Iconoclasm and Power in the European Middle Ages

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.