feast celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine Rite to commemorate the return of icons (sacred images) to the churches (843) and the end of the long Iconoclastic Controversy. Fear of idolatry had led to an official proscription against icons in 730. The restoration was effected by Empress Theodora after the death of her iconoclast husband, Theophilus.