Methodius was a Sicilian Greek of senatorial rank, monk of the Constantinople monastery of Chenolakkos. Twice imprisoned and once flogged in public squares for his open opposition to the second iconoclasm under Emperor Theophilus, he survived to be appointed patriarch by Empress Theodora — who as regent for her infant son Michael III had decided to end the iconoclast era — in 843.
On the First Sunday of Great Lent, March 11, 843, Methodius led the great procession through Constantinople restoring the icons to Hagia Sophia. The day — the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy' (Kyriaki tis Orthodoxias) — is observed every First Sunday of Lent in every Byzantine and Eastern Catholic church to this day, with the icons of Christ, the Theotokos, and all the saints carried in procession.
He governed the patriarchate for four years until his death in 847, composing the Synodikon of Orthodoxy — the liturgical document read each year on the feast — and overseeing the rebuilding of the Constantinople churches stripped of their imagery during the iconoclast era.