BY her mildness and patience she often softened the cruel temper of her
brutish husband, Theophilus, and protected the defenders of holy images
from the fury of his persecution. Being left by his death regent of the
empire during the minority of her son, Michael III., she put an end to
the Iconoclast heresy, one hundred and twenty years after the first
establishment of it by Leo the Isaurian: and the patriarch Methodius
with great solemnity restored holy images in the great church in
Constantinople, on the first Sunday of Lent, which we call the second,
of which event the Greeks make an annual commemoration, calling it the
feast of Orthodoxy. After she had governed the empire with great glory
twelve years, she was banished by her unnatural son and his impious
uncle, Bardas. She prepared herself for death by spending the last eight
years of her life in a monastery, where she gave up her soul to God in
867. She is ranked among the saints in the Menology of the emperor
Basil, in the Menaea, and other calendars of the Greeks. See the
compilations of Bollandus from the authors of the Byzantine history.