11 March

At the beginning of Orthodox Lent, the Triumph of Orthodoxy is remembered.

“Despite the teaching about icons defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, the iconoclasts began to trouble the Church again. After the death of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos, his young son Michael III, with his mother the regent Theodora, and Patriarch Methodios, summoned the Synod of Constantinople in 843 to bring peace to the Church. At the end of the first session, all made a triumphal procession from the Church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, restoring the icons to the church. This occurred on 11 March, 843... The Synod decreed that a perpetual feast on the anniversary of that day should be observed each year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, and named the day, ‘the Sunday of Orthodoxy’

Above: Icon of the Virgin and Child with angels and Sts. George and Theodore Stratelates, c. 600, one of few icons to survive in the period of iconoclasm.