Destruction: Iconoclasm and the Reformation in Northern Europe

1. Andreas Karlstadt, “On the Removal of Images,” in A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt, Emser, and Eck on Sacred Images. Three Treatises in Translation, 2nd ed., trans. and intro. by Bryan D. Mangrum and Giuseppe Scavizzi (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 1998), 40–41. Karlstadt’s original is “Von Abtuhung der Bylder”; Hieronymus Emser, “Das Man der heyligen Bilder in der Kirchen nit Abthon, noch unehren soll und das sie in der Schrifft nyndert verbotten seyn”; and Johannes Eck, “De non tollendis Christi et sanctorum imaginibus” (hereafter cited in text as Kadstadt, Emser, or Eck).

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2. See John C. Olin, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola. Reform in the Church 1495–1540 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 1–15; for a series of essays on various aspects of Savanarola’s reform movement, see A. Fontes, J.-L.Fournel, and M. Plaisance, ed. Savonarole: Enjeux, Debats, Questions. Actes du Colloque International (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1997).

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3. See Freedberg, “Structure of Byzantine and European Iconoclasm”; Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979); Carl C. Christensen, “Patterns of Iconoclasm in the Early Reformation: Strasbourg and Basel,” in The Image and the Word, 107–47; Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); John Phillips, The Reformation of lmages: Destruction of Art in England 1535–1660 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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4. See the brilliant work of Margaret Aston, Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion, 1350–1600 (London: Hambledon, 1993), 261–89; Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts.

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5. This is a very complex topic outside the boundaries of this study, but see Ann Freeman, “Scripture and Images in the Libri Carolini,” in Testo e Immagine nell’Alto Medioevo 1 (Spoleto: Presso Ia Sede del Centro, 1994), 163–88; for the text, see Ann Freeman, ed. Opus Caroli Regis Contra Synodum (Libri Carolini) (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998), especially books 1, 2, and 4. Also see Herbert L. Kessler, “‘Facies Bibliothecae Revelatd: Carolingian Art as Spiritual Seeing,” in Testo e Immagine nell’Alto Medioevo 2, 533–84; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 47–61. Belting, Likeness and Presence, provides a synopsis of the pertinent parts (533–34).

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6. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 8 vols., ed. Rev. George Townsend and Rev. Stephen Reed Cattley (London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1837–41) (hereafter cited in text as Foxe, followed by volume number, then page number).

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7. For the creation of an exotic and dangerous Middle East in the Western imagination, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979); see also John M. Ganim, Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) for an elaboration of the mystification of the Middle Ages along parallel lines with “orientalism” in the nineteenth century.

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8. Among whom are Margaret Aston, Patrick Collinson, Eamon Duffy, Ronald Hutton, Peter Lake, John Morrill, John Phillips, Tessa Watt, and more recently Julie Spraggon.

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9. See Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany, specifically chap. 2; Christensen, “Patterns of Iconoclasm in the Early Reformation: Strasbourg and Basel,” in The Image and the Word, 107; Eire, War Against the Idols, 66–73; Phillips, The Reformation of Images, 108; Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands, 7–8.

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10. Desiderius Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum Desiderius Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen and H. M. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992, repr., 1934), vol. 8, no. 2175, no. 2176, pp. 190–92, and no. 2158, pp. 161–64.

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11. See Epistolarum Desiderius Erasmi, vol. 5, letter no. 1293, p. 77, and no. 1274, pp. 44–47; E. Panofsky, “Erasmus and the Visual Arts,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969), 207.

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12. See Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, eds. Tudor Royal Proclamations: The Early Tudors (1485–1553) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 1:193–97.

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13. Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 6, pt. 1 and 2, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc’Hadour, and Richard C. Marius (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981) (hereafter cited as DCH).

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14. For example, see Simpson, “The Rule of the Medieval Imagination,” in Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm; Sarah Stanbury, “The Vivacity of Images: St Katherine, Knighton’s Lollards, and the Breaking of Idols,” in Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm, 131–50; and Camille, “The Iconoclast’s Desire: Deguileville’s Idolatry in France and England,” in Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm, 151–71.

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15. See Richard Rex, “The English Campaign Against Luther in the 1520s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 39 (1989), 85–106.

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16. For an elaboration of this, see G. R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government: Papers and Reviews 1946–1972, vol. 1 of Tudor Politics/Tudor Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 173–88; see also G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). For Cromwell’s career, see Robert Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s most Notorious Minister (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2007).

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17. See Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) for the origins, development, and economic implications of this middle space.

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18. See Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001) for an extended discussion of purgatory in Hamlet.

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19. Printed in Gilbert Burnet, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, new ed. carefully revised and the records collated with the originals by Nicholas Pocock (Oxford: Clarendon, 1865), 4:272–85, 284n1.

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20. Roger Bigalow Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902).

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21. Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata; or, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849), 1:21.

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22. See Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 346; Lewis W. Spitz, “Further Lines of Inquiry for the Study of ‘Reformation and Pedagogy,’” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 294–306.

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23. See, for selected examples, Henry’s proclamations 129, 168, 177; and Edward’s proclamations 281, 297, and 299 in Tudor Royal Proclamations vol.1; for Elizabeth’s proclamations, see 466, 477, 489 (all on meat abstinence), 561, 688, 699 in Tudor Royal Proclamations vol. 2. For the legislation of faith at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, see Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion 1559 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1982).

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24. See A. G. Dickens, “Tudor York,” in A History of Yorkshire: The City of York, ed. P. M. Tillott in The Victoria History of the Counties of England, ed. R. P. Hugh (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 152.

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25. Ralph Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People During the English Reformation, 1520–1570 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 214–60.

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26. See Margaret Aston, The King’s Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 97–107.

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27. Rev. Hastings Robinson, trans. and ed., The Zurich Letters, Comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops and Others in Latin and English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), 1:55; for the original Latin, 31–32 (hereafter cited in text as Zurich).

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28. J. T. Tomlinson, Queen Elizabeth’s Crucifix: Its Secret History (London: Church Association, 1887).

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