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 ...
What about the Ark of the Covenant?
hundreds of millions? Who? They certainly don’t go to church in England today, where Catholic church attendance is much greater than Anglican.
And perpetuated in Rome until their loss of the Papal States.
I said "You have a guilty conscience, are embarrassed by being inspired by him, and took it as criticism."
Note the subtle difference between an accurate description and an attack. I don't condemn you for being inspired by him. Example: In one case, he picked up a phone, and called someone. Although Popes in the recent past tended to have people do things like that for them, he did it himself. That may be a step in the right direction, or could be a poor use of his time, but inspirational? I do it several times a day, and when I do it, it isn't thought of as inspirational, so I don't find it particularly inspirational in someone else. Running 100 meters in 10 seconds for an older gentleman may be inspirational, but picking up a phone I find less so. You are free to think differently than I, based on your different expectations and background.
On or about Columbus Day we can recall the moribund state of western Europe under the Church, how it was turning to fratricide under pressure from Islam and a few epidemics of bubonic plague, and its sudden recovery and expansion after the expeditions commissioned by Henry the Navigator of Portugal, and those of Columbus, John Cabot, and others with the influence of the Protestant Reformation.
The claim of the papacy was universal jurisdiction over the Church. Boniface VIII made an absurd claim to secular authority and was soon humbled by it. In their struggle against the Emperors, the popes had depended on the French kings, and now it was the French king who slapped him down and removed the popes from Rome into captivity in Avignon. The importance of the papal states was that it gave the popes a certain independence, which is why Pius IX refused to accept the authority of the Italian king after he seized control of the papal states but especially Rome. If you look at the part of Rome that existed in 1870, when it was seized by Savoy, you see not a political capital but a religious center like Mecca. The king wanted Rome as a capital because it was situated between North and South but more because its ancient prestige was supposed to give luster to the new kingdom of Italy. But of course, it prompted Pio Nono to hole up in the Vatican and try to shame the Italians.
I still say you are just full of hatred. Good day.
Have a wonderful day then.
And I wish you a joyful tomorrow.
It also claimed universal authority over the entire world based on the binding and loosing scripture.
And sought to exercise that authority through the various local monarchs. In England the high point, or low point depending on your point of view, might have been when Henry II was forced to do penance.
As the Church became more corrupt, it acted increasingly as another political parasite, and like a louse, was plucked on occasion from the body politic. There were many honest and often effective reform movements, and always many good people inside and outside the church.
People’s faith in something that didn’t help them in this life was probably a great consolation to many people who needed consolation. Objectively, the top heavy medieval church structure was not needed to gain that consolation and was, eventually, excised.
In any case,the pope was never the emperor but the Chief Justice of Europe, while the kings et al served as sheriffs. As for lice, it was always the papacy that served to unite Christendom against the Turks by taxing Europe to fund the Crusades. We know that the money for indulgences did go to rebuild St. Peter’s. But it also went into a Crusader’s fund. Unfortunately, after Pius II, after Constantinople fell to the Turk, no pope even bothered to try to rouse Europe. Luther showed no alarm. He was willing to let the Turk take over and scourge Europe. Even as the Turk was banging at the gates of Vienna, he was only happy that the Emperor was distracted.
Well, there was that little matter of Constantinople falling to the Crusaders in what, 1202-1204?
One of the most profitable and disgraceful sacks of a city every.
That sure demonstrated a united Christendom against the Turks....
“[T]he educated and wealthy Byzantines saw the Latins as lawless, impious, covetous, blood-thirsty, undisciplined, and (quite literally) unwashed.”
From wikipedia
The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in 1380’s AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian. Wycliffe, (also spelled “Wycliff” & “Wyclif”), was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, and his assistant Purvey, and many other faithful scribes, Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe. The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
The pope was a hater!
The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in 1380’s AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian. Wycliffe, (also spelled “Wycliff” & “Wyclif”), was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, and his assistant Purvey, and many other faithful scribes, Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe. The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
The pope was a hater!
Sounds to me like Wycliff should be grateful for St. Jerome, and for the preservation of his work and countless others by poor monks in the monasteries he (ahem) hated.
Don’t think Wycliff went around digging up corpses.
So who is the hater?
You, apparently . . . in a long line of Catholic haters in the sad, centuries-old history of anti-Catholicism. Elizabeth, who had her wits about her, burned as many Catholics at the stake as did a rather deranged Mary burn Protestants. And in the era you are discussing, heresy (Wycliff preached some 50 or 60 of them) was never treated as a laughing matter, and it was often secular authorities who did the persecuting. Wycliff's bones? Yes, exhumed by Martin V, but many years after the order was given by the Council of Constance (long after his death) in a time of religious warfare and to fulfill orders of a council following a period of papal schism and conciliar government. Yes, yes, all very savage, but perhaps we should discuss other enlightened acts of the time, such as the murder of Thomas More or the drawing and quartering of the Carthusian monks, the most devout men in England, as a prelude for the slaughters of thousands of good churchmen (who had the best interest of the peasantry at heart) which soon followed.
But I have also not dug up and scattered bones.
That you charge me with hater, shows you seem obsessed with such. You pin the term ‘hater’ on yourself with every post.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Wycliff didn’t hate the poor monks in the monastries, RATHER, he attacked the concentration of wealth in the church at the expense of the people. He promulgated the authority of scripture at a time (like today) when there were two living popes.
Of course the luxurious clerics were offended with being told that their oaths of poverty meant they would actually be poor.
I hope my post 268 was not too personal.
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