Throughout history, nearly every religion of consequence has displayed a tension between austerity and exuberance. In Christianity this tension shows itself in the contrast between, say, the unadorned, white-washed chapel and the imposing magnificence of a great medieval cathedral.
Both the iconoclast (one who destroys images ) and the iconodule (one who venerates images ) work from differing ideas of God. The uncompromising mandate for iconoclasm is found in Exodus 20:4 - “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is on the earth beneath.”
The other way of thinking about images is found in the writings of Dionysius the Aeropagite, supposedly the Athenian converted by St Paul (Acts 17:34 ), but really a fifth century Syrian philosopher.
Dionysius argues that because God is beyond human understanding and beyond anything we might say or imagine about him, the truest way of speaking and thinking about him is to say what he is not. He is neither darkness nor light, neither beautiful nor ugly “because he transcends all affirmation”.
Yet once admit this and we are free to use metaphors and symbols to describe him as beautiful, the source of truth, the “light shining in the darkness”, so long as we never lose sight of the fact that we are speaking poetically. God is our father or mother, because these images, drawn from our experience, enable us to think of God as caring, loving, and protective.
The first great clash between these two positions occurred between 730AD and 787AD in the Byzantine Empire. During this period, thousands of images were destroyed. Those who venerated images won the debate, helped by John of Damascus, who argued that Christ becoming man, sanctified both nature and human nature. Images were ways in which our thoughts could be focused and directed to the divine.
When Henry VIII broke with Rome in the mid-1530s, a movement was set in train that led eventually to the destruction of a thousand years of tradition, ritual, and devotional practices, from pilgrimages to church festivals, together with the art through which it had been celebrated.
The destruction of the pilgrim shrine at Walsingham, one of the greatest religious centres in England, took place in 1538. The Protestant Bishop Latimer said of the famous statue of the Virgin Mary: "She hath been the Devil's instrument, I fear, to bring many to eternal fire; now … with her younger sister of Ipswich, and their two sisters of Doncaster and Penrhys will make a jolly bonefire in Smithfield.”
Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI (1547-1553 ), issued royal orders for the removal and destruction of all images from English churches, resulting in the defacement of baptismal fonts, the destruction of stained glass windows, and the whitewashing of pictorial depictions on walls. This destructive impulse did not spare even that most venerable symbol, the cross. John Calvin 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”.
Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 is a fascinating examination of medieval English Catholicism. He paints a richly detailed portrait of the religious life of ordinary men and women, and the web of festivals, rituals, and images that bound this vanished society together. And through illustrations of whitewashed frescoes, smashed and defaced statues, fragments of stained glass, vandalised shrines, and broken altars, Duffy shows what was lost.
In Ireland, a former Augustinian priest, George Browne, who had married Henry to Ann Boleyn, became the hammer of the Reformation, and set about the destruction of 'Romish' relics, destroying as many as he could find on a large bonfire outside Christchurch Cathedral. In October 1538, Browne published Thomas Cromwell’s New Injunctions which urged the destruction of “any notable images or relics”. The monastic annalist of Lough Key recorded that “there was not a holy cross, a statue of Mary nor a venerable image within their jurisdiction that they did not destroy”.
Historian Francis Yates makes the striking point we have never seen English medieval art as it was in its original setting, only broken remains of it, scraps of shattered glass, statues with their heads chipped off. The very same thing could be said about Ireland, but on an even greater scale.
Yates admits that our attitude towards this destruction may depend on our religious beliefs, or lack of them. But those sensitive to beauty and craftsmanship will share a profound sense of dismay at the destruction of so many irreplaceable works of art, for this was nothing less than an act of cultural vandalism.
Barnaby ffrench
