Posted on 10/08/2013 5:24:17 PM PDT by marshmallow
A new exhibition at Tate Britain highlights the scale of destruction to artworks in the Tudor period – a staggering amount of books and music were also destroyed
The slashed and broken medieval images displayed in the new Art Under Attack exhibition at the Tate are a reminder of what we lost in the hundred and fifty years after the Reformation. Even now there is denial about the scale of the erasing of our medieval past. The Tate estimates we lost 90% of our religious art. It was probably even more than that. The destruction was on a scale that far outstrips the modern efforts of Islamist extremists. And it was not only art we lost, but also books and music.
We think of Henry VIII and the destruction of the monasteries, but that was not the end of the destruction, it marked the beginning. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, hailed the reign of his son, the boy king Edward VI, as that of a new Josiah, destroyer of idols. After his coronation an orgy of iconoclasm was launched. In churches rood screens, tombs with their prayers for the dead, and stain glass windows, were smashed. The Elizabethan antiquarian John Stow complained, some of this Christian Taliban “judged every image to be an idol”, so that not only religious art, but even the secular thirteenth century carvings of kings in Ludgate were broken.
Books too were burned on a vast scale. Earlier this year Melvyn Bragg was on TV telling us about William Tyndale during the reign of Henry VIII, and the forces of Catholic conservatism blocking publication of his English bible with its attached Lutheran commentaries. But conservatives were not alone in wishing to suppress books that contained ideas they did not agree with. When the monasteries were suppressed.....
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
The people had a government. The government, with the people represented through its Parliament asserted its rights. The foreign church didn’t like it.
Nothing worse than a person who uses religion to push their non-religious ideas.
“Reactions to sin? Oh please. The Reformation in England was neither popular nor necessary. It was imposed upon a good people.”
Thanks for sharing your opinion. Obviously, I disagree with it, as do hundreds of millions of others.
“goodbye Mr. Chips”
they buried them next to the people that the protestants exeecuted in this country during the nSalem witch trials....
WINK
Don’t forget the Vikings! They would loot the churchs and Irish monastaries too.
And the Crusaders! The Catholic Crusaders looted Contantinopole in the 4th Crusade, and had previously pirated through the Red Sea.
“It is actually pretty accurate.”
No, it is false and the history of England before Henry VIII is replete with proof of that. Martyrdom of Thomas Becket ring a bell?
“Henry took over the Church,....”
An admission of which completely disproves your earlier claim. First you said: “The government, of which the Church was part...” and now you say that wasn’t so. Which is it?
“The Act of Supremacy didn’t give him power as head of the church, it rather recognized that he was already head of the church.”
No. It gave him powers he never had using a legal fiction - that the king was somehow always the boss of the Church even though there was no way anyone actually believed that. Even Henry never believed it and never proposed it until he realized he could defy the pope and seize control of the Church which no English monarch had legally controlled or spiritually controlled before. If everyone believed it no penalty and no oath would have been needed.
“The conflating of church and state before 1584 is shown by Henry’s application for dispensations.”
No. First, you mean 1534 and not 1584. If you can’t even get the year right you might want to reconsider engaging in any debate about a topic which might be completely foreign to you. Also, if by “Henry’s application for dispensations” you mean his securing of a dispensation to marry Catherine, that had nothing to do with “conflating of church and state” in itself. If we had lived at the same time and had the same situation, we too could have done the same thing.
“Your problem is, that Henry’s established church and state with state at the top. You perhaps preferred established church and state with church at the top.”
What I would have preferred is what existed before Henry which is neither one of the things you just mentioned.
“As an American, I prefer no established church, but the past is a different country. They do things differently there.”
Do? Did. What you prefer is immaterial. What was and is true is all that matters.
“Your problem is, that Henry’s established church and state with state at the top. You perhaps preferred established church and state with church at the top.
As an American, I prefer no established church, but the past is a different country. They do things differently there.”
..............
+1
Pure, unadulterated fantasy.
The Catholic Church in England, preceded the monarchy and will be around when the monarchy (and its established church) disappears, which by the looks of things, could be any day now.
FYI, in the 300 years preceding the Reformation there were many attempts by the state to influence the jurisdiction of the Church and several anti-papal laws , such as the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire were passed indicating clearly that the Catholic Church was not the established church, although the monarchy wished to subject its ecclesiastical functions to temporal powers.
The English bishops refused to consent to the acts and had their opposition tabled in Parliament.
The history of state antagonism to Catholicism in Britain doesn't begin with Henry VIII although he is the best known and most virulent example. It existed before the Reformation.......a strange situation for an "established" church.
Shame on Moses
“In a church that had so many problems, including idolatry, the reaction in the Reformation swung too far to the other side. This was an example.”
No. There was no idolatry and such a practice has always been abhorrent to the Church and absolutely forbidden.
“I don’t support either side. If you do, fine. Makes for a more interesting discussion.”
Not supporting either side doesn’t mean you have to get the facts wrong. Your “facts” are wrong.
The Church was indeed part of the government. They punished whole contries to keep other parts of the government in line.
“Interdict” was one of their tools of government.
“Crusade” was another.
“Excommunication” was a third.
. . wills of the first decades of the sixteenth century (up to the 1540's) show English men and women . . . pouring into their parish churches gifts of money, sheep, cattle, timber, crops of wheat, rye and beans, bushels of malt and loads of stone, beehives and barrels of salt and fish, jewels and rings, silver and pewter plate, gowns of silk, satin and sarsenet . . . . all these legacies went to parish churches and chapels of ease to embellish and repair them, and to endow high altars dedicated to various saints . . . . They left money and goods for repairs and new buildings, for church furnishings, for organs, clocks and especially church bells. They left their worldly goods to religious contrafraternities, to choirs, and for the upkeep of churchyards . . . . there was still an intense preoccupation with expiatory bequests, that is, bequests which, directly or indirectly, resulted in masses, prayers, and sacrificial offering to Heaven of earthly possessions for the repose of the souls of the benefactor and his or her kin . . . . There is no evidence that any less was being done for the glory of God.
Not Christian ones . . . though there were sects, Lollards, etc. And we’re discussing England, not the Orthodox in the East. Jews have always been persecuted, I dare say far more in Protestant countries than Catholic (though neither is without guilt).
And yet the scientific and industrial revolutions were founded. Comparing the West to the muzzies is retarded.
put things in perspective....if I destroy your camera and film, and you destroy CBS news, all is not equal.
At one point the deal was, the Church could appoint bishops, but the King could withhold benefits if the candidate was not satisfactory, thus holding a veto power.
Shared power, like different branches of government.
Leads to arguments, like squabbling branches of government in the US today.
By contrast, the absense of an established church makes church and state nearly orthagonal, so government acts have little to do with church rules.
Obama is seeking to force church organizations to offer birth control options that the catholic church holds as mortal sin. His religion is to force Christians to violate their conscience.
Certainy the Cathars were a Christian sect but were far from being established.
In some ways the Franciscans were less established than say the Dominicans, and had some degree of greater freedom but fewer resources for it.
“One man’s art is another man’s idol.”
Most of the idolatry I’ve seen in my life so far has involved ‘worship’ of other humans, like politicians, entertainers, sports figures, and some televangelists.
The Crusades were actually an outgrowth of a peace movement (SEE The Peace of God; also The Truce of God) in which the Church brought to a halt fighting and violence all over Europe. And despite modern revisionism, the Crusades actually have a noble history. (SEE the article by the leading historian of the Crusades, Jonathan Riley-Smith, entitled “Crusading As An Act of Love.”)
Well, I wouldn’t mind if he destroyed CBS News.
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