Which Byzantine empress finally ended the second iconoclasm in 843?

Empress Theodora finally ended the second Byzantine iconoclasm in 843. After her husband, the iconoclast emperor Theophilos, died in January 842, Theodora became regent for their young son, Michael III. Unlike her husband, she supported the veneration of religious images, or icons.

In March 843, Theodora and her advisers convened a council in Constantinople. It reaffirmed the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea, held in 787, which had defended the proper veneration of icons. The iconoclast patriarch John VII was deposed and replaced by Methodios I, an iconophile. The restoration was publicly celebrated in Constantinople on 11 March 843.

The event ended the second period of Byzantine iconoclasm, which had begun in 814 under Emperor Leo V. It is commemorated in Eastern Orthodoxy as the Feast of Orthodoxy, celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent. A common mix-up is Irene, who ended the first iconoclast period in 787; Theodora ended the second.