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When Constantine converted to Christianity the majority of his subjects were still pagans and the Roman Imperial cult of the divinity of the emperor, expressed through the traditional burning of candles and the offering of incense to the emperor ’ s image, was tolerated for a period because it would have been politically dangerous to attempt to suppress it.

Indeed, in the 5th century the portrait of the reigning emperor was still honoured this way in the courts of justice and municipal buildings of the empire and in 425 the Arian Philostorgius charged the orthodox in Constantinople with idolatry because they still honored the image of the emperor Constantine the Great, the founder of the city, in this way.

Dix notes that this was more than a century before we find the first reference to a similar honouring of the image of Christ or his saints, but that it would seem a natural progression for the image of Christ, the King of heaven and earth, to be eventually paid the same cultic veneration as that given to the earthly Roman emperor.