Over time, among the vulgar, one of these gods will gradually emerge as a particular object of veneration and worship.
Icons are considered an essential part of the church and are given special liturgical veneration.
It was loosely defined as a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.
The Oxford English dictionary defines a cult as "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object".
Also included in worship are acts of private response: spoken or unspoken prayers, silence, the assumption of particular postures, ritual acts and gestures, and individual acts of veneration of persons or objects.
An important aspect in the practice of medieval Christianity was the veneration of saints, and the associated pilgrimages to places where particular saint's relics were interred and their tradition honoured.
"Beatifying a son of the church does not celebrate particular historic choices that he has made, but rather points him out for imitation and for veneration for his virtue, praising the divine grace that shines in him," John Paul said today.
Fetishism, the veneration of objects believed to have magical or supernatural potency, springs from the association of spirits with particular places or things and leads to idolatry, in which the image is viewed as the symbol of a spiritual being or deity.
In the early church the veneration of saints at first was restricted to celebrations at their tombs, but the cult of saintly relics soon spread the devotion to particular saints to many areas.
Interlaced with epigrams from Oscar Wilde, that essay illuminated a particular modern sensibility -- one that had been largely the province of gay culture -- which centered deliciously on artifice, exaggeration and the veneration of style.
