This latter practice, hotly denounced as idolatry during the iconoclastic controversy, was finally established as orthodox by the Second General Council of Nicaea (787), which restored the use of images. A later development, however, by which certain lights themselves came to be regarded as objects of worship and to have other lights burned before them, was condemned as idolatrous by the Synod of Noyon in 1344.
It must suffice to note a few stages in development of the process. The burning of lights before the tombs of martyrs led naturally to their being burned also before relics and lastly before images and pictures.