1
10
1
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/8745998e4126af25afee67ec1a8ac839.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=RDrVGV-bW6p4YhLEXw49rhk3YhMOGEiRJbo07ODfaGGgvkmIaJRt2Sl95CerYGfBzV%7El-VK75GbB0OS8S7FC1yTTgJ-ZaGJsE-krE7vrQg4bM%7EB-8WtLOJjIDmalWOxTuhxeZXyFKo6lsdNy0KrlsEtn1oeoK4yddfIOX1v8wCJUmU8FKcqyzCFXG0f6VVIITjamZ01Fa60AXcSKDzBJidnX3EHDsmTdhAaBJ05bRPVKn6Rsse4xGFRSmjS%7E10BmVkYuqiGG3LeBGjQu449bJxCGY1KHMwm2iGhVQcSFWffz5V1nnXOKHmA3pkO4ggXWu5GwE%7EgVAi56ih5k8ZV-dQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
1e95cc6f9d83b501732ceb1506dab8ad
PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL secular society
the'
ICONOCLASTS.
BY
SALADIN.
[reprinted
from
“the secular review.”]
London:
W. STEWART & Co., 41, FARRINGDON St., E.C.
��gXO 76
THE
ICONOCLASTS.
Christianity was the tender foster-mother of Art. At
her benign glance the canvas became vivid with the
creations of genius ; at her touch the marble breathed
and burned into the symmetry of heroes and the linea
ments of gods. Indeed! Let us examine the preten
sions of this rolling magniloquence, and, if it be found
to have no feet to stand on, kick it to Gehenna, its heroes
and gods notwithstanding.
“ Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,
•or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or
that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under
the earth,”* quoth Jehovah; and it is no use asserting
that more recent Scriptures abrogated this, for Jehovah’s
son (of the same age with Jehovah himself) assured all
concerned that he came not to destroy the law, but to
fulfil it. So much for Christianity with its genius glowing
■on the canvas, and its demi-gods limned in the marble.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image is
pretty explicit as far as sculpture is concerned ; and in his
oracular, “ nor any likeness of anything” Jehovah kicks
the artist from his campstool, upsets the easel, and knocks
Titian headforemost through his canvas. And yet there
are Christian apologists who contend that, like the late
Joseph Gillott, Jehovah and his son are distinguished
patrons of Art.
Now, it only devolves upon me to show that Christians,
with some exceptions, were loyal enough and consistent
enough to attend rigorously to what Jehovah had said
and what his son had not contradicted in regard to the
“graven image” (sculpture), and the “likeness of any
thing ” (painting). Our George Second admitted that he
“hated boetry and baintingand Jehovah First, and
Exodus xx. 4.
�4
THE ICONOCLASTS.
let us hope last, endorsed the exalted standard of taste
attained to by his royal contemporary in England. Chris
tianity was only a bastard child of Judaism, and we learn
from Josephus* that the Jews regarded images, whether
painted or sculptured, with bitter aversion. The insignia
of the eagles on the Roman standards were hated as
much as the weapons in the hands of the Roman soldiery
were feared. Naturally, as far as painting and sculpture
were concerned, it took a few centuries for the dull
Christian brat to learn anything essential that its Jewish
mother had not taught it. The early fathers, such as
Minacius Felix, Origen, and Lactantius, boast that the
Christians had no “ images,” as Christian Boeotianism
was pleased to call the creations of the sculptor and the
painter.
But the progressive tendency inherent in human
nature, in the long run, began to enter its protest against
the ignorance, vulgarity, and bestial aesthetics of genuine
and primitive Christianity, and painting and sculpture
developed in their despite. A net, a fish creel, a kippered
haddock, a few shavings, and a carpenter’s adz might be
the most elegantly artistic objects to the low-bred rabble
who first pinned their faith to the Nazarene, and to his
apostle, Paul of Tarsus; but gratification had to be found
for higher sesthetical aspirations when Christianity became
imperial and began to absorb proselytes, ennobled by
the culture and taste of decaying heathendom. The
temples of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva became, under
State auspices, Christian Churches, and the only halfChristianised Athenian or Roman refused to break the
art treasures of the temples, out of deference to the
porcine tastes of Christianity. This compromise between
heathen culture and Christian bestiality went on till the
eighth century, when it reached a climax. Then the clear
issue arose, Was Art to be endured or suppressed ? The
Christians who were above their Christianity contended
that it should be endured—nay, fostered ; and those who
were only on a level with their Christianity, a fanatical
and ferocious mob, agitated that the pictures should
be torn to pieces and the images broken with hammers,
Bell. Jud. i. 33, 2.
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
5
conformably with the teachings of Scripture. And thus
sprang into being that brutal and shameful rabblement
■of insurgents known in history as the Iconoclasts.
The first serious Iconoclastic outbreak was in 726,
when the master Iconoclast was the Emperor Leo the
Isaurian. He passed an edict ordering the demolition
of statues and the defacing by whitewash of the paintings
upon the walls of churches. In the face of this edict of
this Christian Emperor (and several succeeding emperors
followed in his footsteps), which was popular with and
zealously carried into execution by tens of thousands of
his subjects, the ordinary Christian apologist is either
dishonest enough or ignorant enough to contend that
Christianity has been the inspiration and patron of Art 1
Over the entrance to a church in a part of Constan
tinople, known as Chalcopatria, stood a statue of him of
Nazareth. By the way, a statue or picture of this per
sonage must, of necessity, bear a very striking likeness to
him, seeing that the fact that such a preaching mechanic
existed is so firmly established, and seeing that there was
a photographer of such distinction in Martha Street,
Bethany. Justin Martyr and Tertullian both admit their
Lord to have been ugly, “ without form or comeliness •”
and his saint and servant, Cyril, is complimentary enough
to describe him as of shabby appearance, “even beyond
the ordinary race of men.” But the ugly Saviour of the
early fathers blossomed into a sort of Galilean dandy in
a spurious epistle, pretending to have been written by
Lentulus to the Roman Senate. So it is to an epistle, by
all scholars admitted to be spurious, that “ the Lord” is
indebted for his good looks ; and it is to four other
epistles, or gospels, which have also undoubtedly much
of the spurious about them, that he is indebted for all
that anybody knows about his existence.
Well, this statue of him of Nazareth (had it a basket
of tools slung over its shoulder, a saw under its arm, and
a foot-rule obtruding from its pocket?) stood over a
church door in the part of Constantinople known as
Chalcopatria. Leo sent a party of soldiers to destroy the
statue. Behold the historic tableau! On came the
soldiers through a crowd, principally made up of exas
perated and hissing women. A ladder was placed with
�6
THE ICONOCLASTS.
its upper end touching the base of the statue; and, amid
cheers, mingled with a storm of hisses and execrations,
armed with a heavy axe, he mounts the ladder. The
excitement is so intense that it fixes itself into wide-eyed
and breathless silence. Would this soldier of the irreve
rent Leo really smite with his axe the miraculous image
of the son of God ? This statue had been specially
useful to wives that had desired to be mothers, and to
maidens who had dreaded lest they should become
mothers. They had prayed to this image of a thing
compounded of world-maker and carpenter, and it had
assisted them in many of the delicate circumstances and
junctures peculiar to their sex. Would the Roman
soldier be permitted to strike the miraculous image? No,
by the thunders of God he should not. They waited
with stopped breath and straining eyes to behold him lift
his axe and arm, and to see whether they should not
be shattered and blasted by a bolt from heaven. Their
suspense was soon over. The soldier reached the top of
the ladder, swung his impious axe, and dealt a heavy
blow upon the face of Almighty God. In the fearful
hush of expectancy the sound of the blow reverberated
through Chalcopatria, and the faint echoes died away
upon the waters of the Golden Horn.
But the calm was only the hush before the crash of
thunder. Ere another blow of the axe could be dealt
upon the face of Jesus, the street was shaken with a
tempest of yells, a hurricane of curses. Men and women
rushed frantically to the ladder, tore it away from the wall
against which it rested, and brought the impious soldier and
his axe crashing to the ground. He rises, he staggers—it is
only for a moment; an angry ocean of human beings dash
against him and overwhelm him ; he is trampled to death,
and torn to pieces. His comrades draw their swords and
fall upon the mob. A mere handful; they are lost in the
armed and infuriated multitude. Women, fierce as tigers,
protecting their hands with their shawls, grasp the swords
of the soldiery, snap them into flinders, and fling the
steel fragments in the faces of their foes. Sounds of the
ferocious uproar reach Leo in his palace. He sends a
relay of soldiers to quell the mob. At last it is quelled.
The street is blocked with corpses and streaming with
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
7
blood, and Jesus, with smashed nose and broken jaw,
looks down upon the carnage.
Vigorously as the Iconoclasts had been led on by Leo
against the Iconduli, as the defenders of the images were
called, their depredations were pushed to even more
lamentable excesses by his son and successor, Constan
tine Copronymus.
Some of the finest treasures of
Roman and Greek art* were, under the Iconoclastic axe
and hammer, irrecoverably lost to the civilisation of the
world. Any priest who dared to make use of an image in
his sacerdotal function, or was known to conceal an image
or picture to save it from destruction, was to be degraded
from his office. An aged monk, named Andreas, was
scourged to death for vindicating the position of the
Iconduli against that of the Iconoclasts. Banishment,
imprisonment, scourching, the cutting off of noses, ears,
and hands, and the burning out of eyes, were the punish
ments resorted to against those who had a word to say
for the preservation of the treasures of painting and
sculpture. One bishop, sound in the Iconoclastic faith,
trampled the paten, or golden plate, used for the conse
crated bread, under foot, because there was carved upon
it the head of Jesus Christ.
Constantine, to conciliate the Christian dregs of the
Roman population for political and military ends, had
made the erection of statues punishable by death. So
much for the encouragement of sculpture by the first
Christian Emperor; and, in this respect, the Christian
Emperors, Constantius and Theodosius, followed in his
footsteps. The great Christian Emperor, Charlemagne,
in this pious detestation of images, followed in the wake
of his imperial predecessors. The Roman pontiffs had
got thinly painted with the brush of civilisation, and, at
the second Council of Nicea, in spite of Jehovah and his
aversion to “ graven mages,” it was enacted that statues
be introduced into the churches. But Charlemagne re
presented the Christianity of the age rather than did the
Pope, and against these statues, supported by the Biblical
anathema against “ graven images,” and eagerly
* Many of the Pagan temples had been converted into Christian
Churches, and the marble statues of heathen gods came to be wor
shipped as Christian saints.
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
seconded by the Christian mob, he sat his face like
flint. This omnipotent “ Emperor of the West,” whose
sway extended over France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and
Hungary, was too powerful a rival for the Papal power
itself to successfully cope with, and so he tore up the
painter’s canvas and smashed the sculptor’s marble
without let or hindrance.
A striking representative of popular Christianity was
this potent Emperor, who had been anointed with the
holy oil. He, in common with every honest man, found
in the Bible inexpugnable sanction for slavery, and did
his best to make it a lucrative source of income to the
State. Here, at least, Charlemagne was at one with the
Papacy, for Pope Adrian, for gain, sold his Italian vassals
to the Infidel Saracens. Like a good Biblical Christian,
this most powerful of the Christian Emperors believed
in polygamy, and, when not engaged in the affairs of the
camp or the senate, had the opportunity to forget the
ills of life amid the blandishments of his nine wives
and numerous concubines. Nine wives he considered
not sufficient for a good Christian, and he tried hard to
make his nine into ten by the addition to his household
of the fiendish Empress Irene, who had gouged out
the eyes of her own son, and that in the chamber in
which she had given him birth. So much for him whom
the representative of Christ on earth had adored and
anointed with holy oil. I have only to add that this
champion of “ the living God ” was so illiterate that he
could not sign his name, and the great majority of God’s
own monks and priests were in the same predicament.
And why not ? Ignorance and Illiteracy are the very
bed-rock upon which are based Faith and Piety.
Although Charlemagne stood unflinchingly by Icono
clasm as the wisest course for his own personal interests,
he was desirous, at the same time, not to come to over
strained relationships with the Pope. Consequently,
although he humoured his myrmidons to the top of their
bent by permitting them to rush over shattered sculptures
to the waning beacon-fires of a former civilisation, he
permitted them to attach all the consequence of super
stitious awe to shrine-cures, talismans, and relics. The
Pope, unwilling to come to a rupture with a potentate
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
9
against whom he was likely to find himself overmatched,
shut his eyes to Charlemagne’s iconoclastic devastations,
while there was no hindrance to his driving a flourishing
business in relics. As long as the populace could be
exercised in wild hyperaesthesia, and behold statues with
wounds that could bleed, eyes that could wink, and
arms that could brandish swords, his Holiness of the
Seven Hills had little reason to complain. The statues
of saints, apostles, martyrs, Christ the carpenter, and
Polly Davidson, his mamma, might be smashed at will,
as long as his Holiness could plenish the pontifical
coffers with the profits from the sale of bones and relics,
never-ending junks of the true cross, hundreds of
bottles of Polly Davidson’s inexhaustible milk, hundreds
of yards of napkins which had been used by her baby
to the Holy Pigeon, and hundreds of legs of the ass
upon which her thaumaturgical son Jesus had ridden
into Jerusalem. The touching of saints’ bones would
cure all maladies, from whitlow to rumblegumption in
the great toe, or the pains of ladies parturient with an
anvil and a grindstone. If the saints, like roaches, had
been nearly all bones, and every saint had been as big as
a hippopotamus, they would not have had enough of
bones to meet the demand of those who, at a moderate
price, were willing to buy them. So his Holiness broke
into the catacombs, and sent out bones in waggon loads
to be sold over the length and breadth of Christendom;
and money flowed copiously into the Papal exchequer.
The fleshless bones of nobodies and somebodies—the
strong femor of the Pagan gladiator and the carious
pelvis of the syphilitic sybarite—were sold as the femoral
and pelvic ossifications of the apostles of Jesus. So,
because it suits the designs and projects of Charlemagne,
let the treasures of painting and sculpture go to eternal
smash, the accursed “graven image,” and the “likeness
of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”!
Catholicism chiselled out the statue with the one hand
and broke it with the other. But Protestantism, ignoring
tradition and basing her principles upon the infallible
Scriptures, and upon them only, was confronted by
Exodus xx. 4, whenever she might attempt to rise from
�1O
THE ICONOCLASTS.
the bathos of ascetic doctrine and iron dogma to the sublimer levels of the painter’s rapture or the sculptor’s ideal.
As soon as she had the power, to the extent of that
power she exerted it to eradicate Art from the earth.
If, in this direction, she had never done a day’s work but
one, she would have laid claim to the grateful recognition
of him who described himself, “ I the Lord thy God am
a jealous God,” and who inspired some one to write
Exodus xx. 4. That day’s work was performed on the
14th of August, 1566, and it laid the interior of Antwerp
Cathedral, the glory of Europe, in ruins.
Antwerp Cathedral! What poetry in stone the words
conjure up unbidden, what lyrics in oak, what epics in
marble ! The heart of even me, the sometimes con
sidered irreverent Freethinker, wanders reverently back
through the mists of the years that are no more to the
ancient city on the Scheldt and to its hoary Cathedral—
“ Where, through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.”
Who claims the triumphs of architecture for Christianity
speaks blasphemy—blasphemy against the hills and the
stars and the sea, and against the highest visions and
loftiest aspirations in the heart and brain of man that
ring responsive to the ocean’s roar or exult in the hush
and silence of the starlight upon the whispering trees.
To these subjective and objective impulses, and not to
the blood-dyed nails and the crown of thorns, are due
the fluted column and the shafted oriel. Who has stood
in the cathedral chancel and beheld the vesper sun light
up with mellow radiance the scrolls and the blazonry and
stream through the glass, burning with tints of gold and
deepening into blood-red in the limning of saints and
martyrs, and not feel the pulse and glow of a religion of
which no Bible or Veda has touched the fringe ? Who,
as that holy sunlight, catching the stained-glass’s tints of
purple and amythest, flings them upon the tombs of the
rulers and the heroes, fears that all the majesty of Life
can be locked up in the sarcophagous of Death ? Who,
as his heel strikes the flagstone in the aisle and wakens
the echoes among the dead below, does not hear in that
echo a resurrection anthem and feel that man is too
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
II
grand for worms and too mighty for dust ? Man cares
little for the peddling edicts of mere Science, when, in
Religion’s chariot of fire, he careers into realms where
Science dare not follow, and, in his emotional might,
leaps over the flaming wall of the Eternities.
Christianity originate architecture like that of York
Minster or Westminster Abbey, never to speak of the
fane of ancient Antwerp ! Men shall, indeed, gather
grapes off thorns and figs off thistles before Christianity
will be aught else than she ever has been, a plagiarist
and thief, a jackdaw strutting in the plumes of Pagandom,
a Hebrew idiot jabbering the myths of India, vulgarising
the hieroglyphs of Egypt, clowning the philosophy of
Greece, and burlesquing the Pantheon of Rome. She
originate the cathedrals in which she performs her
mummeries of worship ! They are often the holy ground
of Art which she is not worthy to tread upon, even when,
like Moses at Horeb, she has cast the shoes from off her
feet. Her touch to such edifices is sacrilege. I love them
and am. religious in them when she is not there mumbling
about her debased deity and her crazy carpenter, her
tawdry heaven and her revolting hell. When she is
there with her conjurer and her dupes, her book, her
wine, and her bread, conjuring away like the witches
round the hell-pot in “ Macbeth,” I feel pityingly dis
gusted, as I would be if I could see Caliban enshrined
in the temple of Minerva. The tree of architecture had
flourished centuries, if not chiliads, before the tree had
been planted out of which was fashioned Christianity’s
manger-cradle : it was growing while the earliest sept of
shepherds kept watch by night on the starlit plains of
Shinar; it will continue to branch and blossom when the
worship of Jesus has died away from the world as has
that of Thoth.
But the Cathedral of Antwerp, the cynosure of cathe
drals, what of it ? “ There was no Church in all Northern
Europe........... -which could equal the Notre Dame of the
commercial capital of Brabant, whether in the imposing
grandeur of its exterior or in the variety and richness of
its internal decorations. The magnificence of its statuary,
the beauty of its paintings, its mouldings in bronze and
carvings in wood, and its vessels of silver and gold,
�12
THE ICONOCLASTS.
made it the pride of the citizens, and the delight and
wonder of strangers from foreign lands. Its spire shot
up to a height of 500 feet; its nave and aisles stretched
out longitudinally the same length. Under its lofty
roof, borne up by columns of gigantic stature, hung
round with escutcheons and banners, slept mailed
warriors in their tombs of marble, while the boom of
organ, the chant of priest, and the whispered prayers of
numberless worshippers kept eddying continually round
their beds of still and deep and never-ending repose.”*
It was in the middle of Autumn, on the fete-day of
the Assumption of the Virgin, 1566, when the Protes
tant zealots, mad with “ the fear of God,” and horrible
with hammers, burst into Antwerp Cathedral. The
statue of the Virgin was dashed to pieces. Ropes were
thrown over the necks of statues that stood high up on
the walls, and the yelling zealots of pious rabbledom
tugged at the ropesand brought down with a crash upon
the flagstones the marble effigies of gods and heroes—
each marble effigy worth a hundred of the carrion brutes
that destroyed it. For, mark me, the child that proceeds
from the head of the man of genius is of more value to
elevate and redeem the world than is the rabble issue
from the loins of John Smith during a thousand years.
The tapers were lifted from the altar and carried round
with axe, hammer, and crowbar to light up the gloom of
that night of devilry. The pictures were torn down from
the walls, the frames broken, and the canvas torn to
shreds. The stained glass of the noble windows was
dashed to splinters. The Protestant bigots filled the
chalices with the sacramental wine, and roared their
drunken ditties in discord with the clank of their
hammers. A deafening hubbub of clash and crash,
and clang and shout, pealed thunderously under the
groined arches during the live-long night; and, before
the morning threw its first ray upon the Scheldt, the
madly-swung candles which had been taken from the
altar revealed, in ghostly hideousness, such a scene of
devastation as, peradventure, the world had never known
before, and which, let us hope, it will never know again.
Wylie’s “ History of Protestantism,” vol. iii., p. 53.
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
j
z
13
The candles, in the hands of the Iconoclasts, drunk with
sacramental wine, through that mighty temple flung
vivid and fitful glares of light, which rendered more
awful the impenetrable gloom that lay beyond the line
of their illumination. How fearful the ever-shifting area
where the illumination fell! There, under the feet of
the Protestant mob, lay the debris that proclaimed to the
world of Art a loss irreparable. There, in mad com
mingling, lay battered martyr and shattered saint, oaken
carving dashed to matchwood, and pictures torn to
ribbons; patens, pyxes, plate, chalices, and mass vest
ments lay mixed with broken crucifixes and splintered
glass; the Cathedral’s seventy altars were levelled wit
the floor, and the Protestants danced upon them the
jig of destruction.
This at Antwerp. I could go on to recount the
same deeds of Vandalism at Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom,
Lier, Tournay, Hague, Delft, Brill, Leyden, Dort, Rotter
dam, Haarlem, and scores of other towns ; but ex pede
Herculem, and the task is one which no poet or artist
could execute without a feeling of anger and shame.
“ Ah, but,” say you, “ Protestantism gave her learning
to the people, and Rome kept it to herself.” And what
learning, pray thee, did Protestantism give to the people ?
The only learning she gave, and which Catholicism
refused, was that which can be culled from “ an open
Bible.” And this is, of course, learning to be proud
of—inexpugnable cosmogony, incontrovertible astronomy,
and geology that cannot be questioned; and abundant
sanctions for stealing, lying, murdering, slavery, poly
gamy, harlotry, and, perhaps, every crime of which human
turpitude has ever been capable. This is the learning
(save the mark) which Protestantism gave and which
Catholicism wisely withheld. An “open Bible” is an
open Pandora’s box. Learning proper neither Church
has ever encouraged ; and, at this hour, Catholicism is
not more hostile than Protestantism to the fearless
researches of science and the unbiassed generalisations
of philosophy. Catholicism and Protestantism—which
of the two weird sisters is at present most amiably
disposed to Charles Darwin’s Evolution or to Herbert
Spencer’s Agnosticism ?
�14
THE ICONOCLASTS.
This “open Bible” would, ere now, have done irrepar
able mischief but that it might almost as well have
never been “ openhardly anybody reads it. The
ordinary Protestant knows as much about its contents
as does the ordinary Catholic. Not one Protestant in a
thousand knows anything about it beyond a few hack
neyed texts. Miss Nancy Smith walks mincingly home
from chapel with it in her muff, in sublime ignorance of
what it contains. If you were to introduce yourself to
her, and narrate to her certain stories to be found in the
“ sacred volume,” she would blush and scream and
call you a vile, bad man, and a liar; and, if her papa,
Mr. John Smith, were to come up, he would swear that
no such filth was to be found in “ God’s Holy Word
that you were a scoundrel attempting to corrupt a young
girl’s morals, and try to drag you into the police court.
So much for the Protestant knowledge of the “open
Bible.” The Bible is nice to go to church with, and, if
big enough and gilt enough, it is pretty to lie on the
window-sill; but nobody really reads it. I am glad Miss
Nancy Smith does not, as I prefer her ignorant innocence
to her guilty knowledge. The people who have really
read the Bible are to be found in the ranks of the
Infidel, and there the careful reading of the Bible sent
them. It is a tedious and nasty pathway to the repudia*tion of the Christian myth ; but a careful reading of the
Bible is that pathway. I should say that, during the
last seven years, the Bible has made a thousand Infidels
where the Secular Review has made one. So much for
Protestantism’s learning for the people in the shape of
“ an open Bible.”
I have said that literature and learning suffered under
the illiterate malice of Protestantism. The verification
of the statement must be present to the mind of every
student of history. Up to the period of the so-called
Reformation, about which Mr. John Smith and his Non
conformist Beetle speak so endearingly, the whole of the
literature and learning of Europe was concentrated in
the monasteries. The 5,000 MSS. to form the nucleus
of the Vatican Library were collected as early as the
time of Pope Nicolas V.; and, soon after, all over Chris
tendom, every monastery had its library and its scrip-
�THE ICONOCLASTS.
i
15
torium where the patient and laborious monks, with
richly-coloured inks, illuminated and copied on vellum
the works that had come down through the storm and
gloom of the bygone centuries of the world. But the
literary treasures of the ages were sold for waste-paper,
because the charms of Anne Boleyn (said, by the way,
to be his own illegitimate daughter) made Henry VIII.
a Protestant. As a Protestant he suppressed the monas
teries and abbeys, edifices of whose grandeur we can
form some estimate from their magnificence, even in
ruin. The splendour of these institutions may be in
ferred from an account of one of the abbeys, Glastonbury,
left us by the commissioners who visited it in 1538. It
was, we are told, “a house meet for the king’s majesty,
and no man else, great, goodly, and so princely as we
have not seen the like. There are four parks adjoining,
the furtherest of them but four miles from the house ; a
great mere, five miles round, and a mile and a half from
the house, well stocked with great pikes, bream, perch,
and roach; four manor-houses belonging to the abbot,
the furthermost only three miles distant.” This magni
ficent “ House of God,” along with hundreds of others,
was dismantled and gutted, its noble architecture plead
ing in vain against the hand of Protestant Vandalism, its
precious vessels and art treasures in vain opposing their
sanctity to the greedy yearnings of Protestant avarice.
What Protestant Christianity had done for Art at Antwerp
and Dort she now enacted at Glastonbury and Col
chester, and in hundreds of other abbeys and monasteries,
whose broken arches and ivy-mantled towers cast a
melancholy glory over many an expanse of English and
Scottish landscape.
And carefully mark Protestantism’s reverence for books
and learning. She sold the libraries, just as she sold the
lead on the roofs, for whatever sum they would bring.
And, since all the learned institutions were being sup
pressed and an educated priesthood beingdisinherited,the
libraries sold for next to nothing. The Protestants were
too full of heavenly wisdom to care anything for secular
MSS. and learning, the former of which, in its ignorant
disdain, it regarded as “ monkish trash.” The library of
Glastonbury was disposed of as waste vellum. Some of
�i6
THE ICONOCLASTS.
the libraries, says Bale,* they sold “ to grocers and soap
sellers, and some they sent over the sea to the book
binders, not in small number, but, at times, whole ships’
full. Yea, the universities of this realm [when they
became Protestant] are not at all clear of this detestable
fact. I know a merchantman that bought the contents
of two noble libraries for forty shillings. This stuff he
has used instead of grey paper for more than ten years,
and he has enough for ten years to come.”
I have now submitted a few out of many historic facts
for the honest consideration of those who, either in dis
honesty or in ignorance, venture to maintain that Chris
tianity has been the friend of Art and Learning, instead
of recognising that they breathe an air in which she
cannot live. Now we have some Art and Learning; but,
in consequence, we have a tame parody of Christianity,
a poor Protean parasite that will abrogate any previous
dogma, and wriggle itself into any shape, to escape evic
tion and enable it to hold on with its bicuspids to the
obolus of Mammon.
* Declaration upon Leland’s Journal, 1549.
Every Thursday.
THE
Price Twopence.
SECULAR
REVIEW:
A JOURNAL OF AGNOSTICISM.
EDITED BY SALADIN.
Order of your Newsagent, or send direct to the Publishers—W.
Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, London, E.C.
RECENT PAMPHLETS.
The Divine Interpretation of Scripture, being a Reply to
Cardinal Manning, by Saladin ...
...
...
o I
The Crusades, by Saladin
...
...
...
O 1
The Covenanters, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
Christian Persecution, by Saladin ...
...
...
o 1
The Flagellants, by Saladin
...
...
...
01
London : W. Stewart & Co., 41, Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The iconoclasts
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ross, William Stewart [1844-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the Secular Review. "by Saladin" [title page]. Saladin is the pseudonym of William Stewart Ross. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
W. Stewart & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N590
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religious practice
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The iconoclasts), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Iconoclasm
NSS