797

By place

Byzantine Empire

• April 19 or August 19 , Empress Irene organizes a conspiracy against her son Constantine VI. He is captured and blinded; Irene exiles him to Principo, where he dies shortly thereafter of his wounds. Irene begins a 5-year reign, and calls herself basileus ("emperor") of the Byzantine Empire. (Sources and historians conflict on whether this was in April or August.)

Europe

• King Charlemagne issues the Capitulare Saxonicum, making Westphalian, Angrian and Eastphalian Saxons equal to other peoples in the Frankish Kingdom. The Nordalbian Saxons revolt; a Frankish fleet is sent to the North Sea coast of Germany. It lands in Hadeln, a marshy coastal region between the Weser and Elbe estuaries, near modern-day Cuxhaven. Charlemagne invades northern Saxony, and again accepts the submission of the Saxons.

Britain

• Battle of Rhuddlan: Welsh forces, including those of Powys and Dyfed, clash with Mercians. King Coenwulf tries to re-assert his domination of northeast Wales. King Caradog ap Meirion of Gwynedd is killed during the fighting (approximate date).

• Bernard of Italy, king of the Lombards (d. 818)
• Ignatius I, patriarch of Constantinople (or 798)
• Judith of Bavaria, Frankish empress (or 805)
• Meinrad of Einsiedeln, German hermit (d. 861)
• Pepin I of Aquitaine, king of Aquitaine (d. 838)
• Shinshō, Japanese Buddhist monk (d. 873)

• February 6 , Donnchad Midi, High King of Ireland
• Æthelberht of Whithorn, Anglo-Saxon bishop
• Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, scholar and theologian
• Al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba, Muslim military leader
• Bermudo I, king of Asturias (approximate date)
• Caradog ap Meirion, king of Gwynedd (approximate date)
• Constantine VI, emperor of the Byzantine Empire (b. 771)
• Cummascach mac Fogartaig, king of South Brega
• Guan Bo, chancellor of the Tang Dynasty (b. 719)
• Muireadhach mac Olcobhar, Irish abbot