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Explores the destruction, mutilation, and erasure of images, artefacts, and monuments during the European Middle Ages.
The European Middle Ages are conventionally considered an image-making age - a time of special reverence for the visual. This interdisciplinary volume re-examines that familiar picture from an important perspective: the desecration and destruction of medieval images and artefacts. Eleven case-studies, spanning the Continent from Flanders to Rome, from the British Isles to the Slav north-east, explore why and how material objects, whether large or small, precious or mundane, were subverted, defaced, and obliterated. Topics addressed include the imagery of kingship, iconoclasm as a weapon both for enforcing and challenging social hierarchies, and the human body as a target for iconoclastic acts. Meanwhile, chapters examining iconoclasm's role in Christianisation and late-medieval heresy demonstrate the fluidity of the boundaries between "sacred" and "profane" images and between "religious" and "secular" motivations for attacking them. Overall, this volume demonstrates how iconoclasm, broadly understood, was integral to medieval culture, and especially to discourses of power, within a world that expressed legitimacy through image and performance.
The European Middle Ages are conventionally considered an image-making age - a time of special reverence for the visual. This interdisciplinary volume re-examines that familiar picture from an important perspective: the desecration and destruction of medieval images and artefacts. Eleven case-studies, spanning the Continent from Flanders to Rome, from the British Isles to the Slav north-east, explore why and how material objects, whether large or small, precious or mundane, were subverted, defaced, and obliterated. Topics addressed include the imagery of kingship, iconoclasm as a weapon both for enforcing and challenging social hierarchies, and the human body as a target for iconoclastic acts. Meanwhile, chapters examining iconoclasm's role in Christianisation and late-medieval heresy demonstrate the fluidity of the boundaries between "sacred" and "profane" images and between "religious" and "secular" motivations for attacking them. Overall, this volume demonstrates how iconoclasm, broadly understood, was integral to medieval culture, and especially to discourses of power, within a world that expressed legitimacy through image and performance.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 272
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Publication Date:
24 November 2026
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781837655113
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
HISTORY / Europe / Medieval, European history: medieval period, middle ages, ART / History / European / Medieval, History of art
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Preface: Beyond Modernity: The Politics of Iconoclasm
Len Scales
Introduction: From the Modern to the Medieval Politics of Iconoclasm
Marcus Meer
Between Violation and Veneration: Saints, Sinners, and Posthumous Martyrs in the Early Middle Ages
Dyan Elliott
Iconoclasm in the Slavic Revolts of 983/1066 and after the Subjugation of the Polabian and Baltic Slavs in the Twelfth Century
Matthias Hardt
Burning Down the House: Home Demolitions and Communal Justice between the Loire and the Rhine (Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries)
Jan Dumolyn & Jeroen Deploige
Graphoclasm: Material and Textual Strategies in the Dispute between Emperor Ludwig IV of Bavaria (1282/86-1347) and the Papacy
Gerald Schwedler
Degradation through Honour: Günther of Schwarzburg's Funeral Ceremony and Cenotaph as a Staged Postmortem Abdication Orchestrated by Charles IV
Martin Bauch
Iconoclasms of Politics and Class in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Sam Cohn
Attacking the Visual in the English Medieval City
Marcus Meer
Politics and Religion in Hussite Iconoclasm
Kateřina Horníčková
The Legacy of Medieval Iconoclasm: The Politics of damnatio memoriae in Early Modern Bohemia and Moravia
Ondřej Jakubec
Erasure in Late Medieval and Early Modern Visual Representations of Intersectionality
Lorenz Hindrichsen
Iconoclastic Feasting: Sugar Sculptures and Performative Image Destruction at the Wedding Banquet of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon, 1475
Allie Terry-Fritsch
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Preface: Beyond Modernity: The Politics of Iconoclasm
Len Scales
Introduction: From the Modern to the Medieval Politics of Iconoclasm
Marcus Meer
Between Violation and Veneration: Saints, Sinners, and Posthumous Martyrs in the Early Middle Ages
Dyan Elliott
Iconoclasm in the Slavic Revolts of 983/1066 and after the Subjugation of the Polabian and Baltic Slavs in the Twelfth Century
Matthias Hardt
Burning Down the House: Home Demolitions and Communal Justice between the Loire and the Rhine (Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries)
Jan Dumolyn & Jeroen Deploige
Graphoclasm: Material and Textual Strategies in the Dispute between Emperor Ludwig IV of Bavaria (1282/86-1347) and the Papacy
Gerald Schwedler
Degradation through Honour: Günther of Schwarzburg's Funeral Ceremony and Cenotaph as a Staged Postmortem Abdication Orchestrated by Charles IV
Martin Bauch
Iconoclasms of Politics and Class in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Sam Cohn
Attacking the Visual in the English Medieval City
Marcus Meer
Politics and Religion in Hussite Iconoclasm
Kateřina Horníčková
The Legacy of Medieval Iconoclasm: The Politics of damnatio memoriae in Early Modern Bohemia and Moravia
Ondřej Jakubec
Erasure in Late Medieval and Early Modern Visual Representations of Intersectionality
Lorenz Hindrichsen
Iconoclastic Feasting: Sugar Sculptures and Performative Image Destruction at the Wedding Banquet of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla of Aragon, 1475
Allie Terry-Fritsch
Select Bibliography
Index