Dennis Martin wrote:
>......Or, when Huguenots sacked monasteries...they went out of their way to
desecrate the reserved sacrament....But it wasn't a question
of mere symbol, it was a question of the reality of the object and the
differences over what the reality was had all sorts of implications
for a number of other cultural issues....
Likewise, for the special class of desecrators who were/are
"iconoclasts", the "symbol" (in the latter case, the image) was far from being
without power.
Witness the near-universal vandalitic strategy of scratching out the eyes
or faces of sacred figures in mural and ms paintings and the beheading of
sculpted images, etc.
During the Huguenot rampage through the Beauce (1560's, I believe), the
low-relief sculptures of the North side of the church of St. Mary (Magdelene)
at Châteaudun were nearly obliterated, while the portal of Étampes (again)
"only" lost *all* of its 100+ heads (must have been pressed for time--so many
villages to burn, so few hours in the day).
(And, had not-far-away Chartres been taken [as it very nearly was], presumably
the sculpures--and glass--there would have suffered the same fate.)
At Étampes this was quite a task, as some of the sculpture is rather high up
on the facade--requiring a good size ladder--and in low relief--requiring a
fair amount of hammer pounding and elbow grease.
I've often thought that these examples (and, say, the ubiquitous scratched-out
eyes in byzantine murals in subsequently Moslem-dominated areas) are proof
positive that the images, far from being dismissed as mere impotent objects,
were seen by their vandals as fully-charged, dangerous and threatening.
Best to all from here,
Christopher
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