Portal:Byzantine Empire/Selected biography/10

Zoe and her son, emperor Constantine VII.

Zoe Karbonopsina, i.e., "with the Coal-Black Eyes" (Greek: Ζωή Καρβωνοψίνα, romanized: Zōē Karbōnopsina), was the fourth wife of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise and the mother of Constantine VII.

Zoe Karbonopsina was a relative of the chronicler Theophanes the Confessor and a niece of the admiral Himerios. Desperate to sire a son, Leo VI married his mistress Zoe on 9 January 906, only after she had given birth to the future Constantine VII at the end of 905. However, this constituted his fourth marriage, and was therefore uncanonical in the eyes of the Church, which had already been reluctant to accept his third marriage to Eudokia Baïana, who died in childbirth in 901.

Although the Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos reluctantly baptised Constantine, he forbade the emperor from marrying for the fourth time. Leo VI married Zoe with the assistance of a cooperative priest, Thomas, but Nicholas' continued opposition to the marriage led to his removal from office and replacement by Euthymios in 907. The new patriarch attempted a compromise by defrocking the offending priest but recognizing the marriage.