Abstract
The tension between nature and art was high during the Iconoclasm movement, which formed a key part of English Reformation thought, recurring in waves for almost a century from the 1530s to the 1640s.1 Iconoclasts advocated the breaking of statues, idols, and paintings connected with Catholic veneration and therefore seen as superstitious. A central tenet of Iconoclasm was privileging the word of God over and above visual representation of any kind. Iconoclasm vigorously rejected ‘the idea that God, Christ, or the sacred events of Biblical history should be physically represented’.2 Revelations could occur only through the written words of Biblical text. Prior to the Reformation Iconoclasm movement, artwork representing Catholic religious figures was ubiquitous, but reformers became increasingly fearful of the persuasive power images had on people. In 1536 official injunctions criticized the practice of leaving offerings before statues. New injunctions in 1538 were much more extreme, ordering parish officers to eradicate images from their churches. Officers were instructed to eliminate ‘suche Images as ye knowe in any of your cures to be so abused with pilgrimages or offeringes’ to avoid ‘that moste detestable offence of Idolatrie’.3 Officials were forced to eradicate all images in their churches by smashing them.
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Notes
With the exception of the years when the Catholic Queen Mary was on the throne (1553–8). Critical writings on Reformation Iconoclasm include Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts: Laws Against the Images, Volume 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1992); Ernest Gilman, Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992);and James Siemon, Shakespearean Iconoclasm (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
Michael O’Connell, ‘The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm, Anti-Theatricalism, and the Image of the Elizabethan Theatre’, ELH 52.2 (1985): 286.
Iniunctions for the clergy. Exhibite Die mensis Anno d[omin]i. M. CCCCC. XXXVIII (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1538). EEBO.
Walter Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1967) 272.
Aristotle, Physics: The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols, trans. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), vol. 1.329.
Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998) 264.
Plato, The Republic, Portable Works of Plato, ed. Scott Buchanan (New York: Penguin, 1948) Book VII, 546.
Scott Cutler Shershow, Puppets and Popular Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995) 15–16.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Teachings and Sayings of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (Boston, MA: Loeb Classic Library, Harvard University Press, 1938).
Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Geoffrey Withrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999) 4.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII: preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and Elsewhere in England, ed. J. S. Brewer, 21 vols (London: Longman 1862–1910), vol. IV, pt 1 (1870) 127.
Leanne Groeneveld, ‘A Theatrical Miracle: The Boxley Rood of Grace as Puppet’, Early Theatre 10.2 (2007): 11.
Margaret Aston, ‘Iconoclasm in England’, in Iconoclasm Vs. Art and Drama, ed. Clifford Davidson and Ann Eljeholm Nichols (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1988) 56.
Gail M. Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 15.
Ibid., 21.
Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims, Popular Beliefs in Medieval England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995), 209.
Geoffrey Chamber, in Original Letters Illustrative of English History, ed. H. Ellis, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 168.
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII: preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and elsewhere in England, arranged and catalogued by J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (London: Longman, 1863–1910), vol. XIII, pt 1 (1892) 283–4.
Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, vol. 1 (Westminster: Camden Society: 1875–7) 75–6.
Ibid. See also John Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
See Scott Lightsey, Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
See J. Brownbill, ‘Boxley Abbey and the Rood of Grace’, The Antiquary 7 (1883): 162–5; 210–13 (in two sections); and T. E. Bridgett, ‘The Rood of Boxley; or, How a Lie Grows’, The Dublin Review, 3rd ser., 19.1. (Jan. 1888): 1–33.
Charles Wriotheseley, A Chronicle of England During the Reign of the Tudors, from AD 1485–1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, 2 vols (London: Camden Society, 1875), vol. 2, 1. See also Mark C. Pilkington, ‘The Easter Sepulchre at St Mary Redcliffe Bristol 1470’, The EDAM Newsletter 5.1 (Fall 1982), for a similar device. For a detailed discussion of the various meanings of ‘vices’, see Philip Butterworth, Magic on the Early English Stage, 115–18.
William Lamberd, A Perambulation of Kent (London: Henry Middleton for Ralph Newberie, 1576).
Scott Lightsey, ‘The Paradox of Transcendent Machines in the Demystification of the Boxley Christ’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 1.1/2 (2009): 99–107; 104.
This history can be traced back to the Old Testament story of the golden calf, on through to the iconoclastic controversies dividing Eastern and Western branches of the Catholic Church in the eighth century, and on into Lollardism. A scholar could spend his or her entire life looking at any one of these moments. For more on iconoclasm as a general impulse, see Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art (Pittsburgh, MI: MIT Press, 2002).
Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2001) 43.
Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, SJ and Grace Monahan (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952) 62.
Brian P. Copenhaver, ed. and trans., ‘Asclepius’, Hermetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 81.
Ibid., 81.
John Cohen, Human Robots in Myth and Science (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966) 20.
Ibid.
Jean Pierre Merlet, ‘A Historical Perspective of Robotics’, International Symposium on the History of Machines and Mechanisms, ed. Marco Ceccarelli and Hong Sen-Yan (New York: Springer, 2009) 379.
Lisa Nocks, The Robot (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press) 4–5. In direct contradistinction to the ushabti was the practice of Fayum wax portraiture by elites in the first century ce in Roman Alexandrian Egypt. Here the wealthy elite paid an artist to make their portrait in wax, which they then lived with in their home until the time of their death, after which time it was transferred to their tomb for public display. See Michelle E. Bloom, Waxworks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) 1.
Frances Yates, Theatre of the World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969) 3.
John Dee, ‘Compendious Rehearsall’, Autobiographical Tracts, ed. James Crossley (London: Kessinger Publications, 1999) 5–6.
Ibid., 6.
Lily Campbell, Scenes and Machines on the English Stage During the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 87. See also Mark Ward, ‘Magick at the Theatre’, New Scientist (23 December 1995): 38.
Gerald Suster, John Dee (Berkley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2003) 10.
Marie Boas, ‘Hero’s Pneumatica, A Study of Its Transmission and Influence’, Isis 40.1 (1949): 38–48.
Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener) 2.
Ibid.
Benvenuto Cellini, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. John Addington Symonds (New York: Horace Liverlight, 1930) 379. See also Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity, as he opens his book with this remarkable tale.
Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (Boston, MA, and London: Thames & Hudson, 1979) 38.
Edward Hall, cited in H. D. Prendergast ‘The Masque of the Seventeenth Century: Its Origins and Development’ Proceedings of the Musical Association, 23rd Sess. (1896–7) 113–31.
Ibid.
For more on the influence of the Dukes of Valois on the English Renaissance, see Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the English Renaissance (The Hague, 1977).
Lucy Aiken, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, 2 vols (London: Ward, Locke: 1875) vol. 1, 44.
Steve Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 126.
Barbara Maria Stafford, ‘Revealing Technologies/Magical Domains’, Devices of Wonder, ed. Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001) 6.
Paula Findlen, ‘Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe’, Renaissance Quarterly 53.2 (1990): 292–331.
Simon Werrett, ‘Wonders Never Cease: Descartes’ Meterores and the Rainbow Fountain’, British Journal for the History of Science 34 (2001): 133. For more on cabinets of curiosity, see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. O. R. Impey and A. G. MacGregor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Ambroise Paré, Des monstres et prodiges [1573], ed. Jean Céard (Geneva: Library Droz, 1971) 117.
There are chamber accounts from the Revels office by the King’s Players on 5 November 1611 for ‘A play called ye winters nightes’. It is also listed in the records of court performances. See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923) 177, 180.
Edward W. Tayler, ‘Nature and Art in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale’, The Winter’s Tale Critical Essays, ed. Marie Hunt (New York: Garland, 1995) 132.
For a detailed reading of various statues coming to life that may have influenced Shakespeare, see Leonard Barkan, ‘“Living Sculptures”: Ovid, Michaelangelo and The Winter’s Tale’, ELH 48.4 (1981): 639–67.
However, Romano’s theories of ‘the rustic mode’ were further propagated in the hugely influential writings of Sebastian Serlio. See Naomi Miller, Heavenly Caves: Reflections on the Garden Grotto (New York: George Braziller, 1982) 44.
John Dixon, Garden and Grove: The Italian Garden in the English Imagination (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986) 122.
Giorgio Vasari, ‘Grottoes and Fountains’, Of Architecture, trans. Louise S. Macleos (New York: Dover, 1960) 87–90, 88.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Louis A. Montrose, ‘The Purpose of Playing: Reflections on a Shakespearean Anthropology’, Helios 7 (1980): 62.
Amy L. Tigner, ‘The Winter’s Tale: Gardens and the Marvels of Transformation’, English Literary Renaissance (2006): 130–1.
Anne Barton, Ben Jonson, Dramatist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 92.
Ben Jonson, Sejanus His Fall, ed. Philip J. Ayers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) 2.391; 2:383–4. All citations from the play are from Ayres’s edition. Ayres offers a reconstruction of William Poel’s 1928 London production with the Elizabethan Stage Circle at the Holborn Empire Theatre (39–40). There was also a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company in January 2005.
See Donald Beecher, ‘Ben Jonson’s Sejanus: Historiography and the Political Tragedy’, PhD Dissertation, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, 1972.
My thinking here is informed by Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Theology (Princeton, NJ, and London: 1957).
Gary Taylor, ‘Divine [E]ssences’, Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 23. Jonson was also called before the Consistory Court for his persistent failure to take Anglican communion in January–June 1601. See also Richard Dutton, ‘Ben Jonson and the Master of Revels’, in Theatre and Governments Under the Early Stuarts, ed. J. R. Mulruyne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambidge University Press, 1998) 64–5.
Melissa D. Aaron, Global Economics: A History of the Theatre Business, the Chamberlain’s King’s Men, 1599–1643 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2003) 120.
Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess, ed. T. H. Howard-Hill (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) 170.
Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, ed. Daniel Seltzer (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1963) 73–4.
Robert Plot, A Natural History of Oxfordshire: Being an Essay on the Natural History of England (Oxford: The Theatre, 1676). Accessible on EEBO.
Ibid., 236.
Ibid., 238.
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© 2011 Kara Reilly
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Reilly, K. (2011). Iconoclasm and Automata. In: Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230347540_2
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