The iconoclasm of the English Reformation was marked by a transformation from reinterpreted 15th-century theological doctrine to tangible action. Episodes of iconoclasm have long tempted medieval observers to view iconoclastic activity as a homogenous mode of destruction. John Walter notes that glass-breaking, and iconoclasm more generally, was “no more than an example of that disorder and irrationality held by elites to be a defining characteristic of the lower orders.”[1] Walter himself acknowledges the faulty, over-generalized perspective of the medieval English elites, arguing that iconoclasm was a calculated and ritualized act of destruction. C. Pamela Graves contends in the same vein as Walter. Rather than indiscriminately targeting objects en masse, iconoclasts attacked the head and hands, which they considered a particularly humiliating rite of destruction for the images in question.[2]
Walter and Graves, among others, have made significant headway in re-examining the execution of iconoclasm as a sophisticated process. I, however, aim to move away from the already well-covered field of the destruction itself. In this article, I reorient the focus on the motive behind the destruction, and particularly the iconoclasm of stained glass windows, with the use of affect theory, thus demonstrating the importance of considering emotion in seemingly non-rational religious events.
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Glass-breaking in England was a particularly extreme form of destruction. Even Continental reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, tolerated stained glass windows for pragmatic reasons, such as their high cost and ability to provide protection from the elements. The English public was not only blatantly ignorant of Continental religious authority but also energized, favoring emotionally charged acts of destruction over rational theological reform.
In order to understand the non-rational nature of glass-breaking, I apply affect theory to parse through the distinctly non-linguistic powers that compelled two different types of stained glass window iconoclasm – complete and partial – during the reign of Edward VI, whose Reformation policies instigated the first major wave of iconoclastic activity. Before proceeding with an affective analysis of iconoclasm under Edward VI, I intend to clarify the term “affect theory” and its pertinence to this article, as it is a field whose application ranges from queer studies to phenomology.
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Kevin O’Neill explains affect as a visceral force that motivates a religious body to legitimize itself. That is to say, affect prompts a religious body, in competition with other bodies, to project itself as authentic. These bodies thus do not remain as a “neutral grid.” Rather, they are excitable and inherently constitute “emerging imperative[s]” that “makes [sic] space meaningful.”[3]
O’Neill’s model of affect illustrates the iconoclastic body as an active entity that projected its dogmas as authentic. Affectively engineered, it struggled against the iconodulic body that favored advanced ritualism. Through glass-breaking, the iconoclasts vigorously worked to expand and reinforce their boundaries over a finite amount of religious terrain, much of which belonged to the iconodules prior to Edward VI, in order to legitimize the projection of their ideals. While indeed part of a broader iconoclastic body, glass-breakers formed two smaller iconoclastic sub-bodies – one favoring complete destruction while the other pursued partial iconoclasm – with each sub-body driven by its own set of affective impulses to enlarge its religious boundaries.
Iconoclasts under Edward VI were affectively propelled to pursue complete and partial iconoclasm in order to fulfill the general impulses of empowerment and collective security. Though both types of iconoclasts undertook glass-breaking, complete iconoclasts mocked images and performed an especially extreme unleashing of the latent hostility towards images, whereas partial iconoclasts exhibited a more measured affect for reassurance and a tendency toward moderation and hesitancy. Both complete and partial iconoclasms were sparked by Edwardian endorsement. In his Injunction 28, Edward VI proclaimed wholesale destruction of any religious iconography in order to “utterly extinct and destroy all… pictures, paintings, and all other monument 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.”[4] While iconoclastic activity under Edward VI flourished with royal advocacy, iconoclasm was far more visceral than a simple reaction to the pro-iconoclastic stance of the monarch, and there was a greater affective appeal to sustain iconoclasm for complete and partial iconoclasts alike.
Complete iconoclasm was an affectively eruptive means by which reformers manifested their intense aversion toward iconodulic traditions. In 1547, an ambassador reported to the Queen Dowager of the Netherlands that “For the last two days, these images have begun to be taken down and cast away at Westminster, and they will not even leave room for them in the glass.”[5] The ambassador’s report explicated a particular mode of glass-breaking that was effectively explosive. Wholesale iconoclasts sought the instant gratification and thrill that accompanied the relative ease of breaking glass. In this way, the iconoclastic body burgeoned its religious borders and cultivated its self-dignity as a body that held authentic dogmas.
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The iconoclastic rage that had been largely suppressed until the reign of Edward VI finally erupted. Complete iconoclasts, thus empowered, were able to collectively cherish the endorsement of destruction while also exacerbating the humiliation of the iconodules, who were directly witnessing the demise of their religious identity. Wholesale iconoclasts, upon viewing a church devoid of any images from the exterior or interior, were constantly reminded of their affectively reinforced unity.
Most importantly, though, desecrated churches reflected the unrelenting agenda of iconoclasm. To iconoclasts, vandalized churches formed a powerful visual affirmation of the efficacy of their actions. Vandalized churches were reminders of the iconoclasts’ power. The iconoclasts vigorously encroached upon iconodulic ground, and complete iconoclasts affectively worked to continually expand and preserve the definition and legitimacy of their iconoclastic program.
Broken stained glass in the tracery of a window of Coventry Cathedral ruins – photo by Jonathan Woodfield / Wikimedia Commons
Though complete iconoclasm ensued, it was significantly more extreme relative to partial iconoclasm, in which reformers experienced hesitancy and remorse for their actions. From 1547 to 1548, the wardens of St. Stephen’s Church, Coleman Street spent £27 19s 6d, a portion of which included the cost for new clear glass.[6] Though the iconoclastic episode at the church was not as overt as that at Westminster, Margaret Aston, in her Broken Idols of the English Reformation, asserts that “it seems as if there were parishes that endorsed the new radicalism (and the expenditure it involved) almost as soon as it became official policy.”[7]
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The iconoclasm at Coleman Street can hence be considered an act of indirect popular iconoclasm, as it involved implicit public approval. Like the complete iconoclasts, the partial iconoclasts vied to theatricize their iconoclasm. By replacing the ornate and radiant stained glass windows with plain glass that appeared duller, partial iconoclasts promoted their affective solidarity, as the lackluster white glass served as a reassuring visual sign of iconoclastic hegemony that was milder than the sight of a completely destroyed church. This solidarity, also like whole destruction, affected partial iconoclasts at personal and social levels. Individually, partial reformers experienced great security in the progress of iconoclastic reform. Outwardly, the presence of clear glass catalyzed iconoclasts to continue their work, which effectively consolidated the frontier of iconoclasm.
The preference for parishioners at St. Stephen’s Church to pursue indirect partial iconoclasm over explicit complete iconoclasm entailed that these parishioners collectively harbored a significant degree of hesitancy toward glass-breaking. Furthermore, the halfway reformers felt guilty seeing the annihilation of the wholesale iconoclasts. On an affective plane, complete iconoclasts and indirect iconoclasts alike pursued image reform, embodying the mission of aggrandizing their legitimacy while also impinging on new space. The incomplete iconoclasts, though, had different affective wiring than complete iconoclasts. Instead of maximizing the effect of power and minimizing the affect of ignominy, the partial iconoclasts desired to maximize the affect of comfort and minimize the affect of guilt.
Under Edward VI’s reign, the iconoclastic affective engine dominated the iconodulic terrain. Both complete and partial iconoclasts had reasonable affective impulses that can explain their otherwise non-rational and radical movements. The study of Edwardian glass-breaking highlights the affective complexity of iconoclasts. Even within one affective body of iconoclasts, there are sub-bodies with different affective inclinations that contributed to different expressions of extreme reform. Both complete and partial iconoclasts established an affective precedent that sustained iconoclasm as a whole, through the threat of Mary I and the more moderate reign of Elizabeth I.
In the well-studied field of English iconoclasm, various scholars have made progress in recent years demonstrating the complex and sophisticated nature of destruction. However, in this article, I hope to suggest that glass-breaking, and emotionally charged religious events more generally, ought to be re-considered with the increasing popularity of affect theory and its application to the study of religion.
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John Shin is the founder of Faith & heART, a non-profit that seeks to promote unity between religious and local communities through the creation of faith-inspired murals. His research interests are focused on the theology and visual culture of the medieval period.
End notes
1. John Walter, “Popular Iconoclasm and the Politics of the Parish in Eastern England, 1640-1642,” The Historical Journal 47, no. 2 (2004): 278.
2. C. Pamela Graves, “From an Archaeology of Iconoclasm to an Anthropology of the Body,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 1 (2008): 35.
3. Kevin Lewis O’Neill, “Beyond Broken: Affective Spaces and the Study of American Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 4 (December 2013): 1094, 1100.
4. Walter Howard Frere and William Paul McClure Kennedy, Visitation articles and injunctions (London, United Kingdom: Longman, 1910), 2:125.
5. “Spain: September 1547, 1-15,” in Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 9, 1547-1549, ed. Martin A.S. Hume and Royall Tyler (London, United Kingdom: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), 145-150.
6. Henry Beauchamp Walters, London churches at the reformation; with an account of their contents, (London, England: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1939), 104.
7. Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 627.
Top Image: Broken stained glass in the tracery of a window of Coventry Cathedral ruins – photo by Jonathan Woodfield / Wikimedia Commons
By John Shin
The iconoclasm of the English Reformation was marked by a transformation from reinterpreted 15th-century theological doctrine to tangible action. Episodes of iconoclasm have long tempted medieval observers to view iconoclastic activity as a homogenous mode of destruction. John Walter notes that glass-breaking, and iconoclasm more generally, was “no more than an example of that disorder and irrationality held by elites to be a defining characteristic of the lower orders.”[1] Walter himself acknowledges the faulty, over-generalized perspective of the medieval English elites, arguing that iconoclasm was a calculated and ritualized act of destruction. C. Pamela Graves contends in the same vein as Walter. Rather than indiscriminately targeting objects en masse, iconoclasts attacked the head and hands, which they considered a particularly humiliating rite of destruction for the images in question.[2]
Walter and Graves, among others, have made significant headway in re-examining the execution of iconoclasm as a sophisticated process. I, however, aim to move away from the already well-covered field of the destruction itself. In this article, I reorient the focus on the motive behind the destruction, and particularly the iconoclasm of stained glass windows, with the use of affect theory, thus demonstrating the importance of considering emotion in seemingly non-rational religious events.
Glass-breaking in England was a particularly extreme form of destruction. Even Continental reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, tolerated stained glass windows for pragmatic reasons, such as their high cost and ability to provide protection from the elements. The English public was not only blatantly ignorant of Continental religious authority but also energized, favoring emotionally charged acts of destruction over rational theological reform.
In order to understand the non-rational nature of glass-breaking, I apply affect theory to parse through the distinctly non-linguistic powers that compelled two different types of stained glass window iconoclasm – complete and partial – during the reign of Edward VI, whose Reformation policies instigated the first major wave of iconoclastic activity. Before proceeding with an affective analysis of iconoclasm under Edward VI, I intend to clarify the term “affect theory” and its pertinence to this article, as it is a field whose application ranges from queer studies to phenomology.
Kevin O’Neill explains affect as a visceral force that motivates a religious body to legitimize itself. That is to say, affect prompts a religious body, in competition with other bodies, to project itself as authentic. These bodies thus do not remain as a “neutral grid.” Rather, they are excitable and inherently constitute “emerging imperative[s]” that “makes [sic] space meaningful.”[3]
O’Neill’s model of affect illustrates the iconoclastic body as an active entity that projected its dogmas as authentic. Affectively engineered, it struggled against the iconodulic body that favored advanced ritualism. Through glass-breaking, the iconoclasts vigorously worked to expand and reinforce their boundaries over a finite amount of religious terrain, much of which belonged to the iconodules prior to Edward VI, in order to legitimize the projection of their ideals. While indeed part of a broader iconoclastic body, glass-breakers formed two smaller iconoclastic sub-bodies – one favoring complete destruction while the other pursued partial iconoclasm – with each sub-body driven by its own set of affective impulses to enlarge its religious boundaries.
Iconoclasts under Edward VI were affectively propelled to pursue complete and partial iconoclasm in order to fulfill the general impulses of empowerment and collective security. Though both types of iconoclasts undertook glass-breaking, complete iconoclasts mocked images and performed an especially extreme unleashing of the latent hostility towards images, whereas partial iconoclasts exhibited a more measured affect for reassurance and a tendency toward moderation and hesitancy. Both complete and partial iconoclasms were sparked by Edwardian endorsement. In his Injunction 28, Edward VI proclaimed wholesale destruction of any religious iconography in order to “utterly extinct and destroy all… pictures, paintings, and all other monument 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.”[4] While iconoclastic activity under Edward VI flourished with royal advocacy, iconoclasm was far more visceral than a simple reaction to the pro-iconoclastic stance of the monarch, and there was a greater affective appeal to sustain iconoclasm for complete and partial iconoclasts alike.
Complete iconoclasm was an affectively eruptive means by which reformers manifested their intense aversion toward iconodulic traditions. In 1547, an ambassador reported to the Queen Dowager of the Netherlands that “For the last two days, these images have begun to be taken down and cast away at Westminster, and they will not even leave room for them in the glass.”[5] The ambassador’s report explicated a particular mode of glass-breaking that was effectively explosive. Wholesale iconoclasts sought the instant gratification and thrill that accompanied the relative ease of breaking glass. In this way, the iconoclastic body burgeoned its religious borders and cultivated its self-dignity as a body that held authentic dogmas.
The iconoclastic rage that had been largely suppressed until the reign of Edward VI finally erupted. Complete iconoclasts, thus empowered, were able to collectively cherish the endorsement of destruction while also exacerbating the humiliation of the iconodules, who were directly witnessing the demise of their religious identity. Wholesale iconoclasts, upon viewing a church devoid of any images from the exterior or interior, were constantly reminded of their affectively reinforced unity.
Most importantly, though, desecrated churches reflected the unrelenting agenda of iconoclasm. To iconoclasts, vandalized churches formed a powerful visual affirmation of the efficacy of their actions. Vandalized churches were reminders of the iconoclasts’ power. The iconoclasts vigorously encroached upon iconodulic ground, and complete iconoclasts affectively worked to continually expand and preserve the definition and legitimacy of their iconoclastic program.
Though complete iconoclasm ensued, it was significantly more extreme relative to partial iconoclasm, in which reformers experienced hesitancy and remorse for their actions. From 1547 to 1548, the wardens of St. Stephen’s Church, Coleman Street spent £27 19s 6d, a portion of which included the cost for new clear glass.[6] Though the iconoclastic episode at the church was not as overt as that at Westminster, Margaret Aston, in her Broken Idols of the English Reformation, asserts that “it seems as if there were parishes that endorsed the new radicalism (and the expenditure it involved) almost as soon as it became official policy.”[7]
The iconoclasm at Coleman Street can hence be considered an act of indirect popular iconoclasm, as it involved implicit public approval. Like the complete iconoclasts, the partial iconoclasts vied to theatricize their iconoclasm. By replacing the ornate and radiant stained glass windows with plain glass that appeared duller, partial iconoclasts promoted their affective solidarity, as the lackluster white glass served as a reassuring visual sign of iconoclastic hegemony that was milder than the sight of a completely destroyed church. This solidarity, also like whole destruction, affected partial iconoclasts at personal and social levels. Individually, partial reformers experienced great security in the progress of iconoclastic reform. Outwardly, the presence of clear glass catalyzed iconoclasts to continue their work, which effectively consolidated the frontier of iconoclasm.
The preference for parishioners at St. Stephen’s Church to pursue indirect partial iconoclasm over explicit complete iconoclasm entailed that these parishioners collectively harbored a significant degree of hesitancy toward glass-breaking. Furthermore, the halfway reformers felt guilty seeing the annihilation of the wholesale iconoclasts. On an affective plane, complete iconoclasts and indirect iconoclasts alike pursued image reform, embodying the mission of aggrandizing their legitimacy while also impinging on new space. The incomplete iconoclasts, though, had different affective wiring than complete iconoclasts. Instead of maximizing the effect of power and minimizing the affect of ignominy, the partial iconoclasts desired to maximize the affect of comfort and minimize the affect of guilt.
Under Edward VI’s reign, the iconoclastic affective engine dominated the iconodulic terrain. Both complete and partial iconoclasts had reasonable affective impulses that can explain their otherwise non-rational and radical movements. The study of Edwardian glass-breaking highlights the affective complexity of iconoclasts. Even within one affective body of iconoclasts, there are sub-bodies with different affective inclinations that contributed to different expressions of extreme reform. Both complete and partial iconoclasts established an affective precedent that sustained iconoclasm as a whole, through the threat of Mary I and the more moderate reign of Elizabeth I.
In the well-studied field of English iconoclasm, various scholars have made progress in recent years demonstrating the complex and sophisticated nature of destruction. However, in this article, I hope to suggest that glass-breaking, and emotionally charged religious events more generally, ought to be re-considered with the increasing popularity of affect theory and its application to the study of religion.
John Shin is the founder of Faith & heART, a non-profit that seeks to promote unity between religious and local communities through the creation of faith-inspired murals. His research interests are focused on the theology and visual culture of the medieval period.
End notes
2. C. Pamela Graves, “From an Archaeology of Iconoclasm to an Anthropology of the Body,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 1 (2008): 35.
3. Kevin Lewis O’Neill, “Beyond Broken: Affective Spaces and the Study of American Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 4 (December 2013): 1094, 1100.
4. Walter Howard Frere and William Paul McClure Kennedy, Visitation articles and injunctions (London, United Kingdom: Longman, 1910), 2:125.
5. “Spain: September 1547, 1-15,” in Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 9, 1547-1549, ed. Martin A.S. Hume and Royall Tyler (London, United Kingdom: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), 145-150.
6. Henry Beauchamp Walters, London churches at the reformation; with an account of their contents, (London, England: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1939), 104.
7. Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 627.
Top Image: Broken stained glass in the tracery of a window of Coventry Cathedral ruins – photo by Jonathan Woodfield / Wikimedia Commons
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