Iconoclastic outbreaks in 16th century Europe
In Latin and Germanic Europe (excluding the British Isles for which the chronology differs) two distinct iconoclastic outbreaks are recorded. The first occupies the years 1520-1530; it spreads north of Germany towards the Baltic space (Baltic countries, Copenhagen, Stockholm etc.) and southwards to Switzerland and Alsace. In 1522, Luther's city, Wittenberg[1], experienced an iconoclastic flare-up, spearheaded by one of his close allies, the theologian Karlstadt[2]. After a fiery sermon where he inveighed against images, Wittenberg statues were destroyed, notably in the church of the Augustinians, whereupon Karlstadt published a pamphlet On the Removal of Images (Vom Abtuhung der Bilder). In the event, three iconoclastic actions followed each other in Wittenberg: the first lead by friars from Luther's very own erstwhile order, the second upon the order of the town council, and the third on the initiative of the townsfolk. It must be noted that Luther was not present at the time. He immediately distanced himself from the troublemakers arguing that, while images serve no purpose in salvation and are therefore expandable, there is no point in destroying them either. For Luther, images – alongside liturgical practices such as the wearing of vestments in particular colours, belong with “things that are indifferent”. Luther couldn't be clearer in his disowning of his disciple Karlstadt, who would in time be driven out of Wittenberg. In the passage of the Large Catechism (1528) where he comments the Decalogue, Luther specifies that true idolatry lies not with the making then adoration of a statue but with the movement of the heart that seeks salvation without God alone.
From the outset, Reformed positions on iconoclastic matters ranged from an extreme to the other. Thanks to Luther's moderate stance, there remains in the Lutheran Germanic space many places of worship that have preserved their pre-reformation pictorial décor beyond the 16th century and to this day (ulterior wars, specifically World War Two's bombardments not withstanding,): it is the case of Wienhausen Abbey in Hanover as well as a number of churches in Nuremberg. Conversely iconoclastic violence spread in the Rhineland and Swabia and beyond, driven by radical preachers among whom, Thomas Müntzer[3] and Balthasar Hubmaier[4]. The destruction was significant, immense but very scattered so that it is impossible to establish a precise inventory of the damage. All told, this first iconoclastic outbreak proved a wholly random episode.
Leaving aside the official iconoclasm imposed in England in 1538 by the royal authority, a second continental iconoclastic outbreak, hitting in 1550-1560 the French and Dutch spheres, needs addressing. Against the background of the Wars of Religion, in 1560s France, destructions of all kinds were rife. For the Huguenots, devotional images symbolically conveyed everything they detested in their Roman Catholic foe. The Huguenots[5] relied on the prescription against graven images of God that they found in the Decalogue[6], an argument frequently found on the lips of image-haters to which image-lovers object that Christ never explicitly reiterated this prescription in the Gospels. Nevertheless, what they attacked in images was a form of worship that was seen as debased. There is no want for episodes (notably analysed by Olivier Christin) where Catholics are seen forcing Huguenots to kneel before a statue, or to doff their hats when passing by; nor is there any want for accounts of image-driven deception: here, a woman pretends to be possessed by the devil only to be blessed with a miraculous cure when taken to the image of a saint; there a priest makes up the statue of the Virgin to make it look like she were shedding tears. Such practices, which appear to have spread with the exacerbation of the conflict, help understand – though not excuse – the people who wielded axes and knives to destroy devotional images: by such action they meant to put an end to practices they considered incompatible with true faith.
The destruction of images answered very diverse motivations. Vandalism (destruction for its own sake) does not appear to be a valid explanation in numerous instances of iconoclasm. In most cases, the destruction had a specific target in that it was an attack on civil or ecclesial power: for instance, an iconoclast may mutilate a statue's blessing hand (a sign of ecclesial power) but not the other holding a book; another scratched out the faces of the apostles (whose succession was claimed by the clergy) on an altarpiece but not the face of Christ.
As for a typology of iconoclastic acts, it is also hugely diverse, as shown by Olivier Christin: some acts were clandestine, therefore anonymous, others public, whether carried out by a small select group or a crowd more or less controlled by charismatic leaders. Whatever the case, it remains impossible to understand the destruction of images without the context of politico-religious confrontations.
