This week in Christian history: Tennessee bans evolution, Iconoclasts defeated, UK Christian group formed

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, March 08, 2020

Eastern churches restore icons – March 11, 843

Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, as depicted in a Medieval mosaic at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. | (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

This week marks the anniversary of when Orthodox churches returned to the practice of using icons during worship, after several years of the practice being repressed in the Byzantine Empire.

In 815, Byzantine Emperor Leo V the Armenian issued a decree placing icons in places where worshipers could not venerate the images with prayers or kissing.

However, explained the Orthodox Church in America, changes in both royal and church leadership eventually led to the restoration of the practice of icon veneration.

“… at a local council in Constantinople, the icons were restored, and a huge, triumphant procession with the holy images took place on the first Sunday of Great Lent in that year—March 11, 843,” noted the OCA.

“This great event, known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy, has been celebrated ever since in the Orthodox Church on the first Sunday of Great Lent—known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy.”