Theodora the Empress

[Kristos]

Reading from the Synaxarion:
As for the renowned Empress Theodora, she was from Paphlagonia and
was the daughter of a certain Marinus, the commander of a military
regiment. While being the wife of the Emperor Theophilus, the last of the
Iconoclasts, she adorned the royal diadem with her virtue and piety; as longas her husband Theophilus lived, she privately venerated icons,
despite his displeasure. After his death, she restored the holy icons to
public veneration; this is commemorated on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the
First Sunday of the Great Fast. She governed the Empire wisely for
fifteen years, since her son Michael was not yet of age. But in 857 she
forsook her royal power and entered a certain convent in Constantinople
called Gastria, where she finished the course of her life in holiness
and reposed in the Lord.

 

[katholikos]

Reading from the Synaxarion:
As for the renowned Empress Theodora, she was from Paphlagonia and
was the daughter of a certain Marinus, the commander of a military
regiment. While being the wife of the Emperor Theophilus, the last of the
Iconoclasts, she adorned the royal diadem with her virtue and piety; as longas her husband Theophilus lived, she privately venerated icons,
despite his displeasure. After his death, she restored the holy icons to
public veneration; this is commemorated on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the
First Sunday of the Great Fast. She governed the Empire wisely for
fifteen years, since her son Michael was not yet of age. But in 857 she
forsook her royal power and entered a certain convent in Constantinople
called Gastria, where she finished the course of her life in holiness
and reposed in the Lord.

I don't understand

 

[Thekla]

I don't understand

Theophilus (her husband) was an iconoclast
(if that was your question ... sorry if I mistook your confusion)

 

[Sphinx777]

Theodora (Greek: Θεοδώρα, c. 815 - after 867) was the wife of the Byzantine emperor Theophilus.

Following the death of her husband, Theodora served as regent for her son Michael. She overrode Theophilus' ecclesiastical policy and summoned a council under the patriarch Methodius, in which the veneration, but not worship, of icons (images of Jesus Christ and the saints) was finally restored and the iconoclastic clergy deposed.

She carried on the government with a firm and judicious hand; she replenished the treasury and deterred the Bulgarians from an attempt at invasion. However, it was during her regency that a vigorous persecution of the Paulician 'heresy' commenced.

In order to perpetuate her power she purposely neglected her son's education, and therefore must be held responsible for the voluptuous character which he developed under the influence of his uncle Bardas, who was Theodora's brother and likewise of Mamikonian heritage.

Theodora endeavoured in vain to combat Bardas's authority; in 855 she was displaced from her regency at his prompting, and being subsequently convicted of intrigues against him was relegated to the monastery of Gastria. She died after his assassination at the hands of Basil I, thus witnessing the end of the dynasty she had worked so hard to preserve. She was sainted in recompense for her zeal on behalf of the restoration of icons as objects of veneration. Her feastday is February 11.