The life of St Methodios of Constantinople
Everything shifted after Theophilos died. The minister Theoktistos persuaded Theodora, ruling as regent for her young son Michael III, to allow icon veneration back into the Church, the iconoclast patriarch John Grammatikos was deposed, and Methodios was raised to the vacant throne in his place.
Barely a week into that office, on March 11, 843, Methodios walked in procession with Theodora and the boy emperor from the church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, formally restoring the icons before the whole city, an act the Church still marks each year on the first Sunday of Great Lent as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. He governed Constantinople afterward with a deliberate policy of moderation toward those who had once opposed him, for some four years, until his death in 847.
