The life of St Theodora the Empress
When Theophilus died in 842, Theodora became regent for their young son Michael III, and with the backing of the newly installed Patriarch Methodios she moved quickly to reverse the policy that had divided the Church for over a century. A synod gathered in Constantinople in 843 condemned iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons, and on the first Sunday of that year's Great Lent, March 11, a procession carried the images through the city in a celebration that has been kept ever since as the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Under her regency, bishops driven into exile for defending the icons, among them Theophylactus of Nicomedia, saw their relics and communities restored. Theodora went on governing capably for years afterward, steadying the treasury and holding off a Bulgarian threat, before being set aside by her grown son's court. She reposed some years later, remembered above all for the single Lenten Sunday that bears her restoration's name.
