Turning sacrilege into victory:Catholic memories of iconoclasm, 1566-1700

This chapter demonstrates the ancient narrative motifs that are associated with image-breaking retained a powerful presence in local oral, material and scribal memories of iconoclasm in the seventeenth century, ensuring that Catholic memories were shaped by pre-Reformation narrative motifs, rather than by a sense of rupture. It shows that when recalling iconoclasm, Catholics focused on single images and relics which had resisted attack, or which had (allegedly) punished iconoclasts attacking them – and the presence of such images was a trigger for the stories. Together, stories and associated... Mehr ...