Published by Pemptousia Partnership, August 5, 2017 Blessed Irene was born in Cappadocia, into the bosom of a rich and noble family, after the death of the iconoclast emperor Theofilos (842). When Theodora became regent, she searched the empire for a wife for her son, Michael III (842-867). The imperial envoys took note of the beauty and nobility of Irene and sent her to Constantinople together with her sister, who later married Caesar Vardas, the