Çınar Square No. 3 Büyükada, Büyükada-Nizam, 34970 Adalar/Istanbul, Turkey
The largest island of the Büyükada archipelago (Prinkipo or Prinkipos), where most travelers staying in Istanbul go for vacation. It is notable for its high and steep shores, dense forest, and ancient monasteries. The first records of influential figures of the Byzantine Empire exiled here date back to the 6th century, when by order of Justinian I the Great in 565, the Patriarch of Constantinople Eutychius was exiled to the island for his teaching on the incorruptibility of the flesh of Jesus Christ. It was this island that gave its name to the entire archipelago – the Prinkipo Islands, which in Russian became known as the Princes' Islands. No "princes" were ever exiled here. The island has many beautiful wooden mansions.
In 635, Emperor Heraclius I sent his illegitimate son Atalarich to exile on Prinkipo, having first cut off his nose and hand. As it later turned out, Atalarich, accused of plotting a conspiracy against his father, had no idea about the planned coup.
In 766, by order of Emperor Constantine V Copronymus, notorious for his persecution of clergy who supported the veneration of icons, Patriarch Constantine II was sent to Prinkipo. Although he himself was a fervent opponent of icon veneration, he nevertheless condemned the emperor’s struggle against heretics, for which he paid with exile to the island. The patriarch stayed on Prinkipo for about a year before being returned to Constantinople, where he was humiliated by being paraded through the streets and then beheaded.
At the end of the 8th century, Empress Irene built a women’s monastery on Prinkipo, the ruins of which can still be seen on the island. The first inmates of the monastery were Irene’s daughter-in-law, the wife of Emperor Constantine VI (Irene’s son, who was blinded by his mother’s supporters in the struggle for power and sent to one of the Princes' Islands). Constantine VI did not limit himself to exiling his wife Maria but forced her to become a nun, along with his daughters Euphrosyne and Irene, who soon arrived on Prinkipo. In 823, Euphrosyne married the new emperor Michael II the Amorian, while the other prisoners remained on the island.
Empress Irene, one of the few Byzantine women who ruled the empire independently, is known not only for her successful intrigues against her son Constantine VI but also for positive reforms in state governance, which soon earned her the love of the common people. On the eve of negotiations with envoys of the Frankish state about marriage to Charlemagne and the subsequent unification of the two empires into a single state, the empress was overthrown by conspirators led by Nikephoros and sent to the monastery on Prinkipo, which she herself had founded. Irene stayed here less than a year before Nikephoros, already emperor, sent a detachment in 803 to transfer the august prisoner to Lesbos, where she died, unable to endure the harsh living conditions and repentant for her sins.
An interesting episode is the exile of another autocratic empress, Zoe Porphyrogenita, who after the death of her husband Michael IV made the mistake of proclaiming her adopted son Michael (Michael V Kalaphates) the new emperor. In "gratitude" for such patronage, Michael V exiled Zoe to the Princes' Islands in 1042, from where she was rescued by Constantine IX Monomachos, the grandfather of Vladimir Monomakh.
The list of those imprisoned on Prinkipo is very long; notable figures include Irene Doukaina Laskarina, daughter of the Nicaean emperor Theodore II, Anna Dalassena, mother of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, and Maria of Alania, daughter of Georgian King Bagrat IV, exiled to the island by her husband Alexios I Komnenos, who no longer needed her political support.
Interesting information about the imprisonment of Maria of Alania is provided by a letter from Archbishop Theophylact of Ohrid, whom the disgraced empress once patronized but whom he did not visit while passing by on a ship. He writes: “Let your majesty know that many times and for a long time I urged the sailors to turn the rudder and set the sails toward the island of Prinkipo, where your majesty happily resides. But my stern shouts did not reach them, I think, because their ears were blocked by the even sterner howl of the north wind.” This situation is quite curious in that the archbishop feels the need to justify why he did not visit the empress in exile, i.e., he not only could but also should have visited her.
And what prevented him was not fear of punishment from the stern emperor but the “stern north wind.” Overall, he does not hesitate to write that the empress “happily resides” on one of the islands. It is obvious that the conditions of the royal person’s detention on the island were not so harsh and quite corresponded to her status.
The last major statesman exiled to the island was Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Doukas, who was deposed and blinded in 1078. However, there is a version that the emperor spent his last days directly in Constantinople.
