On the Letters Letters for the Seventh Council

Editor's note

After the death of her husband Leo IV in 780, the Empress Irene ruled for their young son Constantine VI and set about ending the war on the holy icons. These two letters, written in the names of mother and son, did it. The first, sent in 785, asks Pope Adrian of Rome to come, or to send men in his place, to a General Council. The second was read to the bishops gathered at Nicaea at the opening of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787: it tells how the dying Patriarch Paul repented of the iconoclast synod, and how Tarasius would take the patriarchal throne only if an Ecumenical Council were held.