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Eirene Laskarina, empress of John III Batatzes of the exiled Byzantine Empireof Nicaea (1204--1261 CE), was an important Eastern Mediterranean figure in thefirst half of the thirteenth century. We reassess the date of Eirene's death,which has been variously dated between late 1239 and 1241, with theunderstanding that narrowing the range in which this event occurred contributesmuch to understanding the political situation in the area around 1240. GeorgeAkropolites, a famous official of the Empire, gives an account that connectsEirene's death to a comet that appeared "six months earlier", thus pointing totwo comet candidates that were visible from the Eastern Mediterranean between1239 and 1241, one recorded on "3 June 1239" and the other on "31 January1240". Recent historians prefer the former, based on historical circumstancesand without a critical assessment of the comet records. We revisit thehistorical records and reveal that the "3 June 1239" candidate was not a comet.On the other hand, the other candidate, sighted on "31 January 1240", was acomet, as supported by multiple historical records in multiple regions, and isalso a good fit with Akropolites's narrative. Therefore, we conclude thatEirene died six months after the comet that was seen on 31 January 1240, whichplaces her death in the summer of 1240. Given that the date of her death iscrucial for determining some other contemporary events across the EasternMediterranean, our results offer a solid basis for further research on thethirteenth-century Eastern Mediterranean.

Cometary records revise Eastern Mediterranean chronology around 1240 CE