St. Irene the Empress

Irene was born around the year 752 at Athens, of a Greek family, and was chosen for her beauty and wit to be the bride of the heir to the Eastern throne. She came to Constantinople in the years when the iconoclast policy was at its height, and she kept her veneration of the holy icons in her heart through a court that condemned them.

On the death of her husband she became regent for her young son Constantine, and with the power of the state in her hands she resolved to restore the icons to the Church. She found in Tarasius, whom she raised to the patriarchate, a like mind, and together they summoned a general council.

The first gathering at Constantinople in 786 was scattered by iconoclast soldiers of the guard. Irene did not relent; she had the disaffected troops removed and called the Fathers again, this time to Nicaea, where in 787 the Seventh Ecumenical Council met and restored the veneration of the holy icons, teaching that the honour given to the image passes to its prototype.

Her later years were darkened by the long and bitter struggle with her son for the throne, and at the last she was deposed and sent into exile on the island of Lesbos, where she reposed in 803, having given her wealth to the poor and the Church.

The Church keeps her memory on the seventh of August, honouring the empress who gave the Seventh Ecumenical Council its summons and gave back to the faithful the icons of Christ and his saints.