Misplaced Pages

#577422

100-734: Beeldenstorm ( pronounced [ˈbeːldə(n)ˌstɔr(ə)m] ) in Dutch and Bildersturm [ˈbɪldɐˌʃtʊʁm] in German (roughly translatable from both languages as 'attack on the images or statues') are terms used for outbreaks of destruction of religious images that occurred in Europe in the 16th century, known in English as the Great Iconoclasm or Iconoclastic Fury and in French as

200-472: A "lone perceiver" or viewer. Iconoclasm Conversely, one who reveres or venerates religious images is called (by iconoclasts) an iconolater ; in a Byzantine context, such a person is called an iconodule or iconophile. Iconoclasm does not generally encompass the destruction of the images of a specific ruler after his or her death or overthrow, a practice better known as damnatio memoriae . While iconoclasm may be carried out by adherents of

300-426: A Christian work. For I am convinced that it is God's will that we should hear and learn what He has done, especially what Christ suffered. But when I hear these things and meditate upon them, I find it impossible not to picture them in my heart. Whether I want to or not, when I hear, of Christ, a human form hanging upon a cross rises up in my heart: just as I see my natural face reflected when I look into water. Now if it

400-492: A Dutch blockade of the River Scheldt leading to the city, was to finally destroy Antwerp as a major trading centre. In many places there were attempts by Calvinist preachers to take over the ransacked buildings. These were usually repulsed in the period after the attacks. In the months afterwards there were attempted negotiations in many cities, by William of Orange and others, to allocate certain churches to accommodate

500-479: A Welsh Protestant merchant then in Antwerp, saw: "all the churches, chapels and houses of religion utterly defaced, and no kind of thing left whole within them, but broken and utterly destroyed, being done after such order and by so few folks that it is to be marvelled at." The Church of Our Lady in Antwerp , later made the cathedral (illustrated at top): "looked like a hell, with above 10,000 torches burning, and such

600-520: A booty of 20 million dinars . The attack may have been inspired by the belief that an idol of the goddess Manat had been secretly transferred to the temple. According to the Ghaznavid court-poet Farrukhi Sistani , who claimed to have accompanied Mahmud on his raid, Somnat (as rendered in Persian ) was a garbled version of su-manat referring to the goddess Manat. According to him, as well as

700-584: A complex ritual choreography set in a richly furnished church interior." For Lutherans, "the Reformation renewed rather than removed the religious image." Lutheran scholar Jeremiah Ohl writes: Zwingli and others for the sake of saving the Word rejected all plastic art; Luther, with an equal concern for the Word, but far more conservative, would have all the arts to be the servants of the Gospel. "I am not of

800-556: A different religion , it is more commonly the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion. The term originates from the Byzantine Iconoclasm , the struggles between proponents and opponents of religious icons in the Byzantine Empire from 726 to 842 AD. Degrees of iconoclasm vary greatly among religions and their branches, but are strongest in religions which oppose idolatry , including

900-399: A few of them survive." In Japan during the early modern age, the spread of Catholicism also involved the repulsion of non-Christian religious structures, including Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and figures. At times of conflict with rivals or some time after the conversion of several daimyos , Christian converts would often destroy Buddhist and Shinto religious structures. Many of

1000-459: A hideous triumph in the market-place before all the country, when all the mangled organ pipes, vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross which had newly been sawn down from the Green-yard pulpit and the service-books and singing books that could be carried to the fire in the public market-place were heaped together. Protestant Christianity was not uniformly hostile to

1100-614: A large movement of "field sermons" or open-air sermons ( Dutch : hagepreken ) held outside towns, and therefore out of the jurisdiction of the town authorities. The first took place on the Cloostervelt near Hondschoote , in what is now the arrondissement of Dunkirk in French Flanders , very close to where the attacks later began, and the first one to be armed against disruption was held near Boeschepe on 12 July 1562, two months after religious war had broken out again over

SECTION 10

#1732775727578

1200-519: A later Ghaznavid historian Abu Sa'id Gardezi , the images of the other goddesses were destroyed in Arabia but the one of Manat was secretly sent away to Kathiawar (in modern Gujarat) for safekeeping. Since the idol of Manat was an aniconic image of black stone, it could have been easily confused with a lingam at Somnath. Mahmud is said to have broken the idol and taken away parts of it as loot and placed so that people would walk on it. In his letters to

1300-580: A much smaller town, by 23 August, and continuing in the far north and east into October, although the main towns were mostly attacked in August. Valenciennes ("Valencijn" on the map) was the most southerly town attacked. In the east, Maastricht on 20 September and Venlo on 5 October saw attacks, but generally the outbreaks were restricted to more westerly and northern areas. Over 400 churches were attacked in Flanders alone. The eye-witness Richard Clough ,

1400-421: A noise as if heaven and earth had got together, with falling of images and beating down of costly works, such sort that the spoil was so great that a man could not well pass through the church. So that in fine [short], I cannot write you in x sheets of paper the strange sight I saw there, organs and all destroyed." Nicholas Sanders , an English Catholic exile who was a professor of theology at Louvain , described

1500-485: A purely Islamic coinage with lettering only. A letter by the Patriarch Germanus , written before 726 to two iconoclast bishops, says that "now whole towns and multitudes of people are in considerable agitation over this matter," but there is little written evidence of the debate. Government-led iconoclasm began with Byzantine Emperor Leo III , who issued a series of edicts between 726 and 730 against

1600-600: A significant shift in Egyptian artistic styles alongside a campaign of intolerance towards the traditional gods and a new emphasis on a state monolatristic tradition focused on the god Aten , the Sun disk—many temples and monuments were destroyed as a result: In rebellion against the old religion and the powerful priests of Amun , Akhenaten ordered the eradication of all of Egypt's traditional gods. He sent royal officials to chisel out and destroy every reference to Amun and

1700-585: A somewhat distorted view of the art history of the period. An altarpiece in Culemborg had been commissioned in 1557 from the painter Jan Dey, was then destroyed in 1566 and in 1570 recommissioned from Dey, apparently as a copy of the first. However the new work was only in place for five years before it was removed when the town went officially Calvinist. On 23 August Margaret of Parma , the Habsburg Regent or Governor-general, whose capital of Brussels

1800-581: A strong tradition of forbidding the depiction of figures, especially religious figures, with Sunni Islam forbidding it more than Shia Islam . In the history of Islam , the act of removing idols from the Ka'ba in Mecca has great symbolic and historic importance for all believers. In general, Muslim societies have avoided the depiction of living beings (both animals and humans) within such sacred spaces as mosques and madrasahs . This ban on figural representation

1900-577: A wider settlement that all parties could live with. Instead unrest continued and the episode fed into the causes of the Dutch Revolt which was to erupt two years later. On 29 August 1566 Margaret wrote a somewhat panicked letter to Philip, "claiming that half the population were infected with heresy, and that over 200,000 people were up in arms against her authority". Philip decided to send the Duke of Alba with an army; he would have led them himself but

2000-457: Is "modest at best". Antwerp experienced a further period of iconoclasm in 1581, after a Calvinist city council was elected and purged the city's clergy and guilds of Catholic office-holders. This is known as the "quiet" or " stille " beeldenstorm , as the removal of images was carried out by the institutions they belonged to, the council itself, churches and the guilds. Some images were sold rather than destroyed, but most seem to have been lost. In

2100-467: Is 372,180 (2020), and its area is 1,442.7 km (557.0 sq mi). It roughly corresponds to the French Westhoek (part of French Flanders ), where traditionally French Flemish is spoken. The communes of the arrondissement of Dunkirk, and their INSEE codes , are: The arrondissement of Bergues was created in 1800. The subprefecture was moved to Dunkirk in 1803. As a result of

SECTION 20

#1732775727578

2200-680: Is not based on the Qur'an , instead, it is based on traditions which are described within the Hadith . The prohibition of figuration has not always been extended to the secular sphere, and a robust tradition of figural representation exists within Muslim art . However, Western authors have tended to perceive "a long, culturally determined, and unchanging tradition of violent iconoclastic acts" within Islamic society . The first act of Muslim iconoclasm dates to

2300-535: Is not sinful for me to have Christ's picture in my heart, why should it be sinful to have it before my eyes? The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent , who had pragmatic reasons to support the Dutch Revolt (the rebels, like himself, were fighting against Spain) also completely approved of their act of "destroying idols," which accorded well with Muslim teachings. A bit later in Dutch history, in 1627

2400-530: Is strange that Aaron could so easily avoid the role of the religious criminal. It is more than probable that these traditions evolved under mutual influence. In this respect, Moses and Akhenaten became, after all, closely related. According to the Hebrew Bible , God instructed the Israelites to "destroy all [the] engraved stones, destroy all [the] molded images, and demolish all [the] high places" of

2500-713: The Abrahamic religions . Outside of the religious context, iconoclasm can refer to movements for widespread destruction in symbols of an ideology or cause, such as the destruction of monarchist symbols during the French Revolution . In the Bronze Age , the most significant episode of iconoclasm occurred in Egypt during the Amarna Period , when Akhenaten , based in his new capital of Akhetaten , instituted

2600-630: The Caliphate , Mahmud exaggerated the size, wealth and religious significance of the Somnath temple, receiving grandiose titles from the Caliph in return. The wooden structure was replaced by Kumarapala (r. 1143–72), who rebuilt the temple out of stone. Historical records which were compiled by the Muslim historian Maulana Hakim Saiyid Abdul Hai attest to the religious violence which occurred during

2700-586: The Eastern Association of counties. This covered some of the wealthiest counties in England , which in turn financed a substantial and significant military force. After Earl of Manchester was appointed the commanding officer of these forces, in turn he appointed Smasher Dowsing as Provost Marshal , with a warrant to demolish religious images which were considered to be superstitious or linked with popism. Bishop Joseph Hall of Norwich described

2800-563: The Furie iconoclaste . During these spates of iconoclasm , Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed in unofficial or mob actions by Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation . Most of the destruction was of art in churches and public places. The Dutch term usually specifically refers to the wave of disorderly attacks in the summer of 1566 that spread rapidly through

2900-749: The Low Countries from south to north. Similar outbreaks of iconoclasm took place in other parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire in the period between 1522 and 1566, notably Zürich (in 1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), and Augsburg (1537). In England, there was both government-sponsored removal of images and also spontaneous attacks from 1535 onwards, and in Scotland from 1559. In France, there were several outbreaks as part of

3000-678: The Mamluk dynasty under Qutb-ud-din Aybak . The first mosque built in Delhi, the " Quwwat al-Islam " was built with demolished parts of 20 Hindu and Jain temples. This pattern of iconoclasm was common during his reign. During the Delhi Sultanate , a Muslim army led by Malik Kafur , a general of Alauddin Khalji , pursued four violent campaigns into south India, between 1309 and 1311, against

3100-592: The Synod of Elvira appeared to endorse iconoclasm; Canon 36 states, "Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration." A possible translation is also: "There shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped and adored should be depicted on the walls." The date of this canon is disputed. Proscription ceased after the destruction of pagan temples. However, widespread use of Christian iconography only began as Christianity increasingly spread among Gentiles after

Beeldenstorm - Misplaced Pages Continue

3200-600: The Wars of Religion from 1560 onwards. In France, unofficial episodes of large scale destruction of art in churches by Huguenot Calvinists had begun in 1560; unlike in the Low Countries, they were often physically resisted and repulsed by Catholic crowds, but were to continue throughout the French Wars of Religion . In Anglican England much destruction had already taken place in an organized fashion under orders from

3300-607: The legalization of Christianity by Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 312 AD). During the process of Christianisation under Constantine, Christian groups destroyed the images and sculptures expressive of the Roman Empire 's polytheist state religion. Among early church theologians, iconoclastic tendencies were supported by theologians such as Tertullian , Clement of Alexandria , Origen , Lactantius , Justin Martyr , Eusebius and Epiphanius . The period after

3400-527: The moai of Easter Island were toppled during the 18th century in the iconoclasm of civil wars before any European encounter. Other instances of iconoclasm may have occurred throughout Eastern Polynesia during its conversion to Christianity in the 19th century. After the Second Vatican Council in the late 20th century, some Roman Catholic parish churches discarded much of their traditional imagery, art, and architecture. Islam has

3500-416: The recent and apparently on-going destruction of historic sites by Saudi Arabian authorities, prompted by the fear they could become the subject of " idolatry ." A recent act of iconoclasm was the 2001 destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamyan by the then- Taliban government of Afghanistan . The act generated worldwide protests and was not supported by other Muslim governments and organizations. It

3600-659: The veneration of images. The religious conflict created political and economic divisions in Byzantine society; iconoclasm was generally supported by the Eastern, poorer, non-Greek peoples of the Empire who had to frequently deal with raids from the new Muslim Empire. On the other hand, the wealthier Greeks of Constantinople and the peoples of the Balkan and Italian provinces strongly opposed iconoclasm. Peter of Bruys opposed

3700-482: The (then) French border just nearby. These open-air sermons, mostly by Anabaptist or Mennonite preachers, spread through the country, attracting huge crowds, though not necessarily of those leaning to Protestantism, and in many places immediately preceded the iconoclastic attacks of August 1566. Prosecutions for heresy continued, especially in the south, although they were erratic, and in some places clergy of clearly heretical views were appointed to churches. By 1565

3800-772: The 8th century, Bengali troops from the Buddhist Pala Empire looted temples of Vishnu , the state deity of Lalitaditya 's kingdom in Kashmir . In the early 9th century, Indian Hindu kings from Kanchipuram and the Pandyan king Srimara Srivallabha looted Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka . In the early 10th century, the Pratihara king Herambapala looted an image from a temple in the Sahi kingdom of Kangra , which

3900-455: The Antwerp money market short of funds since earlier in the year, and now made use of Cologne and Augsburg as well, but as events unfolded in the next year, and the personal position of some leading lenders became precarious, the English found to their surprise that repayments were no longer pressed for, probably as the lenders were happy to keep their money abroad on loan to a secure borrower. The Dutch Revolt, which from 1585 onwards included

4000-670: The Eighty Years' War concluded, in the cities and areas that had become Protestant, the old Catholic churches were nearly all taken over by the new established faith , the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church , while other congregations were left to find their own buildings. The bare and empty state of those churches left in Catholic hands after the hostilities eventually ended prompted a large programme of restocking with Catholic art, which had much to do with

4100-627: The Hindu kingdoms of Devgiri (Maharashtra), Warangal (Telangana), Dwarasamudra (Karnataka) and Madurai (Tamil Nadu). Many Temples were plundered; Hoysaleswara Temple and others were ruthlessly destroyed. Arrondissement of Dunkirk The arrondissement of Dunkirk ( French : Dunkerque , Dutch : Duinkerke ) is an arrondissement of France in the Nord department in the Hauts-de-France region . It has 111 communes . Its population

Beeldenstorm - Misplaced Pages Continue

4200-512: The Holy Scriptures and the ancient fathers , and tore in pieces the maps and charts of the descriptions of countries. Such details are corroborated by many other sources. Accounts of the actions of the iconoclasts from eyewitnesses and the records of the later trials of many of them make it clear that there was often a considerable element of carnival to the outbreaks, with much mockery of the images and fittings such as fonts recorded as

4300-507: The Revelation of St. John, in the books of Moses, and in the book of Joshua. We therefore kindly beg these fanatics to permit us also to paint these pictures on the wall that they may be remembered and better understood, inasmuch as they can harm as little on the walls as in books. Would to God that I could persuade those who can afford it to paint the whole Bible on their houses, inside and outside, so that all might see; this would indeed be

4400-444: The actions, and by the end of the outbreak some northern towns removed images by order of the local authority, presumably to prevent the disorder that would accompany a mob action. Analysis of the records of the later trials shows a wide range of occupations, covering craftsmen and small tradespeople, especially in the textile trade, and also a variety of church employees, at a fairly low level. Where wealth and property are recorded, it

4500-474: The area. In some places the nobility gave assistance, ordering the clearing of churches on their estates. Local magistracies were often opposed, but ineffective in stopping the destruction. In many towns the archer's guild, who had a function in controlling public order, took no steps against the crowds. In 1566, unlike the situation after the Eighty Years' War and today, Protestantism in the Low Countries

4600-427: The artist Johannes van der Beeck was arrested and tortured, charged with being a religious non-conformist and a blasphemer , heretic , atheist , and Satanist . The 25 January 1628 judgment from five noted advocates of The Hague pronounced him guilty of "blasphemy against God and avowed atheism, at the same time as leading a frightful and pernicious lifestyle. At the court's order his paintings were burned, and only

4700-563: The authorities seem to have realized that persecution was not the answer, and the level of prosecutions slackened, and the Protestants became increasingly confident in the open. A letter of 22 July 1566 from local officials to the Regent, warned that "the scandalous pillage of churches, monasteries and abbeys" was imminent. On 10 August 1566, the feast-day of Saint Lawrence , at the end of the pilgrimage from Hondschoote to Steenvoorde ,

4800-509: The beginning of Islam, in 630, when the various statues of Arabian deities housed in the Kaaba in Mecca were destroyed. There is a tradition that Muhammad spared a fresco of Mary and Jesus . This act was intended to bring an end to the idolatry which, in the Muslim view, characterized Jahiliyyah . The destruction of the idols of Mecca did not, however, determine the treatment of other religious communities living under Muslim rule after

4900-504: The brass of the gravestones, not sparing the glass and seats which were made about the pillars of the church for men to sit in. ... the Blessed Sacrament of the altar ... they trod under their feet and (horrible it is to say!) shed their stinking piss upon it ... these false bretheren burned and rent not only all kind of Church books, but, moreover, destroyed whole libraries of books of all sciences and tongues, yea

5000-497: The caliphate. Researchers have discovered evidence that the order was followed, particularly in present-day Jordan , where archaeological evidence shows the removal of images from the mosaic floors of some, although not all, of the churches that stood at this time. But Yazīd's iconoclastic policies were not continued by his successors, and Christian communities of the Levant continued to make icons without significant interruption from

5100-627: The chapel of the Sint-Laurensklooster was defaced by a crowd who invaded the building. It has been suggested that the rioters connected the saint especially with Philip II, whose monastery palace of the Escorial near Madrid was dedicated to Lawrence, and was just nearing completion in 1566. Iconoclastic attacks spread rapidly northwards and resulted in the destruction of not only images but all sorts of decoration and fittings in churches and other church or clergy property. However, there

SECTION 50

#1732775727578

5200-463: The country, conquering Debal , Sehwan , Nerun , Brahmanadabad, Alor and Multan one after the other in quick succession, and in less than a year and a half, the far-flung Hindu kingdom was crushed ... There was a fearful outbreak of religious bigotry in several places and temples were wantonly desecrated. At Debal, the Nairun and Aror temples were demolished and converted into mosques. Perhaps

5300-479: The crowd; after the images were smashed and the property occupied, "men fed their stomachs in a carnivalesque indulgence of beer, bread, butter and cheese, while women carted off provisions for the kitchen or bedroom". There are many accounts of rituals of inversion, in which the church sometimes stood for the whole social order. Children sometimes participated enthusiastically, and street games afterwards became play battles between " papists " and " beggars ". One child

5400-419: The destruction in the same church: ... these fresh followers of this new preaching threw down the graven [sculpted] and defaced the painted images, not only of Our Lady but of all others in the town. They tore the curtains, dashed in pieces the carved work of brass and stone, brake the altars, spoilt the clothes and corporesses, wrested the irons, conveyed away or brake the chalices and vestiments, pulled up

5500-569: The destruction of divine presence ; in the eyes of the Egyptians, this same effect was attained by the destruction of images. In Egypt, iconoclasm was the most terrible religious crime; in Israel , the most terrible religious crime was idolatry . In this respect Osarseph alias Akhenaten, the iconoclast, and the Golden Calf , the paragon of idolatry, correspond to each other inversely, and it

5600-541: The dissident movement were out of control". Protestant ministers and activists returning from exile in England and elsewhere played a significant role, and individual wealthy Protestants were widely suspected of hiring men to do the work in some places, especially Antwerp. In some rural areas gangs of iconoclasts moved across country between village churches and monasteries for several days. Elsewhere there were large crowds involved, sometimes locals, and sometimes from outside

5700-525: The disturbances created serious and well-justified fears that its position as such was under threat. Sir Thomas Gresham , the English financier who arranged Elizabeth I 's borrowings, and whose agent in Antwerp was Clough, left London for Antwerp on 23 August, only hearing about the Antwerp attacks en route ; he needed to roll-over 32,000 Flemish pounds and borrow another 20,000 to finance her expenses in Ireland. Dining with William of Orange on his arrival, he

5800-444: The events of 1643 when troops and citizens, encouraged by a Parliamentary ordinance against superstition and idolatry , behaved thus: Lord what work was here! What clattering of glasses! What beating down of walls! What tearing up of monuments! What pulling down of seats! What wresting out of irons and brass from the windows! What defacing of arms! What demolishing of curious stonework! What tooting and piping upon organ pipes! And what

5900-399: The expansion of the caliphate . Most Christians under Muslim rule, for example, continued to produce icons and to decorate their churches as they wished. A major exception to this pattern of tolerance in early Islamic history was the "Edict of Yazīd", issued by the Umayyad caliph Yazīd II in 722–723. This edict ordered the destruction of crosses and Christian images within the territory of

6000-688: The following year, and their layouts, which seem to have echoed early Swiss and Scottish Calvinist designs, are now largely unknown. Once the revolt proper had started, there were many further instances of clearing churches, some still unofficial and disorderly, but as cities became officially Protestant, increasingly undertaken by official order, like the Amsterdam Alteratie ("Alteration") of 1578. Altars, to which Calvinists, unlike Lutherans, took strong exception, were typically completely removed, and in some large churches, like Utrecht Cathedral , large tomb monuments put where they stood, partly to make their return more difficult if political conditions changed. As

6100-590: The government, while in Northern Europe, groups of Calvinists marched through churches and removed images, a move which "provoked reactive riots by Lutheran mobs" in Germany and "antagonized the neighbouring Eastern Orthodox" in the Baltic region. In Germany, Switzerland and England, conversion to Protestantism had been enforced on the whole population at the level of a city, principality or kingdom, with varying degrees of discrimination, persecution or expulsion applied to those who insisted on remaining Catholic. The Low Countries, Flanders, Brabant and Holland were part of

SECTION 60

#1732775727578

6200-415: The guild had commissioned only 15 years earlier. The van Eycks ' Ghent Altarpiece , then as now famous as a supreme example of Early Netherlandish painting and already a major tourist attraction, just restored in 1550, was saved by dismantling it and hiding it in the cathedral tower. A first attack on 19 August was deterred by a small number of guards. When a larger attack was made at night two days later

6300-401: The iconoclasts had provided themselves with a tree trunk as a battering ram, and succeeded in breaking through the doors. By then the panels had been removed from the frame and hidden, with the guards, on the narrow spiral staircase up the tower, with a locked door at ground level. They were not detected and the crowd left after destroying what else they could find. The panels were then moved to

6400-485: The iconoclasts went about their work. Alcohol features largely in very many accounts, perhaps in some cases because in Netherlandish law being drunk could be regarded as a mitigating factor in criminal sentencing. The destruction frequently included ransacking the priest's house, and sometimes private houses suspected of sheltering church goods. There was much looting of common household goods from clergy houses and monasteries, and some street robberies of women's jewellery by

6500-431: The indigenous Canaanite population as soon as they entered the Promised Land . In Judaism , King Hezekiah purged Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem and all figures were also destroyed in the Land of Israel , including the Nehushtan , as recorded in the Second Book of Kings . His reforms were reversed in the reign of his son Manasseh . Scattered expressions of opposition to the use of images have been reported:

6600-443: The inheritance of Philip II of Spain , who was a devout Catholic and self-proclaimed protector of the Counter-Reformation ; he suppressed Protestantism through his Governor-general Margaret of Parma , the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V , who was herself more willing to compromise. Protestants so far represented only a relatively small proportion of the Netherlandish population, but including disproportionate numbers from

6700-442: The local Protestants, often divided into Lutherans and Calvinists. These had mostly failed within a few weeks, not least because Margaret's government rejected them; she had already had an earlier attempt at compromise overruled by Philip a few months earlier, and been embarrassingly forced to retract a decree. Instead there was a wave of building or adapting Calvinist "temples", though in the end none of these were to remain in use by

6800-444: The manufacture of graven (sculpted) images of God. As a result, individuals attacked statues and images, most famously in the beeldenstorm across the Low Countries in 1566. The belief of iconoclasm caused havoc throughout Europe . In 1523, specifically due to the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli , a vast number of his followers viewed themselves as being involved in a spiritual community that in matters of faith should obey neither

6900-433: The mental picturing of Christ when reading the Scriptures was similar in character to artistic renderings of Christ. In contrast to the Lutherans who favoured certain types of sacred art in their churches and homes, the Reformed (Calvinist) leaders, in particular Andreas Karlstadt , Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin , encouraged the removal of religious images by invoking the Decalogue's prohibition of idolatry and

7000-471: The most notorious episode of iconoclasm in India was Mahmud of Ghazni 's attack on the Somnath Temple from across the Thar Desert . The temple was first raided in 725, when Junayad, the governor of Sind , sent his armies to destroy it. In 1024, during the reign of Bhima I , the prominent Turkic-Muslim ruler Mahmud of Ghazni raided Gujarat, plundering the Somnath Temple and breaking its jyotirlinga despite pleas by Brahmins not to break it. He took away

7100-413: The motives for the destruction. During the Tuareg rebellion of 2012 , the radical Islamist militia Ansar Dine destroyed various Sufi shrines from the 15th and 16th centuries in the city of Timbuktu , Mali . In 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi , a former member of Ansar Dine, to nine years in prison for this destruction of cultural world heritage. This

7200-508: The movement as prompted by these factors than was the case a few decades ago. The Beeldenstorm grew out of a turn in the behaviour of Low Country Protestants starting around 1560, who became increasingly open in their religion, despite penal sanctions. Catholic preachers were interrupted in sermons, and raids were organized to rescue Protestant prisoners from jail, who then often fled into exile in France or England. Protestant views were spread by

7300-426: The movement. According to one scholar, this "was not only a dramatic change in the function of art, it was the context in which our present concept of art, what the literary critic M. H. Abrams called "art as such", first began to take shape", replacing a "construction model" where art theory concerned itself with how makers created their works, with a "contemplation model" concerned with the effect of finished works on

7400-532: The names of other deities on tombs, temple walls, and cartouches to instill in the people that the Aten was the one true god. Public references to Akhenaten were destroyed soon after his death. Comparing the ancient Egyptians with the Israelites , Jan Assmann writes: For Egypt, the greatest horror was the destruction or abduction of the cult images. In the eyes of the Israelites, the erection of images meant

7500-597: The neighbouring Eastern Orthodox " in the Baltic region. The Seventeen Provinces (now the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Northern France) were disrupted by widespread Calvinist iconoclasm in the summer of 1566. During the Reformation in England , which started during the reign of Anglican monarch Henry VIII , and was urged on by reformers such as Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer , limited official action

7600-494: The nobility and upper bourgeoisie ; nevertheless, but the Catholic Church had evidently lost the loyalty of the population, and traditional Catholic anti-clericalism was now dominant. The region affected was perhaps the richest in Europe, but still seethed with economic discontent among parts of the population, and had suffered a poor harvest and hard winter. However, recent historians are generally less inclined to see

7700-424: The opinion" said [Luther], "that through the Gospel all the arts should be banished and driven away, as some zealots want to make us believe; but I wish to see them all, especially music, in the service of Him Who gave and created them." Again he says: "I have myself heard those who oppose pictures, read from my German Bible.... But this contains many pictures of God, of the angels, of men, and of animals, especially in

7800-476: The palaces of the nobility, were not attacked. In Ghent, on the one hand the memorial in a church to Charles V's sister Isabel (and so Philip's aunt) was carefully left alone, but a statue in the street of Charles V and the Virgin was destroyed. The actions were controversial among Protestants, some of whom implausibly tried to blame Catholic agent provocateurs , as it became clear that "the more popular elements of

7900-511: The reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–565) evidently saw a huge increase in the use of images, both in volume and quality, and a gathering aniconic reaction. One notable change within the Byzantine Empire came in 695, when Justinian II 's government added a full-face image of Christ on the obverse of imperial gold coins. The change caused the Caliph Abd al-Malik to stop his earlier adoption of Byzantine coin types. He started

8000-412: The same time or to the same extent, but practically none remained unscathed." Many elite Protestants were now alarmed by the forces unleashed, and some of the nobility began to shift towards support of the government. Implementing the somewhat vague terms of the agreement led to further tensions, and William of Orange , appointed by Margaret to resolve the situation in Antwerp, tried and failed to produce

8100-521: The sixth century to the ninth. Al-Maqrīzī , writing in the 15th century, attributes the missing nose on the Great Sphinx of Giza to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr , a Sufi Muslim in the mid-1300s. He was reportedly outraged by local Muslims making offerings to the Great Sphinx in the hope of controlling the flood cycle, and he was later executed for vandalism. However, whether this

8200-509: The summer of 1584 Antwerp was besieged by the Duke of Parma's Spanish army , falling a year later. Rarely was any thought given to the artistic heritage of these cities in 1566, though families were sometimes able to protect the church monuments of their ancestors, and in Delft the syndics of the painters' Guild of Saint Luke were able to rescue the altarpiece by Maarten van Heemskerck , which

8300-663: The three main churches in Leiden were attacked; in the Pieterskerk the choirbooks and altarpiece by Lucas van Leyden were preserved. In the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam an altarpiece with a central panel by Jan van Scorel and side panels painted on both sides by Maarten van Heemskerck was lost. The most important works of several painters, especially those like Pieter Aertsen who worked in Antwerp, were all destroyed, leading to

8400-542: The town hall, and only returned to view in 1569, by which time the elaborate frame had disappeared. The artistic and literary losses were elaborately described by Marcus van Vaernewyck in his journal V an die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt 1566-1568. The original manuscript of his journal is still preserved in the Ghent University Library . Despite militia guards, two of

8500-644: The usage of religious images, the Strigolniki were also possibly iconoclastic. Claudius of Turin was the bishop of Turin from 817 until his death. He is most noted for teaching iconoclasm. The first iconoclastic wave happened in Wittenberg in the early 1520s under reformers Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt , in the absence of Martin Luther , who then, concealed under the pen-name of 'Junker Jörg', intervened to calm things down. Luther argued that

8600-497: The use of religious images. Martin Luther taught the "importance of images as tools for instruction and aids to devotion," stating: "If it is not a sin but good to have the image of Christ in my heart, why should it be a sin to have it in my eyes?" Lutheran churches retained ornate church interiors with a prominent crucifix , reflecting their high view of the real presence of Christ in Eucharist . As such, "Lutheran worship became

8700-493: The vigour of Northern Mannerism and later Flemish Baroque painting , and many Gothic churches were given Baroque makeovers. In the north, now strongly Protestant, religious art largely disappeared, and Dutch Golden Age painting concentrated on a wide range of secular subjects, such as genre painting , landscape art and still-lifes , with results that might sometimes have surprised the Protestant ministers who initiated

8800-918: The visible Church nor lay authorities. According to Peter George Wallace "Zwingli's attack on images, at the first debate, triggered iconoclastic incidents in Zürich and the villages under civic jurisdiction that the reformer was unwilling to condone." Due to this action of protest against authority, "Zwingli responded with a carefully reasoned treatise that men could not live in society without laws and constraint". Significant iconoclastic riots took place in Basel (in 1529), Zürich (1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), Augsburg (1537), Scotland (1559), Rouen (1560), and Saintes and La Rochelle (1562). Calvinist iconoclasm in Europe "provoked reactive riots by Lutheran mobs" in Germany and "antagonized

8900-467: Was actually the cause of the missing nose has been debated by historians. Mark Lehner , having performed an archaeological study, concluded that it was broken with instruments at an earlier unknown time between the 3rd and 10th centuries. Certain conquering Muslim armies have used local temples or houses of worship as mosques. An example is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople ), which

9000-431: Was asked if "the English were minded to depart this town or not", and wrote to William Cecil , Elizabeth's chief minister, "in alarm that he "liked none of their proceedings" but "apprehended great mischief", and urged that the English government "should do very well in time to consider some other realm and place" for marketing English products. It was a message that helped shape the course of events." The English had found

9100-610: Was converted into a mosque in 1453. Most icons were desecrated and the rest were covered with plaster. In 1934 the government of Turkey decided to convert the Hagia Sophia into a museum and the restoration of the mosaics was undertaken by the American Byzantine Institute beginning in 1932. Certain Muslim denominations continue to pursue iconoclastic agendas. There has been much controversy within Islam over

9200-552: Was kept in Spain by other matters, especially the increasingly evident insanity of his heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias . When Alba arrived the following year, and soon replaced Margaret as Governor-general, his heavy-handed repression, which included the execution of many convicted of iconoclastic attacks the summer before, only made the situation worse. Antwerp was then Europe's largest financial and international trading centre, taking as much as 75 or 80% of English exports of cloth, and

9300-444: Was killed in Amsterdam by a stone thrown in such a game. Elsewhere the iconoclasts seemed to treat their actions as a job of work; in one city the group waited for the bell rung to mark the start of the working day before beginning their work. The tombs and memorial inscriptions of the patriciate and nobility, and in some cases royalty, were defaced or destroyed in several places, although secular public buildings such as town halls, and

9400-600: Was later looted by the Pratihara king Yashovarman. Records from the campaign recorded in the Chach Nama record the destruction of temples during the early 8th century when the Umayyad governor of Damascus , al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf , mobilized an expedition of 6000 cavalry under Muhammad bin Qasim in 712. Historian Upendra Thakur records the persecution of Hindus and Buddhists : Muhammad triumphantly marched into

9500-568: Was mainly concentrated in the south (roughly modern Belgium ), and much weaker in the north (roughly now the Netherlands ). Iconoclasm in the north began later, after news of the events in Antwerp was received, and was more successfully resisted by local authorities in some towns, though still succeeding in most. Once again socially prominent laymen often took the lead. In many places there were, or were later said to have been, false claims of official commissions from some local authority to perform

9600-440: Was relatively little loss of life, unlike similar outbreaks in France, where the clergy were often killed, and some iconoclasts too. The attacks reached the commercial centre of the Low Countries, Antwerp, on 20 August, and on 22 August Ghent, where the cathedral, eight churches, twenty-five monasteries and convents, ten hospitals and seven chapels were wrecked. From there, it further spread east and north, reaching Amsterdam , then

9700-558: Was taken against religious images in churches in the late 1530s. Henry's young son, Edward VI , came to the throne in 1547 and, under Cranmer's guidance, issued injunctions for Religious Reforms in the same year and in 1550, an Act of Parliament "for the abolition and putting away of divers books and images." During the English Civil War , the Parliamentarians reorganised the administration of East Anglia into

9800-881: Was the first time that the ICC convicted a person for such a crime. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant carried out iconoclastic attacks such as the destruction of Shia mosques and shrines. Notable incidents include blowing up the Mosque of the Prophet Yunus ( Jonah ) and destroying the Shrine to Seth in Mosul . In early Medieval India , there were numerous recorded instances of temple desecration mostly by Indian Muslim kings against rival Indian Hindu kingdoms , which involved conflicts between Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. In

9900-480: Was unaffected by the movement, agreed to an "Accord" with the group of aristocratic Protestant leaders known as the "Compromise" or Geuzen ("Beggars"), by which freedom of religion was granted, in exchange for allowing Catholics to worship unmolested and an end to the violence. Instead, "the outbreak of the iconoclastic fury began an almost uninterrupted series of skirmishes, campaigns, plunder, pirate-raids, and other acts of violence. Not all areas suffered violence at

10000-687: Was widely perceived in the Western media as a result of the Muslim prohibition against figural decoration. Such an account overlooks "the coexistence between the Buddhas and the Muslim population that marveled at them for over a millennium" before their destruction. According to art historian F. B. Flood, analysis of the Taliban's statements regarding the Buddhas suggest that their destruction was motivated more by political than by theological concerns. Taliban spokesmen have given many different explanations of

#577422