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

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 calculations). We equally find indications of apocalyptic expectations in Constantinople, where Constantineʹs blinding was linked with a spectacular celestial manifestation of divine disapproval – 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 darkening 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.