Protestant opposition to Roman Catholic practice was not limited to matters of theology, liturgy, and church corruption, but came to include as well the physical appearance of churches. Martin Luther was suspicious of the many sculptures and paintings that served as objects of devotion to the Catholic faithful, but John Calvin, the prominent French-born Protestant theologian went even further, declaring that “God forbade . . . the making of any images representing him.”

Perhaps the most dramatic expression of these ideas took place in regions of Europe where Protestants took over formerly Roman Catholic churches for their new forms of worship. During the 1560s, waves of Protestant image smashing, sometimes called the Iconoclastic Fury, took place in England, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. This engraving, produced in 1566 at the height of these religious conflicts, depicts Protestants “cleansing” a Catholic church in Antwerp in what is now Belgium of what they viewed as idolatrous decorations but Catholics revered as objects of devotion.

An English Catholic observer described this event and others like it with horror: “These fresh followers of this new preaching [Protestantism] threw down the graven and defaced the painted images. . . . They tore the curtains, dashed in pieces the carved work of brass and stone, . . . pulled up the brass of the gravestones. . . . [T]he Blessed Sacrament of the altar . . . they trod under their feet and (horrible it is to say!) shed their stinking piss upon it. . . . [T]hese false brethren burned and rent not only all kind of Church books, but, moreover, destroyed whole libraries of books of all sciences and tongues, yea the Holy Scriptures and the ancient fathers, and tore in pieces the maps and charts of the descriptions of countries.”1

These often-dramatic attacks on churches served a practical purpose in preparing the site for Protestant worship. But they also reflected the new beliefs of the Protestants, or, as one scholar has put it, expressed “theology in stone. These churches were stripped of visual distractions and altars where the miracle of the mass took place. Instead there emerged a church, frequently without any images or other diversions like organs or other musical instruments, whose main focal point was the pulpit where the word of God was preached.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Calvinists Destroying Statues in a Catholic Church, 1566

Notes