​IRENAEUS, bishop of Lyons at the end of the 2nd century, was one of the most distinguished theologians of the ante-Nicene Church. Very little is known of his early history. His childhood was spent in Asia Minor, probably at or near Smyrna; for he himself tells us (Adv. haer. iii. 3, 4, and Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 20) that as a child he heard the preaching of Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna (d. February 22, 156). But we do not know when this was. He can hardly have been born very long after 130, for later on he frequently mentions having met certain Christian presbyters who had actually seen John, the disciple of our Lord. The circumstances under which he came into the West are also unknown to us; the only thing which is certain is that at the time of the persecution of the Gallic Church under Marcus Aurelius (177) he was a presbyter of the church at Lyons. In 177 or 178 he went to Rome on a mission from this church, to make representations to Bishop Eleutherius in favour of a more lenient treatment of the Montanists (see Montanism.; Eus. v. 4. 2). On his return he was called upon to undertake the direction of the church at Lyons in the place of Bishop Pothinus, who had perished in the persecution (Eus. v. 5. 8). As bishop he carried on a great and fruitful work. Though the statement of Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 29), that within a short time he succeeded in converting all Lyons to Christianity, is probably exaggerated, from him at any rate dates the wide spread of Christianity in Lyons and its neighbourhood. He devoted particular attention to trying to reconcile the numerous sects which menaced the existence of the church (see below). In the dispute on the question of Easter, which for a long time disturbed the Christian Church both in West and East, he endeavoured by means of many letters to effect a compromise, and in particular to exercise a moderating influence on Victor, the bishop of Rome, and his unyielding attitude towards the dissentient churches of Africa, thus justifying his name of “peace-maker” (Eirenaios) (Eus. H. E. v. 24. 28). The date of his death is unknown. His martyrdom under Septimius Severus is related by Gregory of Tours, but by no earlier writer.

The chief work of Irenaeus, written about 180, is his “Refutation and Overthrow of Gnosis, falsely so called” (usually indicated by the name Against the Heresies). Of the Greek original of this work only fragments survive; it only exists in full in an old Latin translation, the slavish fidelity of which to a certain extent makes up for the loss of the original text. The treatise is divided into five books: of these the first two contain a minute and well-informed description and criticism of the tenets of various heretical sects, especially the Valentinians; the other three set forth the true doctrines of Christianity, and it is from them that we find out the theological opinions of the author. Irenaeus admits himself that he is not a good writer. And indeed, as he worked, his materials assumed such unmanageable proportions that he could not succeed in throwing them into a satisfactory form. But however clumsily he may have handled his material, he has produced a work which is even nowadays rightly valued as the first systematic exposition of Catholic belief. The foundation upon which Irenaeus bases his system consists in the episcopate, the canon of the Old and New Testaments, and the rule of faith. With their assistance he sets forth and upholds, in opposition to the gnostic dualism, i.e. the severing of the natural and the supernatural, the Catholic monism, i.e. the unity of the life of faith as willed by God. The “grace of truth” (the charisma), which the apostles had called down upon their first disciples by prayer and laying-on of hands, and which was to be imparted anew by way of succession (διαδοχή, successio) to the bishops from generation to generation without a break, makes those who receive it living witnesses of the salvation offered to the faithful by written and spoken tradition. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, rightly expounded by the church alone, give us an insight into God’s plan of salvation for mankind, and explain to us the covenant which He made on various occasions (Moses and Christ; or Noah, Abraham, Moses and Christ). Finally, the “rule of faith” (regula fidei), received at baptism, contains in itself all the riches of Christian truth. To distribute these, i.e. to elucidate the rule of faith as set forth in the creed, and further to point out its agreement with the Scriptures, is the object of Irenaeus as a theologian. Hence he lays the greatest stress on the conception of God’s disposition of salvation towards mankind (oeconomia), the object of which is that mankind, who in Adam were sunk in sin and death, should in Christ, comprised as it were in his person, be brought back to life. God, as the head of the family, so to speak, disposes of all. The Son, the Word (Logos) for ever dwelling with the Father, carries out His behests. The Holy Ghost (Pneuma), however, as the Spirit of wisdom for ever dwelling with the Father, controls what the Father has appointed and the Son fulfilled, and this Spirit lives in the church. The climax of the divine plan of salvation is found in the incarnation of the Word. God was to become man, and in Christ he became man. Christ must be God; for if not, the devil would have had a natural claim on him, and he would have been no more exempt from death than the other children of Adam; he must be man, if his blood were indeed to redeem us. On God incarnate the power of the devil is broken, and in Him is accomplished the reconciliation between God and man, who henceforth pursues his true object, namely, to become like unto God. In the God-man God has drawn men up to Himself. Into their human, fleshly and perishable nature imperishable life is thereby engrafted; it has become deified, and death has been changed into immortality. In the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper it is the heavenly body of the God-man which is actually partaken of in the elements. This exposition by Irenaeus of the divine economy and the incarnation was taken as a criterion by later theologians, especially in the Greek Church (cf. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus). He himself was especially influenced by St John and St Paul. Before him the Fourth Gospel did not seem to exist for the Church; Irenaeus made it a living force. His conception of the Logos is not that of the philosophers and apologists; he looks upon the Logos not as the “reason” of God, but as the “voice” with which the Father speaks in the revelation to mankind, as did the writer of the Fourth Gospel. And the Pauline epistles are adopted almost bodily by Irenaeus, according to the ideas contained in them; his expositions often present the appearance of a patchwork of St Paul’s ideas. Certainly, it is only one side of Paul’s thought that he displays to us. The great conceptions of justification and atonement are hardly ever touched by Irenaeus. In Irenaeus is no longer heard the Jew, striving about and against the law, who has had to break free from his early tradition of Pharisaism.

Till recent times whatever other writings and letters of Irenaeus are mentioned by Eusebius appeared to be lost, with the exception of a fragment here or there. Recently, however, two Armenian scholars, Karapet Ter-Měkěrttschian and Erwand ​Ter-Minassianz, have published from an Armenian translation a German edition (Leipzig, 1907; minor edition 1908) of the work “in proof of the apostolic teaching” mentioned by Eusebius (H.E. v. 26). This work, which is in the form of a dialogue with one Marcianus, otherwise unknown to us, contains a statement of the fundamental truths of Christianity. It is the oldest catechism extant, and an excellent example of how Bishop Irenaeus was able not only to defend Christianity as a theologian and expound it theoretically, but also to preach it to laymen.

IRENE, the name of several Byzantine empresses.

1. Irene (752–803), the wife of Leo IV., East Roman emperor. Originally a poor but beautiful Athenian orphan, she speedily gained the love and confidence of her feeble husband, and at his death in 780 was left by him sole guardian of the empire and of their ten-year-old son Constantine VI. Seizing the supreme power in the name of the latter, Irene ruled the empire at her own discretion for ten years, displaying great firmness and sagacity in her government. Her most notable act was the restoration of the orthodox image-worship, a policy which she always had secretly favoured, though compelled to abjure it in her husband’s lifetime. Having elected Tarasius, one of her partisans, to the patriarchate (784), she summoned two church councils. The former of these, held in 786 at Constantinople, was frustrated by the opposition of the soldiers. The second, convened at Nicaea in 787, formally revived the adoration of images and reunited the Eastern church with that of Rome. As Constantine approached maturity he began to grow restive under her autocratic sway. An attempt to free himself by force was met and crushed by the empress, who demanded that the oath of fidelity should thenceforward be taken in her name alone. The discontent which this occasioned swelled in 790 into open resistance, and the soldiers, headed by the Armenian guard, formally proclaimed Constantine VI. as the sole ruler. A hollow semblance of friendship was maintained between Constantine and Irene, whose title of empress was confirmed in 792; but the rival factions remained, and Irene, by skilful intrigues with the bishops and courtiers, organized a powerful conspiracy on her own behalf. Constantine could only flee for aid to the provinces, but even there he was surrounded by participants in the plot. Seized by his attendants on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus, the emperor was carried back to the palace at Constantinople; and there, by the orders of his mother, his eyes were stabbed out. An eclipse of the sun and a darkness of seventeen days’ duration were attributed by the common superstition to the horror of heaven. Irene reigned in prosperity and splendour for five years. She is said to have endeavoured to negotiate a marriage between herself and Charlemagne; but according to Theophanes, who alone mentions it, the scheme was frustrated by Aëtius, one of her favourites. A projected alliance between Constantine and Charlemagne’s daughter, Rothrude, was in turn broken off by Irene. In 802 the patricians, upon whom she had lavished every honour and favour, conspired against her, and placed on the throne Nicephorus, the minister of finance. The haughty and unscrupulous princess, “who never lost sight of political power in the height of her religious zeal,” was exiled to Lesbos and forced to support herself by spinning. She died the following year. Her zeal in restoring images and monasteries has given her a place among the saints of the Greek church.

2. Irene (c. 1066–c. 1120), the wife of Alexius I. The best-known fact of her life is the unsuccessful intrigue by which she endeavoured to divert the succession from her son John to Nicephorus Bryennius, the husband of her daughter Anna. Having failed to persuade Alexius, or, upon his death, to carry out a coup d’état with the help of the palace guards, she retired to a monastery and ended her life in obscurity.

3. Irene (d. 1161), the first wife of Manuel Comnenus. She was the daughter of the count of Sulzbach, and sister-in-law of the Roman emperor Conrad II., who arranged her betrothal. The marriage was celebrated at Constantinople in 1146. The new empress, who had exchanged her earlier name of Bertha for one more familiar to the Greeks, became a devoted wife, and by the simplicity of her manner contrasted favourably with most Byzantine queens of the age.

IRETON, HENRY (1611–1651), English parliamentary general, eldest son of German Ireton of Attenborough, Nottinghamshire, was baptized on the 3rd of November 1611, became a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1626, graduated B.A. in 1629, and entered the Middle Temple the same year. On the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the parliamentary army, fought at Edgehill and at Gainsborough in July 1643, was made by Cromwell deputy-governor of the Isle of Ely, and next year served under Manchester in the Yorkshire campaign and at the second battle of Newbury, afterwards supporting Cromwell in his accusations of incompetency against the general. On the night before the battle of Naseby, in June 1645, he succeeded in surprising the Royalist army and captured many prisoners, and next day, on the suggestion of Cromwell, he was made commissary-general and appointed to the command of the left wing, Cromwell himself commanding the right. The wing under Ireton was completely broken by the impetuous charge of Rupert, and Ireton was wounded and taken prisoner, but after the rout of the enemy which ensued on the successful charge of Cromwell he regained his freedom. He was present at the siege of Bristol in the September following, and took an active part in the subsequent victorious campaign which resulted in the overthrow of the royal cause. On the 30th of October 1645 Ireton entered parliament as member for Appleby, and while occupied with the siege of Oxford he was, on the 15th of June 1646, married to Bridget, daughter of Oliver Cromwell. This union brought Ireton into still closer connexion with Cromwell, with whose career he was now more completely identified. But while Cromwell’s policy was practically limited to making the best of the present situation, and was generally inclined to compromise, Ireton’s attitude was based on well-grounded principles of statesmanship. He was opposed to the destructive schemes of the extreme party, disliked especially the abstract and unpractical theories of the Republicans and the Levellers, and desired, while modifying their mutual powers, to retain the constitution of King, Lords and Commons. He urged these views in the negotiations of the army with the parliament, and in the conferences with the king, being the person chiefly entrusted with the drawing up of the army proposals, including the manifesto called “The Heads of the Proposals.” He endeavoured to prevent the breach between the army and the parliament, but when the division became inevitable took the side of the former. He persevered in supporting the negotiations with the king till his action aroused great suspicion and unpopularity. He became at length convinced of the hopelessness of dealing with Charles, and after the king’s flight to the Isle of Wight treated his further proposals with coldness and urged the parliament