Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford Stu
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Along with the destruction of thousands of icons in England, Protestants were also motivated to create for themselves new religious images in a context which they found more acceptable. The major examples of this are the over five thousand printed images produced between and and the lavish decorative images in architecture and artwork, which have both been catalogued and discussed in other works.
As Susan Hardmann Moore has asked, 'zealous Protestants wanted to strip images out of churches and books. So why fill the mind's eye with pictures? If as Keith Thomas has said, 'the Elizabethan Church never formally prohibited all religious imagery, as such,' then some destruction crossed an invisible line. In specific incidences, the use of such images was offensive to iconoclastic Protestants and Catholics.
In general, a degree of Lutheran theology informed a more moderate view of images up to the Edwardian period. Many English theologians had retained the Catholic idea of images as layman's books, permitting the use of religious images as devotional aids for the illiterate. Hugh Latimer stated that "It is lawful, I own, to make use of images.
Because of this permissibility of certain images, there was a need to clearly distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable. Though opinions varied, by Elizabeth's reign, the devotional use of images for Protestants was suppressed, and the location of images became one of the most decisive factors. This particularly focused on any image that was in a church or in a place of public honour.
For in such places, the intent of the image was clearly to be reverenced or even worshipped, and as such could not be permitted. Martin Bucer was among the first to elucidate this principle in the s, and it became a mainstay of English and Reformed image theology. Elizabeth's articles in sustained that any image 'whether in their churches and chapels. Though other aspects of an image such as dimensions and colour concerned the Protestants, none seem to be valued as highly as location.
As the homily bluntly stated, 'Images in Temples and Churches be in dede none othere but Idols. It was the setting up of these images in the churches and other places that supposed reverence, transforming these images into idols. However, the Protestant theology of images cannot be completely summarized in terms of place. Each image had a history and a context that must be individually understood. In , Elizabeth issued a royal order to protect the funeral memorials and gravestones because they were 'set up for the only memory of them to their posterity in common churches and not for any religious honour.
Alongside her injunctions to eliminate idols, Elizabeth placed a strong emphasis on limiting 'parochial iconoclasm, and also.
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Funeral memorials were not considered to be superstitious. Windows were possibly more dangerous, but were also necessary aspects of the church building. Every church should first assess whether it could afford the material and reparation costs of destroying the windows. These exceptions were something more than allowing for religious images in books and private decoration.
The preservation of windows and funeral memorials, as well as the introduction of clerical vestments in the mid and late s, were perceived by some Protestants as the reanimation of popery within the church. The Laudian cleric Peter Heylin reported that during the Elizabethan period, 'Many unadvised zealots As the Elizabethan reforms took shape, several divides formed between various groups as to the degree of iconoclasm that was needed.
Amongst these disputes, the early Elizabethan bishops were not satisfied with the Queen's level of iconoclasm. Even into the s and s, as the Puritan movement began to separate itself from the Church of England, the definition of what was idolatrous or popish remained a prominent and contentious topic. Regardless, the iconoclasm of the sixteenth century should not be understood simply as the elimination of a belief system.
The early modern visual culture is something more complex than the distinction between Catholic and Protestant. Many aspects of traditional imagery survived, and some were even reused by Protestants. Others were sanctioned by the monarch and yet destroyed by the people in defiance of the official policy. The ambiguous nature of the image requires closer and more specific examination of the survival and destruction of visual images.
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Certain images were at the centre of religious and political dispute amongst Protestants. The dissatisfaction of many former exiles and younger reformers to the slower, more moderate expressions from the monarchy are most aptly seen in the image of the cross. For centuries, the cross enjoyed universal acceptance. By the second century, Christians were making the sign of the cross, and it appears in the written record in the fourth century. For Protestants, because of such gestures and Catholic piety, the cross also came to be seen as an idol.
Preacher William Fulke expressed the iconoclastic mindset saying, 'Though they were ancient and goodly monuments, it is to the great honour of God that they should be despised, defaced, burned. John Jewel expresses the contrasting Protestant sentiments, saying, 'The Crosse, I graunt, emonge the [early] Christians was had in great regarde. In the minds of English iconoclasts, there were several problems associated with the cross. First, as has been shown, most crosses were already imbued with some Catholic significance, whether they were the site of some miracle, the focus of regular devotion in a church, or a memorial to a saint.
Such images were, again, not necessarily dangerous as an object but a sign to the Catholic things they signified. John Calvin had declared that 'wheresoever a Crucifix stands mopping and mowing in the Church, it is all one as if the Divell had defaced the sonne of God.
The popular work condemned images of Christ because 'no true Image can be made of Christes body, for it is unknowen now. Furthermore, the cross was often portrayed in a three-dimensional form, usually located in a place of reverence such as on the rood or in the marketplace.
This tangible representation in places of secular and spiritual honour made the cross an easier temptation for worship. One of the earliest crosses to fall was the Highway Cross of Coggeshall in Paul's, an apprentice disrupted the ceremony and smashed the processional cross. For in at least two other incidences, Elizabeth not only protected crosses, as she did windows and gravestones, but she also punished the iconoclasts.
The first of these was the cross in the Chapel Royal, which had been erected by Elizabeth in late From early on, this cross vexed the bishops, even to the point of almost resigning their posts.
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This thing will soon be drawn into a precedent. The cross was a symbol of the failure of reform as much as it was an idolatrous threat. While Aston is probably correct that this refers to the images at Guildhall and not the Chapel cross, either way the verse pokes fun at the reformers who cannot reform their capital city or their Lady Queen. But one iconoclast went beyond words, invading the chapel and breaking the cross during a service in While unsanctioned destruction was not completely uncommon, this act reveals the strength of the iconoclastic urge.
It was possible for even the monarch, who instituted iconoclasm on a vast scale, to need her own chapel cleansed. Coming on the heels of the Treaty of Edinburgh , England's compromise with Catholic Scotland and France, it seems that the Chapel cross both stood and fell both as a symbol and an idol. For, the iconoclasm was not condemned by the bishops but rather praised and bolstered as a heroic act.
Even though the bishops defended royal supremacy against Catholicism, they were prepared to applaud this radical destruction saying, 'A good riddance of such a cross as that. Since crosses were ordered destroyed by the Elizabethan injunctions, it would not suffice for the Queen to usurp her own rules. While the bishops rejoiced in this victory over popery, the message sent by the destruction was a political one: The Chapel cross was not the most inflammatory destruction in Elizabethan England.
On Midsummer night in , an unidentified group attacked the famous Cheapside Cross, which had stood in London since John Stowe reports, 'such destruction shows the unquenchable pertinacity of these nasty people,' for they seemed forever dissatisfied with the destruction. First, not only did Cheapside enjoy the Queen's approval, but it also, as Joel Budd explains, was as much a centrepiece of Protestant religious and political ceremony as it had been of Catholicism.
On April 8, almost a year after Mary's reign began, in rebellion against Catholicism, someone performed the mock hanging of a cat dressed as a monk from the gallows near the Cheapside Cross. Cheapside was more than a public religious symbol, it was a centre of communal activity as well as a place for religious and cultural expression. Some of the larger events include being a focal point of Elizabeth's coronation, and a decade later, Protestants gathered at the cross to burn Catholic books.
Secondly, the cross seems to have been a victim of its own popularity. Though Cheapside was not necessarily a place of worship, its ambiguous place, being used by both Protestants and Catholics, made it a target for the most strident reformers. Even though Protestants could make use of Catholic images in new ways, there was always the concern that these images could grow too popular, threatening to become an idol.
It was this process of a popular image in the public view leading to idolatry that many reformers harped on in their sermons and writings. As the Puritan theologian William Perkins warned in , that in the early Christian church, 'men used privately to keep the pictures of their friends departed: Also, the political environment of the early s may have accelerated the destruction.
The survival of such a popular cross could easily be associated with the growing influence of Catholic insurgence into England, exemplified by certain Catholic scholars in the universities.
The Catholic Duke of Anjou was endangering the Protestant monopoly on the throne by making marriage overtures to Elizabeth. It is likely then, as Catholic influence appeared to be ominously increasing, Cheapside was seen as a Jonah figure, a means to avoid God's judgement for failing to completely eradicate Catholicism. Also, by attacking the image, the iconoclasts were symbolically acting out their belief that even if the Queen and country were falling into heresy, they remained true to God.
But the Cheapside and the Chapel iconoclasm should not be considered too similar. While both were radical expressions of dissatisfaction with the current religious climate, the uncertainty of the English religion in the s did not exist in Elizabeth's authority had already been well established. So, there is little doubt that those involved in Cheapside were aware of the Queen's disdain for unofficial iconoclasm. This is the reason why the iconoclasts acted anonymously during the night, like the Lollard iconoclasts of the fifteenth century. For the iconoclasts were certainly aware of the popularity of the Cheapside Cross, which found approval among Catholics and Protestants.
This was not merely a difference of opinion as to what was an idol. Cheapside was evidence of Catholic continuation and its corruption of Protestant reforms. It was specifically chosen for this attack because, aside from all other crosses, Cheapside had won a place in the political and religious life of Protestant England and yet was also a vestige of Catholicism. Even in this, it seems that something about Cheapside beyond what has been discussed stirred these radical iconoclasts. For, why were equally well known crosses left untouched?
Paul's Cross, a centrepiece of late medieval London, was built by Catholics, and was seemingly a part of that 'remnant' of Catholicism that must not, as one ballad stated, 'be suffered to contenue, because such remnants were always hurtfull to the Church. Not only were they printed in books, but other market crosses like those in Grantham and Market Rasen were the gathering points to burn popish books and items in the early s.
Students will identify and exploit different kinds of primary and secondary sources to support their studies. Jaffe eds Fordham University Press , pp. Nereo ed Achilleo and S.
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Yale, , pp. Lukehart, The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Lucca in Rome, c. The Sistine and Pauline Chapels in S. Cambridge University Press , pp. The Final Period Princeton, , pp. Weekly seminars will move through a series of roughly chronological case studies as follows: The churches of the new religious orders and their decorative programmes Week 5: Depicting martyrdom Week 6: Innovative learning week Week 7: The Venerable English College: Prints and printmaking Week 9: Tombs and monuments Week Students MUST have passed: Learning and Teaching activities Further Info.