The first paintings to be obliterated were in the
monasteries. Having declared himself ‘Supreme
Head of the English Church’ in 1534, he used his new powers to dissolve over
three hundred of the smaller monastic houses in 1536. The remainder met a similar fate in 1539 when
their lands were sold and their roofs stripped and their buildings quarried for
stone. The gradual decay of other
buildings accounted for further losses.
John Hooper of Gloucester, one of the new bishops of Henry, scoffed at
the church paintings as ‘nothing but the skill and draught of the craftsmen
proportioning a shape not like unto Christ whom he never saw, but where his own
fancy leads him ... and in that case you worship not the similitude of our
saviour but the conceit of this maker.
In 1536 two royal Acts were passed condemning
images. Two years later there were
further Royal injunctions outlawing ‘Candles, tapers or images of wax to be set
afore any image or picture.’ A
particularly vicious campaining was launched in 1538 against wall paintings and
other images of St Thomas á Becket. King
Henry detested his memory because he had resisted a former King, Henry II. St Thomas was now denounced as a traitor and
a rebel and his shrine at Canterbury was smashed by soldiers. Churches were ordered to erase his name from
books and remove all of his images.
In 1547, the nine year old Edward VI succeeded
Henry as King and under his Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset, more extreme
measures were followed. The clergy were
ordered to ‘take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, pictures,
paintings and all other monuments... so that there remain no memory of the same
in wall, glass-windows.’ Paintings that
had survived the first wave of onslaughts under Henry now succumbed.
Most paintings were white-limed or white-washed but
in many places the treatment was cruder.
In the Lady Chapel of Winchester Cathedral a cycle of paintings of Our
Lady were scored with chisels. At
Norwich Cathedral the face of a painting of St Gregory the Great – the Pope who
sent St Augustine and his monks to England – was totally disfigured. In keeping with the Protestant emphasis on
the Word of God, black letter texts such as the Ten Commandments were painted
on church walls and the Royal Coat of Arms was raised above the Chancel arch.
The short-lived reign of Edward’s Catholic
half-sister Mary could not reverse the ravages of nearly twenty years of
destruction. Most churches were too poor
and too uncertain about the future or two divided within themselves to restore
all of their imagery. Mary’s death after
just five years on the throne and the accession of her half-sister Elizabeth
quashed any possible revival of religious images.
Medieval paintings that had somehow survived the
reigns of Henry and Edward now fell prey.
The paintings in the Guild Chapel at Stratford–upon-Avon were finally
white-washed over in 1563-64 at a cost of two shillings. The work was supervised by John Shakespeare,
the father of the famous William. For
many parishes the turmoil of these years must have been bewildering. In the early 1500’s, for example, the
parishioners of Long Melford were enjoying the splendours of their magnificent
newly built church and its extravagantly decorated interior. In 1547 the walls were white-washed and
painted with biblical texts and the King’s Coat of Arms. In 1555 these were erased and traditional
religious paintings were restored with Queen Mary on the throne – only in 1562
to have these despoiled when the walls were once again whitened.
Those who wished to cling to their old faith were
appalled at these attacks but many evangelists felt that they did not go far
enough. They complained that the
paintings were merely ‘slubbered over with a white-wash that in an hour may be
undone, standing like a Diana’s shrine for a future hope and daily comfort of
old popish beldames and young perking papists and a great offence to all that
are Christianly minded! Such people
demanded that the paintings be hacked off the walls. By the end of the 16th Century
hardly any visible trace of medieval England’s wall painting legacy remained.
Wall paintings marked out a sacred space and helped
people raise their minds and hearts to God.
They were part of the tradition connecting the worshippers with those
around them and with those gone before them.
They gave pride and definition and identity to a parish and its
patrons. They were a people’s art for a
people’s faith.
I
am indebted to ‘Medieval Wall Paintings’ by Roger Rosewell
