH9 I
not KROH0I I CO A CT7T, and I can see no

globus cruciger in the left hand of the Empe

The obverse legend on my billon coin is

and reads + AAZICOA 6IPHNIAVI". There
of a further letter at the end of the legen

respects, with one exception, the billon nomi

resembles the gold. The exception is the cr

Empress Irene. On the gold coin it is simi

worn by the Emperor, but on the billon i

pointed arches usually found on the crowns of

empresses from the time of Irene, the

Constantine VI. What these " arches " exact

is difficult to say. Wroth calls them projec
ments/' or simply " projections " in descr
crowns of the Empress Irene, but it is po

originate in the rays of the radiate crown of

date. On the well-known figure of a Byzantin

on the fragment of an ivory diptych in the

Florence they actually appear as arches encl

may possibly have been a velvet cap, much
them on modern crowns. The empress on t
has been identified by some as the Empre
Eudxia, wife of the Western Emperor Valen
and by others, with greater probability, as t
Irene, mother of Constantine VI, but whoever the
royal personage represented, it is noteworthy that the

solidi of both these Empresses, although separated by

some three hundred and fifty years, show these

projecting ornaments on the crowns. Moreover, the
possibility of their derivation from the radii of the
radiate crown finds some support in the coinage of the

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110 HUGH GOODACRE.

earlier of the two Empresses. On the solidus of Li

Eudxia struck at Rome the projections are promi

but on the corresponding solidus struck at Ra

they are replaced by six rays.

The reverse of my billon coin resembles the gold

has the same reading.

"Wroth conjectures the coins of Alexius I wit
wife Irene and son John to have been struck in the

year 1092 when Alexius associated his young son with

him on the throne. They belong to the period of the
debased coinage, but the gold, although poor, makes
no approach to electrum.
This representation of the Empress Irene Dukaina
is, as far as I know, the only one which has come down
to us, unless the second figure on a bronze nomisma in
the Ratto sale (no. 2089 in the catalogue) is, as M. Ratto

thinks, also intended for her. The coin, which is described as " unpublished ", would seem to belong to that

large class of bronze scyphate coins which are so

tantalizing owing to the absence, or illegibility, of
their legends. The coin may be of Alexius I and Irene
- the type certainly suggests it - but I am by no means
satisfied that the figure on the right is that of a woman.

Not merely does not the crown - at least in the photo-

graph - show the usual pointed "arches", but the

characteristic shield-shaped fold of the robe below the
waist is absent. Further, the occasion for the issue of

such a coin has to be taken into consideration. Having

regard to the Emperor's reluctance to recognize his
wife as his consort on the throne, and to the hurried
circumstances attendant on her ultimate coronation,
it is hardly likely that this event was the cause of the

issue, but what other episode can be suggested ? In

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IRENE DUKAINA. Ill

default of the appearance of another, and

served, example of M. Ratto's coin upon
names of the imperial personages represe
read, I think we must be content to regard

sentation of the Empress Irene Dukain

nomismata here illustrated as the only on

Hugh Goodacre.
descended to our day.

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