Angelic Anglican Churches in East Anglia

From the BBC comes this slideshow of "Angel Roofs" in Anglican churches in East Anglia--some that survived the iconoclasm of the English Reformation and some that that been recreated. The images are from a book by Michael Rimmer, The Angel Roofs of East Anglia: Unseen Masterpieces of the Middle Ages:

It has been estimated that over 90 per cent of England's figurative medieval art was obliterated in the image destruction of the Reformation. Medieval angel roofs, timber structures with spectacular and ornate carvings of angels, with a peculiar preponderance in East Anglia, were simply too difficult for Reformation iconoclasts to reach. Angel roof carvings comprise the largest surviving body of major English medieval wood sculpture. Though they are both masterpieces of sculpture and engineering, angel roofs have been almost completely neglected by academics and art historians, because they are inaccessible, fixed and challenging to photograph.

The Angel Roofs of East Anglia is the first detailed historical and photographic study of the region's many medieval angel roofs. It shows the artistry and architecture of these inaccessible and little-studied medieval artworks in more detail and clarity than ever before, and explains how they were made, by whom, and why.

Michael Rimmer redresses the scholarly neglect and brings the beauty, craftsmanship and history of these astonishing medieval creations to the reader. The book also offers a fascinating new answer to the question of why angel roofs are so overwhelmingly an East Anglian phenomenon, but relatively rare elsewhere in the country.

The Telegraph also published some photos from the book.

"Art Under Attack" at Tate Britain: Under Attack

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm opened this week at the Tate Britain, and reviews are not totally positive. Not having seen the exhibition of course, I can still see what the reviewers are concerned about: the exhibition equates the destruction of Catholic art and heritage with deconstructionist art:

From The Guardian:

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm wants to make us think, but I found myself asking the wrong questions and drawing the wrong conclusions. The exhibition fumbles with ideas about "iconoclasm", or the deliberate destruction of art: can art vandalism be art? Is there a perverse humour or truth or beauty in a suffragette slashing Velázquez's Venus or the IRA blowing up Nelson's Pillar in Dublin?

But seeing the Chapmans' glib attacks on old art in the same show as that unforgettably moving Dead Christ, which resurfaced under the Mercers' Chapel in London in 1954, invites grim thoughts about what art is now. The Chapmans' disfiguring of portraits could only happen in a cynical moneyed art world that has no soul. They have the cash to buy oil paintings in order to trash them. Their clients find that kind of thing amusing.

I go back to the Dead Christ: a passionate work of art made to help ordinary people contemplate the biggest realities of life and death. The contrast damns the Chapmans to hell.

Tender depictions of the Virgin Mary and harrowing visions of the sufferings of Christ abound in the first few galleries of this show, in stone and wood and stained glass. All have been damaged, many almost beyond recognition. There are illuminated manuscripts with pages torn out. A painting of the inside of Canterbury Cathedral in 1657 looks innocuous until you see little Puritans patiently, precisely smashing out its stained glass windows.

These rooms offer a truly eye-opening revelation of how much great art was lost when the Protestant Word erased the Catholic image – sometimes literally, as when a painting of the Man of Sorrows had a Biblical text written over it.

But none of this has anything to do with the studiously ambivalent, pretentious way the rest of the show explores modern attacks on art. The casting down of Catholic art in the Reformation did not make that art more "interesting": it is loss, pure loss. Countless things have gone forever. Others survive as battered husks. Their destruction is tragic, to be mourned.

Metro publishes a similar review about how the exhibition confuses the viewer. The New York Times review is more positive but still a little ambivalent. The Guardian, which is the "media partner" of the exhibition, provides this slideshow of images. One of those images was featured on the cover of Eamon Duffy's great The Stripping of the Altars paperback edition.

Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm at The Tate in London

This show will not open at the Tate Britain until October 2, but the BBC and The Guardian have already started to cover it:

Art under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm will be the first exhibition exploring the history of physical attacks on art in Britain from the 16th century to the present day. Iconoclasmdescribes the deliberate destruction of icons, symbols or monuments for religious, political or aesthetic motives. The exhibition will examine the movements and causes which have led to assaults on art through objects, paintings, sculpture and archival material from 2 October.
 
Highlights include Thomas Johnson’s Interior of Canterbury Cathedral 1657– the only painting documenting Puritan iconoclasm in England – exhibited for the first time alongside stained glass removed from the windows of the cathedral. Edward Burne-Jones’ Sibylla Delphica 1898 and Allen Jones’ Chair 1969, damaged by suffragettes and feminists will be on display, as well as evidence of statues destroyed in Ireland during the 20th century. The show will consider artists such as Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono and Jake and Dinos Chapman, who have used destruction as a creative force.
 
Religious iconoclasm of the 16th and 17th centuries will be explored with statues of Christ decapitated during the Dissolution, smashed stained glass from Rievaulx Abbey, fragments of the great rood screen at Winchester Cathedral and a book of hours from British Library, defaced by state-sanctioned religious reformers. These will be accompanied by vivid accounts of the destructive actions of Puritan iconoclasts.

As The Guardian story notes,

"It obviously is a difficult subject," said the director of Tate Britain, Penelope Curtis. "The decision was to treat it seriously rather than shy away from it, to try and explore it properly so that people understood its history more fully."

Curtis, whose idea it was, said it was something Tate Britain ought to do because the museum's collection "covers nearly 500 years but not quite". In fact, the show starts in the 1540s, with Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries, which led to the state-sanctioned destruction of so much art. The events were particular to Britain and changed our visual history forever, said Curtis.

Getting examples of 500-year-old destroyed art is clearly difficult, and one of the star exhibits will be a statue of Jesus that remained hidden for centuries.

Statue of the Dead Christ (1500-1520), which belongs in the collection of the Worshipful Company of Mercers [which is "the Premier Livery Company of the City of London"] in London's Square Mile, was discovered buried beneath the chapel floor in 1954 during the post war clearup. As a result of Protestant attacks it is missing a crown of thorns, arms and lower legs but is otherwise in remarkable condition, the theory being that someone concealed it to protect it from further damage.

It is a powerful statue, with Jesus graphically portrayed with rigor mortis-stiffened limbs, mouth open and carved blood oozing from wounds – it was that power that the Protestant reformers found so dangerous. The Mercers' loan is the first to any exhibition since it was discovered.

This site, focused on the life and times of Margery Kempe, quotes a long description of an iconclastic attack on a parish church in Norfolk:

In the chancel, as it is called, we took up twenty brazen superstitious inscriptions, Ora pro nobis &c.; broke twelve apostles, carved in wood, an cherubims and a lamb with a cross, and took up four superstitious inscriptions in brass, in the north chancel, Jesu filii Dei miserere mei, &c. broke in pieces the rails, and broke down twenty-two popish pictures of angels and saints. We did deface the font and a cross on the font; and took up the brass inscription there, with Cujus animae propitietus Deus, and "pray for the soul," &c. in English. We took up thirteen superstitious brasses. Ordered Moses with his rod and Aaron with his mitre, to be taken down. Ordered eighteen angels off the roof, and cherubims to be taken down and nineteen pictures in the window. The organ I brake and we brake seven popish pictures in the chancel window, - one of Christ, another of St. Andrew, another of St. James, &c. We ordered the steps [before the altar] to be leveled by the parson of the town; and brake the popish inscription, My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. I gave orders to break the carved work, which I have seen done. There were six superstitious pictures, one crucifix, and the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms, and Christ lying in a manger, and the three kings coming to Christ with presents, and three bishops with their mitres and crosier staffs, and eighteen Jesuses written in capital letters, which we gave orders to do out. A picture of St. George, and many others which I remember not, with divers pictures in the windows, which we could not reach, neither would they help us to raise ladders; so we left a warrant with the constable to do it in fourteen days. We brake down a pot of holy water, St. Andrew with his cross, and St. Catherine with her wheel; and we took down the cover of the font, and the four evangelists, and a triangle for the Trinity, a superstitious picture of St. Peter and his keys, an eagle, and a lion with wings. In Bacon's aisle was a friar with a shaven crown, praying to God in these words, Miserere mei Deus, - which we brake down. We brake a holy water font in the chancel. We rent to pieces a hood and surplices. In the chancel was Peter pictured in the windows, with his heels upwards, and John the Baptist, and twenty more superstitious pictures, which we brake: and IHS the Jesuit's badge in the chancel window. In Bacon's aisle, twelve superstition of angels and crosses and a holy water font, and brasses with superstitious inscriptions. And in the cross alley we took up brazen figures and inscriptions, Ora pro nobis. We brake down a cross on the steeple, and three stone crosses in the chancel, and a stone cross in the porch. Quoted by M. Aston, England's Iconoclasts. Vol. 1 Laws Against Images, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1988: 78-9. (Journal of William Dowsing, p. 244)

More about Puritan iconoclasm here. Illustration from Wikipedia: Woodcut image from the 1563 edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, depicting iconoclasm. In the top part of the image "papists" are packing away their "paltry," while the church is purged of idols. Bottom parts depict clerics receiving the Bible from Queen Elizabeth I, and a communion table.

Van Eyck in the Netherlands

From the Wall Street Journal, an article about a special exhibit at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (my emphasis added):

Visitors should be aware that because of the iconoclastic purges of the Protestant Reformation—in which thousands of paintings, sculptures and other devotional objects were removed from churches, abbeys and convents across northern Europe and systematically destroyed as violations of the Ten Commandments' ban on graven images—pictures like these are extremely rare. Only about 36 Netherlandish paintings of the pre-Eyckian era are now known to exist. So what you see in Rotterdam is very nearly the most complete display of early Netherlandish painting possible—a triumph for the curators and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the public, as such an exhibition will probably not occur again.
More about the exhibit here.

Of course, England endured waves of iconoclasm, as this Folger Library website attests:

The conflict over idolatry, which began on the Continent with Luther and Calvin's polemics against Rome, eventually crossed the Channel into England with Henry VIII's break with Rome. Protestant sympathizers translated and published iconoclastic works such as John Ryckes' Image of Love (1525) and John Calvin's sermons. Opponents published their own counterarguments; Thomas More, for example, refuted Ryckes' Image of Love in his Dialogue Concerning Tyndale (1529). The main argument of the defenders was that images were "laymen's books" enabling the illiterate peasantry to acquire knowledge of the Christian faith and grow spiritually. Images of Christ and the saints, the argument went, were not objects of worship, but didactic aids. As Protestant ideas spread and took hold, however, the tensions over the use of images, and whether such use constituted idolatry, became more intense. Thomas Cranmer and Hugh Latimer preached against them. Nicholas Ridley attacked idolatry in A Treatise on the Worship of Images.

Following the accession of Edward VI, royal injunctions ordered the removal of all images from English churches in 1548. Iconoclasm reached a fevered pitch during Edward's reign, resulting in the defacement of baptismal fonts, the destruction of stained glass windows, the whitewashing of pictorial depictions on walls, the painting over, or actual removal of, mounted crosses depicting the crucifixion of Jesus known as roods. During the reign of Catholic Mary I, many images were restored and the Edwardian injunctions repealed. However, in subsequent reigns, iconoclastic activity returned, although it was more sporadic, and the re-established and moderated injunctions for the removal of images were not always uniformly enforced, revealing the ambivalence of the populace. Nevertheless, the destruction of images, as a subject of theological debate as well as an activity, remained an on-and-off issue from Edward's reign to the Glorious Revolution as the English sought to construct a Protestant identity.

Peterhouse Partbooks from The Byrd Ensemble

Not long ago, I highlighted the work of the Blue Heron ensemble to reconstruct and record music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. Here is another group working on the same project: The Byrd Ensemble on Scribe Records. They released a disc last year of music dedicated to Our Lady from the Peterhouse Partbooks.

The Peterhouse Partbooks, a set of partbooks copied around 1540 belonging to Peterhouse, Cambridge, is one of the most important sources of English Latin church music leading up to the Reformation.

Dr. Nick Sandon [the same source of the Blue Heron edition] has spent a large part of his life reconstructing music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. This album contains music from this beloved collection. Dr. Sandon has meticulously reconstructed the tenor parts in tracks 1-3 and has supplied some of the soprano part in track 4 with precision and artistry in order to provide us a sense of the sound world and the expressive writing of Pasche, Merbecke, Ludford and Tallis in the early 16th century.

DR. NICK SANDON studied music at Birmingham University, England and then lectured in music at Exeter University, where he took his doctorate. After several years as Professor of Music at University College, Cork, Ireland, he returned to Exeter as Professor of Music and remained there until his retirement. He now lives in France, where he restores incomplete Tudor compositions, studies medieval liturgy and chant, runs the early music publisher Antico Edition, listens to cricket on the Light Programme, and cultivates his garden.

On the disc:

William Pasche (fl. early 16th c.) – MAGNIFICAT (15:27) world-premiere recording

John Merbecke (c.1510-1585) – AVE DEI PATRIS FILIA (13:58) world-premiere recording (although there exists another recording of this piece reconstructed by David Skinner)

Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557) – SALVE REGINA (16:11) world-premiere recording

Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) – AVE ROSA SINE SPINIS (10:49)

Here is a link to the CD booklet for this disc. Unfortunately, the two groups are not recording the same music, so it will be hard to compare their efforts.

The Triumph of the Cross and Mary's Sorrows

Last year I posted on Rood Screens in English churches before the Reformation: see that post here.

My latest article, exploring the Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross and the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, on the Pray the Mass blog will be posted early this morning here. Here's a preview:

The Feast of the Triumph of the Cross was observed in Rome in the late seventh century to commemorate the recovery of the Holy Cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 629. St. Helena, Constantine’s mother, had found the True Cross in Jerusalem in the fourth century but the Persians had captured it and returned it after Heraclius defeated the Persian king Khosrau. The emperor returned it to Jerusalem, and this feast recalls that event.
 

But on a deeper level, of course, the Feast recalls Jesus’ triumph over death and the fulfillment of His great statement, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." (John 12:32, which serves as the Communion Antiphon). The liturgy of the Mass for this Feast includes both triumph and sorrow in the readings and prayers, since Jesus both suffers His Passion and defeats sin and death. From the Book of Numbers, the First Reading recalls the story of Moses and the bronze Seraph, raised on a pole—when the people Israel who had been grumbling against God for their sufferings, looked up to the serpent, they were healed of the serpent bites God had sent to afflict them. . . .

Earlier this month, Pray the Mass ran this article I wrote on Pope St. Pius X and Holy Communion--in it I demonstrate how I can find a link between my studies of the English Reformation and almost anything!:

As I’ve studied the English Reformation, I’ve read often about the state of religious practice before Henry VIII broke away from the Pope and established himself as Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England. As Eric Ives points out in his recent study, The Reformation Experience, 16^th century Catholics in England demonstrated great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. At Sunday Mass, they were most attentive at the moment of consecration, worshipping the Body and the Blood of Jesus as the priest elevated the Host and the Chalice. At great shrines and cathedrals, the faithful wanted to see the Precious Body and Blood as each Mass was celebrated in separate chapels. The Feast of Corpus Christi was instantly popular in England with its processions and special liturgies as written by the Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas. Holy Week, with its special vigil protecting the consecrated Host from Good Friday to Easter, also demonstrates their devotion to the Real Presence. The one thing they did not do is receive Holy Communion often. They were obligated to receive during the Easter Season (Easter Duty), but the practice of frequent Communion had fallen off during the Middle Ages. . . .

On this Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, the sad connection to the English Reformation is the destruction of the Rood Screens, the statutes or figure of the Mother of God and the Beloved Disciple standing on either of the crucified Christ, and the widespread iconoclasm repeated over and over again in England during the long period of religious change--even to the English Civil War when Parliamentary forces destroyed so much of the beauty restored by Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud. No wonder some call it the "English Deformation"!