The present work offers the first coherent history of the sacred image in Christianity. A history that spans 1,200 years, from the end of Antiquity, when Christians began to make use of the "pagan" cult image, until then frowned upon, to the beginning of the Modern Age, when the Christian cult image entered In crisis. For more than a millennium, icons, statues and altar images stood at the center of public interest, performed symbolic functions in social history, bore witness to the truth of religion and the status of institutions, and did not They escaped destruction. And we cannot forget that cult images present their own aesthetics, which the author tries to reconstruct. With its more than 300 illustrations and the annex of written sources on the use and abuse of images, Image and Cult constitutes an essential book to understand the position of the image in the East and the West, as well as the "emergence of art." in the early modern age.