IRENE WITH CONSTANTINE VI GOLD SOLIDUS – IMPERIAL FAMILY ISSUE – AU NGC GRADED BYZANTINE COIN (Inv. 21298)

$5,500.00

21298. BYZANTINE EMPIRE. IRENE WITH CONSTANTINE VI, AD 787-797.
Gold Solidus, 4.46 g, 20 mm. Issue of Constantinople.
Obv. COnStAntInOS CAb Δ, busts of Constantine VI and Irene, facing, holding globus cruciger and scepter with cross respectively, cross above. Rev. SVn IRIn-I AVΓ’ mItRI AV’, Leo III, Constantine V, and Leo IV seated facing, each wearing chlamys and crown surmounted by cross.
Sear 1591; DOC 2.
NGC graded AU, Strike 5/5, Surface 4/5.

In the late seventh century, Byzantine Christian society became divided over the use of religious icons, leading to the adoption of an official opposition to images under Emperor Leo III. He issued edicts in AD 726 and 730 condemning images and supporting the iconoclast (“image-breaker”) movement, while his son Leo IV, the husband of Empress Irene, violently persecuted those who honored religious images, who were known derisively as iconodoules (“slaves to images”). It is suggested that his crackdown on the iconodoules began when he discovered two icons secretly hidden beneath his Irene’s pillow. Regardless, when Leo IV died in AD 780, Irene, in her new role as regent for the young Constantine VI, restored the religious images that had been under attack for decades. In AD 787, she convened the Second Council of Nicea, at which it was determined that the veneration of icons was not idolatrous on the grounds that the honor given to the image passed on to the individual depicted and was not directed to the image itself.