Art and the Reformation (Part II) — England

[0:00] Good morning. Thanks for your perseverance this morning in the midst of technical difficulties. But it is really good to be here with you this morning and to pick up where we left off in some ways. We, as Alexander mentioned, we're going to be looking at art in the Reformation. And back in December, we started this, we were looking at religious art during the Reformation period, and we specifically focused on what happens in the Lutheran, the Reformed, or Calvinist, and the Catholic, or Tridentine, Reformations. And at the time, I mentioned that the situation in England was distinct enough that it really required its own lecture. So here we are.

[0:50] Before we dive into what happens in England, though, it will be helpful to briefly review what we discussed back in December as a review if you were here and if you weren't, a catch-up to some of the big themes. Our starting point in December was a picture called the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, which we may see at some point.

[1:15] It was painted between 1440 and 1445, and it is a powerful window into the religious world of the late medieval period. It's an altarpiece, so it hangs behind an altar, and each of the Roman Catholic Church's seven sacraments are depicted. We have baptism, confirmation, confession, communion, ordination, marriage, and the last rites. All of life's major moments are contained within and sealed by the church. The largest section of the altar piece is dedicated to Christ's ritual death in the Mass. In the background, we see the moment of institution, the sacrament. There's a priest holding up a piece of bread, but it's quite small. The foreground is dominated by Christ's crucifixion, and this underscores the centrality of transubstantiation. This is the world that Luther and Calvin, and as we'll soon see, Henry VIII, were born into. But this religious order and this kind of religious art would change dramatically during the Reformation period. The Lutheran strand of the Reformation responds to this religious art, and they create a form of religious art that primarily reforms things. The Lutherans reform. Luther maintained that religious art could be instructive, that it could teach. But what should these things teach? For Luther, the answer is true things. He proposes that religious art should be drawn from scripture and history. Real people, real events. Above all, religious art must communicate real doctrine. This is a primary focus of Lutheran art in this period, to create a visual apologetic for Lutheran beliefs. This is precisely what we saw in the Wittenberg Altarpiece, constructed in 1547. And if they show up, we'll look at it.

[3:33] You're getting a window into my online life here. It is almost, the altarpiece is almost identical in shape to the seven sacraments altarpiece. But it proclaims a distinctly Lutheran message.

[3:48] The crucifix is still in the center panel, but Christ is depicted between a preaching Luther and his congregation. So rather than just being front and center with the mass happening behind him, he is in between Luther who is preaching and his congregation who is listening. And this suggests that it's Christ's death that makes, that Christ's death is made actual in preaching, not the mass.

[4:15] So it's preaching, not the mass, that makes Christ's death real. The other panels depict various Lutheran leaders presiding over the Lutheran sacraments, baptism, confession, and communion.

[4:30] One of them is depicted holding the keys of St. Peter. This directly challenges the Roman church's assertion of papal authority. Luther is positioned receiving the communion cup, which perhaps alludes to the Lutheran tradition of offering communion in both kinds to the lady.

[4:48] In all of this, we see how traditional art and imagery were used to advance a Lutheran agenda. The forms were not abolished, but repurposed and revised.

[5:04] We're closer. We're closer. Okay. Okay. So the Lutheran strand of the Reformation does reform religious imagery.

[5:14] In contrast, the Calvinist or reformed strand of the Reformation relocates religious imagery out of the church and into domestic and civic spaces.

[5:26] As we noted, Luther maintains that religious art can teach so long as it depicts true things. But for Calvin, this is impossible. Regardless of its subject, religious art will always lead to idolatry.

[5:39] Consequently, Calvin calls for the removal of all decoration from churches. He replaces the altars, image, candles, and fabrics with a simple communion table and clean white walls.

[5:54] The only decoration might be wooden tablets painted with the Ten Commandments. It's important to note that Calvin is not opposed to art as such, but only religious art.

[6:05] He encourages visual artists to follow nature by depicting things that God has made. This art is acceptable in homes and civic spaces where it can be enjoyed and appreciated, but not worshipped.

[6:19] This results in a relocation of imagery from sacred to secular space. We will see something very similar happening in England, which was considerably shaped by Calvin's theology.

[6:30] So Calvin sends art into homes in the public sphere. The Catholic reformers, they send art to war. The Roman art of this period militates religious imagery to counter the heresy of Protestantism.

[6:47] The style that emerges from these concerns is called the Baroque. It emphasized realism, but a realism infused with supernatural strength. Mary, in particular, gets a makeover in this period.

[7:00] She's transformed from a weak and suffering mother to a physically and spiritually strong warrior leading the charge against heresy. The vault fresco in the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Rome typifies this approach.

[7:15] She's in the clouds, leading the charge, holding a saber of some kind. And underneath, we have all the heretics and all their books. Because heretics write books.

[7:27] Thus, we see that the Roman Church militates its art. It is time to go to war. So we have images reformed, relocated, and militated.

[7:42] This is a broad brushstroke account of what happens. But with these developments in the background, we can now turn our attention to England and the story that unfolds there. The term English Reformation is something that historians love to fight about.

[7:58] Actually, historians like to fight about everything, in case you were wondering. Questions like, when did it start? When did it end? Was it religion or politics? Was it fast or slow?

[8:09] These keep them up at night. Unfortunately, we will not be able to resolve those ongoing historical debates in our brief time today. And if you came here hoping for them to be resolved, I am very sorry to disappoint.

[8:23] But hopefully in our Q&A, perhaps we can take some steps towards that. As we did with the other strands of the Reformation, our focus this morning will be on the ways religious art and ornamentation changes in England.

[8:37] We'll start with the changes wrought in Henry VIII's name, beginning around 1535. And we'll trace them through the reign of Elizabeth, which ended in 1603. As we'll discover, a lot can happen to a church in 70 years.

[8:51] These changes tell a story of religious, political, and social upheaval. A story that will eventually give birth to our own tradition, Anglicanism.

[9:02] The back and forth dynamics of this period make summary sentences difficult. Where Lutherans reformed and Calvinists relocated and Catholics militated.

[9:14] The English, well, they wrote a lot of laws and a lot of books. They fought heated religious and political battles. They smashed sacred objects.

[9:25] Sometimes they hid them. By the end of our discussion today, we'll see that England arrives at a resolution of sorts. Images are moderated.

[9:37] This settlement went too far for some and not far enough for many others. These tensions would later boil over into full-out war. And we may get a chance to talk about that in our Q&A.

[9:49] But all of that is still in the future. Our story begins back with the seven sacraments altarpiece and the world that it created.

[10:00] It was painted in the Netherlands, but that vision of reality would have been recognizable to Christians throughout England. In fact, England was one of the most devotedly Catholic countries at the dawn of Henry's reforms.

[10:12] In 1521, Henry had published Defense of the Seven Sacraments, the very sacraments depicted in our altarpiece. This theological treatise refuted the theology of Martin Luther and denounced him as a heretic.

[10:27] In recognition of Henry's defense of true Catholic doctrine, Pope Leo X declared him defender of the faith. Relations between King and Pope soon soured, however, as I'm sure you know.

[10:42] In 1534, the Act of Supremacy declared Henry the supreme head of the Church of England. The supremacy, of course, cleared the way for his second marriage. But it also opened the door to dramatic changes to England's religious landscape.

[10:57] In Henry's lifetime, these changes would be focused around the institutions of monasticism and the parish church. In 1534, over 800 monasteries dotted the English countryside.

[11:10] Most small towns had at least one, and sometimes more than one, abbey, priory, convent, or friary. By 1540, all of them were closed.

[11:25] A third of the monasteries lay in ruins. Another third of them had vanished completely. Has anyone ever seen these ruins in England? They're kind of everywhere.

[11:36] I was in England right after university and was at Tintern Abbey and just loved it. It was this beautiful, evocative space. And it was only actually, as I was preparing this, that I realized that Tintern Abbey was the product of Henry's dissolution of the monasteries.

[11:55] What I saw as beautiful and serene and a sacred space of sorts would later inspire the romantic poets.

[12:08] And so often we associate them with those spaces. But that kind of evocative beauty, when we look at the ruins and see some sort of beauty, that would have been completely unknown to the men and women living in the 1530s.

[12:21] Broken monastery walls spoke of long-awaited religious purification, the defeat of disloyal subjects, or the traumatic loss of a cherished way of life.

[12:34] Broken monastery walls could speak of long-awaited religious purification, the defeat of disloyal subjects, or the traumatic loss of a cherished way of life.

[12:44] Regardless of how those events were understood, the religious, political, and physical landscape would never be the same. The first blow against the monasteries fell in 1536, when the smaller monasteries were dissolved.

[13:01] Approximately 300 religious houses were closed. And then in 1537, the remaining 500 or so were closed. It would take about three years for this work to be completed.

[13:12] It can be easy to miss how dramatic this was. Certainly there was a massive social and religious cost. But on a physical level, disposing of hundreds of buildings in all their contents was a tremendous undertaking.

[13:30] Some of the monastery buildings were sold by the crown to courtiers to be converted into opulent homes. Some were purchased by municipalities for use as colleges, town halls, or even parish churches.

[13:42] Others were torn down and the materials reused. Most famously, the Tower of London was repaired with stones from the Crutch Friars Monastery. Other monastery stones were used to repave roads or were incorporated into local town buildings.

[14:00] Still others were left standing, but without roofs or stairs, so they couldn't be used. And they would be later picked apart as quarry. Every scrap of decoration that could be found was carried away.

[14:14] And that's just the buildings. Monasteries housed countless treasures. Opulent fabrics, books, bells and organs, statues, paintings, jewel-encrusted reliquaries, goblets, candlesticks, and plates of precious metals.

[14:30] All of this had been necessary to perform the rites of the order. But now it flooded into local auction houses to be sold to the highest bidder. Occasionally, a priest would purchase goods to adorn his local parish church.

[14:45] More often, these objects were purchased by local nobles who decorated their homes with the sacred spoil. On more than one occasion, an auctioneer lamented that the goods were near worthless due to the careless way that they'd been extracted from the buildings.

[15:02] Responses to this situation varied. For those who, like Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, longed to bring Protestantism to England, the dissolution of the monasteries was a tremendous victory.

[15:15] But for many English men and women who remained conservatively Catholic in outlook, the loss of the monasteries was a profound tragedy. Some even rallied in defense of their local religious houses.

[15:27] In Exeter, women of the city broke down a church door and mobbed the dignitaries who'd come to remove a crucifix. Hurling stones, they pursued one dignitary up to the tower, and he was forced to leap out of the window to escape with his life.

[15:44] And he broke a rib. I love this story. Townspeople taking matters into their own hands. But in the end, it was the monastery walls that were broken, and with them, a religious way of life that had endured for centuries.

[16:02] Now, compared to the complete destruction of monasticism, the reforms aimed at local parish churches during Henry's reign were considerably less dramatic. But they nevertheless initiate a process of visual, spatial, and doctrinal modification that would continue, sometimes more aggressively, sometimes less so, for the next 70 years.

[16:26] A process of visual, spatial, and doctrinal modification. In order to understand this process, it will be helpful to learn a bit more about the visual dynamics of parish churches in England at the dawn of Henry's reforms.

[16:42] And I really wish we had pictures. But we will send these out. In his excellent and aptly titled book, The Reformation of the English Parish Church, Robert Whiting provides a helpful sketch of the parish church in this period.

[16:57] We start at the outside. The exterior of the parish church is almost always constructed of local stone and its roofs of local timber. This is a local church of local construction funded by local interests.

[17:14] Inside, one of the first things you'll notice are the many screens that delineate the various sections of the chapel, the church, including side chapels. So these are often painted wood or stone.

[17:26] And often if you've been into an older church, it'll be in front of the altar, blocking off the altar. The most important of these is the root screen, and that's the one that's in front of the altar.

[17:38] It separates the nave, where the people gather, from the chancel, where the priest celebrates the mass. And in this period, there's even doors on that screen.

[17:49] So it's completely and physically closed off. There is a literal wall between the congregation and the priests in the mass. Participation in the mass comes through seeing.

[18:01] So there's always a space in the root screen that you can see through. And sometimes, even down low, there'd be little slits called squints so that kneeling children can still see the mass.

[18:12] Seeing is very important. The root screen is called the root screen because it is adorned with a root or a crucifix. And the root itself is usually placed in a gallery above the screen.

[18:26] So if you imagine walking into a church, think about the altar. There's a screen in front of that. And then above that is this sort of gallery that's much bigger.

[18:39] And you could even have organ pipes, statuary. There it is! That is what it looks like! So, yes, we have our...

[18:50] Here's our root screen. In this period, these doors would have been closed. So it's going to be completely walled up. And then up above here, we have the root loft. And this is our crucifix, the root.

[19:03] What year would this building have been built? So this is the Church of St. Julian's. And it's a parish church in Wellows near Bath. It dates from the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

[19:16] And it was primarily constructed by a local landowner. So again, these are very local endeavors. So great, we have that. This loft is frequently accompanied by images of Mary or the saints.

[19:32] And so here we see these figures on either side of the crucifix. I am not sure who those two figures are. My best guesses are Mary on the left, and then the patron saint of the church, St. Julian, on the right.

[19:46] But I could be wrong on that. The loft would often contain organ pipes, as I mentioned, which we see up there behind them. And occasionally there would be additional altars and candlelights to provide illumination to the statuary.

[20:03] The interior of the church houses many sacred objects for the church's rituals. There are altars for the mass, usually made of stone. And we can see the high altar through the open doors back there.

[20:17] A cross and a candlesticker on the altar. If your eyes are quite good, you can see that. These, along with the other metal goods like chalices and patents, were called the church's plate.

[20:29] Other important objects inside the church would include a font for baptism. And that would just be at the opposite end of the church, behind where you're looking. There'd be cloth for priestly vestments, an altar decoration, books, usually in Latin, and the lecterns that they'd sit upon.

[20:47] And there would also be receptacles to store the most precious items. That is a lot of things inside this church. Screens, altars, fonts, plate, cloth, books, and receptacles.

[21:03] These are the main ritual requirements of the parish church. Robert Whiting, who wrote this lovely parish church book, comments, alongside these, however, a number of additional components are invariably found.

[21:16] Either in painted form on its walls, or in stained glass in its windows, the church exhibits a range of highly colored pictures. I am curious to know.

[21:31] Is that? Yeah, maybe just go one more. One more. There we go. So, highly colored pictures. This is unfortunately a black and white photograph.

[21:42] The church of St. Julian has the remarkable distinction of having their surviving 15th century wall paintings. And as we'll learn later, that's a huge deal, because a lot of things get painted over.

[21:55] It's very difficult to find a photograph of these paintings, and I think that's because they want you to come visit the church and see them for yourself. There's probably also rules about flash photography. So, this is the best I could find.

[22:06] It's a black and white image, but you can see the outlines of various figures here. They would have been quite colorful. And I believe this photo was taken back in the 60s.

[22:18] But these images portray Jesus, Mary, the saints, and they're designed to instruct the minds and arouse the emotions of all who view them. Even more effective for these purposes are the three-dimensional images displayed in the most prominent locations, especially over the altars and on the gallery above the chancel screen.

[22:39] That's the rude screen. We can go one more. Often, they're painted to look lifelike and furnished with clothes and shoes. So, this is slightly closer up. You can see that they are painted.

[22:50] I don't believe these folks are actually wearing clothing, but there is a sense of realism about them. Now, it's important to note that in this period, the word image is specific to a three-dimensional depiction, typically a saint.

[23:07] Today, we might call this a statue. Often, in our language, image and picture are interchangeable, but for them, image is this specific three-dimensional object, like a statue, and then pictures would be the two-dimensional on walls or in windows.

[23:22] So, we've got images in these two-dimensional pictures on the walls and in the windows, and they're part of every parish church.

[23:34] But many people, including some powerful advisors of Henry, they were becoming concerned about them. There had been a long strain of image descent in England among a, at the time, heretical sect called the Lollards.

[23:49] Some of you are probably familiar with them. They're quite critical of imagery, but they don't get very far with it because they're quite suppressed, and there's not very many of them. But now, the Reformation was spreading through Europe, and Protestant sympathizers in England wondered if it was time for their churches to change as well.

[24:08] Their concerns were far from aesthetic. This was about true worship of God and representations that led to idolatry. There's an opposition here.

[24:19] Roman Catholic thinking had maintained that these images and pictures could lead worshipers to God. They were even the books of the unlearned. But reformers in this period will come to believe that that is impossible.

[24:33] Images and pictures are, at best, a distraction. At worst, they are genuine idols. So these images and pictures are the objects of special reforming zeal in this period and the decades to come.

[24:49] It starts with some royal injunctions of Henry in 1538. These were issued in the midst of his dissolution of the monasteries. Just think about that cultural context.

[25:00] We've got things being carried away from the monasteries. They're being torn down. And now he's got some things to say about your church. These injunctions cover a variety of topics, including the requirement for all churches to have an English Bible.

[25:15] But item number seven specifically addresses what would come to be known as the image question. So remember these three-dimensional images. The battle against visual representation in churches begins with these images and not the pictures.

[25:32] And this is because three-dimensional images are more lifelike. And they were therefore understood to present a greater threat of idolatry. Significantly, the concern of the 1538 injunctions is not with images as such.

[25:53] Rather, the focus is on images that have become connected with what they've perceived to be idolatry. This is a common feature of the ongoing legislation against images that will continue into Edward's reign.

[26:08] The question of what would constitute an abuse. If it's being used in an idolatrous way, it's abused and it can be taken down.

[26:19] But if it's just there, it's probably maybe okay. What constitutes abuse is going to prove to be a moving target. What's abuse in one, even in one era or year, is not abuse the following year or vice versa?

[26:36] Eventually, however, the mere presence of images would come to be a form of abuse. But at this point in the journey, we haven't gotten that far, injunctions are just worried about three things.

[26:50] Images associated with pilgrimage, images that people have been giving bequeathals and offerings to, and images that have been illuminated by special candlelights.

[27:01] So pilgrimage and offering images are considered irretrievably abused, and they have to be removed, taken down by the authorities. There's some fancy rules around the candlelight, however.

[27:13] The injunctions say, for avoiding that most detestable sin of idolatry, henceforth, no candles, tapers, or images of wax will be set before any image or picture, but only the light that goes across the church by the root loft, the light before the sacrament of the altar, and the light above the sepulcher, which, for the adorning of the church and divine service, ye shall suffer to remain.

[27:42] So our church of St. Julian, we don't see a lot of these lights at this point, and that's tricky trying to understand what these churches looked like in this period because they have undergone so many changes.

[27:54] But there would have been, in front of all these statues, various images illuminating them that people would pay for candles and oil for these lights.

[28:06] And so that was part of the offerings and the idolatry and the abuse. And so all of those need to be taken away. And the only place we can have those sorts of lights are up on our root loft, down on the altar before the sacrament.

[28:22] Most parish churches complied with these injunctions pretty speedily. And church records indicate that lights before the saints were almost all distinguished or moved up onto the root loft.

[28:34] And that was actually a pretty clever thing that they did because folks often thought about the light as being associated with a particular saint. Even when they moved it up onto the root loft, it still had that devotional purpose, but it was a way of complying with the rules.

[28:49] Now, many historians see this compliance as defensive rather than a sign of agreement. By moving their lights to the root loft, they saved their images from being charged with abuse.

[29:05] And they wanted to keep their images. This safety comes at a small cost, however, because the images themselves become more difficult to see. So we have the churches actually becoming a little physically darker as these images change location.

[29:20] Some of them are extinguished altogether. The injunction against images concludes with the promise of still more reform. The King's Highness, graciously tendering the wheel of his subject souls, hath in part already, and more will hereafter, travail for the abolishing of such images as might be an occasion of so great an offense to God and so great a danger to the souls of his loving subjects.

[29:48] This reform would be wrought in the name of his son, Edward VI, to whom we will now turn. At the time of Henry's death in 1547, his young son, Edward, was barely nine years old.

[30:02] For the next five years, England would be ruled in his name by two different dukes. These were years of tremendous change for the parish church. As one historian notes, if the furnishings of parish churches and the forms of parish worship were adjusted in Henry's reign, in England's, in Edwards, they were transformed.

[30:24] If they were adjusted in Henry's reign, in Edwards, they were transformed. In just six years, wood communion tables would replace stone altars.

[30:36] The Book of Common Prayer would replace the Roman service books. and images were removed completely. Or at least they were supposed to be.

[30:48] The first significant changes came in August of 1547, so not long after Henry dies. And we have another series of royal injunctions. This will be repeated over and over and over again.

[31:00] And if you read books, I actually got one here. Phillips, The Reformation of Images. I've never been so exhausted as when I finished this book because just injunction after injunction after injunction, and they changed course, and they changed course again.

[31:16] It's just this back and forth battle. So we've got more injunctions. And these injunctions, they decree that all candlelight, all candlelight, even the ones up on the rude loft, have to be extinguished.

[31:30] So folks have been making concessions. They've been working with Henry, trying to keep things together, and now all the lights are supposed to go out. Things get expanded further.

[31:41] The definition of abuse, remember I said that shifts, that changes now to include incense. So now you can't have incense over by your image because now that is a sign of abuse. And most significantly, abused images are ordered to be destroyed, as well as all the decoration that's associated with them.

[32:02] In Henry's time period, they were just removed, but now they're being destroyed. The image here is very, the language here is very striking. The injunction says, they shall take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, coverings of shrines, all tables, candles, candlesticks, trindles, or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition, so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glass windows, or elsewhere within their churches or houses.

[32:45] Think about that language. Take away, utterly extinct, and destroy, so that there remains no memory of the same.

[32:57] These are dramatic words. Peter Marshall notes that the royal visitors charged with enforcing these injunctions were, quote, Protestant enthusiasts who interpreted their brief in a maximalist way.

[33:14] Whereas, they only really need to take down certain things, they're just going for it all. They're not in support of images, and they've been given a task, and they're out in the countryside, and there's really no one to say otherwise, and so they just go for it all.

[33:33] Across the country, fights break out over which images can be retained and which must be destroyed. Many villages would have sided with the royal visitors, others were more aligned with what is called traditional religion, the rites, rituals, and ornaments that had characterized their communal religious life for centuries.

[33:57] So we've got some folks who say, hey, bring it on, we've been wanting these reforms, others who are staunchly opposed. And as we think about those two responses, it's important to recall that virtually everything inside a parish church, the font, altar, screens, images, books, plate, fabrics, windows, candlelights, all of that is connected to the people of the town through a complex web of social, religious, religious, and perhaps especially financial ties.

[34:37] Every object spoke of a benefactor or a group of fundraisers. Names covered the church. They were embroidered on fine cloth, etched into communion goblets, carved into stone, and glazed into windows.

[34:55] And when folks would bequeath things to the church, there would often be specific instructions. Make sure my name is on it. Make sure my name is read in front of the church.

[35:05] The social function of these donations is quite strong. Now, to some parishioners, these connections were insignificant compared to the threat of idolatry.

[35:17] One local man famously took it upon himself to knock his own family name out of a stained glass window. This is not authorized, actually, and he ends up being prosecuted for it because everything is supposed to be handled by the authorities.

[35:36] Others, however, so we've got some folks who are knocking their names out. Others, however, are mourning the loss of their church's images as though they were cherished friends. And that comparison is apt.

[35:49] Images of the saints were understood to be very near to the saints themselves. Parishioners sustained them with their offerings of clothing and jewelry and even silver shoes.

[36:02] Eamon Duffy's The Voices of Morabath provides a compelling window into what it was like for a more traditional religious parish to weather the changes of this period.

[36:14] And it is a fascinating book. Often as Protestants, we hear the Protestant side of these reforms and we cheer them on and say this is the best thing ever. And although there may be great theological reasons for that, some of these more conservative congregations really did suffer significant losses.

[36:32] And so this book goes through the warden's accounts of all that the church has to do and as things disappear and as they try to make do, it's really fascinating history in case that's of interest.

[36:46] Toward the end of 1547, conflict over images had reached a fever pitch in England. By the end of the year, all images, whether abused or not, were removed from churches in the city.

[37:02] The following year, the order was extended to the entire country. It was impossible for local officials to oversee the wholesale removal of all these religious images.

[37:14] And as in London, many parishioners take it upon themselves to cleanse their churches. They just strike out and do it. Others of a more conservative or perhaps simply opportunistic inclination, they secret away precious objects for safekeeping.

[37:34] It's this hiding and keeping technique that prompts the issuing of further injunctions in January of 1550.

[37:45] And these are quite strong. They mandate that anyone who has in their possession quote, any image of stone, timber, alabaster, or earth, graven, carved, or painted, which heretofore have been taken out of any church or chapel, or yet stand in any church or chapel, and do not before the last day of June next, ensuing deface and destroy, or cause to be defaced and destroyed, the same images and every one of them.

[38:21] If they don't do that, they must deliver them to the authorities to be openly burnt or otherwise defaced or destroyed. And refusing to do this, they were liable to fine and imprisonment.

[38:32] until now, all images were to be removed and destroyed by authorized persons. We do occasionally have folks leaping ahead and the authorities aren't acting quickly enough, or they maybe left that one behind, we should take that one out as well.

[38:47] But that wasn't acceptable, and it was in fact prosecuted. But now, any person, regardless of station, was required to deface and destroy any sacred object that remained in any place, including homes.

[39:07] Now, this will not work out wholesale. All sorts of religious art is going to last into the period of Elizabeth and beyond. But it is a tremendous victory for those on the side of reform, and they will rejoice very much at this.

[39:24] And we've got a, yes, so this is a woodcut from Fox's Acts and Monuments, and this is celebrating the cleansing of the temple under Edward and all of the horrible Roman decorations and doctrines are being sent packing to Rome.

[39:47] This is a very triumphal image, very excited about what's happening. But less triumphant looking are the decapitated statues and empty pedestals.

[39:58] I think we have one image of that. I'll confess that until I saw this photo in a book, I did not realize that those little pedestals and churches were supposed to have something on them.

[40:09] I have seen so many churches. It just seemed like, oh, additional ornamentation. It always was a little quirky, but medieval churches are quirky, so that's just the way they are.

[40:21] But rather, every time you see something like that, it speaks of the fact that something was supposed to be there and is no longer there. And we can say we are glad that it is not there, but there was something there.

[40:36] By the time Mary I, known to Protestant history as Bloody Mary, by the time she takes the throne, the shape of the parish churches was altered dramatically.

[40:48] We have these sorts of things. And in a whiplash of ecclesial policy, she takes it upon herself to rebuild the broken ruins and restore the Catholic Church in England.

[41:00] Easily said, not so easily done. This Christmas, I watched my sister do some minor kitchen renovations. I don't know if any of you have ever done this.

[41:13] In a matter of hours, she was able to rip down all of her kitchen cabinets, as well as a large portion of her ceiling. Installing new cabinets and drywall and trim was another matter.

[41:26] And in point of fact, she's still not finished. And that is in fact what happens in this period. Because it is very difficult to restore and a lot easier to tear down.

[41:41] One historian notes that the skill of the task was daunting. Parish churches had been reordered for evangelical worship in Edward's reign in a fashion which, though often painful, was at least relatively cheap and simple to implement.

[41:59] Furnishings were sold or destroyed, walls were whitewashed, root lofts were hacked down, and altars were replaced with simple communion tables. Any townsperson with a pickaxe can get this job done.

[42:11] But rebuilding, and not just rebuilding, but rebuilding to the standards of the Catholic church, that required artisans, craftsmen, material resources, time, and money.

[42:25] In some cases, some of these items had been stored away, even altars and other large physical objects, buried often. And so they were able to go down and grab them and bring them up.

[42:39] And you'll see in some churches obvious seams where in the staff of a cross, you can see where they've had to mend it back together again. It had been broken for storage and now it comes back.

[42:50] So we do have some of that happening. There's also a need to bring back all of the liturgical objects that were a part of these spaces.

[43:01] We've got the altar and its altar coverings, candlesticks, processional cross, receptacle to store the host. Mary declares that all these things are essential and must be in every church.

[43:12] Now some churches, in addition to hiding perhaps some of the larger things, they also successfully hide away a few of these objects from the eyes of the royal visitors, the iconoclastic idealists, and the opportunistic looters.

[43:28] There's a lot of people who want these things for lots of different reasons. But most of the objects end up being sold at public auction. And now the church finds itself in a difficult position of trying to persuade the new owners to give them back.

[43:44] They've paid good money for these things. One man, who had acquired two silver candlesticks belonging to the church, is quoted as telling his vicar, a wiser man than ye will not require them back.

[43:59] One historian comments, doing penance for such remarks was not going to turn people into enthusiastic church donors. So it is a bit of an upward battle.

[44:10] Even though large portions of England are still conservative in orientation, getting the materials back to create this worship is quite challenging. And increasingly we have folks who really are inclined towards Protestant styles of worship and Protestant theology.

[44:27] They were really excited about what happened under Edward's reign and are not eager for Mary's reforms. A lot of folks end up going to Europe and they wait out Mary there.

[44:38] A lot of others are killed and that is of course why Protestants refer to her as Bloody Mary. By the time of Mary's death, which you know, she could have lived much longer and it would be really interesting to see what the history of England would look like had she continued to live.

[44:58] But at the time of her death, her restorations, like my sister's kitchen, were still far from complete. Progress had been made. It was clear that a new something was being created and it was recognizable and you could see it.

[45:12] But things weren't the way she wanted them to be. Elizabeth inherits these very mixed churches. Some of them had never been properly cleansed in the first place.

[45:25] Others cleansed, restored to various levels of functionality. Protestants were really hopeful that Elizabeth would pick right up where Edward had left off.

[45:38] We've had this brief Catholic interlude, but now it's back to the Reformation, back to the cleansing of the temple, back to where Edward was taking us. And in some ways, she does do this.

[45:52] Like Henry and Edward before her, she sends out royal visitations. Folks travel the countryside, taking stock of all the churches. How is everything? What does it look like?

[46:03] But rather than returning to the final years of Edward's reign, where things ended up, where all the images have been outlawed, taken down, utterly destroyed, she resets things to 1548, the start of Edward's reign.

[46:21] This is not what folks, many folks, are hoping for. They're pushing for further reform. And so instead, they have churches with some images, some lights, a strong sense that you're not supposed to worship them.

[46:36] This is where Elizabeth has us. In the midst of this, however, we have contradictory developments within the book of homilies. So a lot of her officials are pushing for greater reform.

[46:48] She's kind of holding the line and saying, we'll go no farther than this. But a lot of her ministers are writing phenomenal sermons, extolling the necessity of removing idols.

[47:00] There's this phenomenal homily against idolatry that lists all the reasons that there's no way that religious imagery is helpful. And in fact, it's extremely dangerous.

[47:11] It needs to be torn out root and branch. It's interesting, Elizabeth in her own chapel, she continues to have candlesticks and a cross.

[47:23] These things are removed four times by various folks. They just take it upon themselves to remove them. We need to get them gone. And every time they come back, because she's very committed to what we will often speak of as this middle way, it ends up being a very conflicting legacy.

[47:44] There's strong tensions, folks who are pushing for greater reform, also all the disappointed Catholics who are hoping for a return to Rome. And it's this tension between religion, about religious imagery, but also about politics and religion more generally, that later on boils over into a full-on civil war.

[48:06] At this time, however, there is a moderating moment. We've reached a bit of a stasis, but folks are still quite uncomfortable. Very few were actually happy.

[48:18] A few, not many. And they'll eventually explode into civil war. Before that happens, there's a really interesting development that I'll just mention briefly.

[48:30] The liturgical reforms of William Laud. He takes things even back, harkens back towards what's happening in Mary's time period. Wants to bring back a high altar and altar rails.

[48:41] The beauty of holiness is what he's going for. And there's some theological reasons behind that. We've got an Arminian and a Calvinist controversy happening in England. And so churches get one more change visually in the form of Laud's reforms before we finally have the civil war.

[48:59] And that results in massive iconoclasm. And much of the religious imagery that survives to that time period is then destroyed. But we're not there.

[49:10] We're going to end with the moderation. We're going to end with something a little happier. But Ken, perhaps, talk about that in the Q&A or other things that you're thinking about based on this period.

[49:21] I'm really sorry. I guess we finally did get our slides. So, questions? Yeah. You know, with the Roman Catholic Church, I can sense things. There's such a balance and stability.

[49:32] You sense like, well, there's something that's very, very good about it. You know, we don't agree with the Peter being a first succession of Pope. But there's something about it.

[49:43] You know, when I go to the Holy Rosary, there's just a peaceful. So I went there on Easter Monday. It's all completely common. There's something that's very, very good. My mom's family was Catholic in the cathedral when they came here from Macau.

[49:56] But there's something that's very, very, very good about the Roman Catholic Church. And the priests, there's such people, persons to talk to. Yeah. You're so seasoned from being the confessor.

[50:06] There's some very, very good things about the Catholic Church. Sometimes you can't figure things out on your own. You need to talk it over with somebody. Yeah. And I'll admit that I've often really enjoyed the visual dynamics of a Catholic Church or even, you know, a higher Anglican cathedral.

[50:22] One thing I didn't mention, these reforms happening at the parish level, cathedrals are largely immune to them because they, of the ecclesial structure, they just have a little more independence.

[50:33] So a few things happen, but that's why when you go into some of these cathedral spaces, they can feel a lot more medieval than what you would encounter at a local parish church. But I will say, studying this has challenged me a bit because I can look at these spaces and be like, oh, they're so beautiful.

[50:53] Why did we ever get rid of this? But to then read a little bit more about some of what was motivating folks to want to bring about some change, some visual and some theological change.

[51:08] And a lot of theologians who I, you know, might identify with, like, there's a lot in Calvin that is just really lovely and he's been really influential in our tradition. And he would be absolutely appalled by what happens in Mary's church or even the reforms of William Lott.

[51:25] Um, so I definitely was challenged to, to see how what can see, seem visually beautiful can have a very complicated theological package.

[51:37] And, um, often I want to separate those things out, but it is important to hold them together, I think. Yeah. So in this timeframe, you also have an increasingly literate culture.

[51:47] Yes. Um, obviously we're dealing with the visual and, um, and so forth. Did you come across anything as far as the place of the Bible and the scriptures? Yeah. Um, increasingly.

[51:59] Yeah. No, it's huge. So we have these, these, you know, Henry decrees that a Bible, an English Bible needs to be in all congregations. We've got a proliferation of English translations at this point.

[52:09] We end up with, you know, the, um, the King James, but there's a couple other translations as well. Um, illustrations in those Bibles, interestingly, are quite common. There's this ambivalence within Protestantism.

[52:23] Um, and I'm using the word Protestantism that actually, that's not actually a word that would be used in this period. People would talk about being an Evan, the, the evangelicals, or if you were a Puritan, the godly. Um, but they're quite comfortable with images in Bibles, partly because they're two dimensional, partly because they are connected with the text.

[52:45] Um, but they're quite nervous about certain things. You will almost never see a depiction of God, the father. The most you'll get is sometimes like, uh, the tetra. I can never pronounce that word.

[52:56] Yes. Thank you. So, uh, hovering in a cloud, that's how God, the father's typically depicted. Um, you'll occasionally in the, um, the visions describing when, uh, somebody sees a vision of the Lord high and lifted up.

[53:12] Um, those are occasionally illustrated. So that's the only time you'll see some sort of depiction of God, the father, but that's considered okay. Cause it's a, a vision. And even then in one of the editions I saw, there's all these little letters that would have been, um, explanatory keys.

[53:28] So explaining everything in the vision so that you don't get too wrapped up in fancy, but you're focusing on the one to one, but yeah. And, and Prince, I mean, Fox's book of martyrs. I mean, there's the period is huge.

[53:41] And the other is a lot of, a lot of books and a lot of literacy at this time. Other questions? Comments? Connections?

[53:51] Yes. I worked in a Catholic hospital for 20 years and it was an eyeopening experience for me in many ways, but, um, we're that far past the reformation that I could walk into a Catholic church and see, um, maybe a lovely statue of a saint.

[54:09] And, and I think, well, you know, Julian of Norwich, um, is that what she looked like? Or did somebody dream this up? And I would not ever think about looking at it as an object of worship.

[54:20] And this is where the big difference comes. And I noticed, uh, nuns in our pastoral care department, for instance, um, would use a picture, um, to help a dying patient pray, uh, especially when there was a language barrier of some kind.

[54:38] Uh, and this was, I could see a visual comfort to that person, but it was an aid to prayer. It wasn't, this is a picture that needs to be worshipped.

[54:51] And, and that is a, been a very confusing line, um, in the church because I, I actually asked a couple of the nuns, you know, well, do you really feel that you could pray to the saint and something good is going to come of this, you know?

[55:06] Or even that this person, well, I, it's not, they're, I don't pray to them, it's, it's, it's, um, what do they call it? A devotional act.

[55:17] And I said, so, when you pray to this statue, what, what are you thinking of? Well, this saint could carry your message closer to God. And I thought, whoa, wait a minute, what about one mediator?

[55:30] Um, but they don't think that that way. They have lots of mediators. Mm-hmm. And Mary is a favorite, you know? And I think that's where we can now, uh, with history, that part of history behind us, enjoy these things as art.

[55:45] We don't ever think of them as art. Yeah. And I think, and it's a really helpful point, um, part of what happens, um, we mentioned this with Calvin, it'll happen in England as well.

[55:59] Um, there is an affirmation of the visual arts in certain, to a certain extent, but it always ends up being in a civic space, um, because it's, it's not considered dangerous.

[56:12] People aren't going to be tempted to worship. Um, but, um, I just lost my train to fly. Yes. Um, when I hear something like this, uh, it seems so distant and strange, and I'm always looking for analogy to try to possibly help me understand.

[56:36] And this is, I know this is weird, but this is what came to mind. Um, uh, a top-down attempt to remove, identify and remove and control objects.

[56:48] I need to think of the long gun registry. So you're, you're suggesting that everything that happens in this period is in fact top-down. No.

[56:59] I'm not so focused on the top-down. Okay. That's certainly an element of it, but just, uh, a generalized attempt to identify and, uh, take a negative attitude, attitude toward generally, uh, in a sense demonize and remove a particular something.

[57:23] Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's, it's something to consider. That's good. Linda? I think we have to remember that this, this imagery grew out of a time when people were illiterate.

[57:38] They had nothing but what they looked at. And it was used as a way of focusing their attention on the above. And, um, so then, and then eventually it gets into symbolism and witchcraft and everything else.

[57:52] So it gets polluted. But at first it was, it was dealing with somebody of very little means to understand. They couldn't read, they couldn't write, so it had to be visual.

[58:06] And then it, through the years, gets carried away and, um, and then it, you know, it turns out to be this. So it's just, in my mind, it's one of those things where you protest way to the one side and then it'll bounce back.

[58:21] And it was too bad that everything was destroyed because it was over the top. It didn't need to be like that. But, um, there had to be that reaction to stop it because it was getting prepared.

[58:34] Mm-hmm. But I never think of it. I mean, we had St. Jude, the Patriot Saint of Hopeless Cases. He's of great comfort. I don't think I ever idolized him or ever, you know, worshipped him or anything like that.

[58:47] But if something felt impossible, it was always neat to have him to go talk to me. Mm-hmm. And I think it was just a conversation. And I know I heard things like, you know, if you ask, if you pray to Mary, that's Jesus' mother.

[59:02] He has to say yes to her. And I thought, wow, I don't know about that. You know, so there were things like that that I would rebel. Yeah. And I hear. It is interesting to note that iconoclasm or concern about images, even though these things come into being the images, um, during this preliterate time, even in the preliterate time, there were always people fighting about whether there should be images in the church.

[59:26] Um, this, this goes all the way back to the Byzantines, um, and Protestants and the Puritans after them would establish strong continuities. They'd say, hey, these are our people. We're in the tradition.

[59:37] This has always been there. Um, but you're right that these things do come into being and they are used as the books of the unlearned and, and, and. It's a whole political thing that the church is selling your way into having, you know, so that it's like a conference.

[59:52] Was there, we. One last question with Colleen. Oh, hi. I have more comment, actually. Um, it just became art, art is like electricity. It's powerful. You can be using it through good and through lots of corruptive influences, who you just mentioned.

[60:08] It's, um, and it strikes me, it's very interesting that your talks on the heels of art direction from God on the art of the covenant. Because God was actually using all the art that had permeated Israelites during their time in Egypt to set up a system of worship as they were moving through the desert towards the promised land.

[60:28] He was really specific about colors, textures, the way of it. Um, this was from God. He knew that this was powerful. Art is powerful in people's lives in Egypt. Mm-hmm.

[60:39] Um, can it be abused? Yes, obviously. Yeah. Can we go too far the other way? Yeah, I think we might have. You know? Mm-hmm. Um, but, but I, I, I, I really appreciate the talk so much because as somebody who's in art history degree, all the art that I know about this period was all about the technological advancements in carving and painting.

[60:57] Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, a very secular approach. Mm-hmm. So it really enriched me here about the theology that, that governed what was going on during this period.

[61:08] I thank you so much. Oh, that's great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.zukerson toux and Aside from the ministries and Thank you.