A professor fired to have showed images of Mohammed to a warned public....

[Valmy]

And it's not like Christianity has gone through waves of iconoclasm as well.

Sure. But it wasn't like militant protestants were ransacking through Italy destroying paintings by Caravaggio, they simply removed the images from their place of worship.

[HVC]

Didn't the Dutch go a little extra wild with the art smashing calvanism? Or am I misremebering?

[Jacob]

Start with some reasonable purpose, like avoiding disease from eating pigs in hot climates...

An aside on the "avoiding disease from eating pigs in hot climates":

I read some recent work on the topic and it convincingly made some points supporting that this explanation for pork prohibitions is likely a much later just-so story for people to rationalize religious beliefs as being "scientific based" and utilitarian.

The main argument is that there are essentially two main modes of raising pigs in ancient societies.

1) They're raised scavening for natural food in the woodlands. Hunting wild boars is a dangerous and high status activity. Raising pigs requires woodlands, often owned by the upper classes. In those sort of societies (most of ancient Europe, including Rome) pork is an expensive and high status food.

2) They're raised in urban and semi-urban settings, often by marginal people (the poor, especially outsider s). Owning a pig or two is a low-intensity way for the poor to get protein in their food as the pig mostly tends to itself, subsisting on street garbage including human excrement. In those societies, pork tends to be seen as low status - reserved for outsiders and outcasts existing on the margins. Ancient Egypt was one such society (including in the period the Jews were there and traditional Jewish lands were in the Egyptian sphere), but I suspect most of the Mesopotamian empires were similar as well.

Additionally I don't beleive we have any evidence of the theoretical health risks of pork being understood, discussed, or otherwise impact any of those ancient societies.

TLDR: within Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East* pigs are ritually unclean in places they were subsisted on garbage including excrement, while considered high status delicacies in places where they were raised scavening in semi-wild woodlands.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting.

[Sheilbh]

Didn't the Dutch go a little extra wild with the art smashing calvanism? Or am I misremebering?

Yes and not just the Dutch.

There was very violent iconoclasm generally in the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, Scotland and Switzerland in the most intense period of the Reformation. In France and England there was iconoclasm but it was more localised, later. In France especially during the wars of religion and in England (until the civil war) it very much depended on the whims of the monarch but was ferocious at times, especially under Edward VI.

It wasn't simply removing images from their place of worship. There were huge public bonfires of art. Murals were often hacked and defaced to remove the faces of individuals before being painted over. Wooden statues (really important in Medieval religious art - but, post-Reformation if you want to see examples you need to go to Spain) were chopped to pieces or burned.

Initial English iconoclasm in the Tudor period was fairly restrained. They, uniquely, chopped off the noses and ears of statues and paid carpenters or stone masons to remove them. Even under Edward VI "defacing" was enough. So while there was iconoclasm it wasn't the type of total obliteration of images that you saw in areas with a more popular, less top-down reformation. Also - again reflecting the nature of the English reformation - it is tied to how how often royal visitors are going to parish churches to monitor compliance with the new religion and how strictly they're enforcing those rules. Of course, in practical terms, many of the vicars and more than a few of the royal visitors were in place through most of the phases of the English reformation just trying to do what they needed and get along without attracting attention.

But not always. It's not clear if there seems to have been significantly more iconoclasm in East Anglia and the East of the country more generally because they were hotbeds of popular Protestantism, or that they had a famously radical and effective puritan royal visitor (who recorded his work demolishing "hundreds" of works of art. Probably both - I believe those areas are disproportionate in the numbers of puritans who go to America in the early 17th century. They're Cromwell's home area and parliamentarian stalwarts in the civil war through the Eastern Association. They're also home to the worst witch trials in England - again unclear if it's their popular faith or particularly effective witchfinders operating in the area. In all of England there is one surviving pre-Reformation fresco.

In the Netherlands I think it's part of the start of the revolt against the Spanish and there are a few miraculous examples of some works being saved. But often it's because they were able to dismantle and hide the art from the iconoclasts. There are definitely lost van Eyck altarpieces and religious pieces though. In all of Scotland, there is one small stained glass window that survived the Reformation.

All around art was destroyed - as were religious psalters, book of hours etc that were filled with icons. The internal structure of churches were often torn apart (again - bonfires) and re-oriented in line with the new faith - for example in Scotland no altar and built around the pulpit as preaching was the centre of the religion, not sacraments. Similarly in some reformations choirs were shut down, organs and other musical instruments destroyed - again Scotland, because the only acceptable religious music was metrical singing of the psalms by the entire congregation.

But even away from masterpieces you have the folk art which you still see in some places in Spain, Italy, Malta and the rest of the Catholic world. Little roadside crosses or statues of Mary or some of the saints. These were all over Europe - all of them destroyed in the Reformation. Adding to that there was also - from a Catholic perspective - deliberate desecration of the sacraments. It'd be taken out from behind the altar and trod or pissed on. In England it also plays a role in destroying communal life. Most churches would have local "confraternities" or guilds who would normally raise money through the year for the upkeep of specific altars, chapels, statues. Obviously remove the object and the community that existed to look after it would also fall apart.

They didn't destroy Caravaggio because he's a painter of the Catholic reformation which was very successful in Italy. So there weren't mobs of Protestants in Italy but he also follows the worst outbreaks of iconoclasm. He's in the wrong place and too late. The Reformation was an incredibly violent, radical, revolutionary experience and not a case of disagreement or simple removal of art from places of worship.

[Admiral Yi]

TLDR: within Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East* pigs are ritually unclean in places they were subsisted on garbage including excrement, while considered high status delicacies in places where they were raised scavening in semi-wild woodlands.

It is interesting; but what I don't see is how lower status food would lead to being religiously prohibited.

[Jacob]

I honestly thought Valmy was being deliberately ironic.

I hope so 

[Sheilbh]

I honestly thought Valmy was being deliberately ironic.

I hope so 

Oh no! You might be right

[HVC]

I had also read part of it was the sacrificial usage of animals. Most of a sacrificed animal was actually consumed. Getting sheep and cows or birds to the alter is easy, as is the slaughter. Pigs, on the other hand, don't herd easily and don't slaughter easily so aren't a good sacrifice.

Personally I adhere to the pig toilet theory.

*edit* also I don't think you could kosher slaughter a pig. You'd have to brain it first, a big no no.

[Sophie Scholl]

Medhi Hasan does a good job breaking things down here in a clip just under 7 minutes.

"Islamophobia, sadly, is everywhere. But it wasn't in that art history classroom at Hamline University." My commentary on the firing of a professor who showed students a painting of Prophet Muhammad. "Give that adjunct professor her job back, please."

Here

[Valmy]

I honestly thought Valmy was being deliberately ironic.

I hope so 

I kind of resent that.

No. I am hardly some expert on Christian iconoclasm 500 years ago. Just because somebody is Christian doesn't mean I understand them or sympathize with them or have some kind of close cultural connection. The past is a foreign country after all and hell dozens (if not hundreds) of varieties of Christianity that exist today in the United States I find very strange and distasteful and don't really understand how or why they have such a bizarre interpretation of it. I thought plenty of Dutch Masters painted religious images. I wasn't aware they were worried about them being burned by extremist Calvinists.  If I don't know every aspect of the history of literally thousands of varieties of Christianity I must be idiotically stupid? Come on.

So maybe this kind of thing is just something that goes along with Abrahamic Religions. Did the Jews ever have some kind of iconoclasm? They are ones who originally made idolatry such a central aspect of these religions after all.

[HVC]

They did destroy a perfectly nice golden calf

[Valmy]

They did destroy a perfectly nice golden calf

Poor Aaron. All that work...

[Admiral Yi]

I honestly thought Valmy was being deliberately ironic.

I hope so 

I kind of resent that.

No. I am hardly some expert on Christian iconoclasm 500 years ago. Just because somebody is Christian doesn't mean I understand them or sympathize with them or have some kind of close cultural connection. The past is a foreign country after all and hell dozens (if not hundreds) of varieties of Christianity that exist today in the United States I find very strange and distasteful and don't really understand how or why they have such a bizarre interpretation of it. I thought plenty of Dutch Masters painted religious images. I wasn't aware they were worried about them being burned by extremist Calvinists.  If I don't know every aspect of the history of literally thousands of varieties of Christianity I must be idiotically stupid? Come on.

So maybe this kind of thing is just something that goes along with Abrahamic Religions. Did the Jews ever have some kind of iconoclasm? They are ones who originally made idolatry such a central aspect of these religions after all.

Well there was old Moses smashing up Baal.

I too was unaware that religious art was destroyed during the Reformation.  I thought it was vaguely related to to crucifixes and weeping Madonna statues, which is not *exactly* the same thing as art.

[HVC]

Protty's forget the bad parts of their history. Takes Catholics or Catholic lites (sheilbh ) to remind them. No one expects the inquisition, but everyone forgets how many witches and warlocks were burned outside of catholic countries, for example.

[Admiral Yi]

Protty's forget the bad parts of their history. Takes Catholics or Catholic lites (sheilbh ) to remind them. No one expects the inquisition, but everyone forgets how many witches and warlocks were burned outside of catholic countries, for example.

A lot of the bad part is happening right now.