The Christian Problem With Holy Images

Gregory I, Gregory the Great Bishop of Rome, is writing a letter to another bishop in Serenes. The exchange between Gregory and Serena's shows that the Christian problem with holy images is far more complicated than simply disapproval of pictorial art. Narrative images were never an evident problem, and so were accepted from the beginning. But emergence of saints' portraits in the fourth and early fifth centuries posed new problems insofar as these eventually came to be regarded as objects of veneration.