For more than one hundred years the Church of Christ was troubled by the persecution of the Iconoclasts of evil belief, beginning in the reign of Leo the Isaurian (717-741) and ending in the reign of Theophilus (829-842). After Theophilus's death, his widow the Empress Theodora (celebrated Feb. 11), together with the Patriarch Methodius (June 14), established Orthodoxy anew. This ever-memorable Queen venerated the icon of the Mother of God in the presence of the Patriarch Methodius and the other confessors and righteous men, and openly cried out these holy words: "If anyone does not offer relative worship to the holy icons, not adoring them as though they were gods, but venerating them out of love as images of the archetype, let him be anathema." Then with common prayer and fasting during the whole first week of the Forty-day Fast, she asked God's forgiveness for her husband. After this, on the first Sunday of the Fast, she and her son, Michael the Emperor, made a procession with all the clergy and people and restored the holy icons, and again adorned the Church of Christ with them. This is the holy deed that all we the Orthodox commemorate today, and we call this radiant and venerable day the Sunday of Orthodoxy, that is, the triumph of true doctrine over heresy.

Saint Nikēphóros was a dignitary at the court of the empress Irene (797-802), and then after receiving monastic tonsure, he became known for his piety. In the year 806 he was elevated to the patriarchal throne. The saint was a zealous defender of the holy Icons. When the Iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian (813-820) came to rule, the saint in 815 was exiled to Prokonnis, where he died in the year 828.

In the year 846 the holy relics of Patriarch Nikēphóros were opened, and were found incorrupt and fragrant. They transferred them from Prokonnis to Constantinople and placed them for one day in Hagia Sophia, and then transferred them to the Church of the Holy Apostles. The saint’s hands are preserved in the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos.

The saint left behind three writings against Iconoclasm. The main Feast of Saint Nikēphóros is celebrated on June 2, but today we commemorate the finding and transfer of his holy relics.

The Holy Martyr Christina of Persia was scourged to death for confessing her faith in Christ, during the fourth century.

Gerald was born in Northumbria, England, and became a monk at Lindisfarne. When Celtic liturgical practices were forbidden there, he left England and entered a monastery on the island of Inishbofin off the coast of Mayo, Ireland. When the English and Irish monks there quarreled, he built a monastery for the English monks on the mainland. He succeeded St. Colman as abbot.

In the latter half of the 11th century, Bernard, the Archbishop of Toledo, was delegated by the Pope to bring about an ecclesiastical reform in Spain. He called in various French clerics and monks, among whom was St. Gerald, Abbott of Moissac, who was appointed choir director of the Cathedral of Toledo.

So well did this saintly man fulfill his duties and so much did he influence the people for good, that when the See of Braga became vacant, Gerald was selected by the clergy and people of that city to be their bishop. Gerald visited his diocese eradicating the abuses that had cropped up, especially that of the administering of ecclesiastical investiture by laymen.

Saint Pouplios was Bishop of Athens (after Saint Narcissus) during the second century. He was one of the Seventy Apostles (January 4), and a disciple of Saint Dionysios the Aereopagite (October 3). The God-pleasing hierarch ruled his flock as a good shepherd, and he gave his life for his rational sheep, after he had perfected it by a martyric death during the persecution of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180).