Empress Theodora

Christian art flourished in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, resulting in splendid churches, mosaics, and Gospel illuminations in the east and west. Christians in the west generally embraced this renaissance in church art, but beginning in the eight century Greek theologians, clergy, and laity initiated the "iconoclast controversy" in protest against visual representations of Christ and the saints. The iconoclasts claimed that Christ destroyed the power of paganism and idolatry, eliminating the need for idols. Christians who supported the use of images, called "iconodules" ("image-honorers") argued that Jesus Christ was the perfect physical image of God and that images of wood and stone merely echoed the incarnation. Both sides debated the theology underpinning their arguments for over a century, with emperors and high-ranking clergy alternating between positions. On the first Sunday of Lent in 843 empress Theodora, wife of Theophilus, ended the iconoclast controversy by staging a large procession in Constantinople and declaring the restoration of icons, marking the triumph of the images in east and west.

Henry Chadwick. The Early Church. Revised Edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Pp 283-284