structural:summarization, stylistic:tone, information:highlighting
Icons in Eusebius to Philostorgius (425 AD)

Elsewhere in his Church History, Eusebius reports seeing what he took to be portraits of Jesus, Peter and Paul, and also mentions a bronze statue at Banias /Paneas under Mount Hermon, of which he wrote, "They say that this statue is an image of Jesus". Further, he relates that locals regarded the image as a memorial of the healing of the woman with an issue of blood by Jesus (Luke 8:43–48), because it depicted a standing man wearing a double cloak and with arm outstretched, and a woman kneeling before him with arms reaching out as if in supplication.

John Francis Wilson suggests the possibility that this refers to a pagan bronze statue whose true identity had been forgotten. Some have thought it to represent Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, but the description of the standing figure and the woman kneeling in supplication precisely matches images found on coins depicting the bearded emperor Hadrian (r. 117–138) reaching out to a female figure—symbolizing a province —kneeling before him.

When asked by Constantia (Emperor Constantine 's half-sister) for an image of Jesus, Eusebius denied the request, replying: "To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error." Hence Jaroslav Pelikan calls Eusebius "the father of iconoclasm".

After the emperor Constantine I extended official toleration of Christianity within the Roman Empire in 313, huge numbers of pagans became converts. This period of the Historiography of Christianization of the Roman Empire probably saw the use of Christian images become very widespread among the faithful, though with great differences from pagan habits. Robin Lane Fox states "By the early fifth century, we know of the ownership of private icons of saints; by c. 480–500, we can be sure that the inside of a saint's shrine would be adorned with images and votive portraits, a practice which had probably begun earlier."

When Constantine himself (r. 306–337) apparently converted to Christianity, the majority of his subjects remained pagans. 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. In the 5th century the courts of justice and municipal buildings of the empire still honoured the portrait of the reigning emperor in this way.

In 425 Philostorgius, an allegedly Arian Christian, charged the Orthodox Christians in Constantinople with idolatry because they still honored the image of the emperor Constantine the Great in this way. Dix notes that this occurred more than a century before the first extant reference to a similar honouring of the image of Jesus or of his apostles or saints known today, but that it would seem a natural progression for the image of Christ, the King of Heaven and Earth, to be paid similar veneration as that given to the earthly Roman emperor. However, the Orthodox, Eastern Catholics, and other groups insist on explicitly distinguishing the veneration of icons from the worship of idols by pagans.