Whitewash and the New Aesthetic of the Protestant Reformation 1904597645, 9781904597643

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WHITEWASH and the new aesthetic of the protestant reformation

WHITEWASH and the new aesthetic of the protestant reformation

Victoria Ann George

The Pindar Press London 2012

Published by The Pindar Press 40 Narcissus Road London NW6 1TH · UK

Copyright © 2012 Victoria Ann George All rights reserved British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 904597 64 3

This book is published with the aid of grants from The Millard Meiss Publication Fund

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Printed by De Montfort Publishing Ltd. (trading as De Montfort Print) 18 Slater Street, Leicester LE3 5AY This book is printed on acid-free paper

Contents List of Illustrations

i

Acknowledgmentsxiii Foreword by Margaret Aston

xv

Prefacexix I

Introduction. A Short History of Whiteness

II A Short Trip Through Colour Theory (The Achromatic Hue)

1 46

III An Historical Overview of Whitewashing (A New Role for Lime)

138

IV

Whitewashing of Zürich Churches 

204

V

Coloured by the Bible (The One Source All Knew)

235

VI

Zwingli and the Reformed Aesthetic

283

VII Calvin and Colour-Thinking 346 VIII Conclusion 423 Abbreviations431 Bibliography433 Index457

List of Illustrations Book cover Fig. 1.15

Pieter Saenredam: Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1636–7. Oil on oak. 59.5 x 81.7 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo credit: National Gallery Picture Library, London. Chapter I

Fig. 1.1

Anonymous illustration, The Clearing of the Churches in Zürich, 1524 from Bullinger’s Reformationsgeschichte. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek) Zürich.

Fig. 1.2

Khludov Psalter, Moscow, Hist. Mus. Cod. 129d, fol. 67r, Ps. 68:22. École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. Photo Credit: PHE – Millet, Paris B1479.

Fig. 1.3

Khludov Psalter, Cod. 129d, fol. 23v, illustrating Psalm 25. State Historical Museum, Moscow.

Fig. 1.4

Church of the Year 2000 (Church Dio Padres Misericordioso), Rome. Interior view, nave. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

Fig. 1.5

The altar. Church of the Year 2000, Rome. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. Consecrated, 2002. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

Fig. 1.6

The Ascension. Minature from the Syriac Evangeliary of Rabbula, parchment codex, 586 A.D. Folio 13v, MS. Plut. I 56, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Italy. Photo credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

ii

Fig. 1.7

Giotto di Bondone, 1266–1336. The Ascension of Christ. Location: Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy. Photo credit: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 1.8

Illuminated Carolingian Gospel Book: miniature depicting the four evangelists. Late eighth century. Aachen Cathedral Treasury (Domschatzkammer), Palatine Chapel, s. n., fol. 13r. Photo credit: Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 1.9

The First Crusade: the army of Peter the Hermit is massacred by the Seljuk Turks. From Passages faits Outremer, ca. 1490. Illuminated by Sebastien Mamerot. Photo Credit: Snark / Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 1.10 St. Peter’s, Coton, Cambridgeshire. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer. Fig. 1.11

Hesse Castle Chapel: 13th century interior. Photo credit: Charles Landgrave.

Fig. 1.12

Saint Catherine parish church, Ludham Church, Norfolk, England. Interior view, choir screen with royal Arms of Elizabeth I in chancel tympanum. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 1.13

Daniel de Blieck. Interior of a Church, 1656. Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum.

Fig. 1.14

Emmanuel de Witte. Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, 1651. Wallace Collection, London.

Fig. 1.15

Pieter Saenredam. Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1636–7. Photo credit: National Gallery Picture Library, London.

Fig. 1.16

Saab vs the Puritans, Lowe & Partners Worldwide advertising agency for Saab. Used with permission from Saab, Sweden.

Fig. 1.17

Temple de Paradis, Lyons. Bibliothèque de Genève, Centre d’iconographie genevoise.

Fig. 1.18 Old North Church, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo credit: Joseph R. Rieg.

list of illustrations

iii

Fig. 1.19 St. Paul’s Parish Church, Edenton, North Carolina. Photo Credit: Robert M. George. Fig. 1.20 Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Exterior view. Architect: Le Corbusier. ©2009 Lucas Gray, photographer. Fig. 1.21

Church of the Year 2000, Rome. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

Chapter II Fig. 2.1

Joachim of Flora. Medieval colour diagram: The Holy Trinity, from Liber Figurarum, twelfth century. MS CCC. 255 A, folio 7v. Courtesy of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Fig. 2.2

Medieval colour diagram: attributed to Byrtferth of Ramsey. The four-fold system of Macrocosm and Microcosm, ca. 1080–90. Oxford, St John’s College, MS 17, folio 7v. Courtesy of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford.

Fig. 2.3

The Master of St Giles. The Mass of St. Giles, 15th century. National Gallery, London. Photo credit: National Gallery Picture Library, London.

Fig. 2.4

Chalgrove, Oxfordshire. ©Rex Harris, photographer.

Fig. 2.5

Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp 1954. Interior view, nave with candalabrum. Architect: Le Corbusier. ©2009 Lucas Gray, photographer.

Fig. 2.6

Jacket cover to the book, The Forgetting by David Shenk. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Fig. 2.7

Saint Pieterskerk, Leiden. © smngllbrt@http://www.flickr. com/photos/ingsie/.

Fig. 2.8

The Godley Mill, 1521, a Zürich propaganda fly-sheet. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

Fig. 2.9

Fontenay Abbey interior, Bourgogne, France. ©Sylvia Okkerse,

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photographer. Fig. 2.10

Sir Isaac Newton. Drawing of the two prisms’ experiment. New College, Oxford, MS361/2. 1671. By permission of the Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford.

Fig. 2.11

Newton’s Colour Circle, 1704.

Fig. 2.12

Colour space depicted in the 1931 CIE Chromaticity Diagram.

Fig. 2.13

Matthias Grünewald. The Resurrection, Isenheim Altarpiece. Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France. Photo Credit: Eric Lessing/ Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 2.14

Saint Severus Apocalypse: Commentary, Beatus of Liebanus: Christ in Majesty, 11th century. Bibliothèque Nationale, France, Ms. Lat. 8878, folios 121v–122.

Fig. 2.15

The Anastasis (The Harrowing of Hell), apse fresco in the south parecclesion, Church of St. Saviour in Chora Kariye Camii, Istanbul. Photographer: Gunnar Bach Pedersen, 2004. Public Domain. http://www.easypedia.gr/el/articles/c/h/o/%CE%9 5%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%BD%CE%B1~Ch ora_Anastasis1.jpg_6140.html.

Fig. 2.16

Filippo Brunelleschi, Pazzi Chapel, Florence. 1429–1461. ©rio wright, photographer.

Fig. 2.17 Matthias Grünewald. Right panel of the Aschaffenburger Maria-Schnee-Altar. Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / ©Art Resource, NY. Fig. 2.18

Sainte Chapelle. Stained glass windows, upper chapel. ©Scott Norsworthy, photographer.

Fig, 2.19

Cistercian grisaille glass window. ©Moni Steele, photographer.

Fig. 2.20

Choral singing in the Grossmünster. Johann Meyer, copper plate engraving, 1710. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

Fig. 2.21 Stained glass windows, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Photo credit: Jonathan Dore, photographer.

list of illustrations

Fig. 2.22

Norwich Cathedral with Flare. ©Simon Bunn, photographer.

Fig. 2.23

Old Church of Delft. ©Theo Jacobs, photographer.

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Fig. 2.24 St. Mary, Burgh-next-Aylsham, Norfolk. ©Peter Bromage, photographer. Fig. 2.25 All Saints Church, Skeyton, Norfolk. ©Peter Bromage, photographer. Fig. 2.26

‘A moment of stillness after the Good Friday liturgy in the Black Friars Priory’, Oxford, England. ©Brother Lew, Black Friars Priory, Oxford.

Fig. 2.27

Choir, Monastery of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Nový Dvůr, Bohemia. Cistercian Monastery. ©Hisao Suzuki, photographer.

Fig. 2.28

Monastery of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Nový Dvůr, Bohemia. Interior passageway and exterior view of apse. ©Hisao Suzuki, photographer.

Chapter III: Fig. 3.1

Interior, Church of Saint Mary, Silchester, Berkshire. Photo credit: Hannelore Hägele, photographer.

Fig. 3.2

Augsburg Cathedral, Bavaria, Germany. Red quarelli over whitewash with figurative wall painting superimposed. Photo credit: Anonymous, Cambridge University classmate.

Fig. 3.3

Augsburg Cathedral. Interior wall. Photo credit: Anonymous, Cambridge University classmate.

Fig. 3.4

Augsburg Cathedral. The nave, looking north-east. Photographer: ‘Dark Avenger’, March 2007. Photo credit: public domain. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Augsburg.

Fig. 3.5

Interior black-on-white wall decoration, Hampden Room, Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, 16th century. ©Knebworth Estates, www.knebworthhouse.com.

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Fig. 3.6

Interior white-on-black wall decoration, Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, 16th century. ©Knebworth Estates, www. knebworthhouse.com.

Fig. 3.7

Theodore Psalter, 1066. BL Add. 19352, f. 27v, Ps. 25/26. ©British Library, London.

Fig. 3.8

Konrad Witz. Basel Cathedral, 1445. Naples National Museum and Gallery of Capodimonte. Photo Credit: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 3.9

Sixt Ringle. Basel Cathedral, 1650. Interior view. Copy by F. Löw V. Bratz, 1785. Private collection, Binningen.

Fig. 3.10

Sixt Ringle, Basel Cathedral. Detail. Private collection, Binningen.

Fig. 3.11

Johann Jakob Neustück, Basel Cathedral watercolour, 1826. Interior view looking east. State Archives of Basel Canton.

Fig. 3.12

Constantin Guise, Basel Cathedral, watercolour, 1852. Interior view looking east. Location unknown.

Fig. 3.13

Interior view, Basel Cathedral, 1999. Photo credit: Erik Schmidt.

Fig. 3.14

Church of Saint Issui (aka: Saint Patricio). A ‘Church of Wales’ church situated in the hamlet of Patrishow (Patricio), Vale of Grwyney, south-east Wales.

Fig. 3.15 All Saints, Skeyton, North Norfolk. View of nave. ©Peter Bromage, photographer. Fig. 3.16

St. Mary, Burgh-next-Aylsham, Norfolk. Clear glass windows in an unequivocally whitewashed church interior. ©Peter Bromage, photographer.

Fig. 3.17

St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, Suffolk, England. ©Simon Knott, photographer.

Fig. 3.18

St. Andrew’s Church, Chesterton, Cambridge. Detail of restored wall paintings. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

list of illustrations

vii

Fig. 3.19

St. Andrew’s Church, Chesterton, Cambridge. Whitewashed nave with Doom painting. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.20

Thaxted Parish Church, Thaxted, Essex. Whitewashed interior, view from south aisle looking through to nave. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.21

The Martyrdom of Saint Edmund, Troston, Suffolk. Recovered wall paintings with whitewashing removed. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.22 Norwich Cathedral. Stripped interior. ©Ella Twitchen, photographer. Fig. 3.23

St Peter’s, Ipswich. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.24 Saint Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. Nave looking east towards rood painting. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer. Fig. 3.25

The Royal Arms of Elizabeth I. St. Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.26

St. Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. A rare example of a Marian rood. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

Fig. 3.27

St Margaret’s, Tivetshall. Commandment Tables. Photo credit: Evelyn Simak.

Fig. 3.28

Gerrit Berckheyde. The Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1673. National Gallery Picture Library, London.

Fig. 3.29

Saenredam, Pieter Jansz. (1595–1665). The Interior of the Grote Kerk at Haarlem, 1636–7. Oil on oak, 59.5 x 81.7 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo credit: National Gallery Picture Library, National Gallery of Art, London.

Fig. 3.30

Catholic church, Fronleichnamskirche, Aachen, Germany, 1928–30. Architect: Rudolph Schwarz.

Fig. 3.31

Altar wall, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Architect: Le Corbusier. ©Lucas Gray, photographer. http://picasaweb.

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google.com/lugray/ChapelOfNotreDameDuHautRonchamp France#slideshow/5376479280111524642. Fig. 3.32

South wall detail, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Architect: Le Corbusier. ©Lucas Gray, photographer. http:// picasaweb.google.com/lugray/ChapelOfNotreDameDuHautR onchampFrance#slideshow/5376479280111524642.

Chapter IV Fig. 4.1

Hans Asper, Portrait of Huldrych Zwingli, Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Fig. 4.2

Bird’s eye view of Zürich, in 1576, Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Grossmünster.

Fig. 4.3

Michael Eytzinger, Novus de Leone Belgico eiusque Topographiae et Historiae Descriptione. Cologne, 1588. British Library, London.

Fig. 4.4

Last Supper, wall painting, Grossmünster, Zürich. © Sacred Destinations Images.

Fig. 4.5

Wall paintings, St. Peterskirche, Zürich. © Sacred Destinations Images.

Fig. 4.6

Text panels, Grossmünster, Zürich. © Victoria George.

Fig. 4.7

Virgin and Child, wall painting, Grossmünster, Zürich. © Sacred Destinations.

Fig. 4.8

Jacobskerk, Utrecht. ©Theo Jacobs, photographer.

Fig. 4.9

Achiltibuie Free Church, northwest Scotland. © Jim Downie, photographer.

Fig. 4.10

The Grossmünster, Zürich. Nave, looking east. Photocredit: h t t p : / / c o m m o n s . w i k i m e d i a . o r g / w i k i / Fi l e : 7 4 1 8 _ _Z%C3%BCrich_-_Grossm%C3%BCnster.JPG

list of illustrations

ix

Chapter V Fig. 5.1

Dalmatic of Charlemagne, The Transfiguration, back of garment, 14th Century. Museum of the Treasury, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican State. Photo Credit: Scala / ©Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.2

Dalmatic of Charlemagne. Christ in Heaven Surrounded by the Church Triumphant, front of garment. 14th Century. Museum of the Treasury, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican State. Photo Credit: Scala / ©Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.3

Fra Angelico, 1387–1455. The Transfiguration, ca. 1440–1445. Fresco. Museo di S. Marco, Florence, Italy. Photo Credit: Scala / ©Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.4

Detail from the Procession of the Martyr Saints. Mosaic. Byzantine, 6th century C.E. San Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. Photo Credit: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice. ©Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.5

Benjamin West, P. R. A., 1738–1820. The Ascension, ca. 1801 Oil on canvas. 125.5 x 86.5 cm. Berger Collection, Denver, Colorado.

Fig. 5.6

Figure of a resurrected woman. Detail of a window from the church of St. Vivien, Rouen. 15th century grisaille glass, 30 x 24 cm. Musée national du Moyen Age – Thermes de Cluny, Paris, France. Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.7

David Edwin, 1794–1869, after Rembrandt Peale. The Apotheosis of Washington. Stipple Engraving, 53.1 x 37.5 cm. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, U.S.A. / Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 5.8

Cornelis Cornelisz von Haarlem, 1562–1538, The Conversion of Saul, ©National Gallery Picture Library, Prague.

Fig. 5.9

Francis Quarles, Emblemes and Hieroglyphes, 1639. Emblem V,

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14. ‘Open heaven, God as Amor Divinus’. Fig. 5:11

Phillip de Loutherbourg, The Supper at Emmaus, 1797. Birmingham Art Gallery.

Fig. 5.12

A diagram of the Planes of Nature. From Charles W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible, 1902.

Chapter VI: Figs 6.1–5 Title pages from Zwingli’s publications by the printer, Christopher Froschauer, 1523–1525: 6.1: Der Hirt/The Shepherd 6.2: Welche ursach gebind ze ufzuren welches die waren ufruerer sygind/Those Who Give Cause for Tumult; 6.3: Ein Antwurt Huldrychen Zwinglis Valentino Compar … Vreggeben/An Answer to Valentin Compar 1525; 6.4: Nachhut von dem Nachtmal/The Practice or Action of the Lord’s Supper 1525; 6.5: Von clarheit unnd gewüsse oder vnbetzogliche/The Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God 1522. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich. Fig. 6.6

The Grossmünster, Zürich, 16th century drawing of the interior. Johannes Wick, Chronik des Chorherren, 1586. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

Fig. 6.7

The Grossmünster, Zürich. A 16th century rendering of the remodeled interior. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

Fig. 6.8

David Roberts, Interior of St. Gommar, Lierre, 1850. Wallace Collection, London.

Chapter VII Fig. 7.1

Interior view of the Calvin Auditorium / John Knox Chapel, Geneva. The National Protestant Church of Geneva.

Fig. 7.2

Restored ceiling of the Maccabees, Temple Saint Pierre,

list of illustrations

xi

Geneva. Photo credit: Association pour la Promotion de l’Art Sacré (APAS), Genève, 1992. Fig. 7.3

Whitewashed ceiling (detail), Calvin Auditorium, Geneva.

Fig. 7.4

Interior of the Church of the Madeleine, Geneva, 1975. ©Association pour la Promotion de l’Art Sacré (APAS), Genève.

Fig. 7.5

Portrait of John Calvin.

Fig. 7.6

Two partial pages from a meeting held on 23 August 1643 describing deliberations about the interior colour scheme for the Temple Saint Pierre. Geneva. On the agenda were interior paint colours for the Temple. White was chosen for the walls and a stone colour for the trim. State Archives RC 142 fol. 316.

Acknowledgements

I

n the research and writing of this book and, indeed, in the working out of my earliest thoughts on its subject, I was fortunate to have guidance and support from a group of scholars whom I would especially like to acknowledge. These are: Mark Cousins, Director of General Studies at the Architectural Association in London, who saw the value in my work and encouraged me to continue my studies at the University of Cambridge in the very first instance; John Gage, with whom I consulted long before I got to Cambridge and who subsequently accepted me as his student; Jean Michel Massing who became my supervisor at Cambridge and who led me to a willing publisher; David Pelteret, who gave a fastidiously detailed critique of my work at a critical juncture in the writing of my dissertation. Richard Rex, whom I met in the Divinity School at Cambridge, has been most generous and written several deeply insightful, detailed and challenging critiques of two versions of the manuscript. He is, indirectly, the person responsible for an additional two years’ work on the text. I am deeply grateful to him for his challenging comments. I dedicate this book to two individuals who have had an inestimable effect on my life and have supported me in reaching the conclusion of this project against the odds: these are my husband, Robert M. George, who has been tireless in his support of me; and Margaret Aston, to whom I owe a special debt. Margaret read this work in its earliest form while I was a student at Cambridge. She never lost sight of the value she perceived in my work, while passing along references and thoughts to me over the years. In this way she inspired me to keep working when funding and publishers seemed out of reach. Her regard for my work, and the fact that for years she kept faith in my project, means that I have achieved a lifetime goal. I am proud to claim her as a colleague and friend. I also wish to express my deep appreciation to the many friends and individuals who have assisted me during the research and writing process with

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their integrity and support at all stages of this project. Foremost is my friend and colleague Hanelore Hagele. Others include Deborah Howard, Eamon Duffy, and Professor Andrew Saint of Cambridge University; Frederike Jeans who taught me to read German and assisted with otherwise unintelligible sixteenth-century Swiss German; David Park, curator of the wall-painting division at the Courtauld Institute who unconditionally opened his files to me and gave me an office in which to work; the librarians at a number of libraries, especially the Central Library and State Archives in Zürich who afforded easy access to materials and willingly assisted with requests. Thanks are also due to the scholars who took the time to correspond with me: Margaret Lemberg, Daniel Gutscher, and Gabriel Mutzenberg; also Andrew Honey, binder at the Bodleian Library, and others like him who sent me references (which I have used) simply because they found the subject of interest; and to other friends who likewise openly and unhesitatingly shared valuable references with me. In this category I must thank Jerry Silverman who introduced me to the Khludov Psalter long before digital reproductions on the internet made it widely accessible; Aiden Semmens, a photographer I met online, who gave me open access to his photographs before Flickr was ever conceived of, and the numerous photographers who allowed me to use their images at no cost or at affordable rates, and without whom I do not know what I should have done. Special thanks go to a small but very important circle of friends who financed pictures or advanced funds on my behalf. In this important category I owe special thanks to John Johnson of Church Hill, Richmond, Virginia, who subsidized reproduction rights for several pictures. Kathryn Coler’s sense of humour made the editing process an unexpected pleasure. The final product would not have been possible without the support of the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association (2009), and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, whose substantial publication grant in 2010 made possible the majority of reproductions in this volume, and, last but not least, Liam Gallagher, the commissioning editor of the Pindar Press.

Foreword

W

hat is white? How should we assess the relationship between white light and white pigment? What bearing do these questions have on the history of the Reformation? We have had opportunities to learn a good deal about theories of colour in recent years, but their bearing on religious history has not headed the agenda of research. Victoria George, who has immersed herself in the theoretical, scriptural and historical aspects of a challenging topic, presents us in this book with a novel and exciting interpretation of church reform in sixteenth-century Europe. The conclusions presented here through a careful inspection of sources in the major centres of ecclesiastical upheaval tell us a great deal about the fundamental thoughts and aims of those who sought to remodel Christian belief and worship — not only through hearts and minds but also through the physical vessels of worship. Churches as well as individuals had to be changed and set on a new path. This has of course been recognized in the numerous recent studies of what may be regarded as the negative aspect of this side of religious revolution. The great merit of this new study is that it looks beyond the now well-recognized destructive waves of iconoclastic reforms that swept away so much religious imagery in the centres of evangelical reform, to explore a new path. What ideals lay behind the altered appearance of cleansed and purified churches of Zurich, Geneva and Basel, in England, the Netherlands, Poland and Scotland, after the waves of image clearance and burning had taken place? Was there already a conscious sense that pure worship demanded a particular kind of pure building? If this is a question that has hitherto received insufficient attention, the exploration pursued in these pages shows one reason why: the sources are problematical. Their careful sifting in the chapters that follow does not hedge that difficulty, but meets it with a wide range of approaches, including a helpful discussion of the colour vocabulary of the Bible, and the concept of divine light as dazzling whiteness. Readers are presented with a strong case for endorsing

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the author’s claims for the centrality of whiteness and whitewashing in Protestant religious reformulation, and its arrival as part of a new Protestant aesthetic. Of course whitewashing had a long history which is helpfully explored here, from Byzantine times onward. It had official and unofficial uses, and served practical as well as dogmatic purifying aims. It was associated early on with the eradication of condemned imagery, and can be seen to have become an established method of church purifying, without any traceable explicit direction. Whiteness itself can be seen as having become, through the process of church clearances, an accepted method, signalling liberation from past errors. The white wall advertised new belief, not only in itself, but as the vehicle for scripture, as texts were inscribed inside churches, making them into corroborative adjuncts of biblical pages. The removal of carved saints and painted stories from church walls that marked the advent of reformed belief in the various centres of reform, meant the departure of colour as well as of long-term holy helpers. Whitewash blanked out these erasures by a process of obliteration that was aimed at minds as well as church buildings. It was, as we are shown here, deliberately aimed at inaugurating a new religious future. What had previously been a Lenten sacrifice, when parishioners were accustomed to having their images screened from view by veils, became a permanent visual deprivation. This amounted to much more than the negative “painting out of images”: rather it represented positively “the painting in of a new symbol signifying … membership [of ] the renewed spiritual congregation” (Chap. V). The intention was plain — and ambitious. Did all this amount to what one could call chromophobia? Perhaps this very question (posed in Chapter III) should alert readers to the inherent dangers that modern terms can have for describing inferred attitudes of the distant past. In the first place it requires an imaginative leap to reconstruct in the mind’s eye anything like a realistic view of the carved and painted representations of Christ and the saints that parishioners took for granted. If there was a tendency to exaggerate chromatic intensity of church interiors already in the seventeenth-century illustrations to Bullinger’s Chronicle, as well as in Victorian imitations, we have been helped by some recent explorations. Both the 2002 exhibition Wonder at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and publications by Richard Marks have made it easier to envisage something of the subtlety as well perhaps as exaggeration of adornment and colour that attracted devotion to late medieval images.

foreword

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There may also be an unresolved (possibly insoluble) problem in establishing the relationship of white walls to white light in early reformed church interiors. Scraping out or whiting out wall paintings and breaking and removing carvings was one thing. But thinking about the removal of colour makes it necessary to consider light as well as pigment: windows as well as walls. As long as stained or painted glass remained in the windows of church or minster (carrying decoration that might be purely armorial or decorative, and without the presence of any heinous attributes of saints and prelates), coloured light could continue to dapple the interior of places of worship with magical effects of shifting rainbow lights, long after the walls had be chastened and whited. This question, touched on in the book, is not easy to answer, given the problems of dating changes to church glazing as well as to walls. Certainly in England, where we know of windows being whitewashed (or redded over) to obscure offensive images, unreformed examples of saints and bishops long continued to aggravate aspiring purifiers. In Geneva too, the reform of church glass seems to have taken place long after the whiting of walls. To what extent were window images deemed less seductively dangerous than saints in other media? Was whitewash, with all its proven value and relative ease of application, at odds with the costs of reglazing? The question of white light, as opposed to white walls, seems imponderable, given the demonstrated difficulties of dating reglazing, even in important churches. Victoria George’s book explores fully the critical changes in attitudes towards church art through the major centres of reform, from Zurich to Geneva to England, using a wide range of sources and methods of approach, from scriptural vocabulary to contemporary (all too slim and problematical) reporting. Readers will find here careful analysis of the colour thinking of both Zwingli and Calvin. But the horizons of this stimulating study are not limited to the reforms of the sixteenth century. They extend into the twentieth century, with reflections on the use of white walls in the Modern Movement, including Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp. The stimulus of this work should surely be enjoyed by plenty of readers apart from historians of the Reformation. Undeniably Zwingli and Zurich are central to the book and the entire topic. In this Swiss centre the question of church imagery was considered and debated and recorded with a fullness that is not paralleled elsewhere. And the dazzle of purifying whiteness that became thereafter a long-lasting architectural model seems to radiate from Zurich, with its small city intensity and assurance of founding a new church in a new time. The model may not

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have been readily transferable from city to nation state, but the inspiration fired other minds and aspiration far beyond Zurich and Switzerland. And Zwingli’s reported words spelt challenge as well as triumph. “In Zurich we have churches that are positively luminous; the walls are beautifully white!” Victoria George has shown us how to read this as the start of a new reformed aesthetic that had far-reaching influence. Thanks to her, whitewash can be recognized as having been launched into a new future, having established a new “iconography of faith”. The beauty of blankness had found a new spiritual dimension.

Margaret Aston

Preface

T

his book is about the whitewashing of churches during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. It is also about the different meanings that had accrued to the colour white in Western culture up until that time. The way the Protestant Reformer thought about colour was part of this tradition. Thus, this book is also about the intersection of the history of whitewashing and of ways of thinking about colour, in particular, the colour white, and the uses to which it has been put. My focus is the sixteenth century but because of the Humanist movement, Plato and other ancients also have a voice in this history, which ends with the second wave of Reformation in England in the middle of the seventeenth century. I investigate the meaning of the act of whitewashing and of the associations made with the colour white in the early phase of the reformation of the Church. I argue specific theological and spiritual premises for the use of this colour on a sufficiently wide basis for it to become a critical visual component of the Protestant identity conceptually, vis-à-vis public perceptions, if not always in practice. The central event around which this history is organized begins with that ‘moment’ in June, 1524 when the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli and the Zürich City Council announced the wholesale city-wide removal of images from its church interiors. I propose that within one generation, if not sooner, the whitewashed interior formed a central element of a new iconography of faith, reflecting a particular intellectual orientation to colour, primarily acquired through the Bible but also Benedictine doctrine studied by each of the Magisterial Reformers and transmitted to society through preaching, teaching, the printed word, and the ‘blank’ wall itself. Following events in Zürich in 1524 the practice of whitewashing spread, and was either adopted or considered by the Protestant church at large on a community-by-community basis. Some cases are reasonably clear-cut where leaders sought either to emulate Zwingli or his successor in radicalism, John Calvin. This is especially true in Switzerland, England, Scotland and the

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Netherlands. There are other situations which are less obvious but where strong inferences are reasonably made that whitewashing took place as a metaphoric act. In a critical sense one of the arguments I hope to make is that the whitewashed wall is a representation in its own right, notwithstanding that the practice often occurred in the context of iconoclasm and the obliteration of images. It was, simply, a representation of a different order; a new form of iconography of a newly formed, reformed or renewed faith; my point being here that it operated at a number of levels and served metaphorically very capably at each of them. Thus, as part of the development of the metaphorical history of the colour white as it relates to the subject of this book I examine select symbolisms published, or delivered in sermon form, by the two magisterial reformers most strongly associated with the practice, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, both of whom have already been mentioned. In his 1966 book Charles Garside, then of Yale University, brought the sixteenth century reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, to the attention of the Western world (outside of Switzerland and that of Reformation historians, that is). With clarity, dramatic tension and academic precision, Garside developed an account of the period leading up to and including the stripping of Zürich ’s churches in his seminal study. The visual story is only one among several told by him in his account of transformation of the Catholic Church. Garside analyses Zwingli’s position on the arts in general, including music, painting and sculpture in the context of his evolving theology which in 1519 reflected the traditional Roman church and by 1524 figured among the most radical of the entire Reformation era. Zwingli called for, and got, nothing less than drastic ecclesiastical reform. The effect of these reforms on the making of art is still in the future when Garside’s study ends. Many histories since Garside’s have explored the changes that took place in the relationship of society to images as a result of the iconoclasm of the Reformation. The impact of Reformed thinking on the use and making of images has become a fertile area of research since Garside, and continues to attract an increasing number of historians, art historians, and scholars of material culture. The ‘blankness’ of the Protestant, Reformed or Puritan ecclesiastical interior, as it was often described by sixteenth and seventeenth century observers, the lay public, traveller and historian alike, is often noted by contemporary scholars. Premised no doubt on the fact that lime-washes are, traditionally, considered to be a cheap form of paint; these same scholars

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have typically dispensed with discussion of the practice in one paragraph or less in any given text. The received view generally expressed by these groups — that whitewashing followed iconoclasm as a form of ‘clean-up’ or ‘cover-up’ — is not without cause, but it is not the whole picture either. An exception to this pattern is Andrew Graham-Dixon’s A History of British Art, in which Graham-Dixon explores the Protestant whitewashings and their aftermath for what they can tell us about the relationship of the English people to colour and their reputation for chromophobia, a term Graham-Dixon uses taking, I believe, a cue from Patrick Collinson.1 Still, where whitewashing of the churches is recognized as a signal, on the whole it remains un-probed for its meaning beyond the limited context of its role as a cheap coat of paint. Its significance is completely overlooked by Eamon Duffy (The Stripping of the Altars, 1992) and dismissed by Patrick Collinson (‘From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia’, Stenton lecture, Reading, 1986). And, while it is mentioned by Carlos Eire (War Against the Idols, 1986) and Margaret Aston, who does recognize it as an important subject (see England’s Iconoclasts, 1988, and ‘Iconoclasts in England’ in Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, Kalamazoo, 1989), it remains true that no one has systematically explored the practice for the relationships that may be drawn between it and the emergence of a Protestant identity, for parallels between its metaphoric, symbolic, and propagandistic roles in the Protestant Reformation and an analogous position in the reform movements of the Catholic Church (Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercians, the L’Art Sacré movement), or for the role of whiteness in the colour-thinking of the Reformers. My intention here is to deliver a serious, but readable book which dramatizes the moment of transformation of Catholic Churches into Protestant temples in terms of colour history. In this book an hypothesis is presented about the Protestant relationship to colour within the history of the whitewashings themselves as a pattern that transforms much of Switzerland, is brought to England by zealous repatriated English divines,2 and is subsequently brought to the Netherlands. A study of this kind has 1 David Batchelor had not yet written Chromophobia, but Collinson refers in his 1986 Stenton lecture “From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia, the Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation” to “iconophobia” and colour. 2 The relationship between Zwinglianism and reform in England which, until recently has tended to be ignored is, alas, only mooted here as part of the story. However, that the transmission of Zwinglian ideals and practices took place via English and Anglophile divines

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not to my knowledge been conducted before, notwithstanding the many associations of Puritanism and Calvinism with whiteness and starkness that one reads in Reformation histories.

repatriated following Mary Tudor’s death is beyond doubt. The reader may consult almost any of the many studies of Marian exiles. One of the most recent is Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’, in Heinrich Bullinger, Life–Thought– Influence, Emidio Campi and Peter Opitz, eds., Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd. 24, Vol. 2, 2007, pp. 891–934.

I Introduction A Short History of Whiteness Treuthe nedeth no peynted or coloured termes. William Horman, Vulgaria, 1519 Lyke as a Chamell [chameleon] hath all coulours saue white; so hath a flatterer al poyntes saue honestie. W. Baldwin, Treatise of Morall Philosophie, 1547 If these thinges be true which experience tryeth that a naked tale doth most truly set foorth the naked truth. That where the countenance is faire, ther need no colours, that paynting is meter for ragged walls then fine marble, that veritie then shineth most bright when she is in least bravery.1 John Lyly, The Anatomy of Wyt, London, 1578, fol. A III2

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n 15 June 1524, following a period of religious and political turmoil, the city council of Zürich, in what was then the Swiss Confederation, announced its decision to remove all images from the city’s churches, including paintings, frescoes and statues. No mention of a plan to paint

1 See William Horman and M. R. James, eds., Vulgaria, 1519 and 1926, p. 91, quoted in Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Ann Arbor, 1966, #T585; William Baldwin, A Treatise of Morall Philosophie, quoted in Tilley, #C222; John Lyly, The Anatomy of Wyt, London, 1578, fol. A III2; The Complete Works of John Lyly, Oxford, 1902, vol. I, p. 81. The state of being utterly without embellishment forms the heart of proverbs in this vein. There are many sayings (in the English-speaking world anyway) to the effect that truth is naked, plain, simple and has no

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images over with white lime was made in the announcement.2 Any minutes or records kept of deliberations that led to the decision to whitewash were either lost or destroyed or, perhaps, never even made.3 Yet the organised thoroughness of the operation that accomplished this huge and pivotal task testifies to a plan. The plan is sketched in several contemporary records. A committee was assembled including twelve men: a representative from each of the city’s guilds, selected members of the city council, and two men from the Constaffel (equivalent to a sheriff ’s office).4 Additional members included the senior city architect and an unspecified number of stonemasons, blacksmiths, locksmiths, carpenters and unskilled labourers.5 This group was headed by the three ‘people’s priests’ (Leutpriester) of the city: Huldrych Zwingli, Leo Jud and Dr. Heinrich Engelhard. After five days of closed-door preparation the decoration committee, along with the workmen, visited each of the eight churches in the city of Zürich and its immediate environs.6 The men arrived with their tools, locked the doors behind them and, church by church, proceeded systematically to remove every painting and sculpture from the interior. During these thirteen days, altars were stripped — vessels, votive lamps, crucifixes and easel paintings were broken up or burned. Frescoes and wall paintings were chiselled off the walls.7 On the thirteenth day, the pews need of rhetoric or garnish of any kind including, or especially, colouring. There is also a sense in which — and this is frequently conveyed, if not directly, then sotto voce, as in the quotation from Baldwin — that the state of being without colour may be equated with honesty, and honesty with whiteness. The association of colour with dishonesty is ancient. (See the discussion of the Old Testament in the next chapter.) Non-biblical proverbs associating truth and honesty with the absence of colour or colourlessness, were frequent in the early sixteenth century. See Desiderius Erasmus, Collectanea Adagiorum Verterum in Opera Omnia, vol. I, 805E, quoted in Tilley, #C221. 2 See Charles Garside, Jr., Zwingli and the Arts, New Haven and London, 1966, p. 158. 3 Ibid. 4 See Émil Egli, Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Zurcher reformation in den Jahren 1519–1533, 2 vols., Zürich, 1879, doc. 552. 5 See Bernard Wyss, Die Chronik des Bernard Wyss, Georg Finsler, ed., Basel, 1901, p. 2. 6  See Heinrich Bullinger, Heinrich Bullingers Reformationsgeschichte, Johann Jakob Hottinger and Hans Heinrich Vögeli, eds., Frauenfeld, 1838–40, vols. I–IV. See vol. I, p. 175. 7 George Finsler states that the wall pictures in the Grossmünster were not completely removed, because in the seventeenth century bits of them [Spurren] reappeared through the whitewash. Antistes Johann Jacob Breitinger had them whitewashed over again. See Johann Caspar Morikofer, Joh. Jac. Breitinger in Zürich, Leipzig, 1874, p. 117.

I Introduction

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(literally, ‘stools’/Stuël, now Stühle) were pulled out from the Grossmünster. Some of these were carried away by citizens who could use them; the rest were taken outside and burned8 (Fig. 1.1). Choir stalls, which were subject to different concerns, would be removed two years later.9 Only the imageless altars were retained inside.10 Following the removal of images, the walls were whitewashed so that no traces of what had been there before remained.11 It was on completion of this project that Huldrych Zwingli, who was also the most well-known and senior of the Leutpriester, expressed his unequivocal approval, exclaiming, ‘Wir habe ze Zürich gar hälle Tempel: die Wänd sind hüpsch wyss!’ Reported in Oscar Farner,12 this statement was first translated into English in 1966 by Charles Garside, Jr.: ‘In Zürich we have churches which are positively luminous; the walls are beautifully white!’13 Zwingli’s exclamation of delight may be translated in various ways, each with its own shade of meaning. The merits of different translations are open to argument. In the end, each yields the same essential pieces of information. In a total See Wyss, p. 43. These were removed in July, August and September 1526. See Wyss, Chronik, p. 43; Bullinger I, p. 367; Bullinger I, p. 290; Gerold Edlibach, Chronik in Mittheilungen der antiquarischen Geselleschaft in Zürich, J. M. Usteri, ed., Bd. 4, Zürich, 1846, p. 297. It is possible that, in contrast to the nave pews, the detailing on the choir stalls was acceptable. 10 See Wyss, p. 42. 11 The five primary texts for the history of this event are: Bullinger I, pp. 173–76; Wyss, Chronik, pp. 40–44; Huldrych Zwingli, Huldrych Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Georg Finsler and Émil Egli, et al., eds., in Corpus Reformatorum (vols. 88–101), Berlin, 1905. vol. IV, p. 150; Oskar Farner, Heinrich Bullinger am Grossmünster in Zürich, Zürich, 1942, pp. 6–7; Farner, Huldreich Zwingli, Seine Verkündigung und ihre ersten Früchte, Zürich, 1954, Vol. III, pp. 485–88. 12 Zwingli speaking to Hans Stockar in June 1524, quoted in Farner III, p. 490. Translated in, Garside, p. 160. 13 See Garside, p. 160. Zwingli’s original statement is found in Farner III, p. 490. In his biography of Zwingli, Oskar Farner translates this statement as, ‘Our temples in Zürich are indeed light; the walls are beautifully white!’ (See Oskar Farner, Huldrych Zwingli, seine Entwicklung zum Reformator 1506–1520, vol. II, Zürich, 1946, p. 61). ‘Pretty’ or ‘beautiful’ are better translations of Hupsch than ‘luminous’; so it would seem that Farner’s translation is closer to the original text. Michael Baxandall has pointed out that in Ciceronian Latin (as compared with medieval Latin), different words were used to indicate different kinds of whiteness or blackness. The term albus indicated a dead white, the term candidus, a gleaming white. Albus might be used in connection with an eggshell, white hair, lamb’s wool or complexion; for example: Albus an ater sit, nescio or non curo. / I know not, care not whether he is white or black [skinned]. Candidus indicated gleam; light reflecting off an object, i.e. off metal or a wave. Ater opposed albus indicating a lustreless black. Niger indicated a glossy black 8 9

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of thirteen days of coordinated team effort, out of sight of the laity, the six churches of Zürich and those churches immediately outside her walls had been ‘cleansed’ of all images and painted white inside, transforming them from Catholic churches into model churches of Reformed Protestantism.14 It was not enough to leave the walls and altars stripped of their trappings, which had come to be perceived as forms of ‘Papist’ (Roman Catholic) pollution, corruption and defilement. On the contrary, the Zürich city council found it necessary, following Zwingli’s lead, to take the extra step of painting each city church’s interior white with lime,15 after all images had been removed, even when it could have been legitimately claimed that the temples had been ‘cleansed’ of their idols already. What was the works committee doing when they whitewashed the churches, if the purging of idols had already been accomplished, the altars stripped and walls scraped bare? and opposed candidus. Black human hair might be niger where woven black wool would be ater. As a pair albus / ater were associated with fortune (good/bad), and candidus / niger with moral worth. These distinctions were not retained by Saint Jerome. This might have been intentional when he wrote the Vulgate translation of the Bible. The Indo-European root of the English colour term for ‘white’ began as a word indicating ‘white, to shine’. Luminosity continued to be part of the meaning of ‘hwit’ in Old English, but, according to Casson, by the Middle Ages a shift takes place whereby a number of non-hue color terms indicating brilliance and gleam were dropped from the language. By 888 there is evidence that ‘kweit’ could be snow or milk, the one highly reflective, the other not at all. Ronald Casson, ‘Color Shift: evolution of English color terms’ in Color Categories in Thought and Language, C. L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, eds., Cambridge, UK, 1997, pp. 224–228. Garside may have been reading into his translation of Zwingli’s words his (Garside’s) idea of the nature of the whiteness to which Zwingli referred. Did Garside’s knowledge of Zwingli’s study of Cicero influence his interpretation of Zwingli’s exclamation? Would Zwingli have rejoiced about albus? (Would dead white have been considered beautiful?) Or is it more likely that Zwingli was referring to candidus, because it would have been gleaming, dazzling and, therefore, more beautiful, even suggestive of the transcendental? See M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, 1971, pp. 8–9. I am indebted to Margaret Aston for calling my attention to this reference in Baxandall. 14 Swiss Reformation scholar Daniel Gutscher has raised questions about the extent of whitewashing that actually took place at the Grossmünster in June 1524. See the following note. 15 According to Daniel Gutscher, who worked on its conservation, the Grossmünster was not whitewashed ‘top to bottom’, as was the cathedral in Strasbourg, but only to a limited extent, perhaps only as far as a man could reach without standing on a scaffold (or with very minimal scaffolding). Gutscher holds this view because of the speed with which the ‘cleansings’ were carried out (one week) and because the churchwarden’s accounts indicate

I Introduction

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The reformation of the Catholic Church, which began in Germany with Luther (1517), in Zurich with Zwingli, and in England with Henry VIII (1534–40),16 resulted in the destruction or obliteration of most religious images, which, in their various forms, had served in the Roman church for centuries as aids to worship. The rest were hidden or stored away. In very many instances, the interiors of Protestant or Reformed Protestant churches whose images had been excised were also whitewashed with lime. The practice of whitewashing as a religio-political statement of Protestantism began with the Zwinglian revolution in Zürich in 1524.17 At

that the amount of lime amassed at this time was insufficient to cover all surfaces of the interior. See Gutscher, Das Grossmünster in Zürich, Bern, 1983, pp. 158, 164, 164n.650 and personal correspondence with the author, June 2000. Although it is true that contemporary chronicles do not specify the extent of whitewashing, all indicate that the church interiors were ‘whitewashed’, at least giving the impression to subsequent historians that they were completely whitewashed, or sufficiently whitewashed to have achieved the appearance thereof. For further discussion of this issue, see Chapter IV. 16 That the Reformation in England falls into several distinct periods of legislative, ecclesiastical, theological and social change is now recognised by historians such as Margaret Aston, Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh and others. (For corroboration of this view, see M. C. McClendon, J. P. Ward and M. MacDonald, eds., Protestant Identities: Religion, Society and Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation England, Stanford, 1999, pp. 1–15.) For the purposes of this study, the Reformation in England might be said to begin with the officially sanctioned removal of images ordered by Edward VI in 1547. However, while Henry VIII’s rejection of Papal authority in 1534, the dissolution of the monasteries (1536– 45), and events in the intervening years (1535–46) did not yield widespread whitewashings, I have chosen to use the earlier dates of 1534–40 to indicate that historical ‘moment’ when irreversible changes were initiated within the Christian Church in England. From at least 1532 onward, pivotal links had been formed with reforming cities on the Continent providing news of developments and new texts to people in London and elsewhere in England, which were extremely influential, including news of reform in Zürich, Basel, Strasbourg and Geneva. For a discussion of this see Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, Oxford, 1988, pp. 207–12, esp. pp. 209–10, and Gottfried Locher, ‘Zwingli’s Influence in England and Scotland, Dates and Problems’, in Zwingli’s Thought, New Perspectives, Leiden, 1981, pp. ix–xvi, 340–85. Aston discusses the specific importance of the example of Strasbourg (1530) to Edwardine reform, but also of Karlstadt and others from the early 1520’s during Henry’s reign. However, incidents of white liming as an expression of Protestant iconoclasm in England had not yet reached a critical mass by 1535. 17 There is documentary evidence in a ninth century psalter of the whitewashing out of images of Christ over the Chalke Gate in Istanbul (see Chapter II.) Zwingli could not have known about this psalter, but the psalter and subsequent reproductions of it testify to the impulse to whitewash in the context of obliterating and cleansing undesirable material.

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its peak, the practice of whitewashing had touched nearly every reforming community in Europe, if not in actuality, then at least by reputation. The transformative process of whitewashing church interiors came to an end in England only in the latter half of the seventeenth century, during a second wave of iconoclastic activity (between 1643 and 1644) led by the Puritan William Dowsing (1596–1668), who was appointed by the Earl of Manchester as his Visitor to consolidate reform in the churches of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. Thus, the transformation of churches from Roman to Reformed involved a process which spanned more than a century. During this period, Protestantism defined itself and consolidated its corporate identity. Whitewashing, I argue, played a critical role in this process as an agent of change, revolutionary in terms of the visual transformation that it helped to bring about in the fabric of church buildings both on the Continent and in England, and also in terms of the transformation it created in the ways people would henceforward visualise faith. It was an incremental and complex process, whose unity, scholars now agree, can only be seen in retrospective, but in certain critical respects, it would take only one generation for the whitened church to become normative.18 An historical account of the practice of whitewashing of church interiors during the Protestant Reformation is necessarily also an account of the process — simultaneously practical and symbolic, religious, political and psychological — through which the whitewashed interior became an established iconographic element of the Protestant church, inseparable from its corporate and spiritual identity. In this book, I do not attempt to identify every incident of the painting over of images in those cities and villages that embraced the reform movement during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The individual incidents of iconoclastic activity are too numerous as well as varied, involving countless individual episodes of iconoclasm and many battles. These battles took many different forms: military, theological and political. In order to highlight a pattern of dissemination of thinking and praxis relating to this phenomenon, I have chosen to analyse the migration of the practice only between certain major centres of the Reformation: Zürich, Geneva and Basel, in the Swiss Confederation, to England and the Netherlands. With this in mind, I include lesser incidents of whitewashing 18 See Trevor Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing, Woodbridge, 2001, for a detailed account and analysis of Dowsing’s life and activities. Cf. J. G. Cheshire, ‘William Dowsing’s Destructions in Cambridgeshire,’ Cambs. and Hunts. Arch. Soc., 3 (1914), pp. 77–91.

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only where they provide salient, pivotal or counter-puntal evidence. There are scores of churchwardens’ accounts, travelogues, diaries and theological tracts yet to be studied in order to more completely tell this story even though only one in twenty churchwarden’s accounts survive. To help us understand the impulse to whitewash, in this study I analyse the colour-thinking of two major radical reformers: Huldrych Zwingli, who, as we have seen, spearheaded reform in Zürich and its environs; and John Calvin, theologian and reformer of the second generation of Protestantism. Calvin is most well known for his authorship of the Institutes of the Christian Religion and for the establishment of the Christian commonwealth in Geneva during the 1540s and 1550s, out of which the movement of international Calvinism grew. Calvinism is equally famous for its putatively severe programme of religious instruction and social indoctrination as for its religious tenets. It is also, according to most histories, the movement most closely associated with the whitewashed interior. Calvin, perhaps erroneously, has historically been credited with the whitewashing of Geneva’s churches sometime between 1536 and 1541, until recently eclipsing the whitewashed interiors of Zwingli’s Zürich, although the latter predate Calvin’s arrival in Geneva by more than ten years. It will be my conclusion in this book that, in a critical sense, the theologies of both Zwingli and Calvin, which are examined in Chapters VI and VIII, demanded the use of the colour white not only as a means of eliminating ‘idols’ and papism from communities committed to the reform of their churches, but also as a force for the reform of the Christian worshipper’s relationship to the visual in the practice of his faith. I argue that, in this latter context, whitewashing becomes as much a proselytising agent of change as it is a form of discipline and a critical element of emerging identity. Thus, this book represents a study of the way these two highly influential Protestant reformers thought about colour; it theorises the role of colour-thinking in the Protestant mind and implications of colour-thinking about whiteness for the process of reform. The traditional view held by Reformation historians about whitewashing — that it was primarily a practical and economical way to cover images — is undeniable. Limewashes were, indeed, relatively cheap;19 they had been used on the interior walls of churches on the Continent and in the British Isles for centuries. The English church historian John Charles Cox cites numerous 19 See Louis Francis Salzman, Buildings in England Down to 1540: A Documentary History, Chapter 10, ‘Plaster, Whitewash, Paint,’ pp. 155–72, for an indication of the relative expense of pigments compared with chalk or lime.

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accounts of the pre-Reformation white-liming of church interiors in the British Isles. The earliest is the retro-quire of Peterborough Cathedral in Cambridgeshire in 1190; another pre-Reformation example is Saint Michael’s Church in Bath (Somerset), where a full record exists of both the interior and exterior (tam infra quam extra) whitewashing of the church in 1394. The interior of Saint Dunstan’s in Canterbury was whitewashed in 1490. Cox observed in 1913, ‘The once prevalent notion that the whitewashing of the interior of churches was a debasing idea of Post-Reformation origin can be easily refuted by evidence in the written record (such as sacristy rolls) from the time of the white-liming of Peterborough retro-quire in 1190 down to the first half of the sixteenth century.20 Cox had to have been one of the earliest to call attention to the added ‘value’ (in this case, pejorative) that had accrued to whitewashed walls in connection with Reformation purgings, cleansings and purifyings. He suggests at the same time that the notion of its having always been a debasing phenomenon was erroneous. He continues, ‘Notwithstanding the abundance of good mural figure and design painting, there were frequently large surfaces in our parish churches which, from their uneven surface or from lack of funds, were treated, from time to time, with the whitewasher’s brush.’21 Here Cox was very likely the first to problematise the practice, but he has overstated the case. It is evident from the records that the whitewashing out of wall paintings was from the start a ‘debasing idea’ in the view of a significant segment of society.22 Cox’s statements recognised that the social, religious and political perception of the practice of whitewashing changed over time. Yet some did behold in religious images the work of the Anti-Christ, who gloried in the whitewashing of the churches and felt liberated by the practice. This study explores the ramifications of meaning of

20 See John Charles Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts from the Fourteenth Century to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1913, pp. 89–90. I thank Margaret Aston for calling to my attention this example cited by Cox. In addition to churchwardens’ accounts, there are other records of whitewashings in various import/export accounts, travelogues and diaries. See also Salzman, Buildings in England Down to 1540, Oxford, 1952, cited above. 21 See Cox, p. 89. 22 See Erasmus’s letter to Willibald Pirckheimer, 9 May 1529 in Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum, viii 162, no. 2158; Hans Stockar’s comments in Farner III, 490. A. Porta wrote that ‘a beautiful and edifying painting was better than a blank wall’ (quoted in Freedberg, cited note 34 below, p. 84). Freedberg notes that in this reference to blank walls, Porta is playing on the word ‘blind,’ because in the original he writes, ‘eenen blinden muer’ — perhaps making reference to its whiteness, or to the Protestant view that images were blind and useless.

I Introduction

1.1. Anonymous illustration of The Clearing of the Churches in Zürich, 1524 from Bullinger’s Reformationsgeschichte. Zurich Central Library (Zentralbibliothek, Zürich).

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1.2. Khludov Psalter, Moscow, Hist. Mus. Cod. 129d, fol. 67r, Ps. 68:22.. Ècole Pratique des Hautes Ètudes, Paris. Photo Credit: PHE – Millet, Paris B1479.

I Introduction

1.3. Khludov Psalter, Moscow, Hist. Mus. Cod. 129d, fol. 23v., illustrating Psalm 25. State Historical Museum, Moscow.

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the whitewashing of images and suggests ways in which ‘spiritual meaning could be found in blank walls.’23 Cox was probably unaware that white lime had been used to obliterate images in the ninth century in Constantinople during the first iconoclastic controversy, 726–843 C.E. The act of removing an icon of Jesus Christ during this period by whitewashing is depiced in the Khludov Psalter (Figs. 1.2, 1.3). Over time, however, more extensive ramifications accrued to the practice. Building on questions raised by Garside, Peter Auksi, in 1979, identified the emergence of a new aesthetic that had developed out of Zwingli’s and Calvin’s changes to the liturgy.24 Auksi finds in Zwingli’s and Calvin’s thought,25 an aesthetic of simplicity and silence that has its basis in Scripture (particularly John 4:24 and the Pauline letters)26 and the writings of Church Fathers, especially Augustine. One of the most oft-quoted facts about Zwingli’s career as Zürich leutpriester is his silencing of singing and music in Zürich’s churches which took effect in 1523. Indeed, according to Potter, once Zürich had developed its own liturgy and form of prayer, ‘long intervals of silence must have made [a Zwinglian service] something like a later Quaker assembly.’ Despite its strengths27, however, Auksi’s argument does not go far enough. Although he acknowledges that Zwingli allowed ‘those outward representations to be displayed [in church] that had never aided in worship’ (i.e., decorative ornamentation such as trees, lions’ heads and cattle),28 for Auksi the ‘simplicity and silence’ aesthetic focussed mainly on liturgy and music. In this context he neglects the subject of colour in church interiors, the whitewashing of Zürich’s ecclesiastical interiors, the eradication of narrative imagery, and the implications of this as a constituent element of the aesthetic of silence. 23 See Margaret Aston, ‘Iconoclasm in England’ in Clifford Davidson and Anne Eljenholm Nichols (eds.), Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, Kalamazoo, MI, 1989, p. 80. 24 Cf. Garside, pp. 39–52, esp. pp. 39–41. 25 See Peter Auksi, ‘Simplicity and Silence: The Influence of Scripture on the Aesthetic Thought of the Major Reformers’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 10, no. 4, December 1979, pp. 343–64; ‘Christian Plain Style: The Evolution of a Spiritual Ideal,’ Church History, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 228–31. The latter is essentially a redaction of the longer, earlier article. 26 John 4:24: ‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ See also Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, the Letter of Paul to the Colossians, 2 Cor. 4:16 and 11:3; Phil. 2:3. These are cited in Auksi, ‘Simplicity and Silence’, pp. 344–345; G.R. (George Richard) Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge and New York, 1976, p. 113, 113n.6, 114, 121. 27 Potter, p. 114. 28 See Z III, 900.

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In the nineteenth century, the Swiss novelist Gottfried Keller described the cleansing of the churches in terms of the ‘removal of everything colourful’, as though, he says, ‘the church interior had been subjected to death at the hands…of the relentless logic of the soundless word.’ In Keller’s view, it is the notion not only of obliteration, but also of a world stripped of its colour, that is lamented by society. This is significant because most studies emphasize the eradication of images and deal cursorily, if at all, with the role that colour and the suppression of colour played in the Reformation movement.29 Keller shows himself to be a man of his times, associating the white wall with silence and relentless logic, a description which looks forward to the modernist rationale of the ‘machine age’ (Figs. 1.4, 1.5). In England’s Iconoclasts, and the related essay, ‘Iconoclasm in England’, historian Margaret Aston describes the symbolic, political and ritual meanings attached to the practice of whitewashing walls during the first period of the Protestant movement. Building on Garside’s work, she notes that Zwingli not only rejoiced in the luminosity of his churches’ whitened walls, he found something personally liberating about them. For many Protestants, she argues, there seemed to be a spiritual meaning in the blank walls and silence created by Zwingli’s reformed liturgy.30 Writing of the direct influence on English reformers (especially on Thomas Cromwell), of the Strasbourg iconoclasm and of Martin Bucer’s writings, published in English beginning in 1535, she writes, quoting Marshall’s 1535 version of Bucer’s 1529–30 treatise: The troubles that Strasbourg was putting behind her for England lay ahead. Bucer and his translators looked forward to a time when the scars of erstwhile idolatry would no longer be visible, when pure whitewashed walls would proclaim the delivery of God’s people ‘throughout the whole world.’31 See Gottfried Keller, The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula: Two novellas, Bayard Quincy Morgan (trans.), New York, 1852, rpt. 1974, pp. 96–97. 30 ‘Extremist purifiers, aiming to free believers from the religious clutter that had endangered their forbears, found spiritual meaning in blank walls and silence.’ ‘Iconoclasm in England: Official and Clandestine’ in Davidson and Nichols, p. 80. Cf. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 38, 209. For additional references to whitewashing in Aston, see England’s Iconoclasts pp. 43, 259, 320, 331, 363n.64. 31 Aston, England’s Iconoclasts (p. 209) refers to William Marshall’s ‘Englished’ version of Bucer’s treatise (Pyctures and ymages, STC 24238 (BL C 37 a 28)). Two editions of this work were published in English; the one by William Marshall (ca. September, 1535) and another 29

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Aston observes that the process of whitewashing became an act of ritual cleansing in England through a ceremony called the ‘vanquishing of the idol…designed to sweep idolaters into the purified space created by the destroyers,’ suggesting at the same time that, in this way, the Reformed church ‘aspired’ to a Christendom over which the whitened interior would settle as ‘visual attestation to the Reformation having secured the world for the True Faith.’32 She links the obliteration of images with the whitewashed wall as symbolic functions that proclaim deliverance from ‘Popery’. Aston was the first to suggest that the Reformed church seemed to find spiritual meaning in the whitewashed wall and that a body of whitewashed churches may even have formed part of certain reformers’ vision for the Church.33 This is consistent with David Freedberg’s research on iconoclasm in the Netherlands during its Reformation where he found evidence of ritual associations with whitewashing by 1554.34 To the process of obliteration, then, the ceremonial is joined, which introduces the element of symbolism into the practice. In addition to the objective of obliteration the act of cleansing in this context possesses the fundamental aspects of any religious ritual deliberately repeated to a specific end; that is, the goal of achieving a particular state of being for the worship space itself with important religious implications for those who enter into it. In this way, church by church, the overarching goal of cleansing by John Gough (ca. 1535). The full title of the English publication is: A treatise declarying and shewing dyvers causes taken out of the holy scriptur, of the sentences of holy faders, and of the decrees of devout Emperours, that pyctures and other ymages which were wont to worshypped ar in no wise to be suffred in the temples or churches of Cristen men. By the whiche treatise the reder that is indifferent, shall se and percyve, how good and godly a dede it was of the Senatoures of Argentine [Argentoratum, meaning Strasbourg], that of late daies they caused all the ymages with their auters [altars] to be cleane taken out of their churches. The full title hints at the value that would accrue to iconoclasm as a holy deed, the Reformation equivalent of ‘Good Works’. For a full discussion of the Bucer treatise (as well as other continental treatises addressing the subject of images that entered England ca. 1532), and the implications of it for the budding English Reformation, see Aston, English Iconoclasts, pp. 203–210. For details on Marshall and Gough, see ibid., p. 203 n.45. 32 See Aston, ‘Iconoclasm in England’, p. 179. 33 For references to whitewashing in Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, see pp. 38, 39, 43, 209, 259, 264, 318, 320, 331, 363, n.64. 34 See David Freedberg, Iconoclasm and Painting in the Netherlands, 1566–1609, (Dissertation: D. Phil., Oxford, 1972). (Published as Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609, New York, 1988); see also Chapter III, this book.

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Christendom of popery would be accomplished, however piecemeal.35 Some of the optimism about this goal is reflected by Hugh Latimer who, in 1548, wrote in a sermon delivered at Saint Paul’s in London: Howbeit there is now very good hope that the king’s majesty, being by the help of good governance of his most honourable counsellors trained and brought up in learning, and knowledge of God’s word, will shortly provide a remedy, and set an order herein; which thing that it may so be, let us pray for him. Pray for him, good people; pray for him. Ye have great cause and need to pray for him.36 This is not a prayer for whitewash. It is a prayer for King Edward and the day, which Latimer is confident will come, when all of Christendom will be cleansed of idolatry. Edward’s first injunctions were an initial step toward this goal. The whitewashings were a visual representation of the process both as it unfolded and as it was realised. In the Psychopannychia, one of John Calvin’s earliest published texts following his conversion to Protestantism (written in 1534 in response to Anabaptist claims about the status of the soul in the resurrection of the body), he demonstrates his scholarly command of hermeneutics and the language of signs, metaphor and metonymy. There are several devices relevant to this study discussed by Calvin at length in the Psychopannychia. These include the idea of the putting on, taking off, and wearing of the white garment of faith, the import of the moment the garment is given, and the body as an obstacle to communion with God. These symbols are important to this study because they demonstrate how closely aligned is the idea of the garment of faith worn by the righteous with the whitewashing of churches as a metaphorical garment of faith donned by the church; also that the connection between the two metaphors would not have been lost on Calvin, who amply demonstrates (again, in the Psychopannychia) an intimate knowledge of the white garment metaphor. The particularly relevant passage is a discussion that follows the Rapture of the Church in John’s Revelation (Revelation 6:10–11):

The parallels between the process just described and the proclamations made by Le Corbusier about the liberating effect of his whitened walls in the early twentieth century are striking. (See Epilogue.) 36 See Hugh Latimer, ‘Sermon of the Plough’ (1548), in Sermons by Hugh Latimer, Sometime Bishop of Worcester, London, 1926, p. 71. 35

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The souls of the dead cry aloud, and white robes are given unto them! O sleeping spirits! What are white robes to you? Are they pillows on which you are to lie down and sleep? You see that white robes are not at all adapted for sleep, and therefore, when thus clothed, they must be awake. If this is true, these white robes undoubtedly designate the commencement of glory, which the Divine liberality bestows upon martyrs while waiting for the day of judgment. It is no new thing for Scripture to designate glory, festivity, and joy, under the figure of a white robe. It was in a white robe the Lord appeared in a vision to Daniel. In this garb the Lord was seen on Mount Tabor. The angel of the Lord appeared to the women at the sepulcher in white raiment; and under the same form did the angels appear to the disciples as they continued gazing up to heaven after their Lord’s ascension. In the same, too, did the angel appear to Cornelius, and when the son who had wasted his substance had returned to his father, he was clothed in the best robe, as a symbol of joy and festivity. (Daniel 7:9; Matthew 17:2; 28:3; Mark 16:5; Acts 1:10; 10:30; Luke 15:22.) 37 The white garment of faith is a loaded symbol and signifier with multiple, but related, meanings for Calvin. It signals a transitional state of being from an ordinary, embodied state to a glorified state of being, one which is, furthermore, directly acknowledged by God. It signifies an active state; in an important sense, a transcendental state of being; and it is the symbol of a joyous or festive moment, marked by wearing one’s very best, one’s very whitest threads. It is, above all, not a garment indicating a comfort zone, like a nightshirt, bed, or pillowslip. Figures 1.6 through 1.9 show several depictions of the white garment in various settings relating to the Bible in different periods of time, country and media, suggesting the pervasiveness of the image not only in the imagination, but physically throughout the material culture of Christendom. Examples of the white garment as signifier are legion; in Chapter V are discussed additional examples of some of these.

37 See John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, vol. III, Henry Beveridge (trans.) and Thomas F. Torrance (ed.), Grand Rapids, MI, 1958, pp. 445–46.

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1.4. Church of the Year 2000, Church Dio Padres Misericordioso, Rome. Interior view, nave. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

1.5: The altar. Church of the Year 2000, Rome. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. Consecrated, 2002. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

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1.6. The Ascension. Minature from the Syriac Evangeliary of Rabbula, parchment codex, 586 A.D. Folio, 13v, MS. Plut. I 56. Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, Italy. Photo credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

I Introduction

1.7. The Ascension of Christ. Giotto di Bondone 1266–1336. Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy. Photo credit: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY.

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1.8. Illuminated Carolingian Gospel Book: miniature depicting the four evangelists. Late eighth century. Aachen, Cathedral Treasury (Domschatzkammer), Palatine Chapel, s. n., fol. 13r. Photo credit: Art Resource, NY.

I Introduction

1.9. The First Crusade: the army of Peter the Hermit is massacred by the Seljuk Turks. From Passages faits Outremer, ca.1490. Illuminated by Sebastien Mamerot. Photo Credit: Snark / Art Resource, NY.

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Calvin also writes in the Psychopannychia about the obstacle presented by the body: The body, which decays, weighs down the soul, and confining it within an earthly habitation, greatly limits its perceptions …Whether they will or not, they must be forced to confess, that when we put off the load of the body, the war between the spirit and the flesh ceases. …Then the soul, set free from impurities, is truly spiritual, so as to be in accordance with the will of God, …and is no longer subjected to the tyranny of the flesh; thus dwelling in tranquility, with all its thoughts fixed on God. It is at this moment, when one has unloaded the prison of the body and its dependence on earthly sensations and things, and turned to the unimpeded worship of God, that one is awarded the white garment. And it is precisely this the Reformed church metaphorically also does. In traditional histories the white wall has exemplified the stripping away of papism in its visually treacherous forms pompously worn by church buildings since Constantine, like a cardinal’s attire; sumptuously clothing the body that already weighs down the spirit. When these same interiors were washed with whiteness they were also stripped of their trappings. This is not unlike a soul liberated from the body (or from an encumbered Church body) who is now able to commune with God unimpeded. But the walls were not naked. The building and its interior wear a coat of paint like the body wears a garment. In symbolic terms the conceptualisation of whiteness in Calvin’s text is true to ancient Judaeo-Christian form. The facts of Calvin’s intimate familiarity with the white garment metonymy and of the intensity brought to his analysis of it in the context of imminent radical reformation of the Church, suggest that its symbolic value would not have been lost on him (or Zwingli) who understood perfectly well the inevitability of symbolic meaning in all that we do and say. Analogically and functionally, the figure, ‘the putting on of the white robe of righteousness’ is not unlike the figure of ‘the white veil settling over Christendom’ spoken of by Margaret Aston and referenced earlier. The image it conjures presages the modern notion of the coat of white paint worn by the building doing the active work of radical change in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It is significant that the acts of scraping, chiselling and ‘painting out’ of images were separate and distinct procedures, requiring planning, overseeing and payment for labour. This suggests nuances in intention and purpose.

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If cost were the paramount, or just one of the central considerations in the redecoration of churches with the goal of severing ties to the past, it would have been cheaper to leave churches in their stripped, bare state, re-plastered or pargetted38 without repainting. Thus, along with the ‘making good the walls’ (as in ‘competent repair work’), there is a strong likelihood that the process of whitewashing and the perception of the colour white constituted active symbols of the purification of churches, which rendered them suitable for religious contemplation by the (true) Protestant worshipper. The notion of ‘veiling’ these interiors in whiteness, analogous to the putting on of the white garment of righteousness, would not have been a notion foreign to Zwingli or Calvin, and appeared to be, for them, a readily recognised one. This conceptual analogy is developed further in Chapters V and VI, which analyse the use of biblical metaphors and other ways of characterizing whiteness in the Bible. The concept underpinning this analogy is further developed through Zwingli’s and Calvin’s writings (Chapters VI and VII). The concept of a building taking off and putting on skins (façades), layers, and finishes of various kinds forms part of the analysis of Chapter V with the goal of showing how both the conscious and subconscious conceptualisation of whiteness, absorbed through the Corpus Christianum of Western society, supports its operations in these symbolic terms. That white ‘represents’ purity is an idea the truth of which verges on the ‘a priori’, probably because the idea is so old and because it has appeared throughout history in a number of consistent ways. To give the reader a sense of the traditional character of the way people thought about colour, it is worthwhile to review scriptural references that were fundamental to the education of Zwingli and others like him, and which shaped the structure of their thinking about colour. This subject is also treated in Chapter V. Some churches, even some that rejected and prohibited religious images, did not whitewash their interiors; at least their interiors were not as uncompromisingly stark, white, and empty as Pieter Saenredam’s paintings would suggest. Saint Peter’s Church at Coton in Cambridgeshire, with its present interior of pale pink, is an example of such a solution39 (Figs. 1.10, Pargetting is a form of plastering or plasterwork often done for decoration, but historically it is also a surface intended to smooth something over: to mask or cover up a defect. 39 Originally constructed as a chapel, St. Peter’s, Coton, Cambridgeshire was built in the 12th century when Coton was a parish, though not a village. Of the original structure the nave (excluding the aisles), chancel and font remain. Significant ‘restoration’ work was carried 38

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1.11). The introduction of escutcheons or heraldic shields, which can still be seen in England and on the Continent, was another way of permitting colour, although the amount of colour that physically could be consolidated on heraldic images was necessarily limited by the supporting form. In the chancel arch at Ludham Church, Norfolk, the arms of Elizabeth I, still visible, demonstrate this kind of polychromy (Figs. 1.12, 3.16–3.18).40 Similarly, many contemporary architectural paintings of seventeenth century Dutch churches depict colourful escutcheons suspended from the ceilings of reformed churches, as well as furniture, curtains, and mausolea. A particularly rich example is Daniel de Blieck’s painting, Interior of a Church (1656) (Fig. 1.13). Other examples include Hendrick van Vliet’s (act. 1636–1675) paintings of the Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk in Delft and the paintings of Emmanuel de Witte (act. 1636–1691/2) (Fig. 1.14). Heraldry and other physical appointments are less evident in the paintings of Pieter Saenredam (act. 1623–1665) from the same period (Fig. 1.15 and book jacket). Although there are occasional references to people and objects in Saenredam’s work, these are minimal. His paintings are relevant to this discussion because of the dramatic whiteness portrayed by this artist, the meanings of which are still under discussion by scholars.41 out in the 1870s and 1880s. It is not yet known to this author whether the pink interior dates to this time. It is an untypical Anglican interior which suggests, although perhaps anachronistically in this case, that alternatives to the bright white, now classic, Church of England interior were within conceptual reach. Coton is an interesting case. To the south and west of Cambridge, it is one of the churches William Dowsing would have visited on his iconoclastic travels throughout East Anglia and Suffolk. Yet it does not appear in the diaries he kept of his activities. Trevor Cooper and others have speculated how this could be in view of Dowsing’s zealotry. Cooper suggests that if a church belonging to one of the group not listed was ‘a very small and perpetually poor’ one (as Coton was) it is conceivable, although still not likely, that Dowsing may have omitted it intentionally. There is a certain amount of surviving ‘superstitious’ imagery in this group, but nothing determinative can be concluded about these churches from this fact. One has to wonder, would Dowsing have approved of pink? 40 The arms at Ludham now face the chancel; the rood screen faces the nave. This arrangement probably dates from the nineteenth century. 41 Saenredam’s paintings emphasise the vast expanses of undecorated (or stripped) wall and open spaces whose emptiness is emphasized by being unpopulated and whitewashed. The unmitigated ‘blankness’ of these walls as represented in Saenredam’s paintings has led scholars to probe the artist’s intentions. Was he, as the majority of Saenredam scholars seem to think, demonstrating his skill in depicting perspective? A few scholars speculate that Saenredam was making either a positive or a negative statement about the reformation of churches in the Netherlands. Was he depicting what was left behind, or created, by the

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1.10. St. Peter’s, Coton, Cambridgeshire. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer. 1.11. Hesse Castle Chapel: 13th century interior. Photo credit: Charles Landgrave..

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1.12. Saint Catherine parish church, Ludham Church, Norfolk, England. Interior view, choir screen with royal Arms of Elizabeth I in chancel tympanum. ©Aidan Semmens, photographer.

1.13. Daniel de Blieck. Interior of a Church, 1656. Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum.

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1.14. Emmanuel de Witte. Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, 1651. Wallace Collection, London.

1.15. Pieter Saenredam: Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1636–7. National Gallery, London.

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1.16. Saab vs the Puritans , Lowe & Partners Worldwide advertising agency for Saab. Used with permission from Saab, Sweden. 1.17. Temple de Paradis, Lyons. Bibliothèque de Genève, Centre d’iconographie genevoise.

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Non-biblical examples of colour thinking are equally important to consider because they are dynamic and no less normative. Everyone in sixteenth-century European society would have learned to think about colour in particular ways as a matter of upbringing in a given society, community, or family, and would have encountered references to colour in the course of conversation in daily life. The analysis of such ‘lay thinking’ about colour is dispersed throughout this study. Theories about the phenomenon and metaphorical import of whiteness are concentrated in Chapter II. Chapter III covers the specific embodiment of whiteness in the form of lime, and Chapters IV–VIII deal with various aspects of thinking about whiteness in Christian theology and history. In his 1993 study on the Reformation and the arts, Sergiusz Michalski quotes Hermann Heimpel who had written the now often quoted phrase: ‘the image-breakers were the image-makers’. Michalski cites this as an early indication of a paradigm shift in the way in which scholars regarded the Reformed Protestant’s relation to the image question.42 and he adduces as a first example the iconoclastic events in Zürich and Geneva in 1524 and 1535, comparing the way the churches looked before and after their dramatic transformation. Yet, Michalksi takes the discussion of image-making only as far as the theological basis for the dismantling of image-worship in its contemporary context. He classifies Zwingli as an iconophobe, along with Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1480–1541) and Calvin (1509–64). This is a traditional way of viewing the relationship of these men to images. ‘Image-making’ as such is not directly addressed; nor is the fact that the process of reform? Or, as Mia Mochizuki recently suggested, was Saenredam playing with our minds? (‘Upon reflection, artists like Saenredam, de Witte and the Berckheydes hold up less of a mirror of the world than a hallway of mirrors that destabilize our preconceptions.’ See M. Mochizuki, The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566–1672, Ashgate, 2009, pp. 1–2). Some believe Saenredam omitted depictions of people because he was uninterested in them or just could not draw them well. Others think that he omitted the various objects, furnishings, and paraphernalia that did remain in situ because he wanted to impress upon the viewer the rape of these churches. Still others believe the opposite: that the paintings are odes to the cleansed church and to Calvinism — a representation of ‘Calvinist light’ or the ideal Reformed church. Whichever of these hypotheses is true (the jury is still out), the walls depicted in these paintings have communicated to generations of viewers the whiteness and ‘blank’-ness of Calvinist church interiors in concept or in fact. 42 See H. Heimpel, Der Mensch in seiner Gegenwart, Gottingen, 1954, p. 134, quoted in Sergiusz Michalski, Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe, London and New York, 1993, pp. xi, 43–74.

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church interiors were white limed.43 There is no suggestion of meaning beyond the absence of images and the presence of bare walls and, so, only the image-breaking of Heimpel’s adage need be invoked. Michalski notes correctly, however, that even today people who do not care about church history or religion are usually aware of the differences between a Calvinist church and a Catholic Church. Aston made a similar point about Zwingli’s contemporaries, the difference being palpable already by 1530. She further notes that Zwingli influenced other Swiss cantons and certain Upper German territories. (The details of how Zwingli’s influence manifested itself have been the subject of more recent studies.)44 His influence extended to the physical makeover of the church, including not just liturgical reforms, but whitewashing, the implications of which it is the goal of this book to show. And so, there would seem to be an opportunity for developing a view about what image-making took place in Zürich and Geneva during the period between 1524 and 1535. I am not referring here to general observations about the existence of visual differences between the churches before and after their ‘purification’, but to the degree to which the transformation to whiteness, in addition to blankness, formed an image in itself.45 L. P. Wandel suggested that the Protestants introduced not just bare surfaces, but a new and very modern aesthetic; she specifically links whitewashing practices to the modern aesthetic of simple, smooth, white surfaces, evident in much twentieth-century architecture. She also writes, as did Auksi, that whitewashing ‘silenced’ the walls, though she adds that, ‘[b]efore iconoclasm, Zwingli would not have known [meaning ‘recognized’ or understood as opposed to ‘having ever seen’?] the “beauty” of such a wall.’46 I concur with Wandel in most of her points. But, as we have already seen, Zwingli did exclaim about the ‘beautifully white’ walls of the churches in Ibid., pp. 53–54. See Michalski, p. 83. 45 Ibid., pp. 53–54. In 2009 Mia Mochizuki published an extensive study of imagery in the Netherlands, including church interiors, immediately following the Reformation in the Lowlands. The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566–1672, (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT, 2009) appeared just as this book was being prepared for typesetting. I did not have the opportunity to respond to what Mochizuki says about the myth of the whitewashed church interior or to address the implications of her work for this study. I hope to do soon in another forum. 46   See Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zürich, Strasbourg, and Basel, Cambridge, 1995, p. 194. 43 44

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Zürich. (Recognition of the beauty of the whitewashed wall in a Protestant context is discussed in Chapter VI.) Wandel also suggests that, until that moment, no Christian church would ever have presented the blank wall as an ‘image’ worthy enough in itself for ‘the eyes of its congregation.’47 This claim does not take into account the Cistercian movement and the aesthetics of its moral and religious programme, a detailed coherent visual expression of which was developed by Bernard of Clairvaux.48 Wandel tangentially associates the new interior finish with the idea of divine ‘presence’ which Margaret Aston had made explicit earlier.49 Wandel writes: The iconoclasts made ‘visible’ a new aesthetic: the whitewashed wall, the church interior in which the walls themselves were visible, and not the panels, sculptures, tabernacles and candlesticks. …In all the churches where the ‘idols’ were smashed, the images gone, the visual dimension of traditional Christianity was silenced in the whitewashed walls. The iconoclasts…had initiated the removal of the physical setting of the mass, the visual referents of one theology, and the medium for one way of conceiving of an incarnate God. In so doing, they made traditional worship impossible…In the churches, the white walls signalled a different kind of presence.50 On this interpretation the emphasis is on the new kind of image created by the church interior; the whitened wall is its medium. Wandel overlooks a connection between image, divine presence, and the colour white, emphasizing the bareness of the white wall over its whiteness in this specific context. In her view, the whitewash silences, it does not communicate. In Wandel’s account of the development of the whitewashed wall, Basel appears to have led the way. This overlooks the precedent set by Zürich. The whitewashed wall, moreover, in Wandel’s view signals not a transcendent aesthetic, but ‘a realignment of the relation between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit.’51 This realignment of the means of faith with the content of faith is an Erasmian concept. Here Wandel follows Garside Ibid, p. 194. See discussion of Cistercians, Chapter III. 49 See n.41 above. 50 See Wandel, pp. 194–95. 51 See Wandel, pp. 194–195. It would seem that the realignment sought by Zwingli was, precisely, realignment in favour of the transcendent over the sensual. Wandel’s comment about this subject is ambiguous: 47 48

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who explains Zwingli’s project in just these terms, as a corrective agent bringing form to line with action.52 In Voracious Idols, whitewashing at its most fundamental level is an agent of obliteration signalling change, but it is not the visual sign of a community of people agitating for an ecclesia whose goal it was to recapture a perceived state of purity they believed signified (and signalled) a return to the Apostolic church. Wandel’s observations represent one of a small number of statements that penetrate the connection between the whitewashed wall, which she describes as a kind of ‘discovery’, and the nascent Protestant aesthetic today recognised as ‘Calvinist.’ A popular example of the Protestant aesthetic is also evident in myriad references to ‘Puritan’ aesthetics, a typical visual example of which often includes whitened, simplified objects within a spare setting (Fig. 1.16). A comparable mental picture of Protestant aesthetics was suggested by the art historian Rudolf Wittkower, who tried to assimilate Leon Battista Alberti’s preference for white walls in his designs for Florentine churches within those of ‘Puritanism.’ Wittkower writes of Alberti: ‘And let it be said emphatically: it is a serene, philosophical and almost puritanical architecture that his descriptions conjure up before us.’53 In 1485 Alberti wrote: ‘Cicero follows Plato’s teaching and holds that citizens should be compelled by law to reject any variety [read: decorativeness] and frivolity in the ornament of

‘If we follow the communication of the Basel iconoclasts [February 1529], these white walls did not represent a transcendent ascetic [sic], but a realignment of the relation between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit, a realignment that rejected the asceticism of the traditional religious as false and accepted the world of the laity as itself religious.’ Apart from the fact that this statement overlooks the Zürich example, I take ‘asceticism of the traditional religious’ as a reference to the Cistercians or other reformed monastic order. That is to say, that the aesthetic of the white wall was brought down from the elevated sphere of the monastic enclave into the quotidian world of the middle classes, but not in its role as domestic cleanser, as in ‘Old Dutch Cleanser’, ‘Comet’, ‘Ajax’, ‘Bon Ami’, or whitewash. In a vernacular setting whitewash and distemper (paint) performed the functions of these modern cleaning products, but they also worked as a form of secular holy image. It is at this point that Wandel loses sight of the colour of this wall and privileges bareness as the salient feature of a new kind of image then making itself known. She suggests a new form of ‘presence’ was signalled, but this appears to be an afterthought. (Wandel, p. 195). Pargetting is a form of plastering or plasterwork often done for decoration, but historically it is also a surface intended to smooth something over: to mask or cover up a defect. 52 Wandel, p. 195; Garside, pp. 35–47. 53 See Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, New York and London, 1971, pp. 9–10.

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their temples, and to value purity above all else.’… ‘Let us have’ he added, ‘some dignity for all that.’ But Alberti continued: I could easily believe that in their choice of colour, as in their way of life, purity and simplicity would be most pleasing to the gods above; nor should a temple contain anything to divert the mind away from religious meditation as with other public buildings, provided it in no way diminishes their solemnity. …I would have nothing on the floors or walls that did not have some quality of philosophy. Wittkower’s statement was not an anachronism, but it is telling; the art historian is confident that by invoking the term ‘Puritan’ his readers will conjure in their minds the appropriate visual image, whether or not they are familiar with Puritan history or theology. Yet, if Wittkower had included more detail about what Alberti had actually written, he might not have ventured quite so strong a claim. In writing the above passage Alberti would have his ideal temple rendered in a pure colour, a simple colour, and this strongly suggests the colour white. There is, arguably, no simpler or purer colour. Alberti condemns distraction from worship, not the use of ornament, images or paintings in an ecclesiastical setting, the prohibition of which we usually associate with Puritanism.54 The matter for him is one of taste. The point of the example of Alberti, then, is rather more about the question of, in what good taste consists. Alberti had almost certainly relied on Cicero and Vitruvius, which makes his view on the appropriate environment for an ecclesiastical interior in fact classical, not Puritan, and this is pretty much consistent with a traditional reading of his architectural theory. The ideal colour for temples of worship according to Plato, Cicero and Vitruvius is white, it so happens. One could infer from this fact that this was also the case for Alberti; but he does not state this in his writings on temple building in the Ten Books of Architecture. The writings of classical authors on this subject will be addressed more fully in the chapter on colour theory that follows. The visual divide between, on the one hand, Lutheran (unreformed Protestant) and traditional churches and, on the other, Reformed Protestant churches such as Zürich’s, is noted by Margaret Aston, whose researches tells us that the material differences between the former and the latter group were

54 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books (De re Aedificatoria), Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, trans. Cambridge, MA, 1988. Book VII, 10 is dedicated to sacred architecture (interior and exterior).

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immediately apparent to travellers on the Continent already in the sixteenth century. About the visual appearances of the different Protestant sects, she writes, ‘The doctrinal differences between Lutheran and Reformed communions were immediately legible to European travellers who entered their respective churches: the one not far removed from Catholic tradition in decoration and furniture, the other bare and whitewashed.’55 (My emphasis). In this statement, Aston recognises the symbolic translation of doctrinal differences into two distinct visual styles, the bare and whitewashed Reformed on the one hand, and the polychromatic Lutheran and Roman on the other. The exact date range of the visit by Aston’s imaginary traveller is not specified, but this could be as early as 1525. By 1527 Zwingli was writing of his regret that Luther had not promoted the removal of images; by 1530, Zürich, Basel, Strasbourg and a number of smaller towns and villages had stripped and whitewashed their churches. Such differences as those to which Aston alludes would have been seen. Further, as Sergiusz Michalski, Aston and others have pointed out, even in our time, individuals who have no interest in religion or art are aware of the fundamental differences, including or even especially, visual ones, between a Calvinist and a Catholic or Lutheran church interior. 56 In A History of British Art, Andrew Graham-Dixon links the whiteness of Anglican and Puritan churches not only to iconoclasm and image reform in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also to social and political reform in the direction of democratisation, and to the all-white art gallery interior of the twentieth century. Graham-Dixon’s insight is a perspicacious connection that not many historians have made.57 The complex political and social implications of the reform movement may be said to have been symbolically played out in whitewash. The removal of ornament, the emptying out of traditional content that retained ties to the past, and the identification of a standard form of wall that did not recognise class divides signalled by expensive pigments, gilding and the like, point to a See Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 43. See Michalski, p. xi. 57 See Graham-Dixon, pp. 32–3, 39, 43. I am in total agreement with this view and advanced a similar argument for the democratizing role of whiteness in my Master’s thesis, The Colour White: Its Ascendant Role in the Early Modern Movement, filed with the Architectural Association, London, 1997, and my Ph.D. dissertation, Whitewash. From Switzerland to England. Whitewashing and the New Aesthetic of the Protestant Reformation (1524–1660), filed with the University of Cambridge, 2002. 55 56

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story behind the whitewashed wall every bit as complicated as other aspects of Reformation history. The effect of image reform and the whiteness of Anglican and Puritan churches are not simply coextensive. In Seeing Beyond the Word, an anthology of studies about Reformed Protestantism, Calvinism and the visual arts, the authors focus their attentions on architecture and artisanal production during the second generation of reform in Europe, during the seventeenth century.58 They mention the ‘earlier recommendations of reformist theologians…that walls be whitewashed and altarpieces removed’59 but, as with other similar statements by historians, these recommendations are not probed as part of the scope of material production by Protestants. The authors do reach some conclusions, however, relevant to this study. They clearly distinguish between the purpose-built ‘temple’ architecture (Fig. 1.17), which the Reformed French communities built between 1600 and 1685,60 beginning with the appropriation and recycling of existing churches. In this context, Raymond Mentzer suggests that French Protestants may have considered medieval Catholic churches too defiled or polluted to use, preferring to build new churches and using local resources to do so.61 This would obviate the need to whitewash in French communities who reformed. In another study, James White challenges the characterisation of Protestant style as ‘plain Protestant.’ He enumerates several architectural design features that can be reliably identified as Protestant in order to demonstrate how the designation of ‘plain’ is a misnomer and not the primary goal of the Protestant agenda in England – even for William Dowsing. Nor was it so on the Continent.62 Among the consistent attributes of church design which attest to membership in the Reformed community are the basilica or amphitheatre plan to facilitate listening; the absence of interior columns which blocked sightlines to the pulpit; the inclusion of galleries in various configurations to increase capacity and the congregation’s ability to see the preacher; and the use of local materials and artisans to keep costs down. But in all these, the whitened interior is not one of the details 58 See Paul Corby Finney, ed., Seeing Beyond the Word, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK, 1999. 59 Ibid., p. 410. 60 See Hélène Guicharnaud, ‘An Introduction to the Architecture of Protestant Temples’, in Seeing Beyond the Word, pp. 133–55. 61 See Raymond. A. Mentzer, Jr., ‘The Reformed Churches of France and the Visual Arts’, in ibid., p. 205. 62 See James F. White, ‘From Protestant to Catholic Plain Style’ in ibid., pp. 457–77.

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discussed. The details adduced by White contributed to a great variety of building styles; the absence of a commitment to a particular style being a salient attribute of Protestant style. Particularly important for our discussion of colour and walls is the authors’ emphasis on the intentionally secular nature of Reformed worship space.63 While humility and simplicity were qualities that Protestants sought to embody in their churches, these qualities were, perhaps, primarily exemplified in the wooden trencher, communion table and cup (introduced by Zwingli into the liturgy), rather than in the buildings themselves. Importantly White does take the whitewashed wall into account in his discussion of the change in interior arrangements of the new Protestant space to re-orientate the focus of worship toward the pulpit. He writes: ‘that a new locus of the sacred was being forged, not in the remote, the expensive and precious, the inaccessible, but in the ordinary things of everyday life of which the simple, whitened wall formed a part.’64 James Hall and White are making a similar point here about the democratisation of society in general and it is for these same reasons I would characterise the colour white as the most democratic colour.65 James White raises the example of Rembrandt’s grasp of the sacred in the ordinary, but the democratising and desacralising value of the colour white in this context, not to mention the smoothed and un-detailed nature of most wall surfaces (excluding capitals and pulpits) is not articulated for the reader. Both White and Peter W. Williams66 address primarily the eighteenth-century Enlightenment incarnation of the whitened interior as seen in the architecture of the colonial United States whose leading architects, Asher Benjamin and Charles Bulfinch, followed the examples of Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and Sir James Gibbs (1682–1754).67 A locally designed and built hybrid example of such a church, ecumenically containing Puritan, Anglican and Enlightenment See Peter W. Williams, ibid., pp. 479–80, 484–85, 493 and White, ibid., pp. 457–59. See White, p. 459 and Williams, ‘Metamorphoses of the Meeting House: Three Case Studies’, p. 493, both in Seeing Beyond the Word. For another view, see A. Garvan, ‘Protestant Plain Style before 1630’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct., 1950), pp. 5–13. 65 See The Colour White: its ascendant role in the Modern Movement, Graduate Diploma Thesis, Architectural Association, 1994, in which I make this point. 66 See Williams, Seeing, pp. 199–230. 67 See Williams, pp. 479–505, esp. p. 490; Marilyn Chiat, American Religious Architecture, New York and Chichester, 1997, pp. 12, 13, 22, 32. Wren’s churches built in London after the Great Fire (1666) also represented a landmark in the use of colour in architecture. Gibbs’s most well-known buildings include: St Mary-Le-Strand, London, (1714–17), St Martin-in63 64

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elements is the Old North Church in Boston, built in 172368 (Fig. 1.18). The western entrance (the short wall) which gives an axial orientation to the east, emphasises the sacrament and focuses the congregation on the minister and the Word. The liturgy here remains in essence traditional, and consistent with Catholic practice. But the box pews, galleries, and prominent pulpit to the south and front of the chancel are not; and, in addition, the colours are light and the windows clear, emphasising the Enlightenment value of clarity. It should be noted, however, that the uniformly painted light interior colour was only introduced long after the church was built; for many years, the church sported a polychromatic interior and sometimes dark voluminous curtains.69 In other words, paint analysis has shown that the interior of Old North Church was not white in 1723. A truer example of the Gibbs-Wren model perhaps is Saint Paul’s parish church in Edenton, North Carolina, originally built between 1736 and 1774 in the Anglican tradition (Fig. 1.19). This church was remodelled in 1806– 1809 by an English-born carpenter-architect, William Nichols, in ‘simple, neoclassical taste.’70 The ‘simple’ in this statement would be the same ‘clarity’ to which James Hall refers and which has as its source, as Hall suggests, a concern with ideal forms, purity, truth and essence. Elements of this Platonist way of thinking about purity, truth and essence are evident in the ideas of both Zwingli and Calvin as we shall see in later chapters. Between 1475 and 1525, for example, Alberti’s writings encouraged a simplifying, smoothing and lightening influence on walls within the worship space two centuries before the Gibbs-Wren model became established.71 the-Fields, London, (1720), Senate House, Cambridge (1722–30), and Radcliffe Camera (Library), Oxford, (1737). But most important of all was the publication of A Book of Architecture (1728), the most widely distributed architectural pattern book in Great Britain and the Colonies throughout the 18th century. It was almost certainly in mind if not in hand at the building of Old North and St Paul’s. 68 See Williams, in Seeing Beyond the Word, p. 485. 69 Cf. ibid., pp. 485, 490. 70 See Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Eastern North Carolina, Chapel Hill and London, 1996, p. 136. 71 Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723). In 1669, Wren was appointed surveyor of works to Charles II. He was chief architect to the king, responsible for the design of fifty-three new churches in London following the Great Fire of 1666, including, famously, the new Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Sir James Gibbs, a younger contemporary (1682–1754), was deeply influenced by Wren, and then was himself just as influential architecturally. It is the WrenGibbs model that came to be established in the American colonies, but it was Gibbs’s spin on Wren’s influence that would be the more far-reaching stateside.

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Zwingli scholar W. Peter Stephens72 downplays the image question entirely, making only a brief comment about systematic iconoclasm and no mention of whitewashing.73 Although G. R. Potter analyses the image question in detail, he describes the whitewashing as though it happened by itself.74 Patrick Collinson describes whitewash as ‘slobbering over’ the walls. Daniel Gutscher (whose views on whitewashing the Grossmünster in Zürich are discussed later) and Collinson are largely in agreement about this but, significantly, the latter speaks of acquiring a ‘non-colour figurative sense’ as an outcome of the iconoclasm and whitewashings. Here, I believe, James White, in ‘From Protestant to Catholic Plain Style’ (in Paul Corby Finney, ed., Seeing Beyond the Word, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK., 1999, pp. 457–477), notes that in the American colonies, white was not the usual colour of congregational meeting houses, at least between 1738 and 1834. He writes, ‘The neoclassical revival had a chastening effect in terms of standardising the white painted exterior of the typical New England Congregational meeting house. Before that time, colours were overwhelmingly more popular than plain white or stone colour’ (p. 466). This is born out elsewhere, for example, there is evidence that the Old North Church in Boston, whose interior is now white, utterly conforming to the stereotype of a New England colonial church, was originally polychromed; its interior was only later painted white, to make it conform to the general public’s idea of what a New England church should be. (Conversations with the Rev. Stephen T. Ayres, Vicar of Old North Church, 2005 and 2009.) A technical analysis by Penny Batchelor in The National Park Service Historic Structures Report: Architectural Data, April 1981, contains a paint colour report that concludes: ‘relating to painting and the actual paint colour layering found in the church ... the interior of Old North has been painted totally white only since 1913’, p. 175. Details of the various colour schemes of Old North are detailed by Batchelor in subsequent pages of the report. Similarly, Carl R. Loundesbury, architectural historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, is confident that churches in colonial Williamsburg were not white, inside or out, as they are currently represented as having been. They were ‘restored’ to white when the preservation effort was begun in the 1930s led by Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin, and his team, including John D. Rockefeller Jr. (Personal conversations with Carl Loundesbury, 2005– 2006.) It is possible that, at that early stage of preservation history, it was understood by the consultants that colonial churches were white because that is how they had been experienced in living memory. It is also possible that, as with Old North, they were painted white in order to create the ideal colonial town according to public expectation. The colonial church, however, typically only became white when it was updated in the neoclassical style in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. (Personal conversations with Carl Loundesbury, 2005–2006.) 72 See W. Peter Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, Oxford, 1992. 73 Ibid., p. 37. 74 ‘When the workman had finished, white, clean walls looked down on such little seating as private initiative left in the naves’ (Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 141–42).

I Introduction

1.18. Old North Church, Boston Massachusetts. Photo credit: Joseph R. Rieg. 1.19. St. Paul’s Parish Church, Edenton, North Carolina. Photo Credit: Robert M. George.

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1.20. Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Exterior view. Architect: Le Corbusier. ©2009 Lucas Gray, photographer.

1.21. Church of the Year 2000, Rome. Richard Meier & Partners, Architects, LLP. ©Liao Yusheng, photographer.

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Collinson is referring to the development of an intensely low-key use of colour in the same sense spoken of in connection with Giotto, described by Hall.75 This may also be a reference to a partial reversion to the Renaissance emphasis on line stimulated by the upsurge in black and white print. An example of this sort of thing would be the black and white wall decorations at Knebworth House (see Figures 3.5 and 3.6). Acquiring the sensibility to appreciate a ‘non-colour figurative sense’ is a reference to time and the process of acculturation eloquently described by Duffy, and quoted below. In The Stripping of the Altars Eamon Duffy describes the transformation of faith from the traditional practices of the late Middle Ages in England to the final major impulse of religious change during Elizabeth’s reign in 1580.76 Duffy sensitively describes the process of reform, not just as it takes hold of English society, but as the new ways develop their own meaningful resonance and displace Roman traditions in the most fundamental way: Elsewhere holy-water stoups became the parish wash-troughs, sanctus and sacring bells were hung on sheep and cows, or used to call workmen to their dinner, pyxes were split open and turned into balances to weigh out coin or spice. The insistence of the authorities that all such sacred objects be defaced and ‘put to profane use’ represented a profound recognition of the desacralizing effect of such actions.77 In many communities, the spread of Protestant feeling was a far more positive thing, as the teaching of convinced Protestant ministers penetrated, and the conformist pieties of the respectable of the parish allowed themselves to be recast into a new mould.… New pieties were forming, and something of the old sense of the sacred was transferring itself from the sacramentals to the scriptures. …The imaginative world of the Golden Legend and the Festial was gradually obliterated from wall and window bracket, from primer and block-print and sermon, and was replaced by the Old Testament. Cranmer’s sombrely written prose, read week by week, entered and possessed their minds, and became the fabric of their prayer, the utterance of their most solemn and their most vulnerable moments. 75 See Patrick Collinson, ‘From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia,’ Stenton Lecture, University of Reading, 1985, pp. 8, 23. 76 See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven and London, 1992. 77 See Duffy, p. 586.

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By the 1570s, whatever the instincts and nostalgia of their seniors, a generation was growing up which had known nothing else, which believed the Pope to be Antichrist, the Mass a mummery, which did not look back to the Catholic past as their own, but another country, another world.78 (My emphasis.) Duffy denies that there was any spiritual or ritual content in the act of the painting out of images.79 Therefore, he does not see that the whitened walls of the churches in which the people described above prayed, were an essential element of the new form of faith; nor does he appear to find taking place at the same time a critical psychological re-orientation relating specifically to the visual as it relates to the wall. There were several waves of ‘cleansings’ in England during the sixteenth century and these are each described by Duffy. I will argue in this book that these walls represented not just what was left behind when all idols and images were removed but that they were intentional; and they became, over time, not only normative, but accrued to themselves multiple levels of meaning, all of which were related cognitively, associated with prayer and faith and church and a sense of piety. These resonances became part of the same fabric of worship described by Duffy in for the pre-Reformation Church. A few of these episodes are recounted later in this study where I show that the practice of whitewashing became a ritual act of cleansing, signifying the process of reform through these very same events. In 1972, David Freedberg adduced documentation that in the Netherlands some communities insisted on their churches being whitewashed (read ‘purified’) before they could be entered by the Reformed congregant or minister and used as a place of worship.80 In 1984, Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Peter Jezler addressed the nature of cultural changes in Zürich that resulted from Zwinglian reforms.81 All these authors make the point that Ibid., pp. 586, 593. References to whitewashing in Duffy occur on pp. 454, 478, 480, 482, 485, 494, 583, 584. 80 See David Freedberg, Iconoclasm and Painting in the Netherlands, 1566–1609, Ph.D. Dissertation, Oxford, 1972, pp. 10, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, published as Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1506–1609, New York, 1988. This phenomenon is discussed in more detail in Chapter III. 81 ‘Schon zur Zeit der Reformation war es ein in die Augen fallendes Kennzeichen der Reformation Zwinglis, dass der gottesdienstliche Raum ohne Altar und Bild war, sich als von Kanzel und Taufstein bestimmter Predigtraum darbot.Bildlosigkeit und Konzentration 78 79

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it was Huldrych Zwingli who established the ‘imageless, altarless’ church. Carlos Eire emphasises at the outset of the introduction to his study of Reformation iconoclasm that: Wherever those who held these views acquired enough power, churches were sacked, images smashed and burned, relics destroyed, sanctuaries desecrated, altars overturned, and consecrated hosts fed to dogs and goats. The religion of immanence was replaced by the religion of transcendence; Reformers and their congregations exulted in the beauty of the newly stripped, whitewashed cathedral.82 The removal of pictures, sculptures and carvings, and a new focus on the preached Word that followed their disappearance were characteristics of reform that may be traced, ultimately, to Zwingli. Carlos Eire discusses the whitewashed interiors of cathedrals; although it would be the small parish churches that provided the prototype for the future. But, like Aston, he detects an exultation about them in the sixteenth century reformed Protestant. Like Michalski he quotes Heimpel’s remark (that ‘within one generation the imagedonors had become the image-smashers’83 (my emphasis), highlighting, as does Duffy, how little time was needed for the shockingly new environment to become normative. Each of the author’s discussed thus far in their own way reflects the reasons for this study: not one of them doubts the pervasiveness of the white-limed interior of the Reformed church, but even fewer have probed the practice to discover its etiology in religious practice. Neither the origins of whitewashing, the meanings accrued to it in the context of the Reformation, or in the history of prior or subsequent aesthetics have been probed very deeply. 84 The Catholic Church itself may be seen to have adopted Protestant symbolism in this regard: in the ‘blanches parures’ advocated by Maurice Denis after World War I using the whitened interior as an expression of its

auf das Predigtwort wurden vor allem für Aussenstehende, also für Katholiken und Lutheraner, zum Characteristikum reformierten Christentums zwinglisher Prägung.’ From Hans Diestrich Altendorf, ‘Zwinglis Stellung zum Bild und die Tradition christlicher Bildfeindschaft’ in Bilderstreit, Kulturwandel in Zwingli Reformation, p. 11; see also Peter Jezler, ‘Tempelreignigung oder Barbrei? Eine Geschichte vom Bild des Bilersturmers’ in Kulturwandel, pp. 75–82. 82 See Eire, p. 2. 83 ‘…the beauty of a ‘newly stripped, whitewashed cathedral,’ See Eire, pp. 2, 83. 84 See n.45 in re: Mia M. Mochizuki’s book.

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own self-cleansing;85 in the whitened interiors of Catholic churches built in Germany between 1928–1930; in Germany again after World War II and, famously, in Notre Dame du Haut, built at Ronchamp in eastern France in 1954 (Fig. 1.20). In the twenty-first century, the symbolic use of the colour white by the Catholic Church, signifying what might otherwise be considered Protestant values, turns up in one of its most remarkable instantiations yet, the commission and building of the Church of the Year 2000, an ultra-modern, all-white church situated in an underprivileged, somewhat degraded Roman suburb (Fig. 1.21). How and why the whitewashed wall, indeed the colour white itself, became a major element of the iconography of the Reformed church, as well as of its identity as a corporate body, is a central issue of this study. The answer to this question has several dimensions: the physical attributes of the colour white itself; the way it is perceived neuro-biologically and phenomenologically; the way it functions psychologically — its operations on the mind; and the virtues and other qualities it has been held to symbolise in architecture and painting. The epigraphs at the beginning of this chapter point to instances of these examples in literature and the popular press. Shared ways of thinking about colour symbolism, especially about whiteness, may be found among reformers — in the Protestant, Reformed Protestant and Reformed Catholic churches alike. In addition to the Old and New Testaments, the foundations for reformed thinking about colour may be identified in Patristic thought, early Christian reform movements, and in Christian mystical and Platonic literature, among other sources. The ability of whiteness to convey a range of cognate meanings across thousands of years represents a conceptual thread of paramount importance to a study of any of the applications of whiteness by people to things and ideas. This is equally evident in Greco-Roman and scholastic texts as it is in the Bible and throughout the history of religion, as well as in the history of the treatment of buildings, of which the whitewashed wall forms an important chapter. The history of whiteness, even of just the few themes men-

See Maurice Denis, Nouvelles théories sur l’art moderne et l’art sacré 1941–1921, p. 196 : ‘Il faut que nos provinces ravagés se recouvrent, comme autrefois, d’une blanche parure d’églises neuves.’ (Our ravaged provinces need to be recovered by the apparition of the whiteness of brand new churches, as before.) Denis is paraphrasing a line from a play by Paul Claudel, La jeune fille Violaine (1919). I am indebted to Prof. Andrew Saint of the Architecture Department at Cambridge University for directing me to this reference. 85

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tioned here, is extremely broad, complex and deep. Within the limits of this text, I can do no more than survey the topic; a more thorough investigation will have to wait for another time. Yet certain key elements run all through this history — the concepts of purity, cleansing, purification, and righteousness, and the indissoluble relationships of all of these concepts to that of the colour white. These concepts and their relationships to Protestant reform will be more fully developed in the course of this book.

II A Short Trip Through Colour Theory (The Achromatic Hue) …How would we select a purified example of white, what would it be? What constitutes it such? Is it…lack of adulteration, where there is not the slightest bit of any colour in it? Plato, Philebus. 53a–53c51 Black and white are not reckoned among the colours; the one is the representative of darkness, the other of light: that is, one is a simple privation of light, the other is light itself ...I call those simple colours, which are not composed, and cannot be made or supplied by any mixture of other colours. …The first of all simple colours is White, though philosophers will not acknowledge either white or black to be colours; because the first is the cause, or the receiver of colours, the other totally deprived of them...according to this order of things, White will be the first…We shall set down White for the representative of light. Leonardo da Vinci, The Art of Painting 2 Isn’t white that which does away with darkness? Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour.3

W

e have culturally come to think of the white colour as a neutral colour, a species of colour that we hardly even see, in which role it has become

Plato, Philebus, Benjamin Jowett, trans., New York, 1937. Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting, a Lost Book (Libro A), Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964, p. 56, citing CU 75v–76, LU 254, MCM 176; RIG 227; Leonardo da Vinci, A Treatise on Painting, John Francis Rigaud, trans., London, 1887. The collection of material published as his treatise on painting was for Leonardo a projected treatise in multiple volumes. Leonardo’s notes for the treatise were written continuously until his death in 1519. 3 ‘Ist nicht Weiß das, was die Dunkelheit aufhebt?’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks 1

2 

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the backdrop to our contemporary existence. But, the colour white has not always been perceived in this manner. The conceptualization of white as a kind of ‘zero condition’, or as obliteration as in the case of iconoclasm, has a history; derived, as it were, from a series of notions, perceptions, theories and practices surrounding the colour white itself and its relationship primarily to concepts of purity and light which go back thousands of years, a history that is not unitary, but highly complex. In antiquity, for example, the earliest written text we have on colour is the poetry of the early fifth century writer Alcmaeon of Croton, which dwells, to quote John Gage, on ‘the antithesis between black and white, or darkness and light,’ 4 an early, elementary form of colour terminology. The ancient philosophers Plato and Aristotle, had views on the origin of colour, on the phenomenon of whiteness, its significations, and its relationship to black and other colours, as did almost each and every one of the great artists or theorists who wrote treatises on colour and painting. Thus the colour white itself has a history. To better comprehend the fundamental reasons — conscious, subliminal, intentional or not — underlying the choice of the colour white in the form of whitewash as the medium for the re-decoration of Protestant churches and, hence, as the tangible basis for the establishment of a new, applied religious aesthetic signifying a Reformed church, it is necessary to explore the spectrum of ideas relative to colour which would have been encountered between the years 1475 and 1575, the period during which the break-away theologians, scholars, and magisterial reformers were born, raised, and exercised their first round of influence.5 The previous chapter demonstrated certain perceptions and practices surrounding limewashing, both secular and religious, in parts of Christendom over the centuries. In Chapter V we will consider in detail the symbolism of colour metaphors in the Bible because of their relevance to the writings of Huldrych Zwingli (Chapters VI) and John Calvin (Chapter VIII), formative thinkers and actors in the Protestant Reformation. The work of both theologians as evangelical Protestants relied directly on the on Colour, written in Oxford, 1950–1951. Linda McAlister and Margaret Schättle, trans., G.E.M. Anscombe, ed., published Berkeley, 1977, p. 15e.6. 4 Quoted in John Gage, Colour and Culture, London, 1993, p. 11; see also pp. 58–59. This is true also of pre-exilic Hebrew, addressed in Chapter IV. 5 The dates used here for a frame of reference are the dates of birth and death for Martin Luther (b.1483–d.1546), Huldrych Zwingli (b.1478–d.1531), Guillaume Farel (b.1489– 1565), John Calvin (b.1509–d.1564) and Heinrich Bullinger (b.1504–d.1575).

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scriptures. It is true that in Western society in nearly all respects at this time, the primary source of cultural conditioning and the major source of ideas about colour, as with many things, was the Bible.6 Yet other ideas about colour were in general circulation long before the Reformation, and have little or nothing to do with the Bible or Christian religion and were no less influential for all that. These are sources which one would have encountered as a student, scholar (scholastic or humanist) or as educated citizen. The everyman, too, in the course of his daily business would have absorbed ideas about colour found in general circulation. This chapter is about those secular influences on colour-thinking. The sources discussed in this chapter include literary, philosophical and artrelated theoretical treatises which were in circulation since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and formed part of the world of the traditional medieval scholar and sixteenth century humanist. Aristotle, orators and poets such as Cicero and Dante, and theorists such as Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci, and Leon Battista Alberti, all had ideas, usually strongly stated ideas, about the role that colour plays in art and architecture and about the aptness, even imperativeness, of white and whiteness for particular uses. Each of these men enjoyed an established currency of his own long before the Reformers discovered, or conceived of, the idea that a whitewashed wall could play a role in returning the church interior to apostolic purity, the implications of Matthew 23:27 notwithstanding. How the colour white was viewed by non-biblical sources studied by the magisterial reformers forms the basis, then, of this chapter.7 Figures 2.1 and 2.2 show examples of two medieval colour models of a kind that Zwingli or Calvin might have encountered as young students. Renaissance investigations, theoretical and

6 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Notre Dame, 1964; Bernard S. Levy, The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its Influence on Literature and Art, Binghamton, NY, 1992. 7 Zwingli’s education is discussed in Chapter IV of this book, but Bruce Gordon succinctly sums up the many interpretations of Zwingli’s background this way: ‘[A]ttempts to label Zwingli as a humanist, a rationalist, or anything else are facile. Like most men of his age, Zwingli drew water from many wells. He came to advocate the principle of sola scriptura, but the lens through which he read the Bible was ground from a mixture of humanism and scholasticism, of politics and personal experience.’ (Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, pp. 49, 51.) Scholasticism figures first on this list; profoundly re-shaped subsequently by humanist influences, but Zwingli’s background and mindset was always and indissoluably a hybrid.

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scientific, would revise these models; but certain ideas about whiteness remained. Few would probably argue with the statement that, until the Reformation in both England and on the Continent, the Church had become richly ornamented, its interiors covered with storiated carvings, polychromatic narratives, and colourful surfaces of all kinds. And, although simple, whitewashed, relatively undecorated churches had never ceased to exist, it would be safe to say that in many cases, even the preponderance of cases, that virtually every inch of church wall had become covered in narratives or images or adornment of some kind. Church interior architecture was not simple either, for it included screens, altars, roods, reredos, carols, and other elaborately carved surfaces, not to mention the expensive and ornate objects — the richly embroidered vestments, vessels and accoutrements which served in liturgy (see Fig. 2.3). The stripping of altars, paintings and other detail from churches which took place beginning in 1522 on the Continent and continuing through the 1660s in England, involved the emptying out of traditional content — religious, ideologic and symbolic — that retained ties to the past. This made the church interior that had been an expression of traditional worship and papal authority a statement of political and social negation and exclusion, as much as it was a statement about a future church or a desire simply to obliterate. The iconoclasm emptied; this was often referred to as ‘cleansing’. But the whitewash purified interiors in an absolute and real, as well as in metaphoric and even anagogic senses, consistent with its historic role of eradicating plague.8 This chapter therefore provides an exposition of qualities associated with whiteness, intended to adduce sufficient theory about the colour white to lay the foundation for an explanation of how whiteness, the colour of choice for many, if not the majority, of Reformed Protestant interiors, would assume the important role that it did in the systematic purging of images from churches and from the hearts and minds of the people. I will also argue in the course of this book that whiteness, via whitewashing, played an equally

8 This use of whitewash as a sterilizing medium at times of plague establishes it as a kind of precursor to the modern pursuit of hygiene. In an important sense modern hygiene may be traced to the nineteenth century but in the sense in which mainstream culture pursues ‘whites-whiter-than white’ and modern marketers have sold the idea of white casegoods and all-white kitchens, whitewash can claim a role in the history of visual hygiene reaching further back in history than we are accustomed to think.

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central role in the image-making process of establishing a corporate identity for the emergent reformed sect, the Protestant church. Of the wave of whitewashings across Europe and in England only a moderately small number are recorded in chronicles and churchwarden’s accounts explicitly as part of Protestant cleansing activities. When they are recorded, the records usually indicate the main objective of whitewashing as being the ‘making good’ of walls ‘so that no trace of what was there before remained.’ The objective of erasing memory is as important to the history described in this book, as it is to any other on the Reformation. A certain amount has been written on this subject;9 yet questions remain about ways of thinking about colour (as opposed to images), and about whiteness in particular in the reformed process, which have a direct bearing on depictions of erasure and loss of memory and on the history of colour ideas as they relate to the Reformation period.10 This is a lacunae that this book hopes to at least partially fill. The process of whitewashing may be likened to a form of rhetoric, its goal being to achieve a form of social and psychological tabula rasa on which, and against which, new forms of the visual could, and would, develop. Much has been written in the last ten years in revisionist histories of the Reformation about iconoclasm and its essential role in the creation of the new.11 A new way of visualizing faith entailed devising a different conceptual framework for the material church: an acceptable form of worship which necessarily involved interior appointments of the physical building. This, in 9 Margaret Aston dedicates a chapter to this subject in England’s Iconoclasts. Other works that address the re-orientation of the mind to visuality include,: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1500, New Haven and London, 1992, (although his approach to the subject is less direct than Aston’s, Duffy refers to the ‘unreconstructed mentality of the parishioners’, p. 471); see also Joseph Leo Koerner, the Reformation of the Image, London, 2004. There are an increasing number of publications on iconoclasm and the role of iconoclasm in the establishment of the new and in social re-design. 10 Since writing the manuscript for this book a number of publications on the subject of colour, colour ideas, and the history of pigments have been published. Among these are: Philip Ball, Bright Earth, New York, 2001; Victoria Finley, A Natural History of the Palette, New York, 2002; The Color of Life, Polychromy in Sculpture, Los Angeles, 2008; Spike Bucklow, The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages, London, 2009. The title of Bucklow’s study would suggest a scope including all colours used by the illuminator or artist; alas, there is no chapter on white, nor does the colour white appear anywhere in the index! I found only one reference to whiteness (p. 207).

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turn, entailed a new way of visualizing God. To sort out these issues which, ironically, also entailed symbolism, the Reformers had to decide what they wanted from the physical fabric that was the worship space. Decisions had to be made, therefore, about the role of the material in new forms of worship. Was the worship space just an auditorium? If an interior could distract and even corrupt a soul, could it educate or protect a soul equally well? Could it direct thought, shape, or re-shape the mind of an individual, even the collective of entire communities? Abbot Suger in the early twelfth century was confident that beholding the glory of God on earth would transport him and others to a spiritual realm beyond the material world12 (Fig. 2.3) About the jewel-studded appointments in Saint Denis he wrote: To those who know the properties of precious stones, it becomes evident to their utter astonishment, that none is absent from the number of these …(except carbuncle)…the loveliness of the manycoloured gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.13 For sure, the magisterial reformers did not share Suger’s appraisal of precious materials, but could an interior influence the psyches and and religious thought of a people? 11 Joseph Leo Koerner, Reformation; Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds., Iconoclash, ZKM: Karlsruhe and Cambridge, 2002. 12 Whoever thou art, if thou seekest to extol the glory of these doors Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work. Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights To the True Light where Christ is the true door. In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material And, in seeing this light is resurrected from its former submersion. In Erwin Panofsky, trans. and ed., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, Princeton, 1946. See pp. 47, 49. 13 Panofsky, Abbot Suger, pp. 63–65.

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2.1. Joachim of Flora. Medieval colour diagram. The Holy Trinity, from Liber Figurarum, twelfth century. MS CCC. 255 A, f. 7v. Courtesy of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Repository: Bodleian Library, Oxford.

2.2 (opposite). Medieval colour diagram. Attributed to Byrtferth of Ramsey, The four-fold system of Macrocosm and Microcosm, ca. 1080–90. Oxford, St John’s College MS 17, f. 7v. Courtesy of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford.

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2.3. The Master of St Giles, The Mass of St. Giles, 15th century. National Gallery, London.

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2.4. Chalgrove, Oxfordshire. © Rex Harris, photographer.

2.5. Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Interior view, nave with candalabrum. Architect: Le Corbusier. © 2009 Lucas Gray, photographer.

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2.6. Jacket Cover to the book, The Forgetting by David Shenk. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

2.7. Saint Pieterskerk, Leiden.

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2.8. The Godley Mill, 1521, a Zürich propaganda fly sheet. Zürich Central Library, (Zentralbibliothek, Zürich).

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The Reformers were not only cognizant of these and related concerns; they understood the value of symbolism and believed the minds and hearts of believers could be re-shaped through the process of visual and textual (re) education. And, while they downplayed the importance of the material and visual as we shall see, their reactions to the world about them were strong, their observations detailed and psychologically insightful. They understood that people took in information through their eyes; that that which was visually perceived had psychological and emotional impact on a person; that the visual mattered. The church walls at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire or at Saint Mary’s at Troston, Suffolk are packed with images and provide prime examples of the entertaining, didactic and wondrous images on which the worshipper would traditionally have gazed (Figs. 2.4, 3.21). The substitution of prayer for mass, the extinguishing of lights and of the Tenebrae office, for example, were significant losses of visual as well as dramatic content in the lives of the people (Fig. 2.5). Both had theological and ritual importance and their excision would not still the processes of visualisation that took place in people’s minds. How one learned to visualize one’s faith and God would not change because others had stripped the churches and suppressed traditional rituals and liturgies of the Church. Thus, images would continue to be invoked, even if, or particularly even, if involuntarily and in memory. Yet, ideally, all of this would change if true (complete) reform were to take place. One of the means to accomplishing this was to remove traces of what once was.14 The process of obliteration, then, would facilitate the process of erasing memory and therefore also that of change. In one generation people born into the reformed congregation would not have any idea of the preReformation visual world into which their parents had been born and raised (Figs. 1.12–1.15). The ideas which underpin our ways of thinking about colour, combined with our sensory perceptions of colour, determine our conceptual interactions with it. The expression of these ideas are the uses and the symbolisms given or assigned to colour itself. The nexus of notions, perceptions, theories and practices surrounding colour make up what John Gage has aptly called, ‘the structure of our colour-thinking’.15 A mixture of biblically-based ideas, those The relative cheapness of lime is very often raised in connexion with the use of whitewash . Expense is addressed in Chapter III; but consider this: if the walls had been painted pink or blue or stone colour; would we be talking about it? Why is it impossible to conceive of reformed church walls in red? 15 John Gage, Colour and Culture, London, 1993, p. 8. 14

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learned socially in the form of received beliefs, those absorbed intellectually through study at university, or as part of the education of the humanist scholar, all factor into the structure of the Reformer’s way of thinking about colour. In order to highlight the manner in which modes of thinking — and the meanings that would have infused them — would have informed the practical, symbolic, and anagogic uses of this colour we will first look at the material, whitewash. This will be followed by a discussion of theories in general circulation about the nature and composition of whiteness — as hue, as pigment, and as light, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and concluding with some remarks on contemporary applications of the Protestant aesthetic. Considered last are the operations of whiteness, the perceptual, symbolic and anagogical ways the colour white functioned during the process of reform of the material and religious culture of western Christendom in the century poised on the cusp of the modern world. Each of the considerations mentioned above would have attended washing walls with lime, or washing, metaphorically, with whiteness; not to mention the meaning that would develop out of the experience of worshipping in a newly scrubbed, whitened space. If any colour, may be said to universally invoke notions of void it is likely to be whiteness. Indeed, it would seem that this fact would provide a strong argument against the use of whitewash, and it is largely for this reason that whitewashing is interpreted as an act of violence16 (Fig. 2.6). An astute awareness of issues relating to the visual and emotional aspect of people’s lives, meant the Reformers were alert to the sense of void that would follow the disappearance of images in churches and the abrupt appearance of ‘blank’, whitened walls, even if the radiance of them seemed glorious to some. To most people, then as now, whitewash in a Reformation context suggested (and suggests) obliteration and, therefore, loss. The obliterative powers of whitewash are self-evident. Eamon Duffy’s elegant description of the role of iconoclasm (and whitewash) is expressive of this view. He 16 Closely related to ‘void’ is the concept of ‘blankness’. Being without character or having no character is what makes a wall seem blank. For some, white and blank walls are synonymous. Not all blank walls are white of course, but I would argue that coloured walls might be perceived as ‘plain’ but not ‘blank’. Equally, whited walls are called ‘blank’ for the reason that they appear to lack character. In this case, where blankness is perceived the whiteness is overlooked. Is a blank wall which is also whitened the same thing as one that is blank but not white? (Can a red wall ever be ‘blank’?) What would a wall the colour of natural plaster be (or one in the range of an ‘undyed’ colour)?

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wrote that: ‘Iconoclasm was the central sacrament of the reform’; that ‘[The Reformers] sought with greater urgency the celebration of that sacrament of forgetfulness’ and that ‘Destruction itself [was] a religious act.’17 I agree with Duffy that both iconoclasm and whitewashing became sacraments of reform (explored later). I disagree that destruction itself was the end-goal or sole content of the ritual. One of the arguments presented by this book is that the magisterial reformers were not just erasing images or obliterating memory by clearing images or whitewashing walls, although erasure, often in the form of whitewash was central and, in important ways, ritualized (Fig. 2.7). Iconoclastic reformers were always also creating and affirming, and whitewashing was, in addition, an expression of this. In connexion with the the idea of affirmation it is important to be cognizant of the distinction between the idea of painting something in, as well as out, although the colour, and visual result, might be similar. The image of cleansing, washing and purging with whiteness was in itself not a new idea, as the Bible makes clear. Visual, symbolical and political purging with lime was not new either, as the First Iconoclastic Controversy and the Khludov Psalter also attest (Figs. 1.2, 1.3). Thus, while a real-life encounter with a cleansed (and whitewashed) church must have been shocking and negative for some, it was not unknown as a practice. The whitewashing of walls did not create a total blank either; rather, washing, purging, and purifying with whiteness is an ancient practice, re-enacted in the opening years of the Reformation in a language receiving renewed impetus at this time. From the instant Zwingli and his cohorts swung open the doors on Zürich’s redecorated churches a new form of image had already been created. In this absolutely critical sense, something had also been painted in. In conjunction, then, with ways of thinking about colour established through the Old and New Testaments, combined with classical conceptualisations of whiteness in Western society handed down primarily from Greece and Rome, it may be argued that the established taxonomy of meanings attached to both whiteness and white things, all but rendered the whited wall necessary for the Reformed interior where colour symbolism was inevitable. It was the use of it in this particular way that lent whitewash its dynamic, or creative power beyond its reputation for negation. Further, it provided an apt platform and symbol for the emerging new order being created, appropriate in many ways to the early modern age. 17

582.

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven and London, 1992, pp. 480,

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The effect of the printing press must be briefly mentioned in this context. Clearly, by the first quarter of the sixteenth century printed media was becoming common enough. Well before the middle of the century the Reformation had been generating an abundance of printed matter in its own right. A good portion of this was propaganda and proselytisation on the part of both sides of the religious debate: broadsheets, pamphlets, prints, and books, including translations of the Bible and biblical exegesis.18 An important element of the affective response of colour is the potential for realism created by it. The presence of colour would fundamentally distinguish an image from that of an illustration; from the type-set page, including black and white illustrations used in early printed media, rubrics (red ink detail) notwithstanding. As obvious as this may seem, it remains an important fact of which we should remain cognizant in a discussion of Protestant attitude to images. The sense of tangible realism that could be achieved by artists, particularly accomplished painters but also others, distinguishes the painted, polychromatic image from the printed one in an absolutely critical sense. Thus the acceptability of the ‘black and white’ printed image was never at issue not, at least, until the Root and Branch Act in England was launched by Puritan evangelicals against images of any kind. Evangelical propaganda and even ‘coloured’ biblical illustrations did not have painterly realism or emotiveness as their goal. Christine Göttler described a particular Protestant flysheet image the ‘Godley Mill’ as ‘die stummenden Bild’. (Fig. 2.8). The grammatical form of Göttler’s description presents some difficulty to the reader and her intentions by this description remain unclear. Nonetheless, the description ‘silent images’ and grammatical variations on it give occasion for consideration of the differences between polychromatic images and their black and white print counterparts. ‘Ein stummes Bild’, meaning ‘a silent image’ suggests the absence of affective content. In what other ways these images are stummenden, is hard to say.19 18 G.R. Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge and New York, 1978, pp. 15, 68, 217, 234. Almost any history of the Bible or the Reformation discuss this fact. 19 I thank my German scholar-friend, Dr. James Rolleston (Duke University) for assistance with interpreting Göttler’s language. Rolleston offered the following insight: ‘“Verstummen”, is an intransitive verb form [and] would mean ‘to fall silent’. (This is not what Göttler says, although it would be interesting.) Rolleston again: ‘“Ein verstummendes Bild”, meaning, “an image falling silent” is abstruse, but not impenetrable .’ Neither of these are the form originally quoted.

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Throughout his career as a reformer Huldrych Zwingli approved of printed propaganda which included images and biblical illustrations in books, while he objected to images in non-print media inside and outside of the church and eventually also in homes. Both the propaganda broadsheet and illustrations to his books include high-contrast images in black ink on a ‘white’ ground, sometimes with rubrics. They include little in the way of nuance through shading or chiaroscuro, and are connected always, directly with the Word. This connexion to the Word holds in two senses: first, in terms of conveying a message on the printed page using words — still a relatively new thing for the everyman, involving a visual response to the printed word on a page; secondly, in terms of conveying the true message of the Word through words as well as through a visual means of an entirey new order. The concept of ‘the page’ developed apace with the growth of printed material in circulation. The page changed not only the way an individual related to the words themselves which were no longer presented exclusively orally (to the general population) or in manuscript (for the éite), but also in widely disseminated typeset form representing a major psychological and cultural shift, not just a technological one. In addition, the relationship to the space in which, or on which, words were encountered is a form of imaging in its own right.20 The importance of a relationship to the visual experience of the written word, to words and ideas about words experienced as images set on a page are subjects historians have begun to study as part of the visual and cognitive world of the sixteenth century. That the individual’s visual and tactile sense of his religious world was forced to change because of the elimination of images in churches has become a well-developed subject for scholars. To this must be added ideas about colour shaped by a mental image of the printed page or a ‘blank’ (white) page.

Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy. One of the points Ong makes in Orality is the way in which the printed word fostered a process of interiorization begun before the printing press. About Protestantism in particular he comments: ‘The advent of print intensified the inwardness fostered by script. The age of print was immediately marked in Protestant circles by advocacy of private individual interpretation of the Bible...’ (Ong, p. 150). Also discussed by Ong is the tension between the oral tradition and the written word in the early phase of printed type when society itself remained aural. He does not explicitly discuss the idea of a changed relation to the visual because of the advent of the page (in the sense that a wall might be read as a page), but such an interpretation of the effect of Reformation print media may be read into the theory. See esp. pp. 67–70, 115, 147–150. 20

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Thus, the concept of the printed page and of blankness in the context of a page without writing on it cannot be overestimated for the cognitive and visual shifts these concepts suggest. Because the page had quickly become a part of contemporary culture there is a sense in which it may be said that the church wall now functioned as an analogue for it. Against the space of the blank wall, new histories would be written and scriptural text literally would be painted for worshippers to read. To the new space of the blank wall affirmative meanings signifying renewed and purified faith would soon also accrue. For all of these reasons the whitened wall in the Protestant church would become an image in itself; an emblem which was, perhaps, initially discovered only accidentally, but which nonetheless came to signify the Reformed community, bringing with it long-lasting implications for the Reformed Church and for modern aesthetic values. I would argue that while the wall on which no text was written is obviously different than the one which poses as a page from the Bible, the unwritten wall still carried a message. In very specific ways the blank wall was pregnant with meaning. Examples of references to the whitened wall in its newly found function as cleanser of Roman churches may be identified in numerous Reformation histories. Carlos Eire’s history of the Reformation in Europe, The War Against the Idols,21 provides an example of this. In writing about the major cultural upheaval resulting from Reformed Protestantism which prevailed in Zürich, Geneva, France, the Dutch Republic, England and Scotland, Eire describes the symbol of this change as the ‘[s]tripped, whitewashed church in which the pulpit replaced the altar’ and where the altar became ‘the focal point of a cultural shift from visual images to language.’22 To begin with, and most importantly for our purposes here, Eire’s words, are an evocation of the classic image of the Protestant church interior. But, significantly he also connects the de-ritualisation and de-sacralisation of the worship space that — an unequivocal outcome of the Reformation — to whitewashing as much as he identifies it with the renewed emphasis on lay study of the Bible.23 Whitewashing did de-sacralise the traditional place of

Carlos Eire, The War Against the Idols, Cambridge and New York, 1986. Eire, pp. 315–318, esp. p. 315. 23 Eire also emphasises the near total divorce brought about between art and religion as a result of iconoclastic activity. For some time the consensus of historians and art historians has been that the outcome of this was the creation of highly, although by no means totally, secularized genres of art. This view is increasingly questioned. See Joseph Leo Koerner’s 21

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worship. Where the customary catholic appointments, liturgical accoutrements and decorative riches had identified the church as both Christian and sacred (the traditional Roman Church), these were replaced by walls that signified simplicity, humility, the rejection of ecclesiastical tradition and of all for which Rome stood. For the devout in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, a bare-bones, practical approach to church interiors was appropriate for a monk’s cell, but it was in direct opposition to ideas about buildings and art as odes to, or instantiations of, the glory of God found in the general populous. Yet, a certain irony attaches to Eire’s claim that the stripped, whitewashed wall replaced the altar because, as suggested already, the practice of whitewashing acquired an expiatory aura and iconicity of its own. In a limited but very important sense whitewashing re-sacralised the church while it de-sacralised, although in a form which declared separation and difference from Roman tradition. Simultaneously, while the changes to the interior we have been discussing rendered donations to the Church for art inappropriate and redundant, they also moved the Reformed interior closer to what the Reformers believed to be the apostolic norm. The ‘all-white’ interior was also, incidentally, close to the twelfth century Cistercian ideal (Fig. 2.9). Thus, the act of purging accomplished by whitewashing not only literally cleansed in the way that any building would have been cleansed as a form of hygiene against plague, or in the way that secular buildings in Ireland were ritually, annually, cleansed in anticipation of a performance of the sacraments within them, but the whiteness in a Reformation context announced the status of the Church as religiously, morally, and historically, spotlessly clean; that is, devoid of ‘papal filth’ and of all of the traditions, rules, sacraments and props developed since the time of Constantine. (Metaphorical cleansing with whiteness as a subject will be addressed later in Chapter V, ‘Colour-thinking in the Bible’.) In this important sense the walls performed a chastening role. Nothing could populate them without being seen; they became as much a statement about keeping ‘visual piety’ honest as about being purified of traces of popish idolatry.24

recent study of Lucas Cranach’s work for Luther, The Reformation of the Image, London, 2004. 24 This term is the title of a book by David Morgan. See Visual Piety, a history and theory of popular religious images, Berkeley, 1998. The term is also used by Tessa Watt in Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge, 1991.

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There are certain attributes of whiteness which are central to its metaphoric and functional value. These attributes enable the colour white to have particular associations with, for example, concepts of purity, the transcendental white light of a divine source (dazzle), transparency, and truth. This is not inconsistent with the way in which it had been conceptualized historically, albeit in the sixteenth century these associations would re-emerge in a new register. The traditional attributes of whiteness are evident in the writings of the Old and New Testaments (see Chapter V); within the art and symbolism of the traditional Church, and in the Reformed theologies of Zwinglianism, Calvinism and Anglicanism and, with equal regularity, in the secular worlds of all classes of people.25 The implications of the points made above in the spheres suggested thus far in Chapters I and II are clear: the whitewashed wall suited the Reformed agenda at hand in the years 1524 through the mid-1660s; the colour white was versatile enough to represent nuances of different programmes during different phases of reform while remaining analogically consistent. This versatility forms the basis for its ability to function as a dynamic condition of reform. Whereas it could be claimed that whitewash, as it was used before the Reformation, was of little or no consequence and perfectly ordinary, it was not a neutral colour in a Reformation context. The work it would do between 1524 and 1660 was strident, important, and long-lasting, and would result in the image of the blank white wall itself developing a life of its own in association with a Protestant aesthetic. It seems appropriate, then, to begin this discussion of whiteness with a consideration of the material that was selected to ‘utterly extinct and destroy’ images and to ‘make good walls as though nothing before had been.’26

In the Western world, that is. There are consistencies with other cultures but also differences; only continental Europe, the British Isles and the North American colonies are considered in this book. 26 TRP 287(1547); and during Elizabeth I’s reign: Horne, no. 30 and Guest no. 20: ‘that there remain in their churches no place or case where any images did stand which be not made smooth as though no such image had even been there.’ Grindal’s articles, 1571, no. 4: ‘Whether in your churches and chapels all altars be utterly taken down and clean removed even unto the foundation, and the place where they stood paved, and the wall where they joined whited over and made uniform with the rest, so as no breach or rupture appear.’ Walter Howard Frere, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, vol. III, 1559–1575. 25

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Whitewash, The Material Whitewashes, also called limewashes, are made from a recipe of slaked, hydrated lime, water, and an additive, traditionally linseed oil or casein, used to enhance adhesion. Since time immemorial, whitewashes have been used as a finish coat to interior and exterior walls on both vernacular and high-end buildings. In addition to being a final or finish coat it was used regularly to freshen walls. It was also believed that limewash was an effective prophylactic against the plague and, so, as an epidemic approached a village one washed one’s house with whitewash to prevent illness, just as one re-washed during an epidemic to contain it. In this context whitewashing points to the modern notion that the super-bright whiteness of our habitats (especially kitchens and bathrooms) and soft furnishings (our bedding, towels), and undergarments promises hygiene and health. Victoria Finley in her Natural History of Colour reports that at the turn of the twentieth century in Hong Kong the police would ‘raid the colony’s slum houses to make sure they were white enough.’27 The whiteness of the limewash in this case gave a measure of safety as well as hygiene. It seems likely that one of the senses in which one ‘washed with lime’, important for this study, relates to this practice. Whether one literally washed one’s walls, or one’s soul metaphorically or spiritually, the language comes from a variant of this practice. All of the limes that form the basis of whitewashes originate from a product called ‘quicklime’, or ‘lump lime’. (Magnesian or dolomitic limes are a special case.) Quicklime is the working name for calcium oxide which is made by heating calcium carbonate (limestone, chalk, shells, coral or the like) in a kiln to a temperature of approximately 900 degrees centigrade. At this temperature carbon dioxide gas is given off and the calcium carbonate is chemically changed, or ‘calcined’, to form the quicklime or lump lime (calcium oxide). The quicklime is then combined with water in a process known as hydration. If a considerable amount of water is used the end process is called slaking or slacking and the end product is a colloidal gel called lime putty (calcium hydroxide or hydrated lime). It is this putty (now sold in plastic tubs) which is thinned to the desired consistency and applied to the walls. Once applied, the lime within the wash begins to react with the carbon dioxide in the 27

Victoria Finley, A Natural History of the Palette, New York, 2002, pp. 124–125.

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atmosphere in a process called carbonation, gradually returning it to its original state of limestone. As it reverts, the crystals within the lime expand and adhere to the surface below. The crystals in the carbonated limewash create sharp light refraction that enhances the whiteness of the finish. The process of carbonation is critical for limewash to succeed; without it the wash will not harden properly or adhere. Instructions for mixing lime emphasise the dangers of limewash in its formative stage and with good reason: Quicklime is extremely hazardous. It reacts very violently when it comes into contact with water, moisture or sweat, generating boiling hot temperatures. It should never be handled with bare hands or wet tools. When slaking quicklime protective clothing, gloves, and goggles [should] be worn.28 One of the primary reasons that limewashes were thought to be a precaution against the plague must be attributed to this quality of corrosiveness. The caustic solution that out of a soiled, tainted, or infected surface could create an opaque white surface that also appeared new and unblemished like a clean white skin, must have been compelling. Duffy posits that the reversibility of whitewash was an established fact; that it was used because it was slow-drying and could be rubbed off before it cured.29 It is equally plausible that those who comprehended the corrosive properties of lime would have understood it to consume the surface it touched, as it were, purifying popish images by chemical fire; at a minimum, disfiguring them beyond recognition.30 Ian Pritchett, ‘An Overview of Building Lime’, www.oldhousestore.co.uk. Accessed July, 2009. 29 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 583. 30 The application of limewashes as the finish coat to a wall requires method and an unmodern amount of patience. Traditional plasterers had to take great care in the preparation of their materials. The lime would have to have been slaked to form a putty as already described, and then sieved and matured for many months before use. Only after this could it be mixed to the right consistency and applied to a wall. The application process itself had to be completed in layers, applying the limewash to a dampened wall. The latter process would then be repeated until sufficient coverage was achieved. Purveyors of lime, The Old House Store (UK) describe this process: [P]ure limes set by a two-stage process. The first part, the ‘initial set’, is simply the excess moisture leaving the mortar either by evaporation or migration into the surrounding masonry. The mortar is then firm to the touch but can still be marked with a fingernail. The second stage, carbonation, is a very slow chemical reaction caused by carbon dioxide 28

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The raw material of limewash, calcium carbonate, varies in composition according to its point of origin — usually the local quarry — and because of this not all limes were (or are) the same. The purest of limes is a bright white; less pure limes will be greyed down or yellowish in tone depending on the minerals or sediments such as ochre they contain. Variations in colour are, technically, evidence of impurities of different kinds in varying quantities which by degree affect the hue, light-dark value, drying time, and adhesion of the wash. Thus, it is impurities that give us different building limes and the variations in white hue associated with them. Where locally available lime did not have the desired properties for a given task, either the lime would have been transported from a source further afield, or the local lime would have been amended by the addition of other materials. A case in point is Henry III of England’s search for a lime plaster white enough for his queen’s dais in the mid-thirteenth century.31 French lime continues to be advertised, now on the Internet, as especially white and pure. A consideration of the whiteness of whitewash returns us to the domain of colour theory for an examination of the attributes of white itself and of the colour-thinking associated with it. It makes sense to begin at the nexus of philosophy, science, and art. from the atmosphere entering the damp mortar in solution and reacting with the lime (calcium hydroxide) to convert it back to calcium carbonate. This stage can be very slow; it depends on the temperature, the por[ousness] of the surface to [which it is applied] and the moisture within the mortar and can take many years to complete. …Similarly, lime mortar is softer and weaker than the stone or brick with which it bonds and is therefore able to accommodate slight movements caused by settlement or temperature changes without significant cracking. It is the chemical process of slow-drying moisture exchange that makes limewashes the breathable finish that they are and suitable finishes for walls, either inside or out, where ambient humidity and temperature are considerations. Lime mortars [and limewashes] are permeable, and so it allows evaporation of rising and penetrating damp from within the wall. It is this permeability, or ‘breathing’, which helps to keep the building dry inside without a damp proof course or chemical treatments. Ian Pritchett, ‘An Overview of Building Lime’, www.oldhousestore.co.uk. Accessed July, 2009. It is precisely the permeability of plaster and lime which allows images concealed under a layer of whitewash to re-emerge after years under cover. This happened where the pigments which have chemically bonded with the limewash on the wall, bleed through. When this happened it is likely because the carbonated lime bonded with the pigment so that, in a sense, the pigment belonged to the limewash and no longer to the wall. The limewash might have been rubbed off an image (or object) before the carbonation process had taken effect. Duffy offers this possibility as a reason for the willingness of otherwise reluctant churchwardens and keepers to follow orders to whitewash: ‘The reversibility of whitewash was an established fact.’ See Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 583.

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2.9. Fontenay Abbey interior, Bourgogne, France. © Sylvia Okkerse, photographer.

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2.10. Sir Isaac Newton, Drawing of the two prisms’ experiment, New College, Oxford, MS361/2. 1671. By permission of the Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford. 2.11. Newton’s Colour Circle, 1704.

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2.12. Colour space depicted in the 1931 CIE Chromaticity Diagram.

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2.13. Matthias Grünewald. The Resurrection, Isenheim Altarpiece. Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France. Photo Credit: Eric Lessing/ Art Resource, NY.

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A Few Early Theories of Whiteness The colour white is usually defined as an achromatic colour. At first glance, to be colour without colour or hue may seem to be an oxymoron, for it is impossible to be both colour and ‘colour without colour’— or, ‘not colour’— at the same time. Yet scientists, who perhaps ought to be able to speak less ambiguously, and philosophers, who ought to object to the poor logic of such a statement, cannot even describe whiteness without embracing this paradox. Still, if one thinks about it, how else can one speak of white? In 1435 the Renaissance scholar and theoretician, Leon Battista Alberti (1404– 1472), wrote in his treatise, On Painting, that white is not a colour: 32 [T]he mixing of white does not change the genus of colours but forms the species. Black contains a similar force. For this reason the painter ought to be persuaded that black and white are not true colours, but alterations of other colours. [My emphasis]. …The painter will find nothing with which to represent the brightest lustre of light but white and in the same manner only black to indicate shadows.33 Here Alberti is referring to this paradox. When an artist uses the colour white he is using a colour. Yet it does not behave as other colours do and it has no chroma. Recently colour philosopher C. L. Hardin described white as a colour, although a colour ‘in a limited sense just as zero is a number in a limiting sense.’34 About whiteness, Jonathan Westphal wrote: Blending in white removes the colouredness from the colour; but blending in yellow does not. Is this the basis for the proposition that there can be no clear transparent white? It is hard to see why this should be. And what does it mean to say that blending white into a colour C removes colouredness from C? (There is presumably an exception if C is white.) Blending progressively more red into yellow Libertate Rolls., 36 Hen III, m.17, quoted in Salzman, p. 155. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, John R. Spencer, trans., New Haven and London, 1966. This treatise was originally published in Latin in 1435 as De Pictura. One year later Alberti published an edition written by him in the Italian vernacular, Della Pittura, dedicated to the architect, Filipo Brunelleschi. 33 Leon Battistan Alberti, On Painting, (Della Pittura), John R. Spencer, trans., New Haven and London, 1966, p. 50. 34 C. L. Hardin, Colour for Philosophers,—Unweaving the Rainbow, 1988, p. 25. 31

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finally destroys the yellow, just as blending in white does. The difference is that the final result in the case of white is the absence of colour. Blending white into C removes C and leaves something colourless because here white is not counted as a colour. We reserve a special concept for the effect of white in colour mixing.35 Westphal is here making the same point observed by Alberti in the fifteenth century. Whether we regard white as a colour or not, depends on the context: it might be used as a colour in its own right in a painting, as an admixture to another colour, or as a representative of light itself.36 Plato in the 5th century BCE might have agreed with Alberti as the epigraph to this chapter suggests in which Plato proposes that a pure white is that which includes no other colour. What is more, he equates ‘colour’ with adulteration; a cause of change in the purity quotient of its host colour. Plato had taken up the theories of Empedocles and Democritus as the startingpoint for his thinking about colour, as did his pupil Aristotle. As such the theories of both philosophers have a strong basis in the elements. Neither Plato’s nor Aristotle’s theories of colour are about mixing physical colours in matter (pigments). As metaphysics of light and the physiology of sight, however, they set the stage for almost two thousand years, not only for spectral science but for the structure of our colour-thinking in the West generally. Both philosophers’ ideas were carried forward as part of the Western classical canon; in combination with ideas about colour symbolism absorbed from the Bible, this network of ideas comprised the infra-structure of thinking about colour for the history of Western civilisation. This did not change until Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) published his work on colour in 1672.37 Westphal, p. 30. Ibid. 37 Published as a series of letters in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, February 1672 under the title, ‘The New Theory about Light and Colour’. The first public edition of the experiment was published as The Opticks in 1675; a second edition was published in 1687, and a third in 1704. Important changes were made to each edition with regard to the heretical religious views that Newton feared might be attributed to him by inference from his writings and which he himself recognized to be dangerously radical. Larry Stewart, ‘Seeing Through the Scholium: Religion and Reading Newton in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science, 34 (1996), pp. 123–65; ‘The Theology of Isaac Newton’s General Scholium to the Principia’, in John Hedley Brooke, Margaret Osler, and Jitsell M. van der Meer, eds., ‘Science in Theistic Contexts, Cognitive Dimensions’, Osiris 16, (2001), pp. 169–208. See also http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/newton/ optintro.html. 35

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Plato’s most extensive account of colour, colour mixture, and of the colour white occurs in a passage on the creation in the Timeus38 in which he says that we see colours through the interaction of our eyes and certain elemental particles suspended in space and carried on rays. The particular details of the perception of whiteness are the result of the dilation of the ray which the eye sends out in the process of vision; black is the opposite effect, entailing the contraction of the same ray.39 Plato’s analysis of spectral colour perception was a self-described ‘rational theory of colours.’40 To a contemporary reader the philosopher’s ideas on the biophysics of colour will sound more like hocus pocus than rational theory; yet his influence was unstoppable for two thousand years. Recently Peter Struycken made some sense out of Plato’s theory,41 but it is worthwhile to read an excerpt of the original (in translation) for a sense of its flavor. About transparency, white, black, and dazzle in the Timeus Plato wrote: Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon the sight, some are smaller and some are larger, and some are equal to the parts of the sight itself. Those which are equal are imperceptible, and we call them transparent. The larger produce contraction, the smaller dilation,…in the sight, exercising a power akin to that of hot and cold bodies on the flesh. …White and black are similar effects of contraction and dilation in another sphere, and for this reason have a different appearance. Wherefore, we ought to term white that which dilates the visual ray, and the opposite of this black. There is also a swifter motion of a different sort of fire which strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches the eyes, forcing a way through their passages and melting them, and eliciting from them a

38 Plato’s, Aristotle’s and their predecessors, Empedocles and Democritus’, ideas about colour are famously difficult, some say impossible, to interpret. Fortunately, an account of these is not my task here, but this fact and the numerous attempts to do so should be noted. An excellent recent article on Plato’s, Aristotle’s and Democritus’ theories on colour and colour mixture is found at: P. Struycken, ‘Colour Mixtures According to Plato and Democritus’, Mnenmosyne, Fourth Series, vol. 56, Fasc. 3 (2003), pp. 273–305. 39 Plato’s description of vision is at: Timaeus 45b–d. On whiteness quoted here: Timaeus, 67c–68e. 40 Ibid., 67c–68e. 41 P. (Peter) Struycken, ‘Colour Mixtures According to Democritus and Plato’, Mnemosyne, 4th Series, vol. 56, Fasc.3–2003, pp. 273–304.

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union of fire and water which we call tears, being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an opposite direction — the inner fire flashes forth like lightning, and the outer finds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture, and all sorts of colours are generated by the mixture. This affection is termed dazzling, and the object which produces it is called bright and flashing. (67c–68e). In Plato’s metaphysical palette there are three basic colours: white, black, red, and, as we have just read, a quality of luminosity, the quality of dazzle, which makes a fourth; but all colours are derived from white (leukos–λευκός) and black (μέλαν).42 White was associated with daylight as black was with darkness; both pale yellow and white were associated with sunlight.43 As mentioned, Aristotle, like Plato, relied on Democritus and Empedocles for the foundation of his colour theory which means definitions are closely allied to the elements.44 As with Plato, the different colours we perceive for Aristotle are all derived from white and black.45 As a scientific explication of colour vision Aristotle’s theory appears more developed than Plato’s, but it is no less puzzling or less impenetrable for all that. The amount of literature generated over time in an effort to make a coherent body out of Aristotle’s colour theory is testimony to this point.46 Possibly the clearest summary of Aristotle’s theory of colour phenomenon appears in the introduction to Goethe’s Theory of Colours (Die Farbenlehre), published in 1810, written by Deane B. Judd, worth quoting at length here: Aristotle based his view of colour on the observation that sunlight on passage through, or reflection from, an object is always reduced in intensity, or darkened. Since by this operation colours may be produced, he viewed colour as a phenomenon arising out of the transition from brightness to darkness, which in a sense it is; or…viewed as a colour mixture, or blend, or commingling, or superposition, or juxtaposition of black and white. An essential part of this view…is that all true and pure light, such as light from the

Luc Brisson and Michel Patillo, Platon: Timée, Critias, 4th ed., Paris, 1999, p. 307. Aristotle, Sense and Sensible Objects, 439b16–18. 44 See, Struycken, p. 296. 45 Aristotle, Sens, 439b16–440a7. 46 See Struycken for a summary of scholarly work on Aristotle’s colour theory. 42 43

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sun, has no colour, and colour must be some sort of constituent or material permeating opaque and transparent objects and media, capable of altering or degrading the pure light incident upon them.47 Aristotle explains the phenomenon of whiteness and degrees of whiteness in a number of ways, and he makes references to whiteness in his writings very frequently. In his view, white was a colour, a species of the genus ‘colour’, and the opposite of the colour black.48 As Judd describes above, he held that the perceived phenomenon of colours came from objects through which pure light passed. Pure light was transparent and colourless. Elsewhere, however, and almost more importantly for us here, is that in a significant sense colour was a layer; a kind of ‘material layer that settled on or situated itself between an otherwise transparent object and the perceiver’s view of it.’  49 This provides a foundation, or significant reinforcement for the belief, widely held and resonating deeply throughout Western civilisation, that colour is a covering layer and that the pure is a transparent, or white, zero condition. One passage of Aristotelian colour science will suffice to get the flavor of how Aristotle wrote about the subject: [I]f the account of ‘white’ is a colour which disperses the vision, then that is whiter which is in a greater degree a colour that disperses the vision.50 Not all people would put black and white in the category of colour, but it is hardly surprising that Aristotle conceives of them as opposites; most of us think of black and white as opposites. For Aristotle the attribute of oppositeness is central to the identity of black and white as colour concepts. Furthermore, he claims, it is only through the quality of oppositeness that we learn how to conceive of them at all. As opposites in the genus ‘colours’

Deane B. Judd, ‘Introduction’ to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours (Die Farbenlehre), London and Cambridge, MASS, pp. v–vi. 48 An example of Aristotle on this point, which Thomas Aquinas follows, is: ‘…a passion [quality] is divided ‘according to species’ in the way that the species of colour are white and black.’ Aquinas’ Exposition of Aristotle’s On the Heavens, Bk 3, Lec 3, Sct 561, pp. 3–7. Examples of Aristotle’s references to their oppositeness are countless; also Aquinas’s Commentaries on Aristotle’s works: esp. Topics, Bk IV. 49 Ibid. 50 Aristotle, Topics, Bk III. 47

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they belong to a category called ‘contraries’, or ‘termini’ 51 and, yet, white and black are indissolubly connected. In Aristotle’s scheme of things, as termini black and white represent the physical limit of the genus: scientifically, conceptually, and symbolically. They are, as it were, the end of the colour line.52 For Aristotle they cannot be further broken down into constituent parts and, so, he recognized them as irreducible, indivisible, and simple. Because white cannot be made from other colours it may also be classed as originary and given. Aristotle is also clear: there are no gradations or variants of white either because where there are deviations (this would be a ‘corruption’) white would cease to exist.53 Aristotle uses the colour white repeatedly as an analogue for a pure state of being, and he mines associated attributes of indivisibility, non-compositeness, and absoluteness as analogues in numerous situations in which the demonstration of increments, extremes, simplicity, or purity are warranted. If Aristotle’s influence in other areas of thought may be taken as a measure, his ideas about colour would have had immeasurable impact on the colourthinking of the Western world at large. This would be true even if these ideas were conveyed only incidentally, which they were not. Aristotle wrote explicitly about colour and whiteness in the context of colour discussion in Meteorology, Topics, and Sense and Sensibilia.54 All other colours are categorised as ‘intermediate colours’. In different texts the intermediate colours are spoken of or defined somewhat differently, but in all cases all colours fall somewhere between the extremities of white and black and are derived from them. Aristotle identifies a form of harmony in mixed colours but they remain, by definition, impure.55 It is because of whiteness that all colours change, the philosopher says, for something ‘is

51 Aristotle, Physics, and Aquinas’s Commentary on same, Bk 1, Lec 10, Sct 78, pp. 39–44. 52 Categories, 5 (contraries defined) and 10 (in re: white and black). Physics, Bk. 5 227a7–226b33, p. 383. 53 On this he differs from Democritus who, according to Theophrastus, includes in his basic colour palette two kinds of whiteness. Theophrastus, described these in considerable detail. See Struycken, p. 284. 54 There is also the text by Pseudo-Aristotle, On Colours. 55 Aristotle, Sense and Sensible Objects or, Sense and its Objects in the Parva Naturalis, 439b19–440a7, 442a. The intermediate colours which are derived from white and black include: crimson, violet, leek-green, deep blue, and a grey or yellow. For Aristotle red was the colour closest to light. See John Gage, p. 12.

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said to be changed in colour because changed in whiteness.’56 This idea will appear repeatedly in theories into the present time. I have already mentioned the concept of contraries and the idea proposed by Aristotle that we cannot conceive of whiteness, for example, without blackness. The actual process of changing from white to black or black to white likewise cannot take place without an opponent pair. This is true in two important ways Aristotle distinguishes. As polar opposites of one another each of an opponent pair may be seen as the opposite of its counterpart: white and black, good and evil, sweet and bitter, are common examples of this type for Aristotle. White and black provide a prime analogue for the concept of good and evil itself. Further, Aristotle makes a distinction between the concepts of white and black and the physical phenomenon of colours as we would experience them in the material world (pigments, coloured things). Material colour, those that we experience sensorially with our eyes, necessarily has a form and, therefore, consists in matter in the world. As matter, white and black are mutually exclusive phenomena. However, as concepts we are able to hold both in our minds simultaneously. In Aristotle’s theory of physics there are several ways for something to come into being. These are: generation, corruption and motion. This is relevant to his colour theory because motion entails movement from one positive state to another (positive state), and affects the ways in which whiteness and blackness come into and out of being. Generation, distinguishable from motion, involves movement or change from the negative to the positive, as in the case of ‘non-white’ to ‘the white’; non-existence to existence. Corruption is movement from the positive to the negative, as in white to nonwhite.’57 The purpose of this dialogue in which this example is given was not to illuminate the properties or functions of whiteness, but the metaphysics of being. Still the analogies drawn call attention to the ways in which whiteness operates and to the values assigned to it. The parallels made here are striking: between the positive and whiteness; the non-white or something which has moved from being ‘totally white’ to less-than-totally-white, signifying the movement from purity to corruption (the negative). From this dialogue on colour generation alone, it is not difficult to see how an Aristotelian imprint on colour-thinking would be momentous with power-

56 57

See Westphal discussion above (Westphal, p. 30). Physics, Bk I, Lec 13, Sct 116, p. 55.

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ful implications for colour theory, ideas about colour, and also concepts of purity, cleanliness, and anything to do with admixture or mixture. Generally speaking, white and black may only be derived from one another, with the exception of certain other low value hues such as dark red (a red with black in it), or grey, which can also stand opposite to white as a ‘contrary’ under certain optical conditions. Thus, in his discussion of contraries in de Anima, Aristotle (and Aquinas in his Commentaries on Aristotle) allows that contraries intermediate to white or black, such as grey, may function as a kind of contrary as long as it visually ‘reads’ as one. Grey may function as black to white, so long as there is sufficient contrast between the two. In this scenario there appear to be two spectrums in operation: a whiteblack spectrum and a non-white–white spectrum and at least two ways to arrive at whiteness, the colour. This is notwithstanding that the colour white is a simple, primary, and indivisible, phenomenon.58 While there are other inconsistencies in Aristotle’s colour theory, the influence of its theoretical and scientific framework as well as the rhetorical value of the white-black model, could not have failed to be huge. Colour was also a quality as opposed to a substance and required matter to exist,59 as it appeared to do also in Plato. As mentioned above, Aristotle drew a clear distinction between the concept of whiteness and the actual substance; there is white colouration, and whiteness that one can find in things. The Aristotelian metaphysics of this are complicated, but Aristotle held that, combined with form, matter became a definite dimensional substance which could be perceived in the world. In this way form, as David C. Lindberg has written, could become ‘the bearer of properties’.60 This

The examples of white and black as opposites of one another are countless. See Topics, Bk III, IV. 59 Categories, 2, ‘For example, the individual knowledge-of-grammar is in a subject, the soul, but is not said of any subject; and the individual white is in a subject, the body (for all colour is in a body), but is not said of any subject.’ And: ‘Again, colour is in body and therefore also in an individual body; for were it not in some individual body it would not be in body at all.’; ‘white and black are in the same genus (since colour is their genus),’ Cat. 11. In re its status as a quality: Topics, Bk I: ‘For when a man is set before him and he says that what is set there is a man or an animal, he states what it is and signifies a substance; but when a white colour is set before him and he says that what is set there is white or is a colour, he states what it is and signifies a quality.’ 60 David C. Lindberg, ‘The Genesis of Kepler’s Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler’, Osiris, Second Series, vol. 2, 1986, pp. 5–42; esp. p. 7. 58

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makes colour — whiteness in our case — a secondary quality and subject to a number of variables and foibles relating to human perception. Aristotle recognized the difficulty of judging the true colour of a thing due to the circumstances of perception;61 a form of reflection on the view that we can never know the truth about the nature of a thing. The education that the magisterial reformers, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, received in the early years of the sixteenth century was, in all important respects, the traditional classical education of the fifteenth century humanist in the scholastic tradition. Thus, while the works of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas (whose writings were closely studied by all scholars), were among the least favourite of Zwingli’s predecessors (Zwingli and his cohorts tended to embrace the more contemporary and modern strains of thought such as Plato, Erasmus, Thomas More, and Lucian), the scholastic school remained central to the mix of ideas in circulation which would have shaped the colour-thinking of the age. Complete editions of Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, and Lombard were in Zwingli’s personal library in addition to the works of Plato, Leon Battista Alberti, and Vitruvius, and each of these texts, and many more, show evidence of diligent study. In particular, a comparison of the thinking of Aristotle and Aquinas provides a useful reference.62 In his Commentaries on Aristotle’s Works,63 St Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle’s theories and analogies with fundamentally little change, although it would not be true to say Aquinas never challenges Aristotle’s thought in them. Still, there are over fourteen different ways, relevant to this study, in which Aquinas employs the concept of white. These are instructive as well as important because of the influence of Aquinas (and Aristotle) on the training of contemporary scholars and because of the very strong emphasis in these works on logic and reason communicated in connexion with each idea 61 For example, ‘In answer to those who bring forward very disgraceful pleasures it can be said that these are not pleasant; for even if they are pleasing to the ill-disposed, we must not assume that they are really pleasant—except to such people—any more than what is wholesome or sweet or bitter to the sick is so in fact, or any more than objects which seem white to persons with diseased eyes are actually white.’ Nicomachean Ethics, vol 2, Bk 10, Lec 4, p. 875. 62 G. R. Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 13, 15, 65, 85. 63 The Aristotelian Commentary Series, Oxford, 1993–95, referred to collectively as the Commentaries or, when appropriate, by individual title referencing the Aristotelian work on which a Commentary is based.

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advanced. These references to whiteness can be organized into a taxonomy which I have summarized in the table at the end of this chapter. Physically, symbolically, and anagogically, white and black encompass all of that which falls between them in terms of shades of grey and colour mixes. Aristotle’s ideas about colour were given new currency through Aquinas and disseminated throughout Europe. For Aquinas the concepts of white and of black were as inextricably connected as for Aristotle. In his writings white and black are derived from one another and are absolute contraries (literally ‘termini’ — a term he borrows from Aristotle) and they hold elemental positions as simple, primitive colours. Although in general much less is said by Aquinas about chromatic colour than about white and black (not true of Aristotle), by reading between the lines substantial amounts of information about colour may be inferred from the Commentaries. He holds, again following Aristotle, that it is only through knowing one of an opponent pair (such as white and black), that one can even conceive of either. In this way they are utterly dependant on one another. Both Aristotle and Aquinas are interested in the fact that both black and white may be held in the mind at the same time and yet, as a practical matter, they cannot exist in the real world on the same terms. The implication is that here Aristotle and Aquinas are referring to all white things, including pigment.64 It was not until Newton in the seventeenth century that Aristotle’s science of colour would begin to lose its constituency. However, I propose that Aquinas’s ideas about whiteness and blackness did much more work than these few statements just quoted would suggest. In the Summa Theologica Aquinas discusses the attributes of God, of which simplicity is one. The attributes of God, needless to say, have generated substantial literature in their own right, as has the specific attribute of ‘simplicity’. A list of the divine attributes of God as conceived by the scholastics is not the project for this book; but the relationship between the concepts of them and whiteness, is. About simplicity and whiteness Aquinas, following Aristotle, held: [I]n every composite there is something which is not it itself. But, even if this could be said of whatever has a form, viz., that it has something which is not it itself, as in a white object there is something which does not belong to the essence of white, nevertheless, in the form itself there is nothing besides itself. And, so, since God is 64

Aquinas, Commentary on the Heavens, Bk. 2, Lect. 10, Sct. 384.

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absolute form, or absolute being, He can in no way be composite. …Hilary touches upon this argument when he says: God, who is strength, is not made up of things that are weak; nor is he Who is light; composed of things that are dark.65 One might ask of this passage, why white? Aquinas was not an enemy of colour;66 so why not the jewel-tones that transported Abbot Suger anagogically to the paradisical realm? A few considerations emerge relating to the question of how white functions in the Aquinas passage quoted above. Whiteness, according to Aquinas, does not exist in itself, there are only white objects, and here Aquinas clearly refers to this belief (no colour exists in itself). In this passage whiteness, as the colour-without-hue, is used by Aquinas to clarify a point: in what way a quality does not belong to the essence of a thing. It seems plausible that Aquinas understood, possibly intuitively, that as soon as one introduced chromatic content into a circumstance, one also introduced a material layer, coloratus, for consideration. With colour comes issues: semblance/dissemblance;67 perspective, and the elements of time and narrative which further complicate perception and understanding. I imagine Aquinas saw it would be easier for the reader to concentrate on his meaning using the white object as his example where all extraneous content is eliminated. Through an understanding of the form of whiteness, Aquinas seems to be saying, one can actually see, or more easily imagine, something which contains nothing but itself: the True. Through this analogy one can more readily come to grasp the form of God; that is, his non-compositeness, simplicity and absoluteness. In this paragraph we find references to the absoluteness of white, (its simplicity, unitariness, spoken of earlier) established elsewhere while it gestures toward a number of other attributes that whiteness shares with God. In the Commentaries the opposition of white and black become almost indistinguishable from that of light and dark, indicating a conflation or occlusion of ideas. Discussion of the opposite of dark shifts without explication to one denoting white and also the transparent, and this move returns

Aquinas, Summa, III.7. Ibid., I.I.9. 67 Also related to coloratus in this context is the English verb, ‘tainted’ (teinter) by 1577 meaning ‘corrupted [by admixture], debased, spurious, counterfeit’. See OED, ‘taint’. 65

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us, indirectly, to the attribute of invisibility and purity of God. This would not be the case were the subject or object the colours orange, red or green. Aquinas does not attempt to present any kind of coherent colour theory. Why would he? His uses of colour metaphor do not fundamentally differ from Aristotle’s; one can largely assume, although not always, as with Aristotle so with Thomas. Both liberally invoke the colours white and black as analogies, metaphors and analogues. The predominance in the Commentaries of references to white and black is striking; they represent for him all colour—the spectrum; the source of all colour, and the extremes of colour between which all other colour, and all other examples of extremes, fall.68 The preponderance of attention accorded white and black suggests not only agreement with Aristotle in the versatility of white and black as useful analogues and metaphors for literary purposes. It also suggests to this author agreement about the receptivity of these two colours to a broad, but nonetheless specific, range of meanings. The sources of the versatility lie in the nature of the attributes of whiteness itself which themselves tend to be elusive and paradoxical. These latter qualities provide much of the conceptual and metaphoric power of these colours. This fact was not lost on either Aquinas or his predecessors. That for Aquinas white and black were colours is also clear.

The Paradoxes of Whiteness The most obvious of the equivocal qualities of whiteness is the paradoxical attribute of achromaticity. As pigment, white, along with black and grey, is considered an achromatic colour; that is, a colour without colour, or with zero-hue, a kind of zero value or condition. White may also be characterised as simultaneously unitary and ultimate. It is unitary because indivisible; and indivisible because no other colours may be found in it. This makes it, in this limited sense, a primary colour. In a pre-industrial era, no amount of analysis or experimentation would yield up a verifiable recipe for creating white. The colour white may be said to be ultimate because, as the analysis of Aristotle has shown, as an ultimate contrary it represents the logical limit of colour. On a strictly metaphorical level, these same attributes are shared Aquinas, Commentaries on the Heavens, Bk 3, 1.299a2–299b14 and Bk 3, Lect. 3, Sct 561. 68

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with the white light of the sun as it was then conceived. For Aristotle and Aquinas, the white light emitted by the sun was pure, homogeneous, unitary, and, of course, as the source of vision and colour, also fundamental to life. In The Art of Painting, Leonardo da Vinci takes Plato and Aristotle into account. He refers to the unitariness of white — its simplicity and the fact that for Aristotle all colours derive from white and black. He acknowledges the distinction between theories of colour, philosophical discussions about colour, the practicalities of using it in the form of paint, and issues of perception. In this da Vinci acknowledges that what one has to say about whiteness (and, by extension, colour generally), depends very much on the point of view from which it is being considered. The epilogue to this chapter includes several short quotations about the colour white from Leonardo’s notebooks. White was not a colour in Leonardo’s view, but it functioned like one and was necessary for painters. It was a simple colour; that is, indivisible and therefore a primary. And it was the designated representative of light. Thus, Leonardo says, when painters used white and black as a material (pigmented matter), in the same way that blue, green, yellow, tawny, and red were used as colours, white and black were colours because they functioned as such. Outside of this context, they were not colours per se but the deprivation of light and light itself.69 For centuries the received view of whiteness has been it was the ‘sum of all colours,’ which accounts for the understanding shared by many that it is composite phenomenon. When viewed this way white is understood to be not simple but a compounded colour created out of constituent parts. The notion of whiteness as a sum of colours is scientifically false; although it represents a persistent view still found in the mainstream of lay thinking. The colour white cannot be mixed, but the aphorism –– that ‘whiteness is the sum of all colours’ is true, however, in the limited sense that when we perceive the colour white we are seeing the sum of all spectral wavelengths in reflection. In this specific way white might be said to represent a kind of sum of all spectral colour. White pigments are primary colours, therefore, in the sense that they cannot be mixed (this is not true of black); they are simple, too, for the same reason, as Leonardo claims. Still, it is not a primary in the sense that other 69 Leonardo, On Painting, Martin Kemp, p. 70; ‘Black and White are not reckoned among colours; the one is the representative of darkness, the other of light: that is, one is a simple privation of light, the other is light itself…’ in Patricia Stone, ed., Primary Sources, New York, 1991, p. 6.

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colours can be mixed from it (unless you are Aristotle or Aquinas). White is, arguably, not a colour at all in that colours possess hue (they are not achromatic) and because we perceive hues only as the visible condition of refraction. Whiteness is not refractive; unrefracted light does not appear to us at all except in certain specific circumstances. Therefore, the colour white cannot be the colour of light except where it manifests itself as dazzle,—a non-colour colour attribute of luminence; as a shining or blinding white or yellow light. Light is, otherwise, a transparent phenomenon and not white at all in the same way that refracted spectral light may be said to be violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, or red. The conception of light as being coloured white is attributable to several sources, but its modern foundation is very likely attributable to Sir Isaac Newton. Athough Da Vinci’s description of the function of whiteness in painting also held that white was the representative of light as well as light itself, Newton’s claim lent this view a modern scientific basis. Newton may, however, have borrowed his characterization of this relationship — between white-light and the colour white — from the master painter. Most of us are aware that Isaac Newton established a hypothesis about the consistent correspondence between specific wavelengths of light and particular colours, a theory which, in addition to his work on the mathematization of gravity, brought him considerable fame in his own lifetime. But, as Evan Thompson has shown, Newton did not actually demonstrate the source of the connexion between wavelengths and colours, nor the source of colour itself, which his own summaries of experiments in colour suggested he did. In other words, whether the properties identified through Newton’s optical experiments that took place in 1671 and 1672 are colours or, as Thompson points out, ‘dispositions to exhibit colours’ remained an unresolved question. (Fig. 2.10). Arguing the merits of philosophical and scientific questions about of the ontological status of colour is, fortunately, not essential to us here. What is pertinent, however, is how Newton talked about colour. In the same context to which Thompson refers, the 1671/72 letters read to the Royal Society in London, (also in subsequent editions of the Opticks), Newton spoke authoritatively about the connexion between the refrangible rays of light and colour and equally confidently about the colour of unrefracted light being white-coloured.70 The earliest such reference is in 70 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, No. 96, (21 July 1673), pp. 6087–6092: 7–8. See Wittgenstein on this point. Remarks, I–35, p. 7e.

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the papers read to the Royal Society in 1671 where Newton wrote: But the most surprising, and wonderful composition was that of Whiteness. There is no one sort of Rays which alone can exhibit this. ‘Tis ever compounded, and to its composition are requisite all the aforesaid primary Colours, mixed in a due proportion. I have often with Admiration beheld, that all the Colours of the Prisme being made to converge, and thereby to be again mixed as they were in the light before it was Incident upon the Prisme, reproduced light, intirely and perfectly white, and not at all sensibly differing from a direct Light of the Sun, unless when the glasses, I used, were not sufficiently clear; for then they would a little incline it to their colour. Hence therefore it comes to pass, that Whiteness is the usual colour of Light; for, Light is a confused aggregate of Rays imbued with all sorts of Colors, as they are promiscuously darted from the various parts of luminous bodies. And of such a confused aggregate, as I said, is generated Whiteness, if there be a due proportion of the Ingredients; but if any one predominate, the Light must incline to that colour; as it happens in the Blew flame of Brimstone; the yellow flame of a Candle; and the various colours of the Fixed stars. Thus, Newton holds, white is the most compounded of the colours because no ray ever exhibits this colour, and because it requires exact proportions of all the homogeneal rays (the ‘primitive colours’) to create it (Figs. 2.11, 2.12). (Emphasis mine). The white that Newton describes is defined as ‘the White of the Sun’s immediate light, of the ordinary objects of our senses, and of all white Phænomena that have hitherto fallen under my observation.’ 71 ‘The white of the sun’s immediate light’ is the dazzling white emitted by the light closest 71 At least one contemporary, Christiaan Huygens, took issue with Newton’s theory of whiteness. Huygens wrote to Newton to say that whiteness could be made out of ‘two uncompounded colours’. Newton’s response is recorded in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 96 (21 July 1673), pp. 6087–6092. This is where he states that he had in mind ‘the White of the Sun’s immediate light, of the ordinary objects of our senses, and of all white Phænomena that have hitherto faln under my observation,’ quoted above. To convince Newton, the master says, Mr. Huygens would have to produce a white that matched ‘other Whites not compounded of only two colours like that’ and to show, furthermore, that Huygens’ white ‘matched [Newton’s] in all other respects.’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no. 96 (21 July 1673), pp. 6087–6092.

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to the sun. Newton extends his definition of this same whiteness to include ordinary objects, so he cannot intend only the dazzle of the brightest of all lights but also the white we perceive in objects. That the colour white falls into the same category as ‘white things’ in this specific sense is clear.72 It is also clear from the description of his optical experiments that Newton projected unrefracted light onto white, or ‘luminous’, sheets of paper.73 This allowed him to see the seven homogeneal colours, but it also provided a white ground which projected itself through the unrefracted light that he saw in his rooms at Trinity College. To a significant degree unrefracted light projected onto a white sheet of paper would account for the nature of the language thus used to describe the phenomenon of unrefracted ‘white light’. Newton recognized of course the difference between perception of colour and colour itself, the luminosity of the sky generally lit and the white colour in things, between pigment and spectral light, the intensity of light closest to the sun or diffuse ambient light seen elsewhere, but these distinctions are not always made in what he wrote.74 The Opticks, therefore, provided a basis for the general public’s conflation of white light with the colour white and white pigment where distinctions in The Opticks between media were not clearly drawn.75 The fuzziness around the subject of white light and colour mixture must be the source of the notion that white is a compound colour. It also suggests a strong basis for a lay association between white light (the ‘Colours may be produced by Composition which shall be like to the Colours of homogeneal Light as to the Appearance of Colour, but not as to the Immutability of Colour and Constitution of Light. And those Colours by how much they are more compounded by so much are they less full and intense, and by too much Composition they may be diluted and weaken’ d till they cease, and the Mixture becomes white or grey.’ Prop IV, Theor. III., 115. See also Wittgenstein: Remarks: I.35 (7e); II.23 (15e). 73 ‘If you looke upon some uniformely luminous body (as on the cleare sky or a sheet of white paper &c).’ Isaac Newton, Of Colours, Additional Ms. 3975, pp. 1–22; see also: The Optics 1671/2, Prop. V, Theor. IV:117. Accessed, 02–28–10: Cambridge University Library. Newton Project. 74 For example: ‘Whiteness and all grey Colours between white and black, may be compounded of Colours, and the whiteness of the Sun’s Light is compounded of all the primary Colours mix’d in a due Proportion.’ Here Newton’s language mingles the science of spectral light with that of pigment-mixing. The Opticks, Prop. V., Theor. IV:117. 75 Newton’s religious writings do not make this correspondance, although he speaks of divine light in them. I am suggesting here that the divine light→white light→white colour association would be an easy, relatively small step to take in colour-thinking and symbolism in view of attributes advanced by Plato, Aristotle, and Leonardo. Newton’s theory was not necessary to make this connexion, but it does reinforce it. 72

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divine light of God, where God manifest himself as luminosity and inhabits the celestial sphere), and the colour white itself.76 In a later edition of The Opticks following a set-up consisting in a reiteration of his findings concerning the refrangibility of the sun’s light rays, Newton wrote: the white colour is a mixture of all the Colours which the rays would have apart, (Prop. 5 Lib. 2). The rays in that mixture do not lose or alter their several colorific qualities, but by all their various kinds of actions mixt in the Sensorium, beget a sensation of a middling Colour between all their Colours which is whiteness. For whiteness is a mean between all Colours, having it self [sic] indifferently to them all, so as with equal facility to be tinged with any of them. A red Powder mixed with a little blue, or a blue with a little red, doth not presently lose its Colour, but a white Powder mixed with any Colour is presently tinged with any Colour what-ever. It has been shewed also, that as the Suns’ light is mixed of all sorts of rays, so its whiteness is a mixture of the Colours of all sorts of rays; those rays having from the beginning their several colorific qualities as well as their several refrangibilities, and retaining them perpetually unchang’d not withstanding any refractions or reflections they may at any time suffer by consequence that those their colours are likewise immutable.77 Under certain specific conditions, that of dazzle for example, the light of the sun which Newton includes in the category of white things, will appear 76 The Opticks, Prop V. Theor. IV:117. Correspondence with critics contesting Newton’s theory about whiteness followed the publication of his theory as early as 1673. 77 The Opticks, 1703, Book I:123. Still at I:123 Newton writes in a following passage: ‘…I cause therefore all the Teeth to pass successively over the Lens, and when the Motion was slow, there appeared a perpetual Succession of the Colours upon the Paper: But if I so much accelerated the Motion, that the Colours by reason of their quick Succession could not be distinguished from one another, the Appearance of the single Colours ceased. There was no red, no yellow, no green, no blue, nor purple to be seen any longer, but from a Confusion of them all there arose one uniform white Colour. Of the Light which now by Mixture of all the Colours appeared white, there was no Part really white. One part was red, another yellow, a third green, a fourth blue, a fifth purple, and every Part retains its proper Colour till it strike the Sensorium…if there ariseth out of them all one common Sensation, which is neither of this Colour alone nor of that alone, but hath it self indifferently to ‘em all, and this is a Sensation of Whitness.’

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as some degree of dazzling whiteness or variant thereof. The blinding white apparition of the sun may transition into shades of dazzling yellow, which Newton also elsewhere acknowledges.78 Representations of the dazzling yellow brilliance of the visage of God we have read about in Emile Mâle.79 In Mathias Grünewald’s Resurrection scene in the Isenheim Altarpiece (Fig. 2.13) the divine light emanating from the risen Jesus is a dazzling yellow transitioning to orange, just as Newton describes. A shift begun in the early Renaissance from gold to yellow or white to depict dazzle is completed here.80 Yellow is the only colour (as opposed to achromatic whiteness) that is sufficiently luminant in itself to convey the dazzle of white light. Thus Newton held — in more than one place — that the colour of unrefracted light is white, as we have just read; also, that the sun’s rays mixed together create the white colour of its light. It should be clear by now that the conflation of the language of colour-mixing with an explication of the phenomenon of white light is likely at the basis of the idea that the colour white is composed of all colours. It makes sense in the context of these references that the colour symbolically and phenomenologically associated with white-light, light and, by extension, the celestial and Divine, would accrue to itself compelling associations of the transcendental. What we see on earth is refracted light; what comes from the heavens is a transparent medium that makes all vision and all life possible; it is dazzlingly, blindingly bright white at its source. It is ‘And this yellow will grow more faint and dilute continually in its progress from χ to π, where by a mixture of all sorts of rays it will become white.’ The Opticks, 1704: Book I:122. 79 See Figure 2.11. In L’Art religieux du XIIIe siecle en France Émile Mâle describes a development in passion plays in the late fifteenth century traceable to a particular text illustrated by Hubert Cailloux which included stage directions. In this play Jesus is clad in white in accordance with the Gospels; supernatural light, however, is depicted by painting Jesus’ face in yellow gold. Émile Mâle, L’Art religieux, Paris, 1919, and Marthiel Mathews, trans., Princeton, 1984, p. 64. 80 In De Pictura Alberti challenged his reader to depict light using pigment as opposed to gold, and Leonardo tells his reader the colour of light is white. John Gage mentions an ‘early Renaissance polemic against the use of gold in painting and the great reduction of its use in mosaic, for example, in the Mascoli Chapel in Venice.’ No source is cited for this claim, although elsewhere Gage refers to the ‘prejudices of Vitruvius and Pliny against extravagant colouring and the developing practices of the Quatrrocento toward a...lowertoned harmony of picture surface’, referenced earlier in this chapter also in connexion with Vitruvius (Colour, p. 133). Gage offers an interesting theory for the polemic against gold: that functionally light and colour were separated in art and thought along the lines of 78

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this aspect of light that we take to be a figure for the divine. One of the paradoxes in our thinking about whiteness lies in the sense we have that it is in some way transparent, that we can ‘look through it’, or think that we do — notwithstanding the fact that, as Westphal describes the phenomenon: ‘white surfaces actually present a barrier to light and block the dimension of depth required for the transparency of an image.’81 Ample testimony to the perceived connexion between transparency and whiteness may be found in the writings of others, where the colour white has been, and still is, often used as an analogue for transparency. The relationship between whiteness and transparency is a particularly difficult phenomenon to describe because the colour white is, in fact, the only colour that cannot be physically transparent, as suggested above. Quoting Westphal again: One searches in vain for a straightforward statement of the central features of the concepts [of whiteness and transparency] whose hidden logical relationship is responsible for the problem.82 Westphal’s choice of words reflects the fistiness of the issue, earlier raised by Wittgenstein.83 Preoccupations with this puzzle continued well into in the twentieth century and if Mark Wigley’s writing on this subject or this book may be taken as any kind of measure, the game continues.84 Indeed, Westphal described opacity as a condition of whiteness (my emphasis), a point with which not all colour historians agree.85 If we accept opacity as a condition of whiteness then its transparency must be metaphorical. The metaphorical transparency of whiteness is a particularly important fact for the symbolism and theology of colour and of whiteness Aristotle’s theories about these matters; that the prevailing aesthetic system (in Byzantium) was one of movement; that the movement toward depiction of light with pigment instead of gold coincided with the introduction of one-point perspective which ‘reduced the lateral movement of the spectator.’ (Colour, p. 58). 81 Jonathan Westphal, Colour: A Philosophical Introduction , 2nd ed., Oxford, 1987, p. 30. 82 Ibid., p. 20. 83 Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, I.19 (5e); I.43 (8e); II.2 (15e). 84 In 1990 Mark Wigley referred to the avoidance of any attempt to explicate the connexion (between white and transparency) in, ‘Architecture After Philosophy: Le Corbusier and the Emperor’s New Paint’, Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts, London, 1990, pp. 84–95, where he observed that the ‘opaqueness of the white surface and the transparency of modernism in architecture had not been problematised.’ 85 John Gage, for example, is unequivocal that white can be transparent, or partially so. Personal conversations with John Gage, Cambridge University, 1998–2000. There are a number of references to transparent whites in Colour and Culture.

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in particular. The reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, comes close to invoking whiteness (literally, he suggested ‘painted transparency’) in this context. In The Shepherd the reformer wrote: ‘In the first part you will find the colour and shape of a true shepherd painted with clear strokes. This picture is for sure not a pleasant incentive for the flesh.’86 Not only is the viewer here deprived of the pleasure of colour and of looking upon images of human flesh (the Virgin Mary, the young Jesus as shepherd), he is deprived of all colour. As the colour of the robe of righteousness, whiteness, indicating transparency to God, has central value. But here the figure of the true Christian is depicted using transparent ‘strokes’, where even whiteness may not have been sufficiently pure. Plotinus speaks similarly of the beauty of the virtuous soul whose splendor is hueless.87 Other cognates such as purity and truth which are just as deeply and indissolubly bound up with whiteness as is the opacity of the white surface and the concept of transparency further complicate any explanation of the connexion. Westphal’s conclusion, mentioned above, that not being transparent is a necessary condition for being white means a transparent white is logically impossible.88 Leonardo would agree. Yet the connexion between whiteness and transparency remains a persistant element in our colour-thinking. Sometime during 1950–1951 Wittgenstein (1889–1951) wrote that ‘blending in white removes the colouredness from colour’.89 Although it is likely he would have declined to ascribe ‘powers’ to colours as Alberti Huldrych Zwingli, The Shepherd, H. Wayne Pipkin, trans., Allison Park, PA, 1984, pp. 77–124; see pp. 81–82. 87 What do you feel in the presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of Souls? When you see that you yourselves are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your soul, this longing to break away from the body…? …[W]hat is it that awakens all this passion? No shape, colour, no grandeur of mass: all is for a Soul, something whose beauty rests upon no colour, for the moral wisdom the Soul enshrines and all the other hueless splendor of the virtues… shining down upon all, the light of godlike Intellection. Plotinus, The Enneads, Stephen MacKenna, trans., London, 1991, I.6, pp. 49–50. 88 Westphal has developed a truth table to demonstrate this. See Colour: a Philosophical Introduction, p. 23. 89 “Die Beimischung des Weiss nimmt der Farbe das Farbige; dagegen nicht die Beimischung von Gelb. – Ist das am Grunde des Satzes, dass es kein klar durchsichtiges Weiss geben kann?, Ludwig, Wittgenstein, G.E.M. Anscombe, ed., Linda L. McAlister and Margaret Schattle, trans., Remarks on Colour, Berkely and Los Angeles, 1978, II.2 (p. 15e). 86

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did — Alberti characterised the achromatic colours as ‘forces’, not colours — Wittgenstein had observed a phenomenon comparable to the one Alberti described in the passage quoted earlier relating to the way white functions perceptually in the mixing of colours in paint.90 Alberti saw colour lightened but in the end not removed by white. Wittgenstein also saw that whiteness removed colour from colour incrementally; he goes further, however, and states that if the process of ‘whitening’ were allowed to proceed colour would, theoretically, reach a point of colourlessness (pure white?). Alberti and Wittgenstein differ somewhat on this latter point. Alberti does not conclude, as Wittgenstein appears to do, that colourlessness would be a necessary outcome of the process of whitening if taken to its logical conclusion. Wittgenstein’s comment to this effect might have been a philosophic posture; he perceived white ‘on the palette’ as a colour, not as ‘colourless’ or as ‘colourlessness,’ writing elsewhere in his Remarks that ‘white is a colour, although the lightest one.’91 Westphal holds that the blending of white removes colouredness from a colour in a way that blending any other colour does not.92 We have seen already that philosopher C. L. Hardin described white as a colour, although a colour ‘in a limited sense just as zero is a number in a limiting sense.’93 In a world where each object must have a colour of some kind because it materially exists, a white object or surface becomes an object sans artifice merely in virtue of its whiteness because it is understood not to possess hue in any traditional sense. In an economy where colouredness represents trickery and artiface (a common view found in the Christian West through the seventeenth century), it is a relatively short step to add whiteness as a cleansing agent where whiteness removes colouredness from a colour and whereby a zero condition may be achieved. Thus, the absence of added colour (the undyed), or a return to a zero condition in colour terms, was regarded as more ‘honest’ than the same object coloured a hue. This way of colourSee n.37. ‘On the palette, light is the whitest one.’ (‘Auf der Palette ist da Weiss die hellste Farbe.’), Remarks on Colour, I.2, (pp. 2, 2e). To be fair, the writings assembled in the publication Remarks, are a collection of reflections on colour. Who knows what Wittgenstein would have written had he blended these notes into a coherent treatise on colour? 92 ‘Blending progressively more red into yellow finally destroys the yellow, just as blending in white does. The difference is that the final result in the case of white is the absence of colour.’ Westphal, p. 30. 93 C. L. Hardin, Colour for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, 1988, p. 25. 90 91

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thinking provides a solid basis for the use of white as a cleansing agent in the purging of popism and associated forms of pollution. This is true also for its affirmative value as a symbolic identifier of a specific religious and moral stance.

Symbolisms of Whiteness Its role as an instantiation of purity, or in some sense a ‘signal’ or ‘space’ of purity, suggests that anything other than whiteness in a whitened space will appear as a mark, spot, or intrusion of some kind. Colour sits on the white surface — as a covering layer, a form of envelope (hence references to being clothed with colour), or as discolouration (pollution; soil). It is this phenomenon that leads whiteness to be a measure of purity also, viz. the epigraph to this chapter by Plato. References to ‘hueless strokes’ of colour, ‘hueless splendor’, and white walls praised by Reformers as glorious or beautiful may be interpreted as an equation of whiteness with the transparency of Truth and honesty, as well as with purity. The link between whiteness and purity goes at least as far back as the Old Testament, as already stated. Various tables of equivalents in pagan antiquity include white in elemental positions and characterise ‘mixed-colour’ as impure. We saw this in the epigraph quoting Plato at the beginning of this chapter. It is worth noting in the context of a discussion of symbolisms of whiteness that in these cases we have another sense in which whiteness is pure. This is when whiteness is that from which all colour comes into existence or against which all colour may be seen. Here white establishes itself as a fundamental, absolute, and zero condition. In classical Latin two words were used to designate the colour ‘white’: candidus, meaning a shining, dazzling white: clear, and bright; and albus, indicating a dead or flat, lusterless white. The verb candido (candidus) meant ‘to make glittering or bright’, ‘to make white.’ Candidatus was the term used for a candidate for public office called thus because he was clothed in a ‘glittering white toga.’94 St Augustine refers to an albis vestibus candidari, consistent with classical use (Ep. 168). References to the brilliant white of candidus / candida‘Candidatus’ in Charleton T. Lewis, Latin Dictionary, New York, 1987, quoting the Dictionary of Antiquities. 94

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tus may be found in Isidore, Origen, Tertullian, and other early Christian writers. Another meaning, found in Ambrose (Sermon 81) uses candidatus in connexion with clarity of voice: ‘distinct, clear, pure, silver-toned’; the opposite of fuscus, the root of ‘to obfuscate’ (classical Latin ob + fuscare = to darken). The cognate meanings for candidus are many: ‘resplendant beauty of a person’: ‘fair’; ‘radiant’; the dazzling whiteness of snow; and so on. The implication of each of these examples is that the tangible absence of any form of shadow or discolouration demonstrates a condition of purity. The fact that of all the colours white cannot redefine the hue of its host-colour has bearing also on the metaphorical relationship of whiteness to truth in both secular and religious thought. This fact also provides a solid basis for its tendency to be chosen in praxis as the colour signifying truth, honesty and purity; the colour white leaves things as they are, not wrapped in a cloak of colour which conceals from view the essence of a thing. This concept of colour as overlay or concealment was invariably interpreted as a form of deceit by the majesterial reformers. .95 The term ‘candid’ entered the English language in reference to white things associated with honesty and innocence about 1630. As something splendid, illustrious, clear and stainless, candid does not enter the English language until the mid-seventeenth century; and those meanings do not stay very long. By the early nineteenth century as a direct reference to colour it was obsolete. But in the sense, of something ‘pure, open, free from bias or sincere,’ the meaning of honest and its cognates remained. This construction entered the language later in the seventeenth century and is with us still. One of the meanings cited by the OED is exemplified by a quotation from Warbuton, 1738, in which the terms candid, the colour white, and a reference to colour-mixing are splendidly conflated; he wrote: about a ‘… candid Appearance, which…does result from the Mixture of all Kinds of Colours.’96 That white signifies purity is a concept, that, in and of itself, tends not to be questioned. It has already been claimed that the equation of whiteness with purity represents an a priori fact in our colour-thinking (Chapter I). In the context of Chapter I this assertion was made with respect to the

Also Mt. 7:15; Gen 27:15–27; Jos 9:3–9:15; for references to robes of the rich see: 2 Sam 1:24; Prov.31:21; Jer 4:30; 10:9; Ezek. 27:7; Luk 16:19; Rev. 17:4. 96 ‘1738 Warburton, Div. Legat. I.54 ,OED Online, 2nd ed. Accessed June 2010. 95

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symbolic and anagogic uses to which white was put in the Old and New Testaments. These uses appear no less in other contexts, substantiating the claim that the a priori quality of the equation of whiteness with purity has appeared consistently throughout Western history in many ways which are etymologically, philosophically, and culturally linked.

White Light Whether and in what sense ‘white light’ is is actually white-coloured or (clear) light appearing as dazzling white in certain circumstances only, is a topic in itself, quite apart from the subject of the symbolism of the Divine Light of God as a blindingly white phenomenon, commonly invoked. A white surface, or white object, medium, or substance, as Westphal has pointed out, will reflect most of the incident light upon it (80% or more) and will dazzle (or glare) in the same way reflectant materials such as gold or the phenomenon of white-light itself will do.97 The specific colours that have been used in art and architecture to represent light, ‘white-light’ or divine light have been various over time. In terms of representation in painting, red because of its association with the sun, light rays, or the red flames of the holy spirit; often gold, but also blue and yellow were the colours most consistently used from antiquity through the Middle Ages in connexion with the representation of light and dazzle.98 In each case the colours selected by an artist were consistent with an attempt to convey the complex phenomenon of light itself and its dazzle (Fig. 2.14). Gage gives the example of the Annunciation (mosaic) at the monastery at Daphni where between Gabriel and the Virgin Mary there is no figure. Gage describes how, in this astounding image: ‘the emanation of the holy spirit is conveyed in no more than the reflection of light on gold mosaic.’99 The conclusion drawn from this was that the question, ‘what colour is divine light [in art]?’ was ‘misplaced for it was splendor or dazzle, and not hue, which consistently most captivated the ancients.’100 This would change in the first half of the fifteenth century with the introduction of Alberti’s treatise, On Painting. Westphal, pp. 22, 23, 36. Wittgenstein, Remarks, III.66 (p. 25e). John Gage, Colour and Culture, pp. 25, 26, 58–61, esp. 61. 99 Ibid., p. 59. 100 Ibid., pp. 25, 26, 58. 97 98

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Plotinus in the third century (b.205–d.270) recognised the attractiveness of gold precisely because of its dazzle. Because of this he challenged the prevailing theory of beauty which had excluded gold as well as colour from the category of the beautiful because they did not fit into the established aesthetic system of harmony and symmetry.101 Plotinus also described God, ‘The One’, as light, specifically as the Sun, because of the dazzling and transcendental properties emitted by it. For Plotinus, light in itself was unitary and a perfect image.102 The reverberations of this statement are immense, and point to an intuitive connexion consistently made throughout centuries between God and light and the attributes they share. ‘Light’ not only has a connexion to the sun and is the source of life itself, which is pretty obvious, but it dazzles and blinds in the way we expect the Divine Light of God to do. The unitariness, indivisibility, and simplicity of it, which are also attributes of God, are qualities shared with whiteness as a primary, indivisible and simple colour. Historically, the connexions made between the concept of light and God are ancient and emotive. The example of the Annunciation (mosaic) at the monastery at Daphni, mentioned just above, where the presence of the holy spirit is conveyed non-figuratively through the reflection of light on gold mosaic, is a case in point.103 Figures 2.14 and 2.15 are examples of this concept interpreted visually through early paintings. In the post-Newtonian world, the ‘dazzle’ of ‘white-light’ continued to be associated with these same qualities of the divine — a celestial radiance. But dazzle also came to be explicitly associated with the colour white as the chromatic representative of light, as set down by Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and not too long thereafter, also Wolfgang Goethe In the sense of ‘that which is easily detected, perfectly evident, and free of dissimulation’,104 the colour white as a signifier for truth, honesty and purity Writing about colour and light and beauty Plotinus said the following: ‘But think what this means. …Only a compound can be beautiful, never anything devoid of parts; and only a whole; the several parts will have beauty, not in themselves. …Yet beauty in the aggregate demands beauty in details…its law must run throughout. …All the loveliness of colour and even the light of the sun being devoid of parts and so not beautiful by symmetry, must be ruled out of the realm of beauty. And how comes gold to be a beautiful thing? And lightening by night, and the stars, why are these so fair?’ The Enneads, Stephen McKenna, trans., St. Ives, 1991, I.6.I., pp. 46, 46n. 102 Plotinus, I.6.3, I.6.6. 103 Ibid., p. 59. 104 This definition is Merriam-Webster’s, H.O. Houghton & Co., 1961. 101

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is a well-rehearsed concept in connexion with the perceived nakedness of the achromatic hue. Where an expression for purity of form, transparency of function, and honesty in execution has been sought whiteness and/or transparency have been invoked.105 This is true in the writings of theorists, ancient to modern; of the Old Testament, of the Church fathers, of early Christian theologians; of sixteenth and seventeenth century reformers; and of the designers, architects, and artists of the early twentieth century. Of more direct bearing on this study is the Protestant desire not only to break with the traditions of the Roman Church, but to free the Reformed church from dissimulation, trickery and falsehood, and to establish in their stead purity and truth in the form and content of Christian worship. It is this phenomenon — the relationship between a religious, socio-political agenda and the colour symbolism of whiteness that makes the relationship between whiteness and Protestantism vital. References to whiteness in written tracts by Protestant reformers seeking a metaphor or form of expression for ‘True Faith’, discussed later in this book, are frequent and will substantiate this point. There are five critical senses in which white may be read positively as a ‘non-colour’, by which is meant: not as an absence or as a ‘not-colour’): 1) as a medium of purification; 2) as a zero-condition representing Truth; 3) as a metaphor for the transparent; 4) as unified light, and 5) as moral guardian of visuality. Combined with the broader picture of ideas about the colour 105 This would be the ‘transparency of modernism’ or ‘of function’, a concept well rehearsed during the early modern movement in architecture and design, 1890–1940. Most theories of this time advanced a concept of form that involved, or required, the progressive removal of ornament, the identification of a standard form or object-type that, first of all, must be beyond style (not changeable, superficial, but stable, immutable) then, later, must transcend class distinctions and, thereby, all references to the past. The dialectic on this subject began to appear in the work of architects born in the mid-1800’s who sought to locate a defining concept that would return coherence and spiritual value to society after the effects of industrialisation. This led to the stripping away of all detail, indeed, the emptying out of traditional content — ideologic and symbolic — that retained ties to the past, making the architecture that was its expression into as much a statement of negation as a statement of optimism about the future. As we will see, there are distinct parallels between this phenomenon and views held by the magisterial reformers of the sixteenth century such as Zwingli and Calvin. Developments in architecture in Germany and Holland after 1915 and also the work of Le Corbusier best serve to illustrate this. Commentary on this subject are frequent. A few examples: William Curtis, Le Corbusier, London, 1986, pp. 12, 31, 40, 41, 50; R. Pommer and Christian F. Otto, Weissenhof 1927 and the Early Modern Movement, Chicago and London, 1991; Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the Machine Age, Oxford, 1960.

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white I hope the picture thus drawn of the ways in which whiteness operates is sufficiently strong to render compelling in its own right the proposition that there is a substantive connexion between whiteness and the Protestant use of it in church interiors. I will be claiming that the need for transparency (purity of form and content) mandated the use of white over any other colour because of the intuitive associations made with it, and because of its apparent a priori attributes in this regard affirmed in the literature available to the sixteenth century scholar.

Alberti (1404–1472) I mentioned Leon Battista Alberti earlier in connexion with his opinion on the status of white in fifteenth century colour theory described in his treatise De Pictura (1435–36). The colour white appears again in Alberti’s treatise on architecture, De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building in Ten Books), in connexion with its use in religious buildings. Alberti worked on De re aedificatoria between 1443–1452.106 Although, as with the De Pictura manuscript, ideas contained within it were in circulation shortly after it was written, it was first published in printed form in 1485 in Latin. Editions in the vernacular, Italian, and English followed, winning him the sobriquet, ‘the Florentine Vitruvius’.107 When Alberti wrote the Aedificatoria he was consciously following in the footsteps of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born ca. 80–70 BCE, died after ca. 15 BCE), an artillery engineer possibly in the army of Marcus Aurelius. Vitruvius’s goal in writing his treatise on architecture was, essentially, to preserve the standards of his time believed to have entered a period of decline. What Vitruvius produced turned out to be the only surviving ancient treatise on architecture known to the West, De architectura, also in ten books. De architectura was published for the first time in Italy in 1486 in Latin. Encouraged by Lionello d’Este, Alberti had A first draft of the manuscript was presented to Pope Nicholas V in 1452. The first published edition was produced by Angelo Poliziano in 1485 (in Latin). Alberti was still working on the text at the time of his death in 1472. He had intended to dedicate it to Lorenzo the Magnificant. See Hanno-Walter Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory, New York, 1985 and 1994, pp. 42, 44. 107 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, trans., Cambridge and London, 1988 and 1992. Bk. 7, Ch. 10, p. 220; ‘Florentine Vitruvius’ is Kruft, p. 42. 106

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begun working on the restoration of a copy of the Vitruvian manuscript in 1435, which he continued to do while a papal legate (Abbreviatore) and scholar in Rome at the Papal Court.108 He was nothing if not ambitious and The Aedificatoria (Ten Books of Architecture) was intended, among other things, to best his ancient predecessor.109 Like Vitruvius before him, Alberti included a section on temple architecture and in this section, Book Seven, he describes the appropriate form of decoration for temples.110 Joseph Rykwert has shown that here, as elsewhere in the Aedificatoria, Alberti was likely reflecting ideas he had read in Plato and Cicero, among many others.111 Alberti’s discussion of specific details of ornament to sacred buildings begins with the statement that three steps should lead up to the altar and that ‘the altar for sacrifice’ should be set up higher than anything else in the worship space.112 Both of these attributes would be eliminated in the reformed worship space by the Puritans in seventeenth-century England, though not necessarily on the Continent. This is followed by an initial, brief discussion of ambient light in churches. Thick walls and too much infill restricts light, said Alberti, but because light is a source of dignity [dignitas], one should endeavor to keep walls as thin, and spaces as open and light as possible. Smoothness, incidentally, was a quality that columns in temples should also have.113 Alberti followed these general guidelines with an enumeration of his views on various interior finishes, ancient and contemporary, beginning with a survey of examples gathered together from his researches into classical texts. The opulence he found in antiquity was rejected outright: marble with gold leafed joints; stucco tinted with saffron (presumably to simulate or to suggest gold); and gold in general were cited as examples in history of misplaced endeavor. Alberti readily acknowledged as natural in man the desire to make houses of god (or of the gods) more opulent than any abode ever built for himself Ibid., p. 42. Other texts on architecture, often monographs on specific buildings, were written in antiquity. As the only surviving text on architecture the Vitruvian text by default summarized and codified building theory for the Greco-Roman world. The fact that Vitruvius’ was the only extant text was lamented by Alberti who studied an imperfect (partial and damaged) copy of the manuscript while he was writing De re Aedificatoria. Kruft, pp. 42–44. 110 On the Art of Building, Book 7, ‘Ornament to Sacred Buildings’, pp. 189–243. 111 Plato, Leges, 12; Cicero, De Lege: 2.18, cited in Rykwert, 394n.113. There are also references to Aristotle, Nicholas de Cusa, and others throughout the text. 112 Bk 7:10, Bk 7:13, 129–130v/Rykwert, pp. 228, 229. 113 Bk 7:9, 121v–124v. 108 109

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but, in fact, Alberti said, mirroring Cicero, such opulence was unproductive and undesirable. Not only does gold (and opulence in general) not please the gods, it incites men to jealousy and competition. The examples of excesses adduced by Alberti set the stage for a discussion about the appropriateness of more modest treatments of temple interiors which convey the kind of beauty and dignity that Alberti wished to promote; where firmitas (materials and construction) and venustas (ornament, beauty) produced the dignitas (dignity of appearance/bearing), and gravitas (solemnity) befitting a worship space. The heart of Alberti’s treatment of church interiors reads: Cicero follows Plato’s teaching, and holds that citizens should be compelled by law to reject any variety and frivolity in the ornament of their temples, and to value purity above all else. ‘Let us have,’ he [Cicero] added, ‘some dignity for all that.’ Dignity is paramount and the ability to embody it, Alberti makes clear, resides in smooth surfaces, light environments, and the absence of endless iterative variations of superficial ornament. He elaborates on interior finishes in this context: I could easily believe that in their choice of colour, as in their way of life, purity and simplicity would be most pleasing to the gods above; nor should a temple contain anything to divert the mind away from religious meditation toward sensual attraction and pleasure. Yet, to my mind, with temples as with other public buildings, provided it in no way diminished their solemnity, it is thoroughly commendable to attempt to execute wall, roof, and flooring skillfully and elegantly, and to make them as durable as possible. The form that this temple interior should take, then, should convey notions of simplicity, purity, and solemnity. It is, indeed, a modest interior by contemporary standards of his time that he describes, containing little to amuse the eye. There are no visual delights simply for entertainment. As an archeologist Alberti’s researches into the classical precedents around him would have instructed him that classical examples were made of unpainted, often white, marble;114 corroborating views noted already in his study of Vitruvius, Cicero and Pliny. It seems certain that it is this passage, or the two paragraphs together quoted above, to which Rudolph Wittkower referred Alberti studied the classical ruins about him to the best of his ability. In the Aedificatoria he wrote: ‘There was not the least Remain of any ancient Structure, that had any Merit 114

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when he associated Alberti’s aesthetic guidelines for temples with ‘puritanism’.115 Compared with the standards for church interiors of his own time, it is not hard to see how Wittkower would have characterized Alberti’s ideas as participating in a stripped-down form of aesthetic. The goal, however, was gravitas, a desire to keep the minds of worshippers on their true purpose116 and to create an interior pleasing to God. This is a God, Alberti noted furthermore, who does not need anything material from us (buildings or opulence) in order to be worshipped.117 This view would be reflected by Huldrych Zwingli in 1524. In response to these same paragraphs a number of writers have cited white as Alberti’s colour of choice for the interiors of churches. From several standpoints it is important to emphasise that Alberti does not actually mention the word ‘white’ in these passages. Intuitively, the attributes of simplicity, purity, dignity (for Alberti this entails light), and even smoothness, point to the colour white; but no colour is explicitly specified here. The inference from purity, simplicity, and dignity to whiteness, however, is a testimonial to the intimacy of the connexions made between each of these concepts by Wittkower. The tendency already developing for churches to be lighter and simpler in colour and form, mentioned by both Gage and Pastoureau is evident in the the Chapter House attached to the convent at Santa Croce (the Pazzi Chapel) designed by Alberti’s contemporary, Filippo Brunelleschi, sometime between 1430 and 1433; to a degree Alberti was reflecting these trends, but his scholarship provided the justification for them. (Fig. 2.16).118 in it, but what I went and examined, to see if any Thing was to be learned from it. Thus I was continually searching, considering, measuring and making Draughts of every Thing I could hear of, till such Time as I had made myself perfect Master of every Contrivance of Invention that had been used in those ancient Remains; and thus I alleviated the Fatigue of writing, by the Thurst and Pleasure of gaining Information.’ Alberti does not make note here of the whiteness of the marble that he is studying. I am making an assumption that the marble he observed in extant Roman structures and ruins was no longer noticeably polychromed and that the remnants of colour modern scholars have been able to observe since the nineteenth century were not apparent to him. 115 ‘And let it be said emphatically: it is a serene, philosophical and almost puritanical architecture that his descriptions conjure up before us.’ Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, New York and London, 1971, pp. 9–10. 116 Aedificatoria, Bk 7:12. 117 Ibid., Bk 7:2; 112–113 (Rykwert, p. 193). 118 On the complexities of the professional and intellectual relationship between Alberti and Brunelleschi and on the exchange of ideas between them, see Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, New York, 2000.

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Andrea Palladio in the sixteenth century (1508–1580) would follow the tradition of publishing a treatise on architecture in which was featured a section on sacred architecture. Palladio also held white to be the most appropriate colour for churches, his words mirroring those of each of his predecessors, Cicero, Vitruvius, and Alberti (viz. the first sentence of quoted passage below; Alberti in the second). In his treatise, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura /The Four Books of Architecture published in Venice in 1570 Palladio wrote: Of all the colours, none is more proper for churches than white; since the purity of colour, as of life, is particularly grateful to God. But if they are painted, those pictures will not be proper, which by their signification alienate the mind from the contemplation of divine things, because we ought not in temples to depart from gravity…119 This passage follows Alberti almost verbatim, although it is less demanding than Alberti’s guidelines. That it depends on Alberti’s text for its stance and wording, however, is clear. According to Walter Köhler, Huldrych Zwingli possessed complete editions of Plato and Cicero, and a copy of De officiis by Alberti. If accurate, this would verify that Zwingli was personally aware of Alberti as an author even if he had not read the Aedificatoria.120 A copy of Vitruvius was in the Stift library (the Stiftsbibliothek), the library associated with the Grossmünster. Thus Vitruvius, Cicero, Plato, and Alberti were represented either in Zwingli’s personal library or in the cathedral library to which Zwingli had access and with which he was intimately familiar. Plato and Cicero in particular had been carefully studied by Zwingli; but the fact that the Stift possessed a 1511 Venetian edition of De architectura by Vitruvius121 is nothing if not astounding. The presence of this text in Zürich city’s cathedral library, testifies not only to the humanist bent of Zwingli and his colleagues, but also to the fact that architecture as a subject Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture, A. K. Placzek, ed., Book IV:II.82). Walter Köhler, ‘Huldrych Zwinglis Bibliothek’, in Neujahrsblatt zum Besten des Waisenhauses in Zürich, (Zürich, 1921), no.70, p. 143. See Chapter VI for discussion of Zwingli’s library. 121 Martin Germann, Die Reformierte bibliothek am Grossmünster Zürich im 16. Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der neuzeitlichten Bibliographie, Wiesbaden, 1994. For Vitruvius, see entries: 232, 252, 698; for Plato (Opera Omnia), entries: 163, 258; for Cicero (Opera), entries: 221, 222, 419. 119

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2.14. Saint Severus Apocalypse: Commentary – Beatus of Liebanus: Christ in Majesty, 11th century. Bibliothèque Nationale, France, Ms. Lat. 8878, ff. 121v–122r.

2.15. The Anastasis (The Harrowing of Hell), apse fresco in the south parecclesion, Church of St. Saviour in Chora Kariye Camii, Istanbul.

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2.16. Filippo Brunelleschi, Pazzi Chapel, Florence. 1429–1461. © rio wright, photographer.

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2.17. Matthias Grünewald. Right panel of the Aschaffenburger Maria-Schnee-Altar. Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar, France. Photo credit: Erich Lessing / © Art Resource, NY.

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2.18. Sainte Chapelle. Stained glass windows, upper chapel. © Scott Norsworthy, photographer.

2.19. Cistercian grisaille glass window. © Moni Steele, photographer.

2.20. Choral singing in the Grossmünster. Johann Meyer, copper plate engraving, 1710. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

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2.21. Stained glass windows, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Photo credit: Jonathan Dore, photographer.

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2.22. ‘Norwich Cathedral with Flare’ © Simon Bunn, photographer.

2.23. Old Church of Delft. © Theo Jacobs, photographer.

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2.24. St. Mary, Burgh-next-Aylsham, Norfolk. © Peter Bromage, photographer.

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2.25. All Saints Church, Skeyton, Norfolk. © Peter Bromage, photographer. 2.26. ‘A moment of stillness after the Good Friday liturgy in the Black Friars Priory’, Oxford, England. © Brother Lew, Black Friars Priory, Oxford.

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2.27. Choir, Monastery of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Nový Dvůr, Bohemia. Cistercian Monastery. © Hisao Suzuki, photographer.

2.28. Monastery of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Nový Dvůr, Bohemia. Interior passageway and exterior view of apse. © Hisao Suzuki, photographer.

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of consideration was not off the map, even to the more radical of the magisterial reformers who might have been said to have shunned the importance of the visual.122 Scholars of Zwingli’s thought have long been cognizant of the influence of classical thought on him. With a knowledge of Vitruvius, Cicero, and Plato’s architectural (and colour) theory, not to mention a possible knowledge of Alberti’s works, one can see a strong classical basis for decisions to streamline and whiten church interiors while remaining solidly within the realms of classical and Christian traditions of honour shown to God. Thus, a number of important texts which contain ideas about colour in a sacred context, even more importantly, colour and architecture in a religious context, were available to Zürich’s reformers. In addition to texts already discussed were St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s works and Eusebius’ Auctores historiae ecclesiasticae.123 Cicero and Plato on whom Alberti relied each wrote about the materials that should be used in the building and finishing of worship spaces, including considerations of colour and their significations. In De Legibus Cicero, quoting Plato’s Leges (Laws) at length, writes: In my prohibition of the consecration of land [original emphasis] I am in complete agreement with Plato, who expresses his opinion in about the following words, …‘the earth, therefore, like the hearth in a dwelling, is sacred to all the gods; wherefore no one should consecrate it a second time. Gold and silver in cities, whether in private possession or in temples, are things which cause covetouseness. …Any wooden object, however, if made out of a single piece of wood, or anything of stone, one may dedicate at public shrines, and woven work, too, provided its production has not been more than a month’s task for a woman. White is the colour most suitable for a god, especially in woven work; no dyes should be used except for military standards [heraldry]. [My emphasis.] 124 But the gifts best suited of all to the gods are birds, and pictures produced by a single painter in a single day; other gifts should be of this same character. 122 Who acquired this copy for the library or how it came to be there is an important point of study. 123 Eusebius’ Auctores historiae ecclesiasticae, German no.173 (not obtained until 1523); St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s works, (Köhler, nos. 21, 215, respectively). 124 ‘color albus praecipue decorus deo est.’ in Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus II,18,45, John Henry Freese, trans., London and Cambridge, MASS, 1967, p. 427, quoting Plato, Leges (Laws), XII, 955E–956B. See also Rykwert, 394n.113.

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It is this passage that Alberti was quoting in the Aedificatoria. In other respects, too, Alberti’s treatise follows Cicero on the question of materials, in particular his opinion that the use of gold causes competition and covetousness between men. Here, as with painting, gold is discouraged for this reason. In the case of painting Alberti adds a challenge to the artist because, he said, more skill is required to convey light using pigment than gold. Many issues are packed into the associations made with the quality of being ‘undyed’ to which Cicero refers. They are long-lived and ancient, and reflect on a concern with the outward statement of virtues such as honesty, humility and truthfulness, consideration of which relates to language as much as it does to colour and the interaction between the two. The question of the relationship between the quality of not being dyed as an index of humility, that of whiteness as an indicator of honesty and purity, and by extension of honour shown toward God, is an important one. It is a topic to which we will return in Chapter V concerning colour language in the Bible. As early as 325 CE the Council of Gangra passed a canon condemning clerics who assumed superiority over others in virtue of their garb, in this case in an inverted relationship based on garment shape and a fabric worn by the poor. Evidently, some aspiring priests found a claim to special wisdom and superiority over others in the philosopher’s habit made of rough wool, (a fashion on the increase at the time). Thus, the Council condemned everyone who: used the pallium, or cloak, upon the account of the ascetic life; and, as if there were some holiness in that, condemned those that wore [continued to wear] the birrus and other garments that are commonly employed. Here is an instance of men adopting specific clothing to visually establish the quality of humility, an essential signifier of which is the quality of being undyed. Earlier Saint Clement of Alexandria had written: With reason, it seems to me, did they act, who held scents and unguents in such disesteem, that they banished the compounders of them from well-regulated states, and in nowise differently dealt with the dyers of wools. …for men of hearts pure and uncontaminated, a white and simple garb is the most fitting.125 125 Rev. George S. Tyack, Historic Dress of the Clergy, London, 1897, p. 14. About this statement by Saint Clement, Tyack writes: ‘As regards colour, from the first there was a

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A number of scholars have observed that among the ‘primitive’ clergy, and until the 500s, white was the predominant colour of ecclesiastical vestments. Since the Old Testament was set down undyed, uncoloured fabrics and objects, unpainted faces, and unadorned bodies have been considered more honest than their counterparts. Certain dyes were more expensive than others. Only the affluent could afford dyed fabrics and only the most wealthy among the affluent could use those dyes (purple, red, or blue) whose manufacture made them scarce. Since the 1500s BCE in Asia Minor and in Mycenaean Greece purple was the most expensive dyestuff and also the most prized.126 There are several reasons for this; the first is that all purples (there were different kinds) 127 were made from a small number of species of shellfish or insect and were obviously uneconomical to produce.128 Although evidence of its admired status appears in texts as early as the 7th century BCE it did not become a royal prerogative until the Roman period

prejudice in favour of the white of the undyed material’ In this sentence Tyack adduces for us a perfect example of the conflation of the ‘undyed’ with whiteness. See also Tyack, p. 120. Subsequently, where colours changed in the West white remained the dominant colour used by the Eastern Church. Tyack, p. 124. 126 Gage, pp. 16, 25–26; pp. 25–26, 80 contain a detailed discussion of the history of purple and red in antiquity. 127 E.g. Tyrian purple was made from the murex, including two types of shellfish: (1) the buccinum (purpura haemastroma), and (2) the purpura (murex brandaris). See Pliny, Natural History, Book IX, 128, 134–35; a red was made from a compound extracted from a wingless insect called Kermes vermilio which inhabits the scarlet oak (Quercus coccifera) in the Near East, Spain, southern France and southern Italy. Vermilion red is made by crushing the ‘resin-encrusted kermes insects and boiling them in lye.’ Kermes is, thus, the linguistic root in English of carmine and crimson. Again, Theophrastus, Pliny and Chaucer refer to the kermes insect and colour. When the expensive colours: vermilion, gold and ultramarine became more available (and less costly) in the Renaissance, they were no longer sought out for just this reason. See Phillip Ball, Bright Earth, New York, 2001, pp. 59–60, 107–8. 128 According to Spike Bucklow, sixty insects were needed to make one gram of dye. Dyeing could take place anywhere because the insects could be dried and stored or transported. Eight thousand snails were required to make one gram of Tyrian purple. It had to be extracted from live murex snails, so the entire process of production and dyeing took place on the coast where the snails were harvested. Processing was seasonal and the snails had to be sustained until sufficient numbers of them were amassed for a viable batch. The value of purple wool was equal to that of gold. Both Aristotle (Animals, V, xv, 547b) and Pliny, (Natural History, Bailey, trans., IX, 3, 128, 249) write in detail about the process. See Spike Bucklow, Alchemy of Paint, London, 2009, pp. 30–32; Gage, above, n.123.

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(300s BCE) 129 when a cult of purple had developed with very specific rules and taboos.130 Regulations on its use were imposed with hefty penalties for transgression.131 Pliny wrote about the gleam of purple and its status as the badge of nobility (literally, of ‘noble youth’) and of how it ‘distinguished the senator from the knight.’132 Descriptions of the effect of this colour and also of fabrics dyed in purple centre on the light given off by it; its lustre, called lampron. Democritus writes about this that its lustre ‘was due to the presence of white, for white produces such effects.’133 Theophrastus identifies a purple, called porphurius, made of a mixture of white, black, and red; according to him the largest ingredient was red, black the smallest, and white intermediate between the two. In addition to Pliny, already mentioned, the beauty of purple and its surface lustre was attested to also by Menander, the fourth century poet; Philostratus, and others. Gage suggests the ingredient which lent purple its value was red, the colour most closely associated with fire and light, also divine light in antiquity. Aristotle, for example, placed red next to light in his colour scale. Although white and red were used interchangeably at times in Greek rites to represent divine light, red also acted as the chromatic representative of the sun.134 Red was used in weddings, as a military colour to strike awe in enemies (a ‘power colour’), and as a divine colour for temple walls (Aphaia on Aegina; Isis Temple at Pompei). Made from vermiculum, harvested from the insect Kermes vermilio, red was also an expensive dye which in the form of scarlet would supplant the fabric of this name.135 So far several plausible reasons for the red robes worn by cardinals are evident: red, as signifier of divine light (also the sun); red denoting eminence/status; red the empowering colour that instills awe in others and, of course, red, the colour of martyrdom.

129 According to Bucklow the private possession of purple silk was illegal. See Bucklow, pp. 31–32. 130 See Gage, p. 25; Ball, pp. 95, 197–201, 204. Bucklow details the regulations for manufacture, trade of purple dye and purple silks, pp. 31–32. 131 Imperial edicts made the illicit production of purple a capital offence. It remained a Byzantime monopoly until the fall of Byzantium. Bucklow, pp. 31–32. 132 Natural History, IX, xxxvi, p. 126. 133 G.M. Stratton, Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology before Aristotle, 1917, pp. 136–37, quoted in Gage, p. 25. 134 Gage, p. 26. 135 For a history of the fabric ‘scarlet’and its conflation with the red dye, see Gage, p. 27.

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There is a consensus in most histories of vestments in the Christian Church that during the first eight centuries of its existence there was no special assignment of colours to the time of year or to garment pattern. Clear tendencies were emerging or in place, however, as early 200 or 300 CE (see Hegesippus (ca. 165–175 CE in Eusebius).136 Toward the end of the fourth century Jerome (340/2–420 CE) refers to shining white garments worn by celebrants at the Eucharist. Sometime before 1198, the year Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) became pope, he attempted to standardize the use of liturgical colour and promulgated a codification of colours according to the liturgical season and feast days of the year. In the De sacro altaris mysterio (Book I, Chapter 65), he wrote: Now there are four principal colours by which the Church of Rome distinguishes her sacred vestments, according to the proper characteristics of the days, — white, red, black and green. For in the vestments of the Law [Old Testament] also, it is said there were four colours — white, and purple, blue, and scarlet.137 In England Innocent’s plan was adopted only in cathedrals and not generally until the nineteenth century.138 Long before this, particular garments and colours associated with them were ordered by Popes to be worn by the metropolitans and by some Archbishops and Bishops as senior members of the administrative hierarchy of the Roman Church. The Roman pallium, for example, an essentially white woollen garment is first mentioned as an episcopal insignia by Isidore of Pelusium in ca. 412, 139 conferred on bishops

Cf. Apostolic Constitutions, Book VIII, Chapter 12 (late fourth century). ‘Quattuor autem sunt principales colores, quibus secundum proprietates dierum sacras vestes ecclesia Romana distinguit, Albus, Rubeus, Niger et in legalibus indumentis quattuor colores fuisse leguntur, Byssus, et Purpura, Hyacinthus, et Coccus.’ De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, Book I, Chapter 65; Dialogi contra Pelagianos, Book I, Chapter 29. Cf. also Encyclopaedia Britanica, eb.com: ‘Church Year: Christianity/liturgical colours’. Many sources for the liturgical history of colour are cited here. See also C.C. (Clapton Crab) Rolfe, The Ancient Use of Liturgical Colours, Oxford and London, 1879, pp. 140–41. Rolfe seems to think that the use of green in the mix of liturgical colours in England was aberrant, but there is ample evidence that green was commonly used as a fallback colour for days on which no particular colour was designated. 138 Herbert Norris, Church Vestments: Their Origins and Development, New York, 1950 and Mineola, 2002, p. 123. 139 The pallium is of Roman origin. It consists in a long strip of woolen fabric, shaped to conform loosely around the neck with two ends which fall to the front over the breast. 136 137

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as members of the higher echelons of ecclesiastical society. By 581 it was decreed that no bishop would say mass without his pallium.140 In most cases red was the penitential colour and was, therefore, used during Lent and on Good Friday.141 According to George S. Tyack, red, in keeping with the Ambrosian use at Milan, ‘was recognized by English use as the colour for Sunday, unless it was superceded by the occurrence of some festival which demanded …white.’142 Whether any of these associations is the actual source of cardinal’s red robes is not clear.143 In both cases of purple and red, the sources of the colours were controlled by law in an effort to limit the use of the colour. Because of the expense of their manufacture only the best fabrics were selected for these dyes. Already mentioned is that the term scarlet, which began its life as a fabric in Germany, eventually became synonymous with the red colour with which the fabric was often dyed, emerging as a hue in its own right independent from the fabric much later. But that these colours cannot be disassociated from questions of vanity and wealth is clear. And it is to this — the vanity and expense and the signification of same — that reformers such as Zwingli and Calvin would vehemently object. In Cicero and Alberti undyed fabric is cited as a form of honour shown to God. In part this is due to the association of colour with vanity, which is not present when colour is absent; it might also be the case that one is metaphorically ‘unclothed’ when stripped of the coloured, covering layer. The result is the same: an outer layer masks the underlying truth of the thing. Ideas about tinting and tainting share in this fundamental nature of color; ‘tainting’ suggests degradation has penetrated the substance of the thing; The front pieces are usually crossed or looped. Before the eighth century red crosses were embroidered on the back; later this was changed to six black ones. Tyack, pp. 115, 117. 140 Ibid., p. 115. 141 For example, the cathedral at Lichfield used black as its Lenten colour; Exeter and London used violet or purple. See Tyack, p. 123. 142 Tyack, p. 120. Tyack goes on to say that since ‘time immemorial where there was only one altar-cloth in a church it would be red,’ suggesting also that the use of red as the colour for Sundays is probably the reason. 143 Another possible association would be the divine word as delivered in the story of the burning bush (Ex. 3:2) the fire of which is naturally depicted as red. But this possibility seems remote and I have not seen specific references to such a connexion. Illuminations of this story from Exodus are very often replete with vermilion however. The species of plant thought to have been the actual burning bush was possibly a rare species of the rose family, Rubus sanctus.

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colouring tends to be characterized as an accretion. Drawing on the idea of being untinted and therefore untainted leads one to notions of spotlessness which in the case of undyed fabrics and whiteness yields associations, even evidence of verifiable purity. Colour in this context is not only a dye but an unnecessary elaboration on an otherwise perfect piece of honest cloth. White fabrics as distinguished from undyed fabrics in antiquity were, ironically, not for the economically humble and may not have been so common. Truly white fabrics as we would define them were not easy to come by as cloth had to be whitened through the process of fulling or woven from select byssus fibers.144

Tenebrae At the beginning of this chapter I mentioned the office of Tenebrae, an elaborate Catholic ceremony of light conducted in the dark during which lit candles are sequentially snuffed out to symbolize, to borrow Eamon Duffy’s words, the abandonment of Christ by his disciples, one by one.145 Along with others this ceremony was eliminated from the Reformed and Anglican liturgies during the Reformation. Its early development and longevity as a tradition, however, represents the importance of light symbolism (as well as of pure dramatic content) to the traditional church. The Latin term tenebrae means ‘darkness’ or ‘shadow’. It refers to one of the ‘night offices’ of the Christian Church; that is, one of the worship services conducted during the night, sometime between dusk or nightfall (four to six p.m in the evening) and dawn or sunrise (four to six a.m. in the morning) during Holy Week each day of the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday in the Western Catholic Church). The ceremony has come to include the symbolic use of light in the form of candlelights and altar or sanctuary ‘lamps’. The ceremony began with a ritual introduction of In a note to Pliny’s discussion of lime and gypsum in the Natural History (XXXVI, LVII.–LIX. I) Freese (trans.) says the author was relying on Theophrastus (de Lap. , 64.65) for his information. Theophrastus identifies a form of gypsum used as a fuller’s earth. [Not typical, ed.]. Freese quotes Theophrastus as saying that ‘the gypsum (from Tymphaea) was used for cloaks’ and was ‘sprinkled on cloaks by fuller’s.’ This remark, Freese suggests, indicates that gypsum was used not only for cleaning cloaks but also for whitening them. (My emphasis). 145 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 23. 144

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light into the church, called the ‘ceremonial’ or ‘New Fire’.146 representing Jesus, and from which all lights were then lit. In its earliest form the ceremony included the saying or singing of prayer, psalms, hymns, antiphons and nocturnes; By the sixth century the ceremony had developed the strategic manipulation of the lights through a self-conscious lighting and extinguishing of them at designated intervals until darkness was returned to the worship space. The use of light itself as a means of symbolism for the light of God in the early history of the Christian Church is hardly surprising in view of the deeply embedded conceptualization of Christ as the ‘Light of the World.’ Indeed, it might be claimed that light is one of the most obvious of avenues for a tangible, visible, if symbolic, connexion to the Divine. Who has not lit a candle on a momentous or solemn occasion or witnessed the lighting of candles by others during a time of mourning? The impulse is strong. I argue throughout this book that the reformed thinker was ever mindful of the Divine Light of God and in whitewashing found a means of expressing this concept without entering into the dodgy terrain of mimesis. In Chapter V of this book the invocation of the colour white or dazzling bright light interpreted as divine light is analysed in detail; in Chapters VI and VIII the ways in which Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin thought about the intersection of concepts of God, faith, light and colour are considered. Here I want to consider the use of light itself as the medium of expression in Christian worship. The subject in its own way returns us to a consideration of colourthinking in the Protestant world because both signal the importance of light to the Christian; both are forms of representation of light or divine light; and the whitewashed walls of a Protestant interior and the ceremony of Tenebrae are both ways of conveying the concept of Divine Light and putting the worshipper into spiritual contact with it. A. J. MacGregor summarises the role of light in the traditional Christian Church this way: [I]n view of the close association of Baptism with the Vigil and the equating of Christian initiation with illumination, the centrality in Christianity of Christ the Light of the World, as well as the importance of the concept of light in the mystery religions, which may have influenced Christian theology and liturgical practice, it was See A.J. MacGregor, ‘The Provision of Light at Tenebrae’ in Fire and Light, pp. 34–65; also, pp. 135–240. 146

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almost inevitable that the ceremonies marking the climax of the Church’s year and the annual commemoration of Christ’s victory over the darkness of this world should be held in an ambience of abundant light…. However, by the end of the tenth century in the West and by the beginning of the twelfth century in Jerusalem, an alternative tradition of holding the Vigil in semi-darkness emerged from a monastic milieu.147 In the second paragraph above Macgregor refers to the nascent form of the Tenebrae service. Light, as we shall see, was used in the church functionally, and possibly liturgically, by the fourth century. But tenebrae developed to use not only functional light but symbolic light and darkness in a specific relationship to a particular effect. Its medium is the manipulation of light to create an emphatic darkness in contrast to a decided brightness, which simulates the darkness which fell over the earth following Christ’s Crucifixion, the temporary snuffing of the Light. There is more than one kind of light in the Old Testament, as Elizabeth Achtemeier has shown:148 there is the light of the heavens: the sun, moon, and stars (time-keeping); and there is the divine light of God, the first light (Gen. 1:3) that is the result of God’s creative Word. The light of the heavens is subject to God as a work of His creation (Gen. 1:14–19; Ps. 74:16; 136:7– 9; Jer. 31:35); it is there to serve Him (Isa. 24:23; Ps. 148.3) and it is His to command. A constant theme throughout the Old Testament invokes the metaphor of light: ‘The Lord is God, and he has given us light.’ Without God, then, in addition to an absence of order, there would be no ambient light. The other light is Divine light; the light of God himself. God’s light delivers understanding and brings salvation to people. To receive the light of God, or the light of the Word of God, is equivalent to the good (Is. 5:20); it is to be given life (Ps. 36.9; 56:13; Job 33:28–30) and salvation (Mic. 7:8; Isa. 9.2) 42:16; 51:4; 58:8; 60:1: Ezra 9:8). New Testament references to God as light are equally numerous as those in the Old Testament; God is the light that darkness (of any kind) cannot overpower. (Jn 1:5; and throughout John; Matthew 5:14–16; Luke 11:33–36; Acts 26:18). These references give MacGregor, p. 1. I follow Achtemeier in this and the following paragraphs on light symbolism in the Old and New Testaments. 147

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only a summary glimpse into the many ways in which the metaphor of light is integrated into the concept of God and into writings about Him. As strong or stronger than this concept is the impetus to convey this notion through forms of non-verbal expression: through performative images in liturgy, two and three-dimensional works of art, and sound. The metaphor of light has played a central role in the life and worship of the Christian assembly since the evangelists Matthew, Luke, and John wrote their gospels. Particularly throughout the gospel of John, God is described in terms of light and is proclaimed ‘the light of the world’ (John 8:12; 9:5; Matt 5:14). He is ‘the true light which enlightens every man (John 1:9) and the light which delivers God’s believers from darkness (John 12:46, 35–36; 11:9–10). Darkness, on the other hand, represents the chaos of creation before God’s intervention and in which there was no light; it is the mire out of which God created the world and into which He brought order and light. This is one kind of darkness described in scriptural texts. Another is the withdrawal of light which is the opposite of goodness (Prov. 4:19; 13:9); the withdrawal of God’s grace (Job 22:28); and a state of evil (Job 5:14; 15:22; 15:30; 18:5–6; 18:18; 19:8; 20:26; 22:11; 38:15; Prov. 20:20). Under this circumstance darkness represents a return to a world without God, but it is not a primordial mass. An example of this is Matthew’s New Testament gospel according to which those (borrowing Achtemeier’s words) ‘who do not live in fellowship with Yahweh are thrust into outer darkness’, (Jn 8:12; 22:13; 25:13). Related to this latter form of darkness is the darkening of the heavens following a momentous event; the darkening of the sky following Jesus’s crucifixion, described in Luke and Matthew. For example: By now it was about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last. (Lk 23:44–46). This and other grave events are signaled by the darkening of the sky. As described above, the ceremony of Tenebrae during Holy Week takes place at the climax of the liturgical year during which time Christ’s victory over darkness through his resurrection is celebrated. Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075–1129) suggested that the extension of the Tenebrae service from two days (Good Friday and Holy Saturday) to also include Maundy Thursday

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was in commemoration of the three hours Jesus spent on the cross.149 If parsed into segments this corresponds with the two other momentous events of the ‘tenebrarum terror’ which followed Jesus’ Crucifixion (the darkness spoken of by Luke and Matthew; see above), and His Resurrection.150 The manipulation of light and dark — of illumination and darkness — is the primary visual medium for this. Since the twelfth century (and possibly before), the extinguishing of lights took this form: An unspecified number of lamps or candles was lit before Matins, as were the seven sanctuary lamps. The former set of lights was gradually extinguished throughout the course of Matins, the first at the very beginning of the office. At the end of the first nocturne, a third of the lights were put out, and at the end of the second nocturne, another third. By the conclusion of the last nocturne, which is the end of Matins, the remaining third have been extinguished, and only the seven altar lights remain burning in the church. These are extinguished one by one during the course of Lauds. The central light was put out last at the Benedictus. (Gallican Ordo 26). MacGregor describes the ceremony thus: …the night office of Maundy Thursday began shortly after midnight; and for its celebration, it was prescribed that the church should be fully illuminated. The silence of this order [Gallican Ordo 28] in respect of the loss of lights on this day, in contrast with the clear directions to extinguish them on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, again indicates that normal illumination obtained for the duration of this service. The use of the phrase omne lumine suggests that the illumination of the church was to be brighter than usual. In the two ordines [Gallican Ordo 26.10 and Ordo 29.11], the phrase appears in the rubric prior to the start of Matins, during which the gradual loss of light occurred. For those participating in such a service, the experience of passing from a world of light into a darkness that symbolised death must have been quite dramatic.151 It was an elaborate ceremony the details of which have varied over time and region as well as to which of the three days of the Triduum the ritual Quoted in A.J. MacGregor, Fire and Light in the Western Triduum, Collegeville, MINN., 1992, p. 29. Rupert of Deutz (ca.1075–1129) was a Benedictine theologian and exegete who wrote on liturgy and music. 150 See A.J. MacGregor, pp. 34–65, esp. pp. 26–27. 151 Ibid., p. 29. 149

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took place. While in the main the choreography and media are agreed upon, the exact number of candles involved, the order in which they were lit and extinguished, the precise time of day of the rite and even the arrangement of the candles on the altar or elsewhere in the church, has varied. Macgregor describes the stage-set as ‘disorderly’, ‘sporadic and lack[ing] uniformity’.152 These details were not codified in fact until Vatican II in the twentieth century; indeed, the first comprehensive history of the Tenebrae was only recently written in 1992.153 The first generation of Reformed Protestants — Zwinglians, Calvinists and the Church of England — eliminated the ceremony of Tenebrae from their liturgies because the imagery of it was humanly devised; the dramatic content of the ceremony must also have been unacceptable because emotive. The appointed hours and terminology for these offices would continue to shift over time within the Catholic Church but within it and the high Church of England these were returned to their ancient roots in reconstructed detail following Vatican II.154

Colour Language One of the difficulties of colour discussion both in and outside of a biblical context, is the instability of colour terms over time, between languages, countries, regions, periods, and even individuals. The problem of knowing what hue is referenced in a text is multiplied by transcription error, mistranslation, free translation, and genuinely differing interpretations of words and texts. All of this renders the subject of colour history and philology at times almost unmanageable as a topic.155 For the same reasons t history and science of colour-language has become an enormous subject to which many scholars have now dedicated Ibid. This would be A.J. MacGregor, Fire and Light in the Western Triduum, Collegeville, MINN., 1992, already cited. There are many references to the reversion to the eighth century form of Tenebrae following Vatican II. For example, see p. 29. 154 MacGregor, p. 29; See also, The New Advent Catholic Dictionary (cited above and on which this passage also heavily relies) which provides a succinct but detailed summary of this complicated history. 155 See Gage, p. 165 on Greek terms; Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament, Trowbridge, UK, 1982, on the Hebrew. 152

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themselves for over one hundred and fifty years. The purpose of the following paragraphs on colour language therefore are only intended to highlight a few salient aspects of the subject which resonate particularly strongly with ways of thinking about the colour white in the specific context of this book: that is, in the context of the colour-thinking of early Protestants and the long-term symbolic and aesthetic implications of the ways in which this particular group — as varied as they were and as far as anyone can generalize about anything at all — related to colour. Both the practice of whitewashing as it spread across Protestant territories and the development of Protestant aesthetics, of which whitewashing was a critical part would, in turn, be profoundly influential on the aesthetics and colour sensibilities of subsequent generations into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.156 The medieval scholar and Protestant Reformers were raised to read and speak in Latin and their colour-thinking would have been largely shaped by the processes of biblical study in Latin and, later, Greek and Hebrew. In the context of the Reformation where colour was famously ‘eliminated’ from church interiors — by some accounts from the world 157 — one might think that the Reformed Protestant who developed a reputation for the outright rejection of colour would not speak of colour very much or at all. This is not true. Even where traditions and traditional associations of all kinds, including those involving colour, were being suppressed, certain colour associations remained compelling. Non-colour colour terms; clear, transparent, brilliant, shining, pure, undyed, tainted, et cetera, which reformers

156 There have been a number of challenges to the conception of a unified ‘Protestant aesthetic’, ‘plain Protestant style’ and the ‘whitewashed Protestant interior’, where these conceptualizations included hueless walls and an aversion to ornament. Mia M. Mochizuki’s The Netherlandish Image After Iconoclasm, 1566–1672, Aldershot, UK and Burlington VT, 2009, is the most recent of these. Mochizuki’s goal is to refute: ‘Two of our most cherished assumptions on the impact of the iconoclasm on church decoration — the removal of all imagery and the whitewashing of walls’ as ‘untenable’. (See Mochizuki, p. 1). I look forward to responding to Mochizuki’s claims in another forum. The manuscript for this book must suffice for the moment to present the evidence as I see it. While each Protestant community found their own way — and there was variation — a sufficient number of Protestants were able to establish a pattern conceived of in terms of purging, cleansing and renewal, that led to a paradigm-shift in Protestant aesthetics. This aesthetic has had continuing influence through the twentieth-first century, notwithstanding historical exceptions and variations in visual response to reform. 157 See Gottfried Keller, The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula, Two Novellas, Baynard Quincy Morgan, trans, New York, 1974.

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often seemed to want to substitute for the dyed and pigmented, continued to figure largely even where explicit colour terms no longer had an obvious role. Colour mattered. It makes sense that a discussion of colour language should begin with the Latin word for ‘colour’, ‘coloratus’. Remarkably, on its face the classical meanings of the term ‘colour’ do not differ much from those we find in circulation now and in the intervening millennia. In dictionaries of classical Latin we find these entries: 1). hue; dyestuffs; variation in colour, a variegated hue/change in hue; 2). the natural colour of a person’s complexion, often translated as dark complected; 3). the external form; outward state; outward show, or appearance of a thing; a class, fashion or a kind of thing; a fashion, cast, colouring or style. In the context of diction or character we have 4). ‘a beautiful, brilliant quality of nature’; and 5). ‘lustre.’ The list of definitions is still longer, but it is clear that that there is a remarkable consistency with the ways in which the term, colour, functions today. From its beginning the pejorative sense of the term, colour has been deeply embedded in the term itself. The Old Latin term cŏlos, and its root, cal, meant ‘to cover’. At its very foundation then, the ontological status of colour aside, is the idea of colour as a covering layer. This meaning figures among the definitions in the classical Latin lexicon although without, it would seem, its pejorative contemporary sense of specious. The Latin adjective, speciosus, with the sense of ‘appearance’, ‘seeming showy’ (‘good-looking, showy, beautiful, splendid, brilliant’, or ‘for show, pretended, plausible, specious’) figures here. The English word, specious is, in itself, an interesting case relative to the concept of outer covering because it did not have the pejorative meaning it has today until the early seventeenth century. The OED records examples of usage meaning ‘pleasing to the eye or sight; beautiful, handsome, lovely; resplendent with beauty’ up through 1791, although a shift in tone toward the negative may be detected earlier. All examples of ‘specious’ meaning ‘pretences, pretext, appearance, show; fair, attractive, but wanting in genuineness or sincerity’ date to the seventeenth century. The earliest of these is 1611. This suggests that the development of the meaning signifying mistrust of fairness — mistrust of that which delights the eye — is an outcome of Reformed theology. As an outer layer, an external form, conveying the appearance of a thing, colour lacked substance. It is the colours of things that we use to describe what we see, indeed is the primary medium of vision, and this has readily leant itself to outward show, pretense and, also, deceit; a distrust of the eye

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and of visuality itself.158 Colour may be held accountable for a multitude of sins reducible to the eye and its seductions: as indulgence in luxury, vanity in expensive clothing and surroundings, or in the assumption of economic and political authority signaled by power clothing worn by status-holders. Royal purple and the red of cardinals’ robes are salient examples of this as we have seen (Fig. 2.17). As a matter of politics specific colours would become associated with particular professions and positions in the hierarchy of the Church and, by extension, also with particular ethics. In the world of art and material colour (pigments), colours also became associated with the desire to see and touch that which we cannot imagine; with the ability to depict human beings convincingly, provocatively, and seductively — clothed or unclothed in order to tell compelling stories. In this way colour was associated with desire; at its worst titillation and arousal; less lasciviously, with seduction by mimesis. For the reformer this meant the corruption of the mind and heart because it led to an idolatry of the material world. Clothing imagery which blends almost seamlessly with the idea of colouring does not have a uniformly positive profile in the Bible either. On the one hand, clothing can symbolize warmth and protection; on another, deceit (false prophets in sheep’s clothing; the story of Jacob and Essau). The clothing of deceit can hardly be distinguished from the colour of deceit and it is in precisely these terms that ‘colour’ comes to be used in the sixteenth century. In the Old Testament one of the largest clusters of references to the washing of clothing relates to hygienic precaution, but it is also a symbol of purification. A component of this symbolism was a prohibition against wearing clothes made of cloth of more than one colour. This early form of sumptuary law intended to signify purity was a check on conspicuous consumption; it was a useful symbolism also taken up in Protestant circles, but even more significant is the notion of the absence of admixture — another form of purity, one noted by Plato, and one that whiteness not only shares but proclaims. See also Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993. The first three chapters of Downcast Eyes include a survey of the subject of seeing and visuality (as in ‘the gaze’), from Plato through Descartes. Although much of the commentary on the Reformation is well-rehearsed material for scholars of the subject, for those less familiar with the history and theory of visuality during the Reformation, it is a helpful resource. 158

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It is difficult for the scholar of colour ideas to generalize about hues; to be certain with respect to any given mention to what colour reference is being made. You might think that red (crimson or scarlet, for example), would be one of the less problematic hues in this regard because we think we know what the colour scarlet looks like. What is more, red is generally regarded as a basic colour term; it appears in most languages from the earliest stages of colour language development and it is distinctive, especially in its brightest, purer forms. Yet, in fact, there were seven Latin terms for red: fulvus, flavus, rubidus, poeniceus, rutilus, luteus and spadix. People continued to associate scarlet with a particular fabric or colour, although at different points in time efforts were made to fix the term by pegging it to its method of manufacture or point of origin. A similar situation existed with respect to purple. The term, leukos (λευκός; also λευκαίυω), usually translated into English as ‘white’, comes from the Greek root leuk, (Lat. lux) where, in antiquity, it often meant ‘radiant’, ‘bright’, or ‘light’. As Gerhard Kittel writes in his entry on leukos, ‘this [radiance, brightness, light] is a particularly apposite rendering in eschatological and apocalyptic contexts because it kindles the right associations.’159 These non-colour colour terms in the context of the New Testament are often rendered in English as ‘blinding’, ‘dazzling whiteness’ or ‘white light.’ In non-apocalyptic texts when leukos was translated as a colour it mostly signified ‘white.’ The range of hues included within the purvue of leukos, however, also encompassed a range of grays (‘gray white’, ‘light gray’, and ‘gray’) as well as certain yellows and half yellows. The reasons for the broadness of colour references under the umbrella of one word are the object of continued study. Kittel takes the view that the wide range of meanings for leukos affirmed the relativity of colour perception because the phenomenon is not restricted to Greek. λευκός appears from the time of Homer in all branches of the language including references to the mundane world of white things (eggs, snow; milk, etc.). While not comprehensive of the term (leukos), such references do fix the colour range to a hue we would recognize today as white. More recent studies have established that considerable development in colour language took place between the writings of the Homeric poems and the 3rd century CE, which means more specificity in a greater range G. Kittel, ed., Geoffrey Bromiley, trans. and ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. IV, Grand Rapids, MI., 1947 and 1967, ‘leukos’, pp. 241–250. 159

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of colour terms.160 Yet, the biblical importance of the association of whiteness with radiance and dazzle in the Greek gospels remains and cannot be overestimated. In pre-exilic and biblical Hebrew we know colour terms were also imprecise. The term ‘white’ might have included a white-yellow, for example and Kittel reports that the fiber, byssus, ‘[was] called white even when it [had] a yellow shimmer.’161 Notwithstanding the range of whites, pale yellows and light grays that might in actuality have been captured by this term, in the final analysis, as Kittel suggests, the great many constructions formed with λευκός testify to the significance of the role the colour white played in Greek and Roman antiquity. In the third century Greek world of metaphor the term λευκός is used for the white robes of priests, the dead (likely wrapped in byssus linen), and for the clothing of their mourners.162 But that the dead were buried in a white toga is clear. Indeed, by 30 CE through 100 CE the white toga had become the garment for all solemn occasions as well as for occasions of state. In this form it was retained as the court dress and dress for religious ceremonials. It is the toga, and not the sacrificial vestments of the Hebrew priests, that became the model for the Christian clergy.163 In the Christian Church in the West, the colours for mourning varied; black was decreed the colour of mourning in the Greek Church already by 518;164 but the West was slower to consolidate. Within Greek territories sacrificial animals were frequently required to be white (cocks, lambs, rams);165 ‘helpful’ deities were often designated ‘white’;166 and, as has already been noted, Plato wrote in the Laws that white ‘was the colour most pleasing Citing Selim Augusti, I Colori pompeiani, Rome, 1967. John Gage writes that a ‘decisive expansion of colour-terminology has been noted for the late first century CE when the meagre list of five words for hues in Homer’s poems had expanded to over seventy terms, including some sixteen terms for reds, eight for blues, and ten for greens.’ Gage, Colour and Culture, p. 16. 161 Kittel, p. 243. 162 Ibid., p. 242. See also the monograph on this subject: G. Radke, Die Bedeutung der weissen und schwarzen Farbe in Kult und Brauch der Griechen und Römer, Diss., Berlin (1936). 163 Tyack, pp. 4–7. 164 Ibid., pp. 7, 22. 165 Homer, Iliad, 3, 103f. 166 Kittel cites Hermes Λευκός of Tanagra, the white goddess of the sea (Kittel, p. 242). 160

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to the gods’ (χρώματα δὲ λευκὰ πρέποντ’ ἂν θεοῖς εἴ̉η).167 This phrase, quoted sucessively by Cicero, Alberti, and Palladio in their writings would circulate widely, carrying with it the weight one would expect to derive from endorsements by one of the greatest orators, greatest polymaths and greatest architects of Western civilization. Thus, before the establishment of the Christian Church, white dominated the cultus of the Greek world. 168 In the Hebrew and Jewish worlds it also became the basic cultic colour, dominant for priestly vestments.169 Kittel explains the dominance of the white garment this way: …it is to be explained less in terms of general views and more in terms of the fact that the seriousness and clarity of the [Old Testament] concept of God helped other basic conceptions to emerge even in the field of symbolism of colour, including the complete exclusion of black and the predominance of white. What influenced the choice of white was not so much the character of the divine world as light in a more natural sense, but rather the prominence of the concept of holiness. Philo of Alexandria even allegorised the leprosy which looms large in Leviticus (where most of the references to white occur in the Old Testament, primarily in the category of ‘things’), in order to instruct his reader to take off ‘gaudy, evil and unstable passion and to put on the one simple colour of truth’ (ἀνενδοίαστον ἀληθείας ἁπλοῦν χρῶμα δεξώμεθα).170 The parallel between this interpretation and Protestant rhetoric about the colour of truth is strong. One of the earliest textual references to the white garment in an ecclesiastical setting is found in Hegesippus, a chronicler of the Church who may have been a convert to Christianity from Judaism. He wrote, probably sometime between 170–180 CE, apparently in a letter to Saint James the Just, the first bishop of Jerusalem, that when he offered the eucharist to the

Laws (Leg.), XII, 956a). This is not to suggest that white was not worn in the secular world. It was. Unbleached linen (especially the naturally white byssus fiber) was particularly dear and sought after, but highly valued, brightly coloured clothes were also. See Kittel, p. 243; K. Galling, ‘Farbe und Farberei’, ‘Byssus’ and ‘Kleidung’ in Biblisches Reallexikon (1937). 169 In many cases from which the histories of ancient priestly clothing are drawn, in Philo and Josephus for example, the term, ‘λευκός’ is not used, but byssus is; it is from the whiteness of the byssus that ‘λευκός’ has been inferred in many instances. 170 In Deus Imm., 130, quoted in Kittel, p. 244. 167

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people, he wore garments not of wool but of linen.171 This may well have been the byssus linen. The reference to linen would have been taken to mean ‘the whitest linen’ in any case.172 The emphasis on holiness in connexion with the white garment is consistent with the role it would assume for Christians, the pattern of white vestments being well and clearly established in an ecclesiastical context by the fourth century. Jerome wrote that ‘We ought not to go into the sanctuary just as we please, and in our ordinary clothes, defiled with the visage of common life, but with clear conscience and clean garments handle the sacraments of the Lord.’ And in his work against the Pelagians, St Jerome demands: ‘What is there, I ask, offensive to God, if I wear a tunic more ordinarily handsome, or if Bishop, priest, and Deacon, and other ministers of the church in the administration of the sacrifices come forth in white clothing.’173 The other associations cited regularly in connexion with whiteness in antiquity are: joy, gladness and, of course, purity. George Tyack opens the chapter of his study ‘Colours and Mystic Meanings of the Vestments’ with a summary whose focus is the white garment. It is worth quoting the passage in full because of this emphasis: Occasion has arisen more than once already to point out that the clothing of the primitive clergy was probably white in colour. In later ages, as we have also noted, the ecclesiastical rank of the wearer came to be marked by the hue of his habit, the pope wearing a white cassock, cardinals red, bishops purple, and priests black. The different monastic orders also chose their distinguishing colours, black, white, gray, or brown being those generally selected. In all these cases, the head-gear…agreed in colour with the cassock. ...of these a well appointed church has several sets, to be used at different times according to their hues, as laid down by ancient rules...174 The ancient rules to which Tyack here refers are those of Innocent III [r.1198 to 1216], who was the first to promulgate a code of colours for the Church: white, which the Roman Church used from Christmas to Epiph171 This reference follows Tyack closely. See Tyack, p. 8. Hegesippus is known to us only through eight passages quoted by Eusebius. It is also through Eusebius that Jerome came to know Hegesippus’s work. 172 Tyack, p. 8; Kittel, pp. 242–43. 173 Quoted in Tyack, p. 8. 174 Tyack, p. 120.

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any, from Easter to Pentecost and on a few other festivals such as feasts of confessors, virgins and on other ‘joyful’ days, such as Baptism. Red was used for martyrs at Pentecost, and for the feast of All Saints (the origins of this being, possibly, the anniversary of the dedication in 609 of the church of Our Lady, Queen of All Martyrs (the Pantheon in Rome). Black was the colour for penitential seasons and for Masses for the Dead; green was used on common days because it was ‘midway between black and white’.175 There were exceptions: the Roman Curia wore white on All Saints Day; Pope Innocent himself regarded violet as a species of black and so rationalised violet for the feast of the Holy Innocents, also for Laetare Sunday (the fourth or middle Sunday of Lent). Scarlet and saffron yellow (coccineus et croceus) were considered by some to be variants of red and green and were worn where they could be justified in this capacity. Rose coloured vestments were sometimes worn for feasts of martyrs and yellow for confessors. England, it has already been said, did not follow Innocent’s dictum to the letter, or at all; but that coloured silk vestments were sought after, acquired, and worn until Edward VI’s warrant for them to be put away, is amply evident in the written records. All of this would change with the Reformation. Zwingli in Zürich rejected the notion of specific garb for priests because of the continued risk vestment symbolism represented, because politically and socially priests belonged among the people, not elevated above them; and because of the wide-ranging vanities and monies ill-spent on frivolities he not unjustifiably associated with the Roman Church, Curiously, the white baptismal garment seems to have been retained, but not because it was explicitly prescribed in the Bible. Calvin, too, rejected coloured vestments, but acknowledged the resonance of the symbolism of the white baptismal garment. Just as England did not follow Innocent III’s order regarding seasonal use of specific colours for vestments and liturgical linens, so the Reformed community in England was unable to agree on which vestments to keep, or whether to keep any at all. The Vestments Controversy in England began during Edward VI’s reign when he offered John Hooper the Bishopric of Gloucester176 which Hooper declined because he refused to wear traditional ecclesiastical robes. After a long and intense period of controversy between divines on both sides, not to mention a period in the Fleet, Hooper eventu175 176

Ibid. John Henry Primus, The Vestments Controversy, Kampen, 1960, p. 3.

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ally and reluctantly submitted. The issue would never be resolved by the Anglican Church — not during the Reformation anyway. The Puritans who in part emerged in response to the weakness of the Church of England on such points, resolved it for themselves.

White Colourless Glass A brief word should be said about the use of coloured glass in churches, on which volumes have been published. We associate coloured glass — stained and painted — with churches, especially those of the Gothic period of cathedral building during the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries and with churches built in this style. The style of window is largely attributed to Abbot Suger’s re-modelling of St Denis, begun in 1137, dedicated in 1144. John Gage reports that modern estimates count between fifty-eight and sixty-eight window openings at St Denis all of which were filled with painted glass, only a fraction of which, alas, survives. This means (again, quoting Gage) that something in the range of ninety to one hundred windows were thus glazed. For this project Suger spent approximately seven hundred livres, not including the value of a substantial gift of blue glass he had received.177 In the diaries he kept of his work on St Denis, he wrote of the luminosity of his windows; but the dominant blue glass would have made the church very dark indeed.178 Yet the iconography and jewel tones of these windows set the standard for subsequent churches and cathedrals for centuries until the Reformation. The French royal chapel, the SainteChapelle, constructed between 1243 and 1248 is an example of the dissemination of Suger’s prototype developed in the direction of what would become the ‘rayonnant’ form (Figs. 2.18). At the same time Suger was installing his windows, he bypassed a longstanding, well-established grisaille tradition favoured by the Cistercians. The few pieces of grisaille glass installed in the St Denis ambulatory were embroidered with brightly coloured red and green borders. These contained 177 Gage, p. 70. 178 Suger kept a diary of his works on St Denis, published in English in Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abby Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, Princeton, 1946 and 1979. See also Andreas Speer, Gabriele Annas, De consecratione, Cologne, 1996, which contains the original Latin.

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complex patterns that thwarted the transmission of light. Not so with the Cistercians, who were developing a system of achromatic glass-making that would become thoroughly identified with their order. An example of this may be seen in Figure 2.19.179 John Gage writes about the prestige of ‘white colourless glass, which was also the most difficult to manufacture.’180 Isidore of Seville had described white glass as the noblest.181 Gage cites a tradition of white grounds in eastern France and Germany with ‘backgrounds of the clearest white.’182 The early Cistercian tradition of white, ‘colourless’ glass, is consistent with the standards established by Bernard of Clairvaux for his abbeys and the order: to minimize distraction and expense, although pure white did not come cheap. Suger’s patent deviation from the grisaille tradition and his characterization of his windows as ‘wondrous’ (On Consecration) is curious in view of the darkness the great masses of blue and other tints must have created. In the first wave of iconoclasm in the Reformation of the early 1520s, window glass in Zürich was not smashed or removed, as far historians have been able to determine. There are reasons for why this would be. Zwingli’s view was that only those images which had been objects of worship or were potential objects of worship need be eliminated. It is unlikely that images in glass would have met this criteria lacking, as they do, the three dimensionality, warmth, or sensual appeal of a painted image, although they would have introduced colour into the church. No mention is made in the accounts of the iconoclasm in Zürich of the removal of coloured glass. If no glass was removed, then the windows Here I follow Helen Zakin, ‘French Cisterican Grisaille Glass’, Gesta, vol.13, No. 2 (1974), pp. 17–28,esp. p. 17, 17n.4; and Terryl Nancy Kinder, Cistercian Europe: architecture of contemplation, vol 2001, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2002, pp. 218–220. C.R. Dodwell (Painting in Europe, 800–1200, Baltimore, 1971, pp. 90–91), cited in Zakin, has suggested that the early statute (1134), did not become official until 1152. There is debate about the dates of these statutes as well as about their longevity as effective regulations. The early statute reads: ‘Vitrae albae et sine crucibus et picturis.’ (white glass without crucifixes or pictures). Reprinted in V. Mortet and P. Deschamps, Recueil de texts relatives de l’ histoire de l’architecture et a la condition des architects en France, au moyen age: XIIe – XIIIe siecles,’ Paris 1929, p. 32. 180 V. Mortet and P Deschamps, Recueil de texts relatives de l’ histoire de l’architecture et a la condition des architects en France, au moyen age: XIIe – XIIIe siecles,’ Paris 1929, p. 32. 181 The Etymologies, XVI, 4, quoted in Gage, p. 70. 182 Mentioned by Theophilus in his treatise Of Divers Arts (1120s), quoted in Gage, p. 70. 179

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depicted in drawings of the Grossmünster interior made in 1570 are likely original glass.183 If so, the glass was clear — not painted — at the time of the iconoclasm. We can infer this from the all-over diamond pattern in the windows; storiated windows could not be rendered using a geometric pattern. My view is that the glass in Zürich’s churches was very likely clear and the point in this case was moot (Figs 2.20, 6.6, 6.7). This was not the case in other centres of reform, particularly in England, where stained glass windows were largely destroyed, if not by the end of Edward’s or Elizabeth’s reigns then between 1643 and 1644 by the Earl of Manchester’s henchman, William Dowsing. Yet, as with some art, some glass, was hidden away and otherwise preserved (Figs. 2.21–23). Margaret Aston cites the purchase of sixty-pounds of red lead bought ‘to color the windows pillars and arches of the churche’ by the parish of St Mary’s, Lambeth. She notes that the substantial purchase of red lead appears only in two other accounts, both associated with whitewash. We do not know for certain whether this was used for over-painting imagery in windows, but it is possible.184 In the context of a preoccupation with the purification of the Church, the meanings associated with various colours as well as with whiteness take on a special value where resonances with particular concepts are established. A number of these have been outlined in this chapter and relate to the noncolour attributes of whiteness: radiance, light, and dazzle, for example. Other ideas about whiteness make metaphoric and symbolic connexions derived from both the colour attributes of white (honesty, humility) but also from associations suggested by the colour itself, those which appear to be a piori (purity, clarity, transparency). From colour language, coloratus, and candidus in particular, ancient meanings have come down to us in not-sodilute forms; the mere utterance of some words now signifying for us the negative aspects of colour, or the most positive attribute of whiteness. The occurrence of these terms and their cognates in Protestant rhetoric emphasize the degree to which the desire for the rejection of colour and the ideas connected with it, was felt by the Reformer. Although necessary to Daniel Gutscher’s history of the Grossmünster does not discuss glass. Aston cites another example in Bungay in Suffolk, where 1 lb. of red ochre was used ‘for defacing the Christover [Christopher].(Christopher Reeve, A straunge & terrible wunder; the story of the Black Dog of Bungay, Bungay: Morrow, p. 12). Black was also used to obliterate images in glass as was the case in Bailliol College, Oxford (See AnthonyWood, John Gutch, ed., The history and antiquities of the colleges and halls in the University of Oxford, Oxford, 1786, p. 91). I am grateful to Margaret Aston for sharing these references with me. 183

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vision, colour was also that in which we clothed ourselves. The stratification of the church and of society as a whole is proclaimed by colour. The reversal of this process (in addition to the stripping of other detail) by its very nature announces the opposite: the emptying out of traditional content and the absence of precious materials. Therefore, while whiteness and undyed materials and surfaces on the one hand claim the space of humility, they simultaneously confer on each congregant a form of equality in the eyes of the Lord. For reasons relating also to the notion of ‘emptying out’ a strong argument may be made for the whiteness of whitewash being symbolically, although not practically, the most democratic of the colours. Whiteness simplifies and streamlines what it touches by removing the extraordinary, spectacular and particular. By its presence it replaces what had been with a colour which cannot claim individual expressions of wealth, power, or space in the way that purple, red, or indigo can.185. This phenomenon has everything to do with its achromaticity and apparent simplicity186 (Figs. 2.24–2.28). In the pagan world of colour symbolism and the secular world of painting techniques, we have seen that the colour white carried meanings not unrelated to those which developed later in Christendom in a specifically religious context. As the color most pleasing to the gods, it was also the colour for state occasions where it invoked associations of social status and political stature in contexts where moral spotlessness and ethical purity were required. Personal and domestic hygiene — whitewashing against plague for example, is directly related to its spotlessness but also to the caustic qualities of lime, discussed earlier. The modern seque to this is evident in ‘white case’, domestic appliances.

I would argue that the shift in emphasis represented by these visual and material changes initiates a process that would become an expression of the Early Modern Loosian ideal. The stripped down, whitened interior first reaches its apotheosis in the Weissenhof Seidlung housing exhibition of 1926 in Germany. 186 In other words: does not reflect the actual care involved in the real world in keeping white fabrics (or surfaces) white. The latter, while not strictly-speaking relevant at this juncture to our discussion of whiteness provides a basis for the argument that whiteness is in fact an élite colour only for those who could afford the byssus linen or who had servants. This is also to say, it is rather the idea of whiteness held in the minds of individuals and of society that is all-important, not the practicalities of it. See: C.L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, Color Categories in Language and Thought, Cambridge, 1997, p. 178, where in contemporary theory white and black are defined as ‘the degree of resemblance to the imagination of the elementary white [or black].’ 185

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In subsequent chapters, the significance of these meanings will be examined further in terms of their value as a metaphor or symbol in a religious context, for both the Reformed Protestant church and the Catholic church in contrast to them. Central to the meanings attributed to whiteness and whitewash are its uses as an agent for change and its role as eventual emblem of Reformed congregations.

III An Historical Overview of Whitewashing A New Role for Lime? ‘Wir haben ze Zürich gar hälle Tempel, die Wänd sind hüpsch wyss!’1 Huldrych Zwingli

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hen described at all in architectural and church histories it is usually assumed that cost considerations were controlling in the choice of whitewash as the finish for interior walls.2 In religious histories of the sixteenth century, whitewashing is traditionally characterised almost exclusively as a practical measure undertaken to obliterate images or refurbish tired or damaged church interior walls in the cheapest and quickest possible way.3 We have already seen that the whitest whitewash was valued for its luminosity; few people could afford to import the whitest of white limes from France.

Huldrych Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, June 1524, speaking to Hans Stockar, quoted in Farner III, p. 490. Translation, Charles Garside, Zwingli, p. 160. 2 See Louis F. (Francis) Salzman, Building in England Down to 1540: a Documentary History, Oxford, 1952, (pp. 154–172), who demonstrates the relative cheapness of lime in accounts quoted by him. Cf Patrick Collinson cited below, and Anne Eljenhom Nichols, ‘Broken up or Restored Away, Iconoclasm in a Suffolk Parish’, in Iconoclasm vs. Art and Drama, Clifford Davidson and A. E. Nichols, eds., Kalamazoo, 1983, pp. 172–3. Such references are legion. 3 The Khludov Psalter documents whitewashing in the eighth century so we know that, as an obliterative practice, it was not new in the sixteenth century. It is pretty safe to assume that Huldrych Zwingli and his colleagues were unaware of the Khludov Psalter; however, it is clear they were familiar with the details of image removal during the First Iconoclastic Controversy from patristic and other historical sources. 1

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With respect to its usage more traditionally conceived, outside of the royal realm and within the religious context, other solutions to whitewashing might have been, and were, sometimes found; options were certainly discussed. In Poland in the small town of Kempton, for example, it was proposed by a local burgher who did not want the paintings in his church destroyed, that they be covered with fabric and removed from sight in this impermanent way.4 In 1530 at Strasbourg, walls were painted a stone colour to match the material out of which the church originally was built;5 and in Coton in Cambridge, as we have already seen, there is an Anglican church whose interior is strawberry pink (Fig. 1.10). Such examples suggest that the act of whitewashing was not exclusively a question of practicality for alternative options were available, identified, discussed and implemented. This suggests conscious acceptance or rejection of the means of dealing with images and their walls. The practice of whitewashing was not new (see Chapter I). Houses, cottages and churches in every country across Europe and in England had been washed with lime for centuries before the Reformation. In 1252 Henry III of England had the wooden dais in the hall of Nottingham Castle finished with smooth, white French plaster.6 According to the Chronicles of Matthew Paris, when Henry visited the French capital in 1254, the king ‘examined the handsome houses, which in the city of Paris [were] made of gypsum, 4 The episode is described in S. Michalski, ‘Das Phänomen Bildersturm, Versuch einer Ubersicht’, §IV, p. 107, in Robert Scribner, ed., Bilder und Bildersturm, Wolfenbuttleler Forschunger, vol. 46, Wiesbaden, 1990: ‘Es ging natürlich darum, das Übertunchen zu vermeiden, als Übergangsmaßnahme wäre das Zudecken ganzer Wände doch zu kostspielig..’ 5 La Petite Chronique de la Cathédrale (Die kleine Münsterchronik): La chronique strasbourgeoise de Sébald Büheler, L. Dacheux, ed., in Fragments Anciennes Chroniques d’Alsace, I, Strabourg, 1887), p. 20. The Strasbourg archivist, M. L. Schneegans, who recovered and edited the French edition of this chronicle in 1849 (as ‘La Petite Chronique’) believes that the text of the original Münsterchronik from which the Petite Chronique derived must be that of a painter and chronicler named Sebald Büheler whose original text has perished. Apparently the original text was copied by another chronicler named M. de Bulach, which is the text found by the archivist, Schnéegans. A biography of Büheler appears at the front of the Münsterchronik translated by Bulach confirming Schnéegans’ impression that Büheler must have been the original writer. Notes by Bulach ‘to verify and confirm details’ also underscore the impression that this was not Bulach’s original work, although it appears to be contemporary. The text of La Petite Chronique does not clearly reveal its author either, however, nor the exact date of its writing. Schnéegans has deduced authorship based on Bulach’s handwriting in other texts. 6 Libertate Rolls., 36 Hen III, m. 17, quoted in Salzman, p. 155.

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or plaster, and the mansions of three, and even four stories [or] more.’7 The chronicler does not actually state, but implies, that Henry was particularly taken with the French plaster phenomenon. Various customs accounts show that by 1532 ‘plaster of Paris’ for interior use was being imported into England from as far afield as Rouen, Antwerp and Normandy for use at Winchester and Hampton Court. But from at least 1288 ‘plaster of Paris’ was made also in England.8 Expense books show its purchase from far afield. Throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries carts traversed the British Isles from Windsor, York, London (for town houses as well as Westminster); to the Vale of Bever, Cambridge, and other places to make deliveries.9 That plaster was used to finish walls with a smooth white surface provides testimony to the value placed on these qualities. Louis F. Salzman emphasises the primacy of the whiteness, even over smoothness, for if a wall was not sufficiently white or had become soiled or discoloured, it might be freshened up with a coat of whitewash or paint.10 In addition, entries in building accounts recording the whitewashing of internal walls were widespread.11 Salzman writes that: In the Middle Ages whitewash was fully appreciated and was applied with a lavish hand externally and internally. The Keep of the Tower of London was known as the White Tower from its being resplendent with whitewash, and was provided with downpipes from its gutters to preserve its whiteness from splashes.12 At Corfe Castle the entire keep was whitewashed externally in 1243, and at Guildford the hall, the two royal chapels, and other buildings were ordered to be whitewashed inside and out.13 While this form of decoration 7 Rev. J.A. Giles, trans., Matthew Paris’s English History, [Chronicles], London, 1854, vol. 3, p. 109. 8 Salzman, p. 156. 9 Ibid., pp. 154–172. 10 Ibid., p. 157. 11 Ibid., p. 157. 12 Ibid., p. 157. 13 It is not clear to this author whether the Hampden Room at Knebworth House was intended to remain a black drawing on a white ground. The official guidebook (see Lord Cobbold, Knebworth House (c. 1999, n/d., p. 17) gives no indications about the iconography of this wall fragment. The 13th century example of the Queen’s Chamber, Silchester Church, and many other black-on-white examples suggest the possibility that the predominantly white wall reflects final objectives. According to Anthony Wells-Cole (personal communication,

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was used for churches and chapels, most of these examples appear not to have had any particular religious or ritual meaning. Common to both the domestic and ecclesiastical examples is the fact that the smooth, whitened wall had a particular aesthetic value as early as the thirteenth century, and that plaster of Paris and lime-wash were highly sought after materials to achieve this effect.14 Still visible in a number of churches is the common practice of decorating interior walls with faux masonry lines or flowers in red on a whitewashed ground, as in Westminster Abbey, ordered by Henry III in 1253.15 Henry III ordered the Queen’s chamber in the Tower whited in 1240 (‘thoroughly whitened internally and painted with roses’).16 An extant example of this may be seen at the Silchester church in Berkshire (north Reading). (Fig. 3.1). The great chamber in Guildford Castle was whitewashed and ‘marked out in squares’, called pointing, quarrying or quarellari, in 1255, which is a practice that was not limited to England.17 German examples of quarellari from the Bavarian cathedral at Augsburg are shown in Figs. 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4. Examples of sixteenth century black-on-white and white-on-black wall decoration may still be seen at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire in

2–1–2010), both wall paintings are likely derived from sixteenth century prints. The whiteon-black decoration over the door between the hall and the dining parlour is possibly based on a designed by Jan (or Hans) Vredeman de Vries, published c.1570–75. De Vries was an Antwerp-based stained glass artist and ornament designer. . That de Vries was a Protestant who constantly had to leave the city to escape Spanish Catholic troops is, according to WellsCole, probably not something about which an English patron either would have known or cared. The Hampden Room wall painting is more difficult to find a source for as the sources for this kind of design are too broad. It is closer, says Wells-Cole, to Italian and German Renaissance ornament prints than to Flemish ones. Many wall paintings in England are black and white (though some are, indeed, coloured) including the Knebworth paintings and those at Harvington Hall in Worcestershire. These areas were a hotbed of Catholicism with numerous priest-holes. As for dating, the taste for black-and-white paintings probably spanned the period c.1530–1630. While these images may not contain overt religious references (as decorative as they are this is not surprising), but coincides with the Reformation in England. The limited palette may be an indicator of a changing relationship to colour, affluent patrons notwithstanding. 14 Salzman, 156. 15 W. R. Lethaby, Westminster Abbey Re-examined, London & Aylesbury, 1925, pp. 204– 206, esp. 205. 16 Liberate Rolls., 23 Hen III, quoted in Salzman, p. 158. 17 Liberate Rolls., 40 Hen. III, m. 10 quoted in Salzman, p. 158.

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the Hampden Room and on the overdoor between the dining and parlour Rooms. (Figs. 3.5 and 3.6). In his church history Thomas Fuller wrote in 1655 that ‘white-limed houses exceeded those which are only rough-cast’,18 referencing, again, the value placed on whiteness and smoothness, but a smoothness closely associated with white lime washes. Two late eighteenth century examples of whitewashing in Ireland are notable. In Munster, County Tipperary, a ritual practice within the Roman Catholic Church suggests a mingling of both the purification processes of washing and becoming metaphorically ‘white’ with rural, secular traditions of annual whitewashings for the purpose of cleaning. In Armagh in 1834 the well-established tradition of the ‘Stations’ involved the practice of holding Mass and administering communion in people’s homes. Even though the practice was customary, the holding of stations, and of whitewashing in preparation for them, became obligatory. Alice Taylor writes about how houses were cleaned, de-cluttered and whitewashed inside and out in preparation for this event: ‘Rooms that were full of clutter before, now doubled in size … when the burning and washing had finished the painting began and nothing escaped the paintbrush.… We whitewashed the inside walls and any parts of the outside not covered by ivy.’19 This passage is pregnant with suggestive symbolisms relating to our subject. Connections are made here between burning, cleansing, purifying, and (white) washing. Each process is noted as though a ritual in itself, certainly a carefully considered detail of a larger annual rite. In Reformation scholarship over the last twenty years burning has received much attention as a purification ritual in its own right. Here, the new coat of whitewash for this house is associated with the burning, but the new coat of paint, the last event in this series, is laid over the freshly washed house as though putting on a clean, white shirt following a very important ritual bath. Somewhat incidental, but still present to the scenario, is the mention of being stripped of extraneous details. Thomas Fuller, and J. S. Brewer, The Church History of Great Britain from the birth of Christ until the year 1645, London, 1655, I. I. §13. 19 Alice Taylor, To School through the Fields: an Irish Country Childhood, Dingle, County Kerry: Brandon, 1988, pp. 8–11, 16–17. I am grateful to Bodleian Librarian, Andrew Honey, for this reference and the information about Munster and Armagh, sent to me, 7 May 1999. 18

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Various terms were used to describe this process; in England terms such as whitening (1351),20 wasshyng (1423),21 qwhitten (1435),22 white casting (1509),23 whytelyme[d] (1519),24 whittyng (1540),25 whitelymynge (1547– 8),26 whiten, whyghten (1552),27 whytte-lymed (1556),28 white washe (1591),29 whitning (1664),30 and more, were used. This is consistent with a history of the development of colour terms in the English language written by the anthropologist Ronald W. Casson. His research shows, not unsurprisingly, that basic colour terms have been part of the English vocabulary since the emergence of the language. But Casson goes on to describe an important semantic shift in the development of colour language during the Old English period from ‘brightness colour concepts’ to a conceptual base focused on hue. The colour white which, also not unusually, is classified as one of the basic colours (black, white, red, ochre), followed this pattern. It derived from the Indo-European root ‘kweit’ meaning ‘white, to shine.’ The Old English reflex of ‘kweit’ was, Casson notes, primarily, although not exclusively, a brightness term; but the OED records both a brightness and hue sense in the Old English period by 888. Chalk is an example of this. The sense of hair and complexion appears in 900; snow or milk in 950 (both examples from OED quoted by Casson). Importantly, Casson also notes that the sense of ‘colourless’ and ‘uncoloured’ is attested in 888 as well. This occurrence demonstrates that from very early in the development of the English language a virtually indissoluable connection was made between concepts of whiteness and colourlessness. The majority of references however to ‘hwit’ in E. 471, 6, Exch. K. R. Acts. (bundle) 471, doc. 6, quoted in Salzman, p. 157. E. 459, 10 quoted in Salzman, p. 157. 22 ‘Of qwhome sum þer fowlnes to hyde or þer bewte þa study to increse with payntynge of begillynge avotre þer faces þa colour & qwhitten.’ MISYN, Fire of Love, II, ix, 95 quoted in J.A.H. Murray, H. Bradley, W.A. Craigie, C.T. Onians, eds., OED, 1933. 23 Sir Thomas Lucas in Gage, Thingoe Hundred, quoted in Salzman, pp. 146, 155. 24 Horman, Vulgaria, c. xxix, quoted in Salzman, p. 155. 25 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v.‘whiting’ I.1(a), 2nd edition, 1989. 26 H. J. F. Swayne, Churchwardens’ Accounts, Sarum, 1443–1702, (1896), 275, quoted in OED, s.v. ‘White-lime, sb.’: ‘To Lytchefeelde for whitelymynge of the same.’ 27 S.v. Huloet, ‘whyghten, albo …canefacio.’ OED, ‘Whiten’ 1.a. OED, Oxford, 1933. 28 From the Chronicle Grey Friar’s (Camden) 54 quoted in OED, Oxford, 1933: ‘Whitelime’, sb. 1556: ‘Alle churches new whytte lymed, with the ten commandmenttes wryttyne on the walls.’ 29 Percival, Sp. Dictionary Enxalvegar, quoted in OED, Oxford, 1933, s.v.‘whitewash, (v.) 1.’. 30 In W. O. Blunt, Ch. Chester-le-Street (1884), 96, s.v.:‘Whiten 1. b.’: ‘For whitning the church four pound ten shillings.’OED, Oxford, 1933. 20 21

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Old English denoted brightness, luminosity or reflectivity (a shining light, a roof, a helmet, gem, silver), with references to hue also recorded.31 In German-speaking Switzerland, verdünchen (1523),32 or weiss33 ‘überweiselt’,34 ‘mit kalch verwisset [geweisselt] und verstrichen [gestrichen] ist worden’,35 ‘verwiszget [geweisselt]’,36 and gewisget37 are terms regularly found. And in French-speaking Geneva, terms such as blanchir, blanchisseure and passer du blanc were used (1643).38 From as early as 1200 there are in England allusions in non-biblical texts to Matthew 23:27 (‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and all uncleanness’), where the writer omits the specific reference to sepulchers but retains ‘whited’ as a synonym for a morally good, pure, or purified, character (‘Mannes þruh, be is wiouten ihwited, and widinne stinkende.’).39 As well as such allusions, direct comparisons with Matthew 23:27 are made. A similar analogy is made in 1435 where the term ‘white’ is used in connection with painting the face to suggest hiding foulness beneath a spotless surface. ‘Of qwhome sum Þer fowlnes to hyde or Þer bewte Þa study to increse with payntynge of begillynge avotre Þer faces Þa color & qwhittyn.’ 40 31 These are to ‘brightness of snow and foam but, more importantly, for the hue of milk, flour, salt; alabaster, marble and pearl; ivory, (whale) bone, chalk; paper; clothing; swan, horse and mule; sheep’s fleece and boar’s tusk; hair and beards in old age; skin and complexion; and pallor resulting from illness. Ronald W. Casson, ‘Color Shift: evolution of English color terms’, in Color categories in thought and language (sic), C. .L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, eds., 1997, 224–239; above quotation, see. p. 225. 32 BernardWyss, Chronik, p. 42 33 Huldrych Zwingli quoted in Farner, III, p. 490. 34 Rudolf Wackernagel, Geschichte der Stadt Basel, vol. 3, Basel, 1924, p. 517. 35 Johannes Kesslers Sabbata, Emil Egli, ed., Saint Gallen, 1902, (Staatsarchiv (Basel), Aq. 73.), p. 313. 36 Die Chronik Konrad Schnitts 1518–1533 in Basler Chroniken, vol. 6, August Bernoulli, ed., Leipzig, 1902, p. 118. 37 Die Chronik des Fridolin Ryff in Basler Chroniken, Wilhelm Vischer and Alfred Stein, eds., vol. 1, Leipzig, 1850. 38 Archives d’État de Genève, RC 142, fol. 315, (‘Séance du 23 aout 1643’). 39 Vices and Virtues, 15, quoted in OED: White’, (v.), 1. b. 40 OED, 2nd ed., 1989, ‘whiten’, v.1.b. citing: 1435 MISYN Fire of Love II. ix. 95, ‘Of qwhome sum Þer fowlnes to hyde or Þer bewte Þa study to increse with payntynge of begillynge avotre Þer faces Þa color & qwhittyn’.

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This is probably a reference to lead-based makeup; the concept of a cosmetic white surface being applied to another surface to conceal foulness parallels Matthew (24:27). The concept of whitening to cover over evil or foulness had entered the English language well before the term ‘to whitewash’ appeared in the sense known today, but it conveyed the very same idea. The term itself would not enter the language carrying its current meaning until the eighteenth century (1713) when Joseph Addison wrote in a journal called The Guardian that he had heard an entire sermon on whitewash.41 When ‘whitewash’ does appear in general circulation (in print) in approximately 1762, it is used metaphorically to indicate the cynical process of covering something up, just as it is today.42 It is logical that this term entered the English language as a consequence of the whitenings and lymewashings which had taken place in the previous century in the context of the Protestant Reformation, where walls were washed with lime to cover over all visible traces of evil-doing in the form of making holy images, or, to cover over traces of evil-doing in the form of damage caused by the iconoclasts. Whitening the face to give the appearance of a fair complexion would certainly have contributed to the poetic impact of the concept. Both are applied surfaces; in that sense they are cosmetic. Both refer to the adoption of a spotless white surface invoking the concept of whiteness as a symbol of pureness of spirit. In both examples above the term involves inverting the symbol of righteousness, purity or wholesomeness into one of dissimulation. Adding to the intricacy of the concept of washing white with lime is the concept of blankness. Frequently when describing the visual effect of the stripping of church interiors during the Reformation the term blankness (in English descriptions) is used, often overlooking the whiteness of the very same walls.43 This has always struck me as a curious phenomenon, although intuitively it has a certain logic. We all know what this means — blankness — but deeply embedded in the English word ‘blank’ is the concept of whiteness, dating to the time when it entered the English language as blanke, 41 ‘I have heard a whole sermon against white-wash.’, Rt. Hon. Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, The Guardian, London, 1713, no. 116, p. 1., fol. cited in OED: s.v. ‘Whitewash’, n.1. (cosmetic). The first use of whitewash (as opposed to ‘whiting’, ‘withening’, ‘whiting over’, etc.) was in 1591 (Percivall, Sp. Dict., Enxalvegar). Both examples are quoted from OED. 42 ‘Such as are blackened in the North Briton are…white-washed in the Auditor.’ 1762, Colman Prose Sev. Occas. (1789), s.v. ‘Whitewash, 2.a. trans., OED, 2nd ed., 1989. 43 Even if the ‘blank’ wall had not been freshly whitewashed, it is relevant to ask whether it would have been described as blank had it been painted a saturated colour?

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blanck, blanc, blank, from the Romanic.44 The Oxford English Dictionary records a 1325 example of blanc signifying the colour white. The use of blanc signifying white in English continued up through the nineteenth century. In his sermon ‘On the Plough’ Hugh Latimer, the English martyred reformer (1485–1555), uses the term blanchers to identify a particular group of iconodules who had been thwarting the progress of reform: And this way the devil used to evacuate the death of Christ, that we might have affiance in other things, as in the sacrifice of the priest; …So he was ‘The Lamb that hath been slain from the beginning…’ and not for the continuance of the Masse as the blaunchers have blaunched it and wrested it.45 In this case, Latimer’s use of the term is partly in the sense, recorded in the OED, of ‘a hinderer, or obstructor’, derived from its meaning of obfuscation by artifice or suppression of the truth,46 But embedded still more deeply in the term is the concept of whiteness, or whitening (now blanching), as the specific form of obfuscation. Elsewhere in the same sermon the term occurs again combining the meaning just described with the doubleentendre of whitewash, engaging the meaning more familiar: ‘Blanchers… that can blanche the abuse of Images.’47 This may be why Margaret Aston, in her description of this sermon says, Latimer ‘attacked those “blanchers” who were whitewashing the abuses of imagery.’48 The irony of blanchers blanching popish abuses is exquisite in view of what was shortly to come; it also suggests that the coat of whitewash used by the first generation of Protestants in England was not interpreted as obliteration, but rather as something else, a cleansing agent very likely. S.v. ‘Blank 1.(a)’., OED, Oxford, 1933, p. 901. Hugh Latimer, Sermons by Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester, London and New York, 1906 and 1926, p. 66. Under Edward VI Latimer was the King’s Court Preacher who was also known in his time throughout the East of England. His sermons attracted large crowds and it was for this reason as much as anything else that he became known as a leader of the English Reformation. The ‘Ploughers’ sermon was delivered in the Shrouds at Saint Paul’s on 8 January 1549, and printed shortly thereafter. See also Margaret Aston, Iconoclasts, 265n.29. Aston, p. 264, quotes Hugh Latimer, Sermons by Hugh Latimer, ed. G. E. Corrie, (Parker Society: Cambridge, 1844), p. 26. 46 See also the OED: ‘blanch, 1.5 ’ and OED: s.v. ‘blancher 2, 1’. 47 Cf. also: ‘Certeyne blaunchers longyng to the markette, to lette and stoppe the light of the gospel.’ (Latimer, p. 69); and, ‘He would not hear these blaunchers and wordly-wise men, but without delay followeth God’s cause.’ (Latimer, p. 70). 48 Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 264. 44 45

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3.1. Interior, Church of Saint Mary, Silchester, Berkshire. Photo credit: Hannelore Hägele, photographer.

3.2. Augsburg Cathedral, Bavaria, Germany. Red quarelli over whitewash with figurative wall painting painted superimposed. Photo credit: Anonymous, Cambridge University classmate.

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3.3. Augsburg Cathedral. Interior wall. Photo credit: Anonymous, Cambridge University classmate. 3.4. Augsburg Cathedral. The nave, looking north-east.

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3.5. Interior black-on-white wall decoration, Hampden Room, Knebworth House Hertfordshire, 16th century. © Knebworth House, Lytton Enterpirses, Ltd. 3.6. Interior white-on-black wall decoration, Knebworth House Hertfordshire, 16th century. © Knebworth House, Lytton Enterpirses, Ltd.

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3.7. Theodore Psalter, 1066. BL Add. 19352, f. 27v, Ps. 25/26. © British Library, London.

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More familiar may have been the use of the term in connection with alchemy where blanching indicated a chemical process used to turn something white or fair. There is also the more familiar meaning of ‘empty of all marks’, which can be traced back to 1547 and continues until this day. It is probably no accident that the earliest reference to blankness (meaning ‘empty of all marks’) can be dated to the year that whitewashings began under Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) in England. From a practical standpoint the ‘making good’ of walls within a church damaged by iconoclastic activity following the removal of altars, statues, and wall-paintings, requires little explanation. Churchwardens’ accounts contain numerous references to the ‘making good’ of walls; it is natural after all to apply a fresh coat of paint to soiled or damaged walls as part of upkeep. But if one takes into account the directives given by Edward VI’s and Elizabeth I’s royal Visitors in England, and chronicles from the Continent which state the purpose of whitening as being ‘to remove all traces of what went before so that no trace of memory remains’, 49 the significance of whitewashing deepens. It has been mentioned that the concept of whitewashing as a cosmetic cover-up was recorded in the Bible by Matthew (Matt. 23:27). From then on it appears in literature and proverbs throughout the Christian world down through the ages in different forms. The apparent purity of the whitewash is worn like a garment of disguise. Priests at the Holy Sacrament, Angels at the Transfiguration, wore it as a garment symbolic of righteousness. As a significant component in the process of re-shaping and re-orienting the mind it is far less familiar, and yet it is precisely this process which is meant by the words, ‘to remove all traces of what went before.’ There is a particular clarity surrounding the colour white in the form of the white garment, the white of the transcendental garment being as bright as, and synonymous with, light itself. The white garment is one of numerous examples of the connection between the kind of dazzling whiteness described in the Bible (especially, but not exclusively in the New Testament) to indicate holy or transcendental phenomena and light itself (Hab 3:4, Mt 17:2, Mt 28:3, Mk 9:3, Lk 9:29, Acts 1:10). Underpinning these descriptions of This language appears in Bucer’s, ‘A Treatise declaring and showing that images are not to be suffered in churches’, published in English by William Marshall, London, 1535, p. 47–48: ‘To conclude…to plucke down ymages and pictures/and to ryd them quyte oute of churches is a holy thing…That is to wytte, that they be so taken away/that there be no whytte of them remaynynge.’ Earlier in this text Bucer talks about removing these same traces from the mind. 49

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transcendental super-bright whiteness is a mutuality of terms and concepts, a shared basis in the words from which these descriptions are derived, which is discernable in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and English texts. For the scholar trained to speak in Latin, learned in Greek and Hebrew and concerned with the translations of the Old and New Testaments into the vernacular languages of German, Swiss German, English, and French, these consonances of meaning would have been resonant and critically important.50 This is rendered doubly so since in their basic form early colour terms indicating light (quantity of luminescence present from light sources and reflectivity), including glisten, gleam, and luminosity, were brightness terms when they entered the language. Over time these became hue-oriented while also becoming associated with things.51 Whiteness, the hue, is one of these words whose origins refer to its luminosity. In its earlier forms it became central to metaphors which refer to the light of God, whose righteousness, when bestowed upon the believer, was worn as a transcendental garment. It is likely that, emerging out of the corpus christianum of language, these terms provided reinforcement for what had to have been at a minimum a subconscious perception of white as a symbol for purified being, especially in the context of a church whose goals focused on the re-establishment of a body of righteous, true worshippers who individually and as a community desired to cleanse themselves of unwanted historical accretions. The intersection between the ideas surrounding transcendental light and life-giving ambient light empowers the concept and the act of whitewashing, distinguishing it from the more ordinary use of the colour concept ‘white’ found in language describing lime-washes on vernacular buildings, or for things. Included in this latter group is the use of the colour white in an applied liturgical context within the Catholic Church before the Reformation. In the traditional liturgical context the colour white was used on things as a 50 There are a several recent studies about the writing of the King James Bible that demonstrate this very point. See Adam Nicholson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, 2005; Alister McGrath, In the Beginning: the Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, 2002. Also relevant but incorporated into Nicholson (2002) and McGrath (2005) are the histories of the translations of Miles Coverdale (1535) and William Tyndale (1536). 51 Athalya Brenner, Colour In the Old Testament, pp. 26–35, 70–77, 81–82, 83, 89–94. Cf. Ronald W. Casson, ‘Colour shift: evolution of English colour terms from brightness to hue’, in Color categories in thought and language (sic), C.L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi, eds., Cambridge, 1997, pp. 224–239. See also Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Downers Grove, IL. and Leicester, UK, p. 944.

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symbol for or signifier of purity, righteousness, and humility, but without the element of active empowerment it would acquire during the first half of the sixteenth century, when it became an active force. This is not to suggest that white, the hue, acquired a new warrant while it lost traditional symbolic value completely. It did not. The metaphorical value of each of the mystic colours, gold, blue, purple, and red, varied over time according to regional and temporal usage. Variations in pattern and degree of use is also true of the colour white, although, with regard to it, usage tended to be more consistent than for the other liturgical colours. General usage for the liturgical calendar within the Catholic Church was first regulated by Innocent III, and eventually codified by the Council of Trent in 1565 in a campaign to standardise colour symbolism within the Church.52 Thus certain traditional references were retained, and, later, others further developed. A symbolic and spiritual connection between the colour white, whitewashing, and Reformed Protestant values may be substantiated from several standpoints. The concept of the hueless splendour of God had traditionally been conceived in terms of light: both as a physical light expressive of the Divine presence (Ex 25:37, Ps 4:6), and as a symbol of God’s grace and truth (Ps 119:105, 130; Pet 1:19). In this context the concepts of huelessness and light are traditionally conflated where white is both chromatically hueless and also representative of light. The juxtaposition of light and darkness had expressed or symbolised either the presence or absence of God or the presence of God contrasted with the presence of the Anti-Christ; that is, evil or darkness. (Job 24:13, Jn 3:20). The tradition in literature of each of these patterns of thought is very long.53 The attributes of purity and transparency exemplified by whiteness in ancient Greco-Roman literature became God’s attributes in Christendom: light became the sign of Him and whiteness the chromatic representative of His righteousness. The tradition of donning white garments in baptism, or to signify righteousness in martyrdom, sainthood or one’s state of grace adds still another dimension to the mix. Closely allied to the white garment in this context is the ‘undyed’ 52 Clapton Crabb Rolfe, The Ancient Use of the Liturgical Colours, Oxford and London, 1879, pp. 32–35, 57, 113, 118, esp. 35; W. Saint John Hope, ‘The English Liturgical Colours’, Saint Paul’s Eccl. Soc. Trans., ii; Cox, Churchwardens’ Accounts, pp. 134, 177–78, 249. 53 For further discussion of this subject, see Elizabeth R. Achtemeier, ‘Jesus Christ, the Light of the World’, Interpretation, (October 1963), pp. 439–449; L. Ryken, J. C. Wilhoit, T Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Downer’s Grove (USA) and Leicester (UK), 1998, pp. 509–512.

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(hueless) garment, often a sign and symbol of humility. Each of these factors combined to a powerful effect in Reformation thinking not only as a symbol in its own right, but as a non-negotiable ritual act of cleansing in the form of whitewashings, as Reformed theology and practice developed after 1524 in Europe and the British Isles, in particular Switzerland, England, Scotland and the Low Countries. The painting-over of images using the medium of whitewash as a form of response to iconoclastic beliefs is as old as the iconoclastic controversy itself. As a way of obliterating idolatrous images, whitewashing dates at least to the ninth century, when it was clearly used as a cleansing agent. As early as the years immediately following the official ‘defeat’ of iconoclasm in 843 in Constantinople, two illuminated pages illustrating Psalms 25 and 68 appeared in the Khludov Psalter,54 now in Moscow. The images on these two leaves depict one of the earliest known accounts of the obliteration of images as a theological and political statement using whitewash.55 The illumination accompanying Psalm 68 (Fig. 1.2) (the illumination of Ps. 25 is not reproduced here) comprises two scenes. In the first (lower left corner of the leaf ) is an iconoclast busy painting out a medallion image of Christ,56 possibly that on the Chalke (Bronze) Gate of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople. He is using a pole with a large sponge attached to one end 54 Historical Museum, Moscow, Cod. 129D, Fol. 67r. Also known as the Khludov Marginal Psalter because the images which form a commentary on the text are found in the margins. Kathleen Ann Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters, Cambridge, 1992, p. 6. See also S. Dufrenne, Tableaux Synoptiques de 15 Psaultiers Mediévaux, Paris, 1973, pp. 2–3. In her book Corrigan seeks to identify the anti-semitic polemic imbedded in the illustrations to the Psalters, which had not been previously analysed. Corrigan concludes that while the illustrations in the Psalters, edited and added to in the ninth century, contain images purely illustrative of Scripture, and primarily consisting in a defence of the orthodox view, they also contain anti-Semitic polemic which condemns the iconoclasts as Jews. 55 According to S. Dufrenne’s survey of imagery in Psalters a third example of such an illustration may be found in the Barberini Psalter (Vatican, Barb. Gr. 372). See Dufrenne, Introduction, p. 2. 56 According to Corrigan, the medallion image should be read as an ‘authentic image’, or icon, of Christ, and its use in the Khludov Psalter as representing the acceptance by the ‘blessed man’ of the incarnation of Christ, as well as of his image. Equally, the iconoclast’s rejection of the image of Christ, and of icons, as in the case of John the Grammarian, is represented as the painting out of the image in medallion form. In the illumination accompanying Psalm 59, the iconoclast is portrayed being trampled by the victorious iconophile Patriarch Nicephorus (806–815) who triumphantly raises in his left hand the same medallion image of Christ for all

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as a long-handled brush. Traces of white can just be seen on the image being painted out. Beside this is an inscription which identifies the three actors in this drama as iconoclasts. Byzantine scholar Kathleen Ann Corrigan has identified the sponge-bearer as John the Grammarian, the last iconoclastic Patriarch (r. ca. 838–843).57 The relevant lines being illustrated in this Psalm (68:22) read: ‘They gave me also gall for my food, and made me drink vinegar for my thirst.’58 This is juxtaposed with the second scene on the upper right portion of the leaf in which one of two men, Longinus, to the right of Jesus, is holding a lance, which he uses to pierce the side of the already dead Christ on the Cross. The other of the two men, the Jew traditionally known as Stephaton, is energetically thrusting into Christ’s face a sponge mounted on what appears to be a pole (in certain accounts this is interpreted as a reed) on which is, presumably, the vinegar of Psalm 68. In tradition these men are held to be Jews and are so identified by Corrigan. The connection between the two scenes, as Corrigan describes it: …is made both visually and verbally. Visually, by their parallel actions and by the similarity of the containers holding the whitewash and the gall. Verbally, by the inscriptions: ‘they [mixed] vinegar and gall’ next to the Jews; and next to the Iconoclasts: ‘and they mixed water and lime on his face.’ 59 The Khludov Psalter offers an example of associations made with whitewashing in connection with the iconoclasm of the ninth century. It is an important example because of the parallels drawn not only between the iconoclasts and Jews as Corrigan points out, but also between lime-wash and the vinegar and gall by the orthodox iconodules. This view is not just neutral in the sense that the iconoclasts eliminated images and happened to use lime-wash while doing so. In the text accompanying the miniature, limewash is on a par with the iconoclasts in terms of the responsibility assigned to see. (Was this a medallion image painted in again?) See Corrigan illus. 38 (Hist. Mus. Cod. 129, Khludov Psalter, fol. 51v., Psalm 51:9) and Corrigan, p. 30, 30n.30, 32. 57 Corrigan, pp. 6, 27. John the Grammarian was appointed by Emperor Leo V to replace the iconophile Nicephorus (806–815) as patriarch of Constantinople during the period including the last episodes of the iconoclastic controversy before a settlement was reached in favour of images in 843. John the Grammarian was deposed as patriarch in 843. 58 Corrigan, p. 30. 59 Ibid.

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to and the disparagement indirectly heaped on it as the proximate vehicle for the cruelly and unjustly administered actions of the sponge-bearer. In the Theodore Psalter (now in the British Library), a similar image is depicted. (Fig. 3.7).60 Although Corrigan does not discuss this particular Theodore image in her study, she does mention that this Psalter is an eleventh century version, closely dependent on the Khludov Psalter,61 which would explain the similarities in style and distribution of images. Again, a man using a sponge on a long pole appears to be painting out a medallion image of Christ. Beneath the medallion image is a large pot of paint, not unlike the one seen in the Khludov Psalter. To the left of the painter, Patriarch Nicephorus, seated and dressed in red and accompanied by his aides, presides over the whole operation. Above Nicephorus in the margin are two individuals holding up between them the iconic medallion image of Christ, demonstrating the triumph of the iconophiles over the iconoclasts in the form of an image of Christ freshly painted in. In addition to its political value, this is a depiction of a triumphal scene celebrating the victory of a particular visual and spiritual concept fought over since 726. The images from the Khludov and Theodore Psalters from the first iconoclastic controversy provide a framework within which to pose an initial question about what, if any, symbolic and moral value was attached to the act of whitewashing out of religious images in this, the earliest documented incidence of the obliteration of images of Christ. The Khludov Psalter is, fortuitously, accompanied by commentary on the perpetrators.62 In both of these psalters the primary villain, as he is called by Corrigan, is John the Grammarian. John, who is described in the psalter as a cohort of the devil, is trampled by Nicephorous. The lime-wash is visually and textually likened to the corrosive mixture of vinegar and gall. The parallel image is reinforced by the similar pots being used by the sponge-bearers — the one containing lime, the other, vinegar and gall. Traditionally these pots are

60 This is one of the most profusely illustrated, possibly the most significant illuminated MSS in Constantinople. It was made for Abbot Michael, Abbot of the Studius Monastery in Constantinople and named after Theodore, a monk, who came from Caesarea to the Studius scriptorium. (Visual Polemics, p. 126.) A digital version (electronic facsimile) of this MS (BL Add. 19352) is published by the University of Illinois and the British Library and is available both at the Library of Congress (USA) and the British Library ‘Online Gallery’. 61 Corrigan, p. 4. 62 Ibid., pp. 27–30.

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interpreted as representing the ‘accumulated iniquities of sinful humanity’63 and, by extension, this applies to the pot of whitewash also. Both are, in a sense, corrosive mixtures, in that they are intended if not to destroy, then to obliterate the surface to which they are applied — in this case Christ’s visage, physically in His person and symbolically in His image. The method of applying either mixture is the same and contributes not only to the obvious parallels between the two depictions, but also to the negative commentary being made about those counted among the non-Christian who exhibited heretic behaviour. From the Khludov and subsequent Theodore images one may infer that for the first iconoclastic period whitewash was not only passively associated with erasure and destruction, but actively with the intentional act of evil-doing. While vernacular limewashes would continue to be applied annually to homes, and medicinally to plague-sticken villages, it was not used again in a politico-religious context until the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Many questions remain outstanding about the history of whitewashing during the Protestant Reformation, not least of which is that, because of a paucity of records discussing the practice, the full and true extent of it is not easily reconstructed. David Parks64 estimates that churches not decorated with wall-paintings were regularly whitewashed as a matter of refurbishment approximately every ten to twelve years, at least in England. Further, different ways of whitewashing may be said to have taken place, depending on the goal, on what was being painted, the time and place of painting, and the actor or perpetrator, depending on point of view. The earliest modern instance of whitewashing in a religious context is Zürich in 1524. But because there is a chapter later in this book dedicated to the special case of Zürich we will continue with a summary of other, select, well-known instances of iconoclastic whitewashing as a point of departure. The first of these is Basil in Switzerland. Following the well-publicized ‘spontaneous’ storming of the churches on 9 February 1529 in Basel, images were completely and permanently obliterated with lime throughout that city. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote his friend Willibald Pirckheimer, 63 William Chester Gordan, ‘The Last Tormentor of Christ’, Jewish Quarterly Review: New Ser., Vol. 81, No. 1/2, p. 21. 64 Director, Conservation of Wall Painting Department (Chairman) Courtauld Institute, London, personal conversation, 1999.

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Not a statue had been left in the churches, in porches, on facades, or in monasteries. Everything frescoed is lost under coats of whitewash. Whatever would burn has been thrown into the pyre; everything else hacked into small pieces. Neither value, nor artistry prevailed to save anything.65 The earliest extant painting of an interior view of the Basel cathedral is by Konrad Witz (Fig. 3.8). Completed in 1445, it does not show wall paintings in the nave, but smooth plain walls; however several subsequent paintings indicate increasing and decreasing stages of whiteness. A copy of a painting by Johann Sixt Ringle from 1650 shows the interior washed in an unmistakably bright white, consistent with Erasmus’s description (Fig. 3.9, 3.10). A still later water-colour dating to 1826 shows the münster walls still whitened, and the red brick trim whitened also (Fig. 3.11). In 1857 Constantin Guise depicts the interior with the red brick returned. (Fig. 3.12). A photograph from 1999 shows only the ceiling plastered and whitened; all other plaster and whitewash is removed and the light-coloured stone out of which the cathedral was built is exposed. There is no red brick (Fig. 3.13). Following Luther’s intervention in the iconoclasm of 1522 in Wittenberg, incited by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, churches that came under the aegis of Luther and Lutheranism developed an entirely different position altogether with respect to images. As a result, although protestant, Lutheran worship spaces form a category sui generis. The history of the removal of images in England during its one hundred year-long Reformation begins with two sets of injunctions promulgated by Henry VIII in 1536 and 1538. These rejected the veneration of images and ordered, among other things, that those religious images which had been ‘abused with pilgrimages and offerings be removed from all churches throughout 65 Desiderius Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, P. S. and H. M. Allen, eds., vol. 8, p. 162, no. 2158, letter to Willibald Pirckheimer, 9 May 1529, trans. Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 39. In English translation also in J. A, Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, London, 1894, pp. 332–3. Froude emphasises the methodical nature of the transformation, making the image removal sound less like a riot, and more like Zürich. (See Froude, p. 332). For another contemporary account of the Basel iconoclasm see also the Chronicle of Fridolin Ryff, Wilhelm Vischer, ed., ‘Der Bildersturm in der Schweiz und in Basel inbesonders,’ Basler Taschenbuch, 1, Basel, 1850, pp. 17–37; and the description by Dominican Johann Stolz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Bildersturms von 1529’, Basler Taschenbuch, 5 & 6 , Basel, 1855, pp. 194–96.

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Henry’s lands’, and that all other remaining images be regarded for their historical and didactic value only.66 (My emphasis). The 1536 injunctions had told parishioners that any other images remaining in churches might be removed in due course and that they should ‘prepare’ themselves for this possible eventuality. No mention was made of destroying images in this proclamation or in the injunctions issued by Henry’s bishops and visitors, nor was there any mention of whitewashing, or of white-liming as it was then known in England. A number of modern historians hold the view that the most significant impact of Henry’s injunctions was the extinguishing of the ‘lights,’ 67 notwithstanding that all images which had been venerated were, in theory, supposed to have been removed at the same time. The extinction of lights, a term then used for candles (see footnote below), had become official with the injunctions of 1538. It is possible, although unlikely, that extinguishing the candles burning in honour of the dead or in prayer would have had more visual impact than the removal of multitudinous paintings and sculptures. Had both happened concurrently it would have been difficult to apportion more or less the effect to one or the other. It is more probable that in 1538 some images were removed, but not so many, and that the effect of the extinction of candles was relatively strong. According to one historian, none of the accounts for the period 1500–1535 in fact record the removal of images.68 On the contrary, surviving accounts show that most rituals and ornaments of the 1520’s remained in English churches until the end of Henry’s reign, and that during the years 1500–35, a record number of embellishments for churches in England were commissioned or donated.69 Proclamation 186, TRP, I, New Haven and London, 1964, p. 274. See Ronald Hutton, ‘The local impact of the Reformation’ in the English Reformation Revised, ed. Christopher Haigh, Cambridge, 1987 and 1992, pp. 116–7; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 451. In 1536 three lights had still been allowed to burn within churches; five years later in 1541 this had been reduced to one altar light only. See Colin Platt, The Parish Churches of Medieval England (Parish Churches), London, 1981, p. 149. In 1547 they were limited to two. Proclamation 287 in Tudor Royal Proclamations (TRP), New Haven and London, 1965, pp. 393–403, esp. p. 394. ‘Lights’ is the term used for lit candles symbolic of Christ’s eternal light. It refers to wax tapers, lamps, and torches. Tapers were usually fixed along the rood beam on prickets placed in metal bowls; torches were candlesticks carried in processions. (Henry Beauchamp Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, London and New York, 1939, pp. 26, 53). 68 Ronald Hutton, ‘Local Impact’, pp. 115, 117. For his study Hutton examined the accounts of 198 parishes throughout England, Scotland and Wales. 69 Ibid., pp. 115–6, 119. 66 67

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Dramatic change began with Henry’s death and the accession of his son, Edward VI.70 One of the most important aspects of this change was, beyond a doubt, visual. On 31 July 1547, six months after the accession of Edward VI to the English throne, Protector Somerset and his government on behalf of the young King promulgated a set of injunctions directed to the cause of ‘the suppression of idolatry and superstition throughout the realm’ in order to ‘plant true religion’ in its stead.71 With respect to the use and abuse of images in the church these articles followed closely those of Henry VIII’s articles and injunctions of 1536 and 1538 (the First and Second Royal Injunctions, respectively) in that they ordered people to cease worshipping idols and images. Like his father Edward forbade the ‘extolling or setting forth of pilgrimages, relics, or images, or lighting of candles, kissing, kneeling, decking of the same images, or any such superstition.’72 All torches, candles, tapers, images of wax were ordered to be taken down, leaving only two lights before the high altar as a reminder ‘that Christ was the true light of the world.’73 Edward further ordered: That they [deans, archdeacons, vicars, and other ecclesiastics — not private citizens] shall take away, utterly extinct, and destroy all shrines, covering of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindles74 or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles,

Corroboration of this view may be found in many sources. See Walters, London, p. 1, 50; Hutton, ‘Local Impact’, p. 119, Brigden, p. 424, Duffy, p. 453, Colin Platt, p. 149, Aston, pp. 246–276, esp. 255–259, 270–71. 71 Proclamation 287, Tudor Royal Proclamations (TRP), Hughes and Larkin, eds., New Haven and London, 1965, pp. 393–403, esp. 394; ‘The Royal Injunctions of Edward VI’, 1547, in Visitation Articles and Injunctions (VAI), ii, W. H. Frere and W.P. M. Kennedy, eds., London and New York, 1910, p. 114. 72 Henry’s First Royal Injunction [Transcr. Cranmer’s Register, fol. 97b.]: ‘Item, that you shall every Sunday and holy day …openly and plainly recite to your parishioners…not to repose their trust or affiance in any other works devised by men’s phantasies beside Scripture; as in wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money, candles, or tapers to images or relics, or kissing or licking the same, saying over a number of beads,...’ Henry Gee, William John Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, 1896, pp. 265–281. 73 Proclamation 287, TRP, I, pp. 393–403, esp. 394, 401; VAI, ii, pp. 103–13, 114–30. 74 A trindle (or trundle) is a coil or roll of wax made into a taper candle. It was used for light in medieval churches. According to the OED (2nd edition, 1989) by 1796 and again in 1852 the precise shape that a trundle took was in dispute among church historians. 70

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pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition; so that there remain no memory of same in walls, glasses, windows, or elsewhere within their churches or houses. And they shall exhort their parishioners to do the like in their several houses…75 (TRP 287). (My emphasis.) From the start the radicalness of this first set of articles and injunctions distinguished Edward’s reformation of the church from Henry’s. Appended to Edward’s injunctions were sets of questions, called Articles, posed to ecclesiastics (deans, curates, vicars, stipendiaries and spiritual administrators) by the royal Visitors and Commissioners making official visits to villages, towns and cities throughout the country. They were commanded to determine for every parish: Whether there do remain not taken down in your churches, chapels, or elsewhere, any misused images, with pilgrimages, clothes, stones, shoes, offerings, kissings, candlesticks, trindles of wax, and such other like: and whether there do not remain not delayed and destroyed any shrines, covering of shrines or any other monument of idolatry, superstition and hypocrisy.76 (My emphasis). The commissioners’ visitation pursuant to these, Edward’s first set of articles and injunctions, took place between August and November 1547. To parcel out the work the kingdom was divided into six circuits to which three to four visitors each were appointed, including a combination of lay and clergy men.77 The extremeness of these injunctions was critical.78

Injunction no. 36, TRP, I, p. 401, VAI, ii, p. 126. Royal Injunction 28, 31 July 1547, VAI, ii, p. 126. This same injunction using identical language appears in Edward’s Royal Articles under Proclamation 287. See TRP, p. 393. For a discussion of the use of the ambiguous term ‘delayed’, ’delay’ or ‘deley’ (as it is spelt in some versions of the injunction), see Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 227. 77 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reign of the Tudors A.D. 1485– 1559 (Wriothesley’s Chronicle), Westminster: Camden Society Publicatons, 1875–77, II, p. 1n.a., 185; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 254. 78 Bishop Hooper’s Articles and Injunctions of 1551–2 for Gloucester and Worcester Diocese, although considered to reach beyond the law, do not go further than this on the matter of images. They require (among other objects) images, idols, and ‘any other provocation of idolatry’ to be taken down and destroyed (Item 16). Hooper specifically mentions wall paintings, and orders such wall-paintings as remain to be defaced, but not eliminated. (Item, 28). (See VAI ii, pp. 284–85, 289.) Item 16 is inclusive, however; in addition to images and idols, Hooper also orders that ‘all places, roodlofts, tabernacles’ and any other form of 75 76

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3.8. Konrad Witz, Basel Cathedral, 1445. Naples National Museum and Gallery of Capodimonte. Photo Credit : Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY.

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3.9. Sixt Ringle, Basel Cathedral, 1650, interior view. Copy by F. Löw V. Bratz, 1785. Private collection, Binningen.

3.10. Sixt Ringle, Basel Cathedral, detail.

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3.11. Johann Jakob Neustück, Basel Cathedral, watercolour, 1826. Interior view looking east. State Archives of Basel Canton.

3.13. Interior view, Basel Cathedral, 1999. Photo credit: Erik Schmidt.

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3.12. Constantin Guise, Basel Cathedral, watercolour, 1852. Interior view looking east, location unknown.

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There was to be complete destruction, not just removal, and the range of objects proscribed had been expanded. Whereas Henry’s injunctions of 1536 (no. 4) and 1538 (nos. 6 and 8)79 had proscribed Roman abuses, Edward’s discountenanced the majority of instruments and accoutrements that one would expect to find in an ordinary parish church. One of the most salient of these was ‘glass windows’ presumably with narrative imagery on them — stained glass. Not even Huldrych Zwingli or his city council had insisted on the removal or destruction of stained glass in Zürich80 where, until this moment, the most deliberate and comprehensive case of iconoclasm ever had taken place. Though in Zürich as in Edward’s England at this moment, the more radical reformers believed in the removal of images everywhere — in homes as well as in churches — an injunction to this effect had not, in fact, been imposed on Zürich citizens. All over England whitewashings began to take place, during the year 1547–48. Most historians agree that whereas images had previously been universal they had disappeared by the end of Edward’s reign. They are also in agreement that most church interiors in England were whitewashed at this time to obliterate images on walls and to ‘make good’ interior walls that had been damaged as a result of the removal of altars and shrines and any other visual depiction affixed thereto, or forming part of, the walls.81

partition or division of space be removed, creating a bare interior, as the editors point out, ‘Nothing [was] to be left but the bare walls, even altar steps and footstools are not spared.’ VAI, ii, 284n.1. 79 VAI ii, 1.5–6. Henry accepted images in the church on qualified grounds. He condoned traditional observance of them (for example, praying to Mary, the saints, and the belief in purgatory), and he acknowledged certain legitimate uses. These included: images as a way of teaching the stories, morals, and messages of the Bible, as books for the illiterate, and as inspiration toward the spiritual, usually couched in terms of ‘stirring men’s minds’, or some such phrase. However, superstitious practices, such as showing images honour — kneeling, kissing, creeping was not to be permitted. This sort of honour was due to God only. See Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 222–224). 80 Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, Oxford, 1988, p. 256, and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, New Haven and London, 1992, p. 451. Stained glass remained in Zürich’s churches; Zürich ordinances required only the removal of images. 81 G. A. Bergenroth, et al., eds., Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, (1862–1964), ix, p. 148; Walters, 1, 50; J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, pp. 207–11; Brigden, p. 429; Hutton, pp. 114–38; Eamon Duffy wrote about this period ‘that in response to a central diktat the altars were drawn down and the walls whited, windows broken or blotted out to conceal “feigned miracles”.’ (Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 453, 478). The author does not cite

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In this context it is not hard to see how white-lime would be perceived by traditionalists as a means of destruction, not unlike the example of vinegar and gall quoted earlier in this chapter. In 1547 Charles Wriothesley, the chronicler of Tudor England, recorded the promulgation of injunctions for the ‘utter abolishing of idolatrie’, in his invaluable political history of London, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors A. D. 1475–1559.82 Wriothesley was the younger son of Thomas Wriothesley, a Garter King of Arms in the court of Henry VIII. Less successful professionally than his father, but Cambridge educated, Charles became a herald in Henry’s and Edward’s courts and, subsequently, a political chronicler. Recording events of August 1547, Wriothesley wrote in his Chronicle, This year, in August, the Kinges Majestie, with the advise of my Lord Protector and other of his Counsell, sent out through this realme of Englande certain godlie injunctions for reformation of the cleargie [clergy], the true preaching and settinge fourth of Godes worde, and

his source, but this is almost certainly language from the 1547 set of injunctions quoted above in which identical language appears. Susan Brigden observed that, ‘One by one, the churches were transformed, reformed from idolatry: the brightly painted walls now whitelimed, pulpits replaced tabernacles, Scripture messages replaced wall paintings, plain glass stood in the windows.’ Susan Bridgen, London and the Reformation, p. 429, cites Henry Beauchamp Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, in general for information regarding expenditures to make these changes. Walters’ book consists of parish inventories prepared at the time of Edward VI’s visitation in 1552, giving both current inventories of material assets, the monies received for their sale and, where applicable, how funds were used or re-allocated after liquidation of assets. As a general rule these inventories do not record changes to the fabric of church buildings, but there are a number of significant exceptions. Brigden’s citation may be to a section entitled ‘Images’ which states that probably all images of saints or other sacred personages and events ‘had disappeared by the end of Edward’s reign.’ (See Walters, pp. 50–51). R. Hutton, too, mentions whitewashings in this context writing that ‘all observers agree that images were cleared from the churches of London by the end of that year [1547] and that most churches whose accounts he studied ‘were reglazed and coated with white lime almost certainly to obliterate images in stained glass and wall-paintings’ (R. Hutton, p. 121). The author cites the Calendar of State Papers, Spanish IX, p. 148, Monumenta Franciscana, II, pp. 314–315; Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reign of the Tudors, Westminster: Camden Society Publications, 1875–77, II, p. 1. 82 Charles, Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors from 1485–1559, Charles Hamilton, William Douglas, eds., vols. I–II, Camden Society, London, 1875–1877.

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utter abolishing of idolatrie, which were clene putt downe in everie parish church in the realme of Englande.83 On 16 November of the same year Wriothesley records that, The Kinges Maiesties visitors beganne that night to take down the roode with all the images in Poules Church, which were clene taken awaie. […] Likewise all images in euerie parish church in London were pulled downe and broken by the commandment of the said visitors.84 Wriothesley’s account of the iconoclasm on this date is not very detailed, although he indicates that all images were taken down. He does not mention whitewashings being carried out, unless this is what he meant by ‘clene putt downe.’ Nor does he note that any were ordered to be done until 18 March 1554, during the first year of Mary’s reign when he reports: ‘Scriptures written on Roodlofts and about the churches in London, with the armes of England, was washed out againste the feast of Easter in moste parte of all the parish churches of the diocesse of London.’85 It is curious that Wriothesley should mention whitewashing in the context of Mary and not Edward because about Edward’s reign the Grey Friar’s chronicler wrote, ‘Item the 5. day after in September beganne the kynges vysytacion at Powlles [St. Paul’s], and alle imagys pullyd downe; and the 9. day of the same monyth the sayd visytacion was at [St. Bride’s], and after that in dyvers other paryche churches; and so alle imagys [were] pullyd downe thorrow alle [throughout] Ynglonde att that tyme, and alle churches new whytte-lymed, with the commandmenttes wryttyne on the walles.’86

Ibid., vol. I, 185. Ibid, vol. I, 185 and vol. II, 1. 85 Ibid. Washing in this specific context may only be a synonym for ‘painting’, ‘painting out’, or ‘cleansing’, as in ‘removal’. Although a limewash is not stated here, this is very probably what it was. 86 John G. Nichols, ed., Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, (Camden Society, vol. 53, London, 1852), p. 54. 83 84

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Numerous churchwardens’ accounts document the liming over and ‘washing out’ of images during Edward’s reign as well as the liquidation of other hard church assets, very often sold abroad in the Netherlands for cash. At the Parish of St Ewens’ in Bristol in its ‘booke of the Accompte’ for 1547–1548 there is an entry for the ‘white-liming of the chancel and the making good of the walls where images had been ripped out.’87 It was similarly the case at Saint Mary the Great in Cambridge in 1547–48;88 at Saint James in Colchester in 1548;89 at Bishop’s Stortford (1547–1548);90 and in Sarum (1547–1548).91 The process begun at the end of July 1547 continued throughout Edward’s reign supported by proclamations and injunctions from the King and his Privy Council followed up by a series of royal visitations (considered more fully below). During this first visitation commanded by Edward, each commissioner was given a copy of the relevant injunctions. These injunctions required every church to have a ‘comely and honest pulpit’, a complete copy of the Bible in English, a copy of Erasmus’s Paraphrases, and Thomas Cranmer’s Homilies. A homily is a sermon, and the Books of Homilies to which the proclamation refers were sermons authorized by the crown for use in the Church of England. Originally proposed by Thomas Cranmer in 1539 during the reign of Henry VIII, they were submitted to Convocation in 1542, but not formally approved until 1547, the first year of Edward VI’s reign. It is believed that Cranmer wrote at least five of the twelve homilies that comprise the first book. But, because preachers and clergy throughout the kingdom were often themselves uneducated in scripture, or even, sometimes, illiterate, the parish clergy were required to read from the Book of Homilies each Sunday. The proclamation explains: Quoted in Platt, Parish Churches, p. 155. Walters, p. 3, Platt, p. 155, 162; See also W. D. Bushell, The Church of St Mary the Great the University Church at Cambridge, Cambridge, 1948, pp. 52–53, 54–55; 66–67; 140–41; 154. There is a note in ‘Historical and Architectural Notes on Great St Mary’s Cambridgeshire’, Cambridgeshire Publications, (1869. 38. Keyser) to the effect: ‘Saint Andrew’s chapel, East end, N. Aisle; traces of gilding and colour on the string courses. Late 15th century.’ Although all colour had for sometime been gone, Saint Mary the Great was whitewashed again in 1559, see Platt, p. 160. 89 Platt, p. 152. 90 Bishop’s Stortford, Churchwardens’ Accounts (CWA), pp. 56–57; (also cited in E. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 584). 91 Henry J. F. Swayne, ed., Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund & S. Thomas, Sarum, Salisbury, 1896, p. 275 quoted in the OED Online, ‘white-lime’, III.4.13. 87 88

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Also, because through the lack of preachers in many places of the King’s realms and dominions the people continue in ignorance and blindness, all parsons, vicars, and curates shall read in their churches, every Sunday, one of the Homilies, which are and shall be set forth for the same purpose by the King’s authority.92 These homilies contained unequivocally Protestant doctrine and were intended to provide the public both with a general religious education and, even more importantly, with an understanding of reform, thematically delivered in sermon form.93 Cranmer was priming the pump. Each commissioner was provided with an exhaustive set of ‘articles of enquiry’ or ‘visitation’94 while being empowered to create their own articles wherever they found it necessary.95 The delegation of authority to ‘respond to each situation as it presented itself ’ worked well for the goal of eliminating 92 Certyne Sermons, or Homilies, appoynted by the kynges Maiestie to be declared and redde by all persones, Vicars or Curates, every Sondaye in their churches, where they have Cure. (Short Title Catalogue: 13, 639), originally published by R. Grafton, London, 31 July 1547; then almost every year thereafter until the publication of the Second Tome of Homelyes by Elizabeth I in 1563 (Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of the late Queen Elizabeth, Oxford, 1844). See Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, (pp. 320–325) for a detailed discussion of the ‘Homily on Idolatry’ and changes made to it by Elizabeth. 93 R. W. Heinze, The Proclamations of the Tudor Kings, Cambridge, pp. 204–210; The Anglican Library, http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/reference.htm, The Books of Homilies. Book 2, Short-Title Catalogue 13675. Renaissance Electronic Texts 1.1. © 1994 Ian Lancashire (ed.) University of Toronto. The second book of Homilies, written primarily by Bishop John Jewell and published only in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, instructs openly on images, their place in Christian worship and on the evil of idolatry. For example, Homily 1, Book 2, reads, quoting 2 Corinthians 6:16, ‘What agreement hath the Temple of God with idols?’: ‘What fellowship is there betwixt righteousnesse, and vnrighteousnesse? or what communion betweene light and darkenesse? or what concorde betweene Christ, and Belial? or what part can the faithfull haue with the vnfaithfull? or what agreement can there be betweene the Temple of GOD and images (2 Corinthians 6.14–16)? Which sentence, although it be chiefely referred to the temple of the minde of the godly: yet seeing that the similitude and pith of the argument is taken from the materiall Temple, it enforceth that no vngodlinesse, specially of images or idols, may be suffered in the Temple of GOD, which is the place of worshipping GOD: and therefore can no more bee suffered to stand there, then light can agree with darkenesse, or Christ with Belial: for that the true worshipping of GOD, and the worshipping of images, are most contrary. And the setting of them vp in the place of worshipping, may giue great occasion to the worshipping of them’. 94 VAI ii, pp. 114–130. ‘Enquiries’ were equivalent to our contemporary ‘interrogatories’. 95 The original injunction published by Richard Grafton, London, 1547, p. 9, may be found in TRP I, 287, pp. 393–403.

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all memory of what was before ‘in walls, glasses, windows, or elsewhere … within [their] churches or houses.’96 In the absence of an injunction ordering the whitening of church interiors, discretionary orders to smooth and whiten walls were, indeed, given and duly put into effect. It is important to note that the whitewashing of churches in England was not originally ordered by the 31 July 1547 proclamation (TRP 287), nor by the supporting injunctions of the same date, just as it was not ordered by Henry VIII’s injunctions of 1536 and 1538 on which Edward’s 1547 injunctions were based. Nor were the whitewashings ordered by any other injunctions, articles, or ordinances in Henry’s or Edward’s reigns.97 Whether as part of the discretionary authority of the Edwardine commissioners who enthusiastically carried out the injunctions, or in anticipation by churchwardens of royal visitations, a consistent pattern of whitewashing of churches was established at this time.98 Significant radicalisation of reform under Edward, including the dramatically changed visual appearance of the churches, is one of several important developments embedded in the Edwardine series of injunctions as compared with Henry’s.99 Some historians consider that the elimination of ‘lights’ (candles) under Henry was as radical as the stripping of images that followed in the early years of Edward’s reign pursuant to the injunction just cited. Contributing equally to the radicality of visual changes in the overall appearance of the church interior and to the experience of the church-goer was the pattern of whitewashings ordered by commissioners which began

TRP I, 287. Even Bishop Hooper, who has been described as ‘England’s Zwingli’, did not include white-liming as a required step of rReformation in his Articles and Injunctions of 1551–52 for Gloucester and Worcester, see VAI ii, 284–85, 296, nos. 16 and 31. 98 Susan Brigden, who writes about the whitewashing of churches in the diocese of London during the 1547/8 visitation, does not mention any authority responsible for ‘ordering’ the ‘lime-washings’. (See S. Brigden, London and the Reformation, Oxford, 1989, pp. 426–33). Eamon Duffy writes about them in connection with a clear order from the Crown (see E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 479); Ronald Hutton indicates that they were ‘for the most part coercive, in response to royal visitation’, i.e., that they were imposed from above and not from below. (See R. Hutton, ‘The Local Impact of the Tudor Reformation’ in The English Reformation Revised, Cambridge, 1987, p. 118). 99 In his analysis of the injunctions supporting the 1547 proclamation (TRP I, 287) R. Hutton (pp. 116, 120) attributes almost as much impact to the ‘snuffing of lights’ as does Duffy (pp. 452–55). 96 97

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on a consistent basis at this time.100 That the commissioners consistently chose to whitewash suggests that even where meaning did not previously exist, a paradigm had emerged which they consciously or unconsciously felt compelled to follow. In the aggregate a resonance associated with the process would accrue in due course. In January 1550 the Comprehensive Act for Abolishing and putting away of Divers books and images (sic) came very close to ordering the ‘obliteration’ of images, but ordered their destruction instead. In addition to rounding up ‘all antiphoners, missals, scrayles, processionals, manuals, legends, pyes, portuyses, primers in Latin or English, cowchers, journals, or other books .…heretofore used for the service of the Church’, the act also called for the destruction by the end of June of all: images of stone, timber, alabaster or earth, graven, carved or painted, which heretofore have been taken out of any church or chapel or yet stand in any church or chapel. 101 This edition of the order had expanded to include every probable medium in any worship space, building, or private domicile — except glass — that contained a representation. Even more striking are the numerous levels of government (mayors, bailiffs, constables, and churchwardens in every community) tasked with responsibility for bringing about the requisite changes. Anything not destroyed between 1547 and 1548 would almost certainly have been so now. A few years later, in May 1552, Edward’s Privy Council ordered a survey of all churches, chapels, guilds and fraternities with 100 A well-known incident of whitewashing occurred before the accession of Edward at St Martin Pomery in Ironmonger’s Lane, London, which has often been cited by historians to underscore the public sense of urgency about this issue. Among them, see Walters, London Churches, p. 3; W. K. Jordan, Edward VI, The Young King, Cambridge, MA, 1968, p. 146; James C. B. Gairdner, The Church in the 16th Century, London, 1902, p. 242. See also Brigden, p. 462, where she cites Hooper’s satisfied observation that altars had been torn down throughout London before they were ordered to be taken down. Jordan suggests that whitewashings in general began at this time in London well before the general visitation of the diocese in the autumn of 1547. (See Jordan, p. 150). Could Jordan be conflating the two events? 101 See the ‘Comprehensive Act for Abolishing and putting away of Divers books and images’, 1550, TRP I, 353, published in C. H. Williams, English historical documents, 1485–1558, London, 1967, p. 853 and J. Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation, 1908–13, III, pp. 125–26, 172–74, 181–84. See also C. Platt, Parish Churches, p. 153; Duffy, p. 468– 69. Gairdner describes this act as being ‘for the defacing of images and the bringing in of books of old service in the Church.’

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a view to seizing extant church valuables it would appear in order to finance the government’s war commitments and the renowned ‘rapacity’ of the Tudor Court.102 These included surrendering to the Crown all veils, hangings, vestments and even furnishings and other valuable church possessions. In 1552–53 this next harvest yielded further significant ceremonial and visual changes. From a review of some of the inventories made at this time in response to Edward’s 1552 Commission it is evident that further whitewashings of church interiors were carried out at this time, between 1552 and 1553.103 Out of 106 inventories published in Henry Beauchamp Walters’ compilation of inventories, London Churches at the Reformation,104 twenty-nine mention ‘reparacions’ to the church fabric. A large number of churches had fallen into disrepair since Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries and chantries and in many cases upkeep had been long-coming and was overdue. Yet, because these accounts are often inexact, it is not always possible to determine from entries citing ‘reparacions’ whether these were general repairs or repairs necessitated by the removal of shrines, altars and tabernacles, and wall paintings. Nor is it possible to be certain whether or not reparations included white-liming as part of mandated changes. It is thought that some of these expenditures were intended to retain for the parish the liquidated wealth generated by the sale of church goods. In anticipation of fulfilling the injunctions clergy had 102 This is E. Duffy’s description, but the view is shared by many. See E. Duffy, p. 478 and Walters, pp. 11–12. 103 Walters, pp. 108, 109, 118 (‘alterations and repairs’), 122, 134 (for ‘payntinge and other necessaries’), 143, 202 (for ‘Rasyng & defacing … & Reparying the walles ayene’), 203, 210 (‘for the reparacions’), 221, 223, 225 (‘necessary reperacions … and for removing awaye the Alters … and altering the said churche’), 276, 324 (‘neceesarye and nedefull reparacions’), 333 (‘for the maintenaunce …in reparacions being in greate ruyne and decaye’), 349 (repairs and alterations), 353 (repairs and other charges), 359 (‘dyuerse reparacions’), 364 & 365 (payments to workmen and repairs), 366 (‘mayntenance of the Reparations’), 397 (necessary Reparacions’ including taking down alters), 400 (‘urgent Reparacions’), 401 (‘vrgent reparacions’), 428 (‘necessary and nedefull reparacions’), 416, 456 (‘dyuers and necessarye Reparacions’), 461 (‘Reparacyons…tyllinge…glasynge’), 472, 476, 499 (‘mayntenance of the reparacyons’), 526, 528 (necessary reparacions’), 529, 541 (Reparacions’ in conjunction with ‘overplus Distributed to and Amongste the poore’), 549 (‘reparacions…& other necessaries), 550 (for repairs), 551 (repairs), 536 (reparacions’ including painting texts), 562 (‘nedfull Reparacions wher in dede the walles is myche decayed’), 571 (repairs), 585 & 586 (payments for nine loads of chalk in conjunction with repairs and wages), 591 (repairs), 629 (repairs specified by churchwarden but not itemised by Walters). 104 Henry Beauchamp Walters, London Churches at the Reformation, London and New York, 1939.

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begun to spend the money raised by selling plate, vestments and art, before it could be confiscated by the Crown. In the event, those responsible for the upkeep of the church had little difficulty finding ‘necessary reparations’ to the fabric of their old buildings. Fourteen entries in Walters’ inventories specifically mention the painting of church interiors with white lime over which was written scriptural text. These, too, are unmistakably in response to Commissioners’ requests or in anticipation of them. Descriptions of the inscriptions come in many forms. At All Hallows in Staining the scrivenor entered a payment in 1552 for the whitewashing of the church, for pews, and for the ‘wrytyng of the church.’105 At Saint Alban’s, Wood Street, the inventory states that money generated by the sales of ‘parcelles’ was ‘employed vpon the payntinge and other necessaries of the church.’ At Saint Andrews’s Holborn (1552), the answers to the Commissioners’ request for information informs us that: the sayd Olyver dyd bestowe vppon the Churche in tyellynge ledying of the gvtteres glassing of the wyndowes whiteing of the Churche and setting vp the Kinges maiesties armes with Skriptures vpon the roode lofte and hother places in the churche.106 (My emphasis). At Saint Botolph’s, Aldersgate, in 1551 the scrivenor describes both the ‘Rasying and defacing of the alters and plucking of them downe and Reparying the walles ayene’ as well as ‘for making & paynting the church with Scryptures & for mending the glasse wyndowes being broken in the commocyon time.’107 All Hallowes, Honey Lane, mentions the making of a painted cloth with royal arms and scriptural text on it to hang in front of the rood screen, but in every case where whitewash is mentioned the writing of scriptural text on the walls also followed. What can be clarified by another look at these inventories is that the whitewashings were not ordered by Edward or his Privy Council, at least not in the printed official commission. Were they verbally ordered by the Commissioners? All entries with the exception of Saint Bride’s, Fleet Street,108 are matter of fact about the process. Are the entries for ‘reparacions’

Walters, p. 122. Ibid., p. 143. 107 Ibid., p. 202. 108 Ibid., p. 223. 105 106

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3.14. Church of Saint Issui (aka: Saint Patricio). A ‘Church of Wales’ church situated in the hamlet of Patrishow (Patricio), Vale of Grwyney, south-east Wales. 3.15. All Saints, Skeyton, North Norfolk. View of nave. © Peter Bromage, photographer.

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3.16. St. Mary, Burgh-next-Aylsham, Norfolk. Clear glass windows in an unequivocally whitewashed church interior. © Peter Bromage, photographer.

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3.17. St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, Suffolk, England. © Simon Knott, photographer.

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3.18. St. Andrew’s Church, Chesterton. Detail of restored wall paintings. © Aidan Semmons, photographer. 3.19. St. Andrew’s Church, Chesterton Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. Whitewashed nave with Doom painting. © Aidan Semmons, photographer.

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3.20. Thaxted Parish Church, Thaxted, Essex. Whitewashed interior, view from south aisle looking through to nave. © Aidan Semmons, photographer.

3.21. Thaxted Parish Church. Recovered wall paintings with whitewashing removed. ©Aidan Semmons, photographer.

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3.22. Norwich Cathedral. Stripped interior. © Haberlea, photographer.

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an indirect reference to or a reflection on the damage it was felt had been inflicted on the churches, as in the painting of Christ’s face with vinegar and gall? In contrast, at Saint Bride’s, whitewashed sometime in 1547 or 1548, the entry seems to indicate a measure of satisfaction in the process of eradication of idolatry and in white-liming.109 Was white-liming an act of cleansing, obliteration, violence,110 liberation,111 propaganda,112 or all of these things? One thing is certain, by the end of Edward’s reign, virtually no images on walls remained (Figs. 3.14–3.23). In July 1553 following Edward’s death and the accession of Mary Tudor to the throne the Queen began the process of reversing the work of the last twenty years accomplished by her father, Henry VIII, but particularly her brother, Edward VI. This meant reversing the purges and changes made by the Protestants and reconstructing the fabric of worship as it had been before the Reformation had begun. Restoring church interiors to what they had been at the time of Henry VIII’s death meant not only re-creating rood-lofts, altars, paintings and decorative items, but the reversing of the social enterprise of the Protestants: that of persuading minds and hearts to the reformed path.113 In late October 1555 Mary sent her commissioners to visit every Parish in London and Middlesex to inventory and order the re-instatement of images and roodlofts. At the beginning of Lent, 1556, Mary sent a commissioner to every Parish to ensure that clerics were following orders and that an image of the named saint for every church had been (re)set up.114 On conservative Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s order the parish of Saint Benet Gracechurch whited out scriptural text painted onto her walls; the royal Arms over the altar at St Mary Magdelen in Milk Street, at St Matthew’s, Friday Street, at St Botolph’s, Aldgate, Saint Mary at Hill, all in London. At other churches throughout London the Decalogue and royal Arms were also whited out.115 Ibid., pp. 222–226. Graffitti and the Writing Arts, London, 2000, pp. 73–78, esp. p. 75. 111 Suggested by Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 43, 209; also Haigh, p. 212. 112 Ibid. 113 See Aston, England’s Iconoclast, pp. 277–94. 114 Wriosthesley’s Chronicle, II, p. 134. Many historians hold that Mary would have been content to restore churches to the state in which they had been left by her father, but for her unfortunate choice of Archbishop Laud who pushed the restoration programme too far. See Margaret Aston, for discussion of this point: ‘Mary I’, in England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 277–294. 115 See Brigden, London at the Reformation, Oxford, 1989, pp. 585–86, citing Guildhall, MSS 2596/1, fo. 113r; 1016/1, fo. 15v; 9235/1 (unfoliated); St Mary at Hill, ii, p. 397. 109 110

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An extant example of this kind of reversal of Protestant iconography may be seen at St Catharine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk (Figs. 3.24, 3.25, 3.26), and at the church of Saint Margaret, Tivetshall in Norfolk. Fig. 3.27). At Ludham, the Crucifixion was removed, the royal Arms of Elizabeth put in place; and the process eventually reversed. At Saint Margaret’s, Tivetshall, the arms of Elizabeth, painted in 1587, are enormous and fill the entire tympanum. Beneath the lion and dragon of her Arms are painted the words, ‘God Save Our Quene Elizabeth.’ Also included in this painting are the arms of four other Tudor monarchs including those of her mother, Anne Boleyn. Although, cumulatively, the changes which took place between Edward’s accession (31 January 1547) and his death (6 July 1553) effectively meant that in almost every church throughout England all images, altars, and rood lofts had been eliminated, niches emptied, filled in, plastered over, and whitewashed, whitewashings continued until at least 1578. Thus, first Edward, then Mary, and afterwards Elizabeth, washed and re-washed out each other’s icons. Subsequently, between 1643 and 1664 another wave of cleansings would take place as the result of Puritan control of the nation’s churches. The elimination of lights and the obliteration of glass and windows in the 1547 injunction was radical. However, it should be noted that the overarching goal and language of Edward’s programme to eliminate all trace of image and, therefore, of the memory of ‘Popish’116 images in all forms, parallels that of Zürich’s city council under Zwingli’s leadership as described in several chronicles written at the time of the whitewashing of that city’s churches in 1524.117 In Zürich, painted windows and stained glass were not affected by the iconoclasm there, but the goal of Zürich’s city council, as with References to ‘popish’, ‘papistical’ ‘popery’ and other variations on this term in reformed writings on the Continent and in England are legion. Zwingli used these terms frequently (see The Shepherd (1524), pp. 84, 93). ‘Popish’ appears on the title page to William Marshall’s 1535 English edition of Martin Bucer’s, Das einigerlei Bild. For a reproduction of this page see M. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 204. Elizabeth I forbade the use of words such as ‘papist’, ‘papistical’ etc. because they were contentious. See TRP II, 460 (Hughes and Larkin, eds., 1960), p. 128. See Trevor Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing, for midseventeenth century examples of this language: pp. 125, 355, 360, 368, 378. 117 Wyss and Bullinger make very similar comments to this effect. For example: ‘Damit ouch die gedachtnus der unheiligen dingen abgienge’ / ‘so that even the memory of the unholy things should go away.’ See Heinrich Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, Vogel and Hottinger, ed., Frauenfeld, 1838–40, p. 367 (no. 202); see also Bernard Wyss, Chronik, p. 42. 116

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Edward subsequently, was to remove all visual traces of what had existed until that moment with the added explicit objective of ‘cleansing the mind.’ In her 1559 proclamations Elizabeth reiterated language identical to that in her brother Edward’s injunctions. On first glance Elizabeth’s language refers to traces of image on walls and in glass windows, but the implications are bigger. Elizabeth and her councilors ordered that any religious images, idols, or sculptures in people’s homes also be destroyed — not just put away — excising throughout the land and in any venue any visual record that could keep memory of a former life alive. As if this were insufficient, repairs to the church fabric were also ordered so that no traces of the excision itself would remain, making total obliteration its end-goal. Because of the language in Elizabeth’s 1559 proclamation it is possible to read the references to ‘reparacions’ which appear in churchwardens’ accounts at this time as the repairs ordered pursuant to the proclamation, including the whitewashing of walls that would have, at least ostensibly, returned them to an irreversibly pristine state. Between 1559 and 1590 Elizabeth whited out Mary’s restoration, an example of which is recorded at Chichester, 1580.118 What miraculously remained at the end of Elizabeth’s reign in 1603 of Marian catholic reforms were definitively whited out again during the subsequent Puritan regime (1642–60), as were those of conservative Bishop Laud (Bishop,

118 Duffy recounts the meticulous removal ‘of the externals of the old religion’, ‘imposed as a matter of policy from above,’ as late as 1580. (Duffy, p. 585). He also suggests that in some places, such as at Chichester, overpainting in white lime was done with the understanding that it was reversible. In the example the parishioners rub at what sounds to be freshly painted whitewash to remove it and recover their painting of Christ’s Passion. (See Stripping of the Altars, p. 583, citing Albert Peel, ed., The Seconde Part of a Register, II, Cambridge, 1915, p. 191.) I question whether one can generalise from this example to show that whiteliming was undertaken with its reversibility in mind notwithstanding that a new wash might be — and was in this case — removable by rubbing. Both Edward’s proclamation (TRP 287, see above) and his visitors’ injunctions required the ‘utter extinction’ of images. Further, ‘whiting’ historically was used as a polish and for scouring as well as a colouring agent (when suspended in a binding medium) to refresh and restore surfaces of all kinds. (OED, ‘whiting’ II.3). However, it is plausible that by 1560 the royal injunctions regarding the form of the church and its liturgy may have been implemented without conviction as images had, indeed, been painted out (1547–9), painted in (1553–8), and painted out again (1559–1580) due to Elizabeth’s reiteration of Edward’s injunctions in 1559 and the second ecclesiastical commission (writ dated) 1562.

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1621–1640)119 whose efforts had restored a certain amount of Catholic imagery to England’s churches following Elizabeth’s death. This late wave of whitewashings occurred between 1643 and 1644 with the appointment of the puritan, William Dowsing, in East Anglia120 one hundred years after the Reformation had begun in England. When Dowsing was appointed by the Earl of Manchester to visit churches in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to remove all images and ornaments deemed ‘superstitious’, the process of visitations, purgings and whitewashings began again.121 The Parliamentary ordinance which Dowsing was commissioned to implement is dated 28 August 1643.122 It was entitled ‘An Ordinance for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry’123 and it was to be accomplished by 1 November of that same year.124 Manchester’s warrant to Dowsing, charging him with this task of ‘State iconoclast’, is dated 19 December 1643.125 It represented a renewed effort to destroy all traces of Marian and Laudian, or even surviving pre-Edwardine worship, that remained in churches. Famously, Dowsing began the campaign before Christmas, the same week in fact that Manchester issued his warrant. 119 William Laud, made archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, opposed Puritan reforms under Charles I. 120 In Tournhout in the Netherlands a similar series of events occurred. Following the iconoclasm of 1566 a restoration of churches began almost immediately in 1567. Some of the iconoclasts were fined, sermons were held to raise funds for repairs, and some new pieces were purchased or commissioned to replace those lost or damaged. Twenty years later in 1585, the entire church was whitewashed again following the re-sacking of its interior. See Freedberg, Iconoclasm and Painting in the Netherlands, (Dissertation: D. Phil., Oxford, 1972), pp. 106–11. 121 Cooper’s Annals, vol. iii, p. 364; Cambridge, 1842–53; also Baker MSS, v, 458 et seq., (Cambridge University Library), and Trevor Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing, pp. 12–15, 337–44. John Twigg describes the ordinance of 28 August 1643 as ‘the most significant move of the religious reform’. See John Twigg, History of the University of Cambridge, I (The University of Cambridge and the English Revolution), Woodbridge, 1990, p. 66. 122 C. H. Firth and R. S. Raitt, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642– 1660, London, 1911, I, pp. 265–6. See also Cooper, Journal of William Dowsing, p. 12 and Appendix 11. 123 C. H. Firth and R. S. Raitt, I, pp. 265–66. 124 Twigg, p. 66. 125 John Morrill, ‘William Dowsing and the Administration of Iconoclasm’, in T. Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing, Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War, Woodbridge, (UK), 2001, suggests that Dowsing had made application for ‘the post of iconoclast general in East Anglia’, p. 8. The characterisation, ‘State iconoclast’ is Morrill’s.

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Cambridge University, followed by the city of Cambridge, were his first targets, beginning with a visit on 21 December 1643 to Peterhouse College chapel, one of four college chapels considered a bastion of Laudianism.126 He remained in Cambridge until 4 January 1644, following through on his task with particular enthusiasm. Dowsing’s journal records visits to more than 250 churches and chapels in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk with twenty-one separate expeditions throughout Suffolk alone covering the period between 2 December through the end of October 1644.127 Scores, and sometimes hundreds, of images are mentioned which were either removed or broken into pieces.128 Dowsing kept a journal of his activities129 in which he records in a summary fashion the removal of every genre of image: statues, sculpture, paintings, reliefs, stained glass and stone altars — as prescribed by the two mandates.130 In addition to the removal of all altars, communion tables, tapers, rails, candlesticks, basons, crucifixes and crosses, images and pictures, and the levelling of chancel steps, the original Interregnum ordinance also ordered that: Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing, pp. 155–161. Ibid., pp. xxii–xxiii, 17–22. It is thought that these numbers still may not represent a definitive count because there are lacunae in the journal indicating time ‘on the road’ unaccounted for; e.g. 6–20 February, 15–17 April, and 1–26 September. 128 For example at Jesus College Chapel ‘120 at least’ were removed, and at King’s ‘1 thousand superstitious pictures’. See Cooper’s Annals, vol. iii, Cambridge, 1845, pp. 364– 67. Notwithstanding that Dowsing’s iconoclastic mission destroyed up to 95% of images in churches in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, the authors (Cooper et al.) express doubt in their study that Dowsing’s image-counts were accurate. For a tabular analysis of estimated destruction by Dowsing and his men, see Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing, Table 1.2, p. 25. On Dowsing’s tendency to exaggeration see pp. 34, 159, 164, 169. 129 The original Dowsing journal covering the period 21 December 1643–1 October 1644 appears to have been destroyed (see Cooper, The Journal of William Dowsing, esp. pp. 15–27). The sections of Dowsing’s journal relevant to Cambridgeshire are found in Charles Henry Cooper, Annals of Cambridge [Cooper’s Annals], iii, pp. 364–7, and an eighteenth century copy is preserved in the Baker Manuscripts, University Library, Cambridge. See vol. XXXVIII, pp. 455–458 and pp. 471–473. However, the most complete copy of Dowsing’s journal combining both the Cambridge and Suffolk parts is found in Cooper, Journal of William Dowsing, cited above. 130 Trevor Cooper notes that after the second mandate was issued there was a change in what Dowsing destroyed to include the added items (Journal of William Dowsing, p. 15). Because Dowsing so fastidiously followed the Ordinances — including such changes — Cooper describes Dowsing as ‘the bureaucratic Puritan.’ Ibid., p. 17. 126 127

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…the Walls, Windows, Grounds, and other places which shall be broken, [i]mpaired or altered by any the means aforesaid, shall be made up and repaired in good and sufficient manner, in all and every of the said Parish-Churches or Chappels, or usual places of publique Prayer belonging to any Parish, by the Churchwarden or Churchwardens of every such Parish for the time being respectively; and in any Cathedral or Collegiate Church or Chappel, by the Dean or SubDean, or other chief Officer of every such Church or Chappel for the time being; and in the Universities, by the several Heads and Governors of every Colledge or Hall respectively; and in several Innes of Court, […], to whom the charge of the repair, of any such Church, Chappel, Chancel, or place of publique Prayer, or other part of such Church or Chappel […] shall belong131 (My emphasis). Another ordinance was issued on 8 May 1644. It reiterated the contents of the August 1643 Ordinance (to remove raised chancels and pictures of saints or persons of the Holy Trinity) but extended its reach. The 1644 ordinance included additional items to be removed or defaced such as the representations of ‘angels, superstitious vestments, roodlofts, holy-water fonts and organs, along with their cases and frames, images in stone, wood, glass, or church plate…used in or about the worship of God.’132 No mention is made of over-painting the churches with white-lime in either ordinance, although it would be reasonable to infer lime-wash from the words: ‘made up and repaired in good and sufficient manner.’ Nor was white-lime required of Dowsing by Manchester’s warrant in December 1643. In Dowsing’s journal there is no record of an express order to whitewash, although there are indications in churchwardens’ accounts that he, or his appointees, may have given such orders verbally. On only two occasions did Dowsing explicitly refer to or mention wall-paintings: at Little Wenham and at Papworth Everard.133 At Little Wenham Dowsing refers to a picture of the Virgin Mary which is, in fact, an extant wall-painting known to have been covered in whitewash at one time; and at Papworth he writes: ‘The four Evangelists in the chancel painted on the walls, Matthew, Marke, etc. In the church 2 angells painted on the walls, and Baker MSS, pp. 265–66; Journal of William Dowsing, Appendix 5, pp. 337–44. Firth and Raitt, Acts and Ordinances, I, pp. 425–26. See also, Journal of William Dowsing, pp. 15, 343–44. 133 Journal of William Dowsing, entries 98 and 141. 131 132

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Abraham offering up Isacke. Left a warrant with Robert Hamon, Overseer.’134 The general understanding of contemporary historians is that most idols — painted statues and images — had been removed or obliterated if not by 1553 at the end of Edward’s reign then by 1603 at the close of Elizabeth’s. Trevor Cooper wrote in conclusion of his study that: Every active manifestation of … communion with the living and the dead was destroyed in the first generation of the Reformation; the side altars, the chantries, the reliquaries, the shrines, the Doom and paintings that illuminated that theme. What was left for Dowsing were passive reminders of that discredited theology: the stained glass, the invocations on tombs …; images in stained glass; and … the communion table presented as an altar, a place of sacrifice.135 The whitewashings undertaken during the Interregnum (1642–1660) were not ordered by Parliament, as Dowsing’s commission was not. Yet the white-liming of churches took place either in anticipation, or as a result of, a pending visitation by a government representative, just as it had in Edward’s reign. I have indicated that ordinances from Edward’s reign required the utter extinction and destruction of images, significantly radicalising what his father had begun. Although Edward would retreat somewhat from this most radical of positions, he would return to it before his death. In Elizabeth’s reign, injunctions addressing the problem of images followed Edward’s with the significant distinction that her bishops began to stipulate not only that walls be ‘made good’, but also that church interior walls be painted white. The result was that by the end of her reign the whitewashed church had, effectively, been codified. Between the two waves of whitewashings is approximately seventy years — almost three generations — long enough for this standard to have become normative. The whitewashings that took place during Cromwell’s time may have represented, then, an increased sensitivity to images; images once regarded as indifferent, as adiaphora, now mattered. Cooper’s reference above to ‘passive reminders of that discredited theology’ reflects this shift in meaning. Or, they may have represented no more than ‘the making good’ of damaged, partially reformed walls. As such they represented re-whitewashings of churches into which images had been 134 135

Ibid., p. 260. Ibid., p. 26.

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re-introduced during Mary’s reign and which had survived Elizabeth’s. If the latter is the case, then these walls were being returned to a purified state but from the standpoint of a norm. Either way, by October 1644 there were, effectively, no extant wall-paintings in England’s churches.136 Patrick Collinson has suggested that by the time of the Puritan movement (ca.1640–1660), in English society one had a state of iconophobia rather than iconoclasm137 (my emphasis) and this is apt. In a similar vein Andrew Graham-Dixon has suggested a state of chromophobia as the outcome of the second Reformation in England; a kind of advanced state of iconoclasm.138 The first generation of iconoclasm in England had made the break with the material culture of traditional medieval practices that had obscured the distinction between latreia, dulia, and hyperdulia. The forceful elimination of any and all figuration unequivocally from every surface surely suggests a determination to eliminate images irretrievably; to the modern mind the strength of this gesture suggests fear. The first generation Protestant strategy to alter the material nature of worship, to alter the individual psychologically, as well as the collective sense of religious sentiment expressed visually (what David Morgan has called ‘visual piety’),139 was radical and intended to be permanent. This was not quite so straightforwardly accomplished. Colour in glass still cast spectral shadows and vestments introduced material colour into the Reformed church, although efforts were in place at this time to suppress or eliminate even these. Yet, as long as the whitened wall was in situ for one generation this would be sufficient to permanently alter the way people outwardly expressed their faith. The suppression of vestments which also began during Edward’s reign (the Act Against Books and Images, 1550) eliminated the use of scarlets and other expensive fabrics and dyestuffs that reinforced the visual experience of polychromy in the church. As with other liturgical and theological details, the policy on coloured vestments would be reversed by Mary. Promptly in 1554, within a year of her succession, she would order surplices, copes and all Ibid., pp. 27, 237, 260. Patrick Collinson, ‘From Iconcolasm to Iconophobia, the Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation, Stenton Lecture, University of Reading, 1986. 138 Graham-Dixon, History of British Art, pp. 32–33, 39, 43; Patrick Collinson, ‘Iconoclasm to Iconophobia,’, esp. p. 22. 139 David Morgan, Visual Piety: a history and theory of popular images, Berkeley, 1998. Visual piety is a superior as well as efficient term that expresses the needs of ordinary people to have recourse to the divine in accessible, material media. 136 137

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other ecclesiastical attire re-instated. This was, of course, in addition to other traditional ‘externals’: the altars, altar-cloths, patens, chalices, monstrances, albs, amices, and other items that had been in use in the medieval Church. As a means to achieving the elimination of images as part of the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth, in turn, whitewashed-out images left behind by Mary. In the event, however, although veiled in ambiguity and subject to popular iconoclasm, the language of the Elizabethan Act would leave room for coloured vestments to remain, which they did in varying degrees and regions until the 1660s. Although rarely appearing in church or city council orders, or even in contemporary chronicles except summarily, there is evidence that by 1533 whitewashing had become part of the ‘purification’ programme for churches on the Continent and an anticipated component of the reform process. It is clear from the example of Kempton in Poland quoted at the beginning of this chapter that consideration was given to what to do with the prized images belonging to its churches. A prominent burgher, Hans Gufe, in a bid to save images in his church from anticipated destruction due to pending reforms, proposed at his own expense that they be covered in cloth, not unlike the practice of veiling during Lent. It was, in the end, decided by a majority of those voting that the images should be burned.140 But the anticipation of, and discussion about a seemingly unavertable ‘whitewashing’ — strongly resisted by Gufe and others141 — shows that a recognisable pattern was in place independent of the elimination of pictures and images by other means. It evidences, I suggest, that the practice of whitewashing was a widespread and almost assured one which certain reforming cities, towns and villages undertook, or to which they were submitted, and that it started, therefore, to be perceived as an almost inevitable component of the reform process. It appears from this and similar evidence that by the time of the Kempton incident, whitewashing served more purposes than the cover-up of all 140 For further study on the ritual of burning, see Margaret Aston, Faith and Fire: popular and unpopular religion 1350–1600, London and Rio Grande, OH, 1993 or M. Aston, ‘Iconoclasm in England: Rites of Destruction by Fire’ in R. Scribner, ed., Bilder und Bildersturm im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzheit, (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, 46), Wiesbaden, 1990, pp. 175–201. 141 The episode is described in S. Michalski, ‘Das Phänomen Bildersturm, Versuch einer Übersicht’, §IV, p. 107, in ed., Robert Scribner, Bilder und Bildersturm, Wolfenbütteler Forschunger, vol. 46, Wiesbaden, 1990: ‘Es ging natürlich darum, das Übertunchen zu vermeiden, als Übergangsmaßnahme wäre das Zudecken ganzer Wände doch zu kostspielig.’

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memory of image, as other effective solutions to the problem of images were being mooted and rejected. Clearly the practice of whitewashing brought fear and dread to some, but it seems likely to have also carried with it a dynamic significance for those converted to the new faith, compelling them to deal unequivocally in this particular way with the power of images. This fact speaks not only of the need to see the images rendered utterly invisible, but of the compelling nature of the act of whitewashing, or of whitewashingout, itself.142 In Geneva, too, churches were whitewashed at some point following the removal of images, statuary, and ecclesiastical objects. It is unclear whether this was accomplished in 1535 under the aegis of Guillaume Farel as some think; due to Calvin’s influence following his arrival in 1536; or after his (Calvin’s) return from Strasbourg in 1541.143 The liming of Geneva’s walls may have been part of the removal of images by an undocumented council decision as it was in Zürich; it may have been ‘spontaneous’ as in Basel; or it may have been ordered by Calvin and the Consistory to ‘make good’ church interior walls following Farel’s initial sweep though Geneva. Whether it was in 1535, 1536, or 1541, other villages in and around the cities of Zürich, Geneva, and Basel, as far east as the Polish territories, and as far west as the Netherlands and England, continued to follow the pattern of whitewashing established in Zürich, or anticipated the whitewashing of their churches as part of the pattern of the cleansing process. 142 Oecolampadius’ letter to Wolfgang Capito, dated 13 February 1529, which describes events leading up to and including the iconoclasm in Basel, does not mention the whitewashing. (The original letter in Latin may be found in Ernst Staehelin, ed., Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads; zum Vierhundertjährigen Jubliläum der Basler Reformation, Leipzig, 1971, vol. 11, no. 636; in English translation in B. J. Kidd, ed., Documents Illustrative of the Reformation, Oxford, 1911, No. 219, p. 464). One might infer from this that the whitewashing itself did not occur until a later date or was unimportant to Oecolampadius relative to the dramatic sequence of events that had taken place there. Yet while it is difficult to imagine that during a ‘spontaneous’ iconoclasm, the citizens could have organised sufficiently large amounts of whitewash including buckets and brushes and ladders, the Chronicles of Fridolin Ryff from Basel which describe the iconoclasm indicate that the churches were, indeed, whitewashed on 9 February or, at least as part of the aftermath of the iconoclasm, between 9–13 February. This is echoed by Swiss Reformation historian Wackernagel who implies 9 February and, more recently, Lee Palmer Wandel (1995), p. 173, presumably relying on Wackernagel. See Die Chronik des Fridolin Ryff in Basler Chroniken, vol. 1, Wilhelm Vischer, Alfred Stern, et al., eds., Leipzig, 1872, I, pp. 57, 80–90; and Rudolf Wackernagel, Geschichte der Stadt Basel, Basel, 1907–24, vol. 3, p. 513–17, esp. p. 513. 143 See chapter, ‘Calvin and Colour Thinking.’

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3.23. St Peter’s, Ipswich. © Aidan Semmons, photographer.

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3.24. St. Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. Nave looking east toward rood painting. © Aidan Semmons, photographer.

3.25. St. Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. The Royal Arms of Queen Elizabeth I. © Aidan Semmons, photographer.

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3.26. St. Catherine’s Parish Church, Ludham, Norfolk. A rare example of a Marian rood. © Aidan Semmons, photographer. 3.27. St Margaret’s, Tivetshall. Commandment Tables. Photo credit: Evelyn Simak.

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3.28. Gerrit Berckheyde. The Interior of the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1673. National Gallery, London. 3.29. Saenredam, Pieter Jansz. (1595–1665). The Interior of the Grote Kerk at Haarlem, 1636–7. National Gallery, London. Photo credit: National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY.

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3.30. Catholic church, Fronleichnamskirche, Aachen, Germany, 1928–30. Architect: Rudolph Schwarz.

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3.31. Altar wall, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Architect, Le Corbusier. © Lucas Gray, photographer.

3.32. South wall detail, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 1954. Architect, Le Corbusier. © Lucas Gray, photographer.

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An early reference in the Netherlands to a makeover of a church interior in white occurs in 1554, only seven years after documented whitewashings in England began; thirteen to eighteen years after Geneva and twenty years after Zürich. Writing to the lay worshipper in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, Jan Gerritz Verstege urged onto the public the ‘proper’ decoration of churches.144 Verstege, a leader of reform in the Netherlands more commonly known by the name Veluanus, published in Strasbourg in 1554 an influential treatise called Den Leken Wechwyser in Guelders dialect.145 In 1555 it was translated into Dutch and published in Holland undergoing many subsequent printings thereafter in 1591, 1594, 1597, 1605, 1610, and 1632.146 Keith Moxey describes Veluanus’ text as, ‘coming close to defining the Calvinist programme of the 1566 iconoclasm,’ that is, as ‘a campaign of church seizure and purification that coincides exactly with the character of subsequent events [in the Netherlands].’147 Although Freedberg suggests that Veluanus’ writings were still more forceful on the subject than either Zwingli’s or Calvin’s or the English reformers’,148 it would seem that, in applied terms, Veluanus was more lenient than either Zwingli or Calvin in what he deemed ‘proper’ for the interior treatment of a church. This is because in Den Leken Veluanus suggests that either historical narratives or white walls would be acceptable décor for a church interior.149 In Den 144 On Veluanus and his writings see Freedberg, Iconoclasm (cited above, p. 14, n.34), pp. 38–47 and Keith P. F. Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation, New York and London, 1977, p. 167. 145 Johannes Anatasius Veluanus, Der Leken Wechwyser, meaning literally ‘The Laymen’s Guide’, reprinted in S. Cramer and F. Pijper, eds., Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica, iv, The Hague, 1906, pp. 123–363. For other works by Veluanus, see this same volume, and for details about his life, see the ‘Introduction’ to the text by F. Pijper, pp. 79–123. 146 Freedberg, Iconoclasm, p. 39. 147 Keith Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation, New York and London, 1977, p. 170. Freedberg notes that Grotius in 1622 mentioned ‘Leeken-Weg-wijser’ along with the writings of Erasmus, The Decades of Bullinger, the Loci Communes of Melancthon, in a group of four works he regarded as being of especial influence. Freedberg, Iconoclasm, p. 39. 148 Freedberg, Iconoclasm, p. 44. 149 Zwingli disapproved of any images inside the church except flora and fauna, as did Calvin. Historical images (‘geschichtewyss’) acceptable to Zwingli were tolerated by him within, for example, homes and guilds (ZII, 19–20, 658,; Garside, pp. 149–50). Freedberg characterizes Den Leken as being still more ‘vigorously concise’ than either Karlstadt or Zwingli, and as ‘very effective writing with an understandable appeal’. Iconoclasm, p. 44, and K. Moxey, pp. 167, 169.

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Leken, reprinted so many times an injunction against importing copies was issued.150 Veluanus wrote: Having taken all this into account [i.e., the dangers of images] according to my small understanding, it is impossible that good evangelical hearts should allow all the gross gods to remain in the reformed temples or allow new ones to be made. If one desires figures, the churches can be painted with important narratives from holy scripture. Or one can let the church remain completely white, without figures, and simply have good maxims written on the walls in large letters.151 The evidence of the whitewashings in the Netherlands and the churches themselves would indicate that Keith Moxey might be correct in attributing to Veluanus a radicalism that is not mitigated by such statements as the one above, in which case it is probable that Veluanus intended to mean, or strongly preferred, a whitened, imageless space. It may be no coincidence that an early, possibly isolated, example of whitewashing in the Netherlands occurred in 1555, the year after Den Leken hit the booksellers’ stalls. Almost undoubtedly, with the circulation that this treatise enjoyed, the message it contained was not only received but sought out by readers. A watershed event in Netherlands reform took place with the storming of churches and the removal of images there in 1566. By the early 1570s ritual cleansings had begun to emerge as a practice in a number of cities. These cleansings often took the form of whitewashings which had become de rigueur for many as part of the act of purification, functioning as rituals in their own right without which a newly reformed church was deemed unfit as a sacred space suitable for worship, being otherwise considered ‘impure.’152 Seventeenth century architectural portraits of church interiors, although not always accurate in detail capture the effect of this transition (Figs. 3.28, 3.29). In Leeuwarden and certain parts of Limberg preachers had refused to conduct services until the churches had been whitewashed in addition to

Freedberg, Iconoclasm, p. 39. Den Leken Wechwyser, Cramer and Pijper, eds., IV, p. 289, quoted in and translated by Moxey, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, p. 169. 152 Freedberg, Iconoclasm, pp. 10, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24. 150 151

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being stripped.153 As the number of Reformed preachers, hedge-preachings and their congregations grew in the early 1570’s Protestants began to make formal requests for churches in which to practice their faith, only the requests were couched in terms of churches which could be ‘purified for the preaching of the Gospel’ — not simply taken over.154 While such requests might be referring exclusively to the destruction of images within a church, this form of request suggests that a pattern of ‘purification’ had developed which not only included image-removal that had, after all, already taken place in most instances in 1566, but that the additional procedure of whitewashing with distinctly symbolic ritual value was also required. There is an irony in this practice that was not lost on Luther. As with Zwingli Luther’s position on images and other externals underwent change. Between 1518 and 1522 until the iconoclasm at Wittenberg Luther could be quoted railing against images in terms as strong as Karlstadt’s or Zwingli’s.155 Unlike Karlstadt or Zwingli, however, Luther’s views towards images and other externals became more tolerant, further clarified by events at Wittenberg. In 1522 Luther preached against the iconoclasm incited by Karlstadt and asserted a qualified indifference to images and other ‘externals’. While not quite adiaphora, images were, he held, not dangerous in themselves and should be left alone; it was education about images that was needed.156 Although Luther maintained his preference for no images at all in churches, by 1524 he was arguing that Karlstadt not only reinforced the importance of images, but had effectively made out of the image question the equivalent of a doctrine of ‘works-righteousness:

Freedberg, Iconoclasm, pp. 16, 24, citing A. C. Dukes & D. H. A. Kolff, ‘The time of troubles in the county of Holland, 1566–7’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiednis, 82, 1969, pp. 316–337, esp. p. 326n.80. 154 Ibid., p. 22. 155 See Luther, Church Postils of 1522 translated by and quoted in Carl Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany, pp. 62–63: ‘See, that is the proper worship, for which a person needs no bells, no churches, no vessels or ornaments, no lights or candles, no organs or singing, no painting or images, no panels or altars…For these are all human inventions… which obsure the correct worship with their glitter.’ 156 For an excellent analysis of Karlstadt and Luther’s positions on images and iconoclasm, see Carl Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany, esp. 42–65. See also Carlos Eire, pp. 65–73 and Hans van Campenhausen, ‘Bilderfrage in der Reformation’, Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, 68: 96–127 (1957). 153

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Therefore I warn you once again, to think of this when I am no longer with you in the flesh, and closely observe their doctrine whether they preach Christ correctly, that is, whether they boast of their own works before God: then you will be able to judge. I often said and repeat it, that you will find them always requiring some good little deed, not thereby to serve the people, but in order to merit salvation, that whoever does and keeps this shall be saved, but he who does not observe and do this, shall be damned. Thus they force you to trust in works, as the fanatics drove the mob to break up images by saying: Whoever breaks an image or tears down a painting does a good work, and proves himself a Christian. 157 In 1525 he expands further on this position, again asserting the irony of Karlstadt’s theological demands. In these, Luther argued, Karlstadt was no different than the Catholics because in making iconoclasm a ‘works righteousness’ issue, he had turned iconomachy into a form of idolatry.158 Just as the desire for salvation was a major motivation for ‘good works’ and for the commissioning of paintings and sculptures, iconoclasm also became a kind of necessary ‘work’ if one wanted to be right with God. The intensity of the these practices, iconoclasm and washing with lime, suggests that the whitewashings — a kind of representation of cleansing in its own right — also became a ‘good work’, and the ritual of whitewashing an image in its own right of that ‘work’ as a central element of its ritual role. Although Huldrych Zwingli also objected to spontaneous iconoclasm and to ‘good works’, he did not indicate that he perceived the acts of ‘purification’, ‘cleansing’ or whitewashings of churches in terms comparable to those of Luther. From a trans-historical perspective the religio-visual paradigm established during the first wave of Reformation may be linked to the development of two distinct paths that the whitened ecclesiastical interior subsequently

157 Luther’s Works, Saint Louis and Philadelphia, 1955, vol. 4, ‘Sermons on the Gospel, Texts for the First to Twelfth Sundays after Trinity. Eighth Sunday After Trinity: Second Sermon, Mat. 7:15–23.’ 158 See J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann, et al., eds., Luther’s Works, vol. 4, pp. 40, 67; 69; 85; 94; 97. Carlos Eire also makes this point with respect to Luther’s argument with Karlstadt over the latter’s emphasis on images. See Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols, pp. 68–70. Freedberg makes a similar point about reformation activities in the Netherlands, where he notes that the iconoclasm of the reformed community there ‘must have appeared to them as a necessary aid to salvation.’ Iconoclasm, p. 29.

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takes. The earlier of these was initiated by Zwinglian influenced individuals and disseminated throughout England in diffuse ways over a period of almost one hundred years.159 It was given expression in neo-classical church interiors, the archetypal forms of which were designed first by Sir Christopher Wren and subsequently by Sir James Gibbs who have already been mentioned. While in terms of architectural theory the churches designed by these two men had their foundations in a Platonic and Palladian discourse, in terms of colour the Wren/Gibbs model sits squarely within the Anglican aesthetic established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a later case a Protestant aesthetic visibly emerges in a secular as well as an ecclesiastical context: in the predominantly whitened interior of early twentieth century architecture of the Early Modern Movement, salient examples of which exist in secular as well as sacred architecture. In early modern examples of ecclesiastical architectural interiors the colour white emerges in a way which may be seen in terms sharing significant parallels with the Reformation. This is especially the case with churches influenced by Father Pierre Alain Couturier, a participant in the l’Art sacré movement founded originally by Georges Desvalliéres, Joseph Prichard, and Maurice Denis in 1919.160 Striking examples of churches built under the aegis of this group include the Fronleichnamskirche in Aachen (1928–30) (Fig. 3.30). and also numerous projects after World War II such as the Catholic church of Saint Reinhold in Dusseldorf-Gerresheim (1956), Saint Elisabeth in Fulda (1962–63) and, most famously, Le Corbusier’s Notre The influence of Zwingli on England for a long time was ignored by scholars in deference to the received tradition that the more radical influences on England were Calvinist in origin. However, recent scholarship is demonstrating otherwise. See, for example, Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’, in Heinrich Bullinger. Life — Thought — Influence Emilio Campi and Peter Opitz, eds., (Zürcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd 24, vol. 2, 2007, pp. 891–934, 2007. 160 The l’Atelier art sacré was, in some senses a modest revival movement of the sacred arts founded in 1919, although the movement has given the world several of its early modern masterpieces. A journal (l’Art sacré ) was founded in 1935, edited first by Joseph Prichard, subsequently by Father Pierre Marie Alain Couturier of Lyons (1897–1954) and Father Pie-Raymond Régamey (1900–1996). (The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 3, Chicago and London, 1998, p. 423; The New Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. 4, New York and Saint Louis, 1967, pp. 400–01, 766; William J. Curtis, Le Corbusier, Ideas and Forms, 1986 and 1992, pp. 177–8, and Aidan Nichols, Redeeming Beauty, Soundings in Sacral Aesthetics¸ Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT, 2007, pp. 105–123. The recent publication, Nichols’ book Redeeming Beauty, contains what is, I believe, the most complete summary of the history of l’Art sacré in English. 159

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Dame du Haut (an all-white Catholic pilgrimage church) at Ronchamp in eastern France built between 1950 and 1955. (Figs. 3.31, 3.32). It was on Father Couturier’s recommendation that Le Corbusier was commissioned as the architect of Notre-Dame-du-Haut.161 Here, we see the adoption by the Catholic Church in France and Germany following World War I of the ‘blanches parures’ spoken of by Maurice Denis,162 the simultaneous use of the whitened interior as a confessional metaphor and as a central, critical, integral element of the building’s ornamental statement. The Church of the Year 2000 (Figs. 1.4, 1.5) provides a 21st century example of an all white Catholic church in a post-Vatican II context. Built in the Roman suburb of Tor Tre Teste, developed on agricultural land in the 1970’s, this is an area that had been consistently described as ‘degraded’, under-funded, under-privileged and with high unemployment. The Pope had publicly complained of the ugliness and deficiencies of modern churches in general where, he said, ‘there is little harmony between form and content and where it is difficult for the faithful to have a sense of the sacred’. Then, in October 1997, speaking through the Vicar of Rome, he announced the selection of architect,163 Richard Meier, to develop the design for a millennium pilgrimage church, the ‘Church of the Year 2000’ to be built in Tor Tre Teste with the goal of remedying the unwelcoming and uninspiring character of the area. Of fifty new churches planned by the Vicariate of Rome to launch its ‘evangelisation’ programme for the new millennium, the

Other churches include: Notre Dame de-toute-grâce, at Assy; La chapelle de Rosaire in Vence, and Le Sacré Coeur at Audincourt. See Nichols, Redeeming Beauty, p. 115. 162 Maurice Denis (1870–1943) was the principal Nabis theorist. He became more fervently Catholic as time passed, and made primarily religious art from 1910 onward. In 1919 he founded L’ Ateliers de l’Art Sacré and published an article in the journal Revue des Jeunes (February 1919) in which he talks about restoring the monuments defiled by the Germans. In 1922 he published ‘Nouvelles theories sur l’art modern et l’art sacré 1914–1921’ in which this article appears as a reprint. The passage quoted below is found in the reprint (pp. 194–243). It paraphrases the lines of a character, Pierre Craon in the play, La jeune fille Violaine (1919), by Paul Claudel, the playwright. Denis wrote, ‘il faut que nos provinces ravagées se recouvrent, comme autrefois, d’une blanche parure d’églises neuves.’ (‘Our ravaged provinces ought to be re-clothed with the fine white attire of new churches, as [they were] before.’) Nouvelles théories sur l’art moderne et l’art sacré, p. 196. I am indebted to Prof. Andrew Saint, Architecture Department, Cambridge University, for directing me to this reference. 163 This was a limited competition juried by the Vicar Cardinal (or his delegate); the Director of the New Churches Office; a theologian, and an historian (Bruno Levi). 161

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Vicariate committee selected Meier’s proposal164 to be the first built. Thus, on the cusp of the twenty-first century the visual language established by the first generation of radical Reformers and the symbolism signaled by the use of whiteness adopted by them, is represented by the reformed Catholic church in its commission and consecration in 2003 of the Church of the Year 2000 in Rome. The new church, consistent with Meier’s oeuvre, is white inside and out. The church historically regarded as the originator of ‘Popery’ had chosen an architect who works only in white; a form traditionally, diametrically opposed to Catholic tradition, but for ‘blanche parure.’ An especially white concrete was developed for this project that is meant not to colour or discolour with exposure to ultra-violet light and the elements of weather, signalling the importance placed on the whiteness of the design.165 One has to assume that the factor of its whiteness was determinative in the selection of Meier because it is his signature, notwithstanding his disclaimers to the contrary. The whiteness in this context could be a reference to the bright white stone of the great pilgrimage cathedrals of the Middle Ages, as much as it is a modernist message intended to reach out to a ‘modern’ people through the language of contemporary architecture, especially where these people are, according to the Vatican, ‘unchurched.’ Is the presence of a non-colour, or an achromatic hue, intended to democratise this church, to create common ground with Protestant Christians, and even non-Christians, who might be accustomed to whitewashed chapels, churches and mosques or, simply, to modern architecture? Is its whiteness intended to enable a relationship that would otherwise be hindered by an architectural language linked to a former age? — in which case the whiteness is once again used as a form of forgetting, or of severing ties to the past. Might the whiteness of this building be worn like the white garment of faith — a kind of simultaneous claim to humility and grace? In these various ways, the whitened Catholic Church of the Year 2000 attempts a more universal appeal predicated not only on its architecture which is, after all visual and experiential, but one based also on the colour chosen for its surfaces, with ramifications as broad and deep and resonant as any religious message the Vicariate hopes to convey via other means.

Quoted in June Hager, Pilgrimage, London, 1999, p. 182. Stephen Elliott, ‘White Light for Rome’s Millenium Church,’ Concrete Quarterly, Autumn, 1999, pp. 6–7. 164 165

IV Whitewashing of Zürich Churches ‘...they chipped away with chisels all the pictures from the walls which were made with oil colours and whitewashed over them so that nothing was left behind’1 Bernard Wyss, Chronik ‘Wir haben ze Zürich gar hälle Tempel: die Wänd sind hüpsch wyss!’2 Huldrych Zwingli

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uldrych (Ulrich) Zwingli (1484–1531) was born and raised within the traditional Catholic church, in the rural district of Toggenberg in the Swiss Alps. Educated at the humanist universities of Vienna (1498– 1502) and Basel (1502–6), he was called to Zürich as a preacher in January 1519 by an unsuspecting group of canons who endorsed him primarily for his anti-mercenary views3 (Fig. 4.1). A contemporary, or near-contemporary,

1 ‘...und alle Bild ab den Altären ze thuon und das Gmäl, so mit Oelfarwen gemacht was, abzebicken mit Steinaxen und wider zuo verdünchen, dass es nüt blibe.’ Bernard Wyss, Chronik, p. 42; Farner III, p. 487. 2 ‘In Zurich we have churches which are positively luminous; the walls are beautifully white!’ Huldrych Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, June 1524, speaking to Hans Stockar, quoted in Farner, III (Huldreich Zwingli, Seine Verkündigung und ihre ersten Früchte), Zürich, 1954, pp. 485–88. Translation: Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, New Haven and London, 1966, p. 160. 3 The Swiss had developed an international reputation as excellent soldiers willing to fight on behalf of foreign powers, including the Pope, for a fee. As a result these soldiers were in high demand by foreign countries but their service to foreign powers compromised the Confederation’s political independence. The money so earned brought considerable wealth to the Swiss, to the soldiers, their families, and to the communities in which they lived, so much so that at one time sumptuary laws were enacted to curb conspicuous spending

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disciple and acquaintance of Erasmus, and one of the so-called ‘Magisterial Reformers’, he is central to any discussion of the origins of the Reformation in Europe. It was Zwingli in fact who, through his decisive influence on Zürichers and their government, first accomplished a wholesale, city-wide transformation of churches, including not only reformed music and liturgy, but reformed interiors, which had been systematically divested of their objects and interior detail, and consciously painted white (Fig. 4.2). The subject of Zwingli’s involvement with and influence over the Zürich town council, and of the ramifications of Zwingli’s wider political sway generally, is a subject of sustained academic study in its own right. A contemporary biography of Zwingli by Oswald Myconius written in 1532 indicates a receptivity to reform in Zürich which pre-dates Zwingli’s arrival and which allowed for the successes and speed with which reforms were accomplished there. Whether Zwingli’s influence over the democratically organized Great and Small City Councils (upper and lower houses) was greater or lesser than claimed is, in a sense, immaterial. At a minimum Zwingli’s ability to communicate and work with the two houses of city government created an atmosphere of cooperation and common cause which in the aggregate affected at its core both the momentum and shape of the Zürich reformation.4 Because of this, and the particular vision Zwingli must have had by spring, 1524, of by citizens made wealthy thereby. Many Zürichers, including the Church in Zürich, were opposed to the mercenary system before Zwingli arrived there. But Zwingli gave the antimercenary movement a theological basis more persuasive and effective than the moral or political arguments against had been. See also George Richard Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge and London, 1976, pp. 45, 66. W. P. Stephens, 7–8, 31, 282–285; Garside, 40, 79. 4 Myconius wrote: ‘…the man [Zwingli] began to plan how he could put things into a better state, and that everything might be in order, whatever changes seemed especially to pertain to the furtherance of the gospel were made at the earliest opportunity.…Therefore the Senate decreed on the persuasion of Zwingli’s celestial spirit [that ecclesiastical offices should be reduced, a conjugal adjudicatory body set up]…and persuaded them that the worship of images must be abolished, the Mass utterly done away with, and the Lord’s supper restored.’ (My emphasis). From ‘Original Life of Zwingli’, Oswald Myconius, in The Latin Works and Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 1, S. M. Jackson, ed., New York and London, 1912, pp. 1–26, esp. p. 14. The subject of Zwingli’s involvement with and influence on the Zürich town council and of the ramifications of Zwingli’s politics generally is a subject of sustained academic study in its own right. In 1972 Wayne Pipkin’s A Zwingli Bibliography already cited sixteen publications on this subject. See also Zwingliana for more recent publications. By contrast, Ulrich Gäbler emphasises that Zwingli’s political and theological influence has become exaggerated. (Gäbler,

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what a reformed church must, or should, look like,5 I have chosen to make him (and John Calvin) the theological focus of this study, as opposed to Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Philipp Melancthon, Heinrich Bullinger, Guillaume Farel, or even Martin Luther, who might be included here for the role that he played in the controversy about iconoclasm in Wittenberg. A number of other important reformers in Zürich such as Ludwig Hätzer, Leo Jud, Konrad Schmid, 6 also contributed to the line of thought under investigation in this book, but their influence did not re-shape the appearance of the reformed sacred space as comprehensively as Zwingli’s did. Most authorities would also agree that the Zwinglian Reformation made a forceful impression on the social, religious and political fabric of the Swiss confederation as a whole and, in ways not yet fully accounted for, on Western Europe at large.7 It is therefore appropriate to consider the relative prominence of Zürich in the sixteenth century and how developments there with respect to changes in liturgical form, as well as content, more or less pp. 51–52). For other discussions of Zwingli’s relationship to politics and the Federation, see McGrath, 147ff. See Gäbler, p. 8, for a concise summary of the Zürich cantonal and city government structure. 5 It might be argued that Zwingli would not have had a ‘particular vision’ based on his personal views expressed in A Short Christian Instruction, the Sixty-Seven Conclusions, Advice Concerning Images and the Mass, or in A Proposal Concerning Images and the Mass, and that the visual for him was inconsequential. Here I am not suggesting that his ideas about the visual form of the church were well defined at this moment; rather, I am suggesting he had a concept of the apostolic church which however ill-formed existed in his mind and to which he responded. This included a vision of the early church that was minimalistic in its appointments, aniconic, and, therefore, pure. The relationship between the concept of a reformed church and an apostolic church in applied terms is discussed in the following chapter. 6 Schmid was the son of a wealthy peasant whom Zwingli met while both were studying at the University of Basel (Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge and London, 1976, p. 18, citing ZWA II, 65–73). Schmid held degrees in theology and philosophy, and had become a Commander of the Knights Hospitalers of Saint John at Küsnacht, Schmid’s birthplace. About Schmidt Garside wrote: ‘In his own right the Commander was a figure of influence and importance in the canton. That he was on such intimate terms with Zwingli enhanced his already considerable prestige, so that his opinion on any subject would not be lightly regarded by the gathering. His speech represents the moderate point of view at its best, and what he advocated with such eloquence is of major significance to the course of the debate.’ (Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, New Haven and London, 1966, pp. 135–6.) It was Schmid who advanced the idea, at least initially, that images of Christ should be purged from the mind as well as from the church (Garside, p. 138). (See discussion by Aston and Konrad Schmid, Chapter I). 7 This state of affairs is rapidly changing. Since the original writing of this text Zürich and Zwingli have become more recognized as an influence, on England in particular. See

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silently rippled across Europe to England and possibly eventually to the American colonies. (In the context of the white clapboard colonial church, Anglican and Puritan influence is less evident on the visual form of the church Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’ in Heinrich Bullinger. Life —Thought — Influence, ed. Emilio Campi and Peter Opitz (Zürcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd 24, vol. 2, 2007, pp. 891–934, 2007; and MacCulloch, ‘Putting the English Reformation on the Map’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (RHS) 15 (2005), pp. 75–95, esp. p. 92. See also, John Henry Primus, The Vestments Controversy, Kampen, 1960. Basel, where one of the most well-known episodes of iconoclasm took place, represents a case in point. It is well-known primarily because of Erasmus’ account of it but also because of its sudden, violent eruption. Most histories reflect this suddenness and violence, and where the Basel whitewashing is mentioned, it is in passing. Garside emphasises the differences in intention and action between events of Zürich and Basel as well but no more than this. (See ‘Ludwig Hätzer’s Pamphlet Against Images’, MQR, vol. 34, 1960, pp. 20–36). Wandel’s account of iconoclasm in Zürich, Geneva, Basel, and Strasbourg, emphasizes degrees of violent engagement and destruction as much as ‘iconoclasm’ in which context only the fame of France in 1560–61, and the Wonder Year in the Netherlands of 1566–67 compare with the notoriety of Basel (Wandel, p. 150). Zürich is not mentioned, possibly because it represents a peaceful revolution. Richard Zürcher suggests it was mainly through Zwingli that Zürich was put on the map, as Zwingli gave Zürich not only its very own famous humanist reformer but its own creed and its own rejection of the old creed. Zürcher further holds that Zwingli made Zürich a centerpoint of Europe, whose fame travelled further than the Swiss Border. (Die Kunstlerische Kultur in Kanton Zürich, Zürich, 1943, p. 39). Limited recognition of a wider sphere of influence of Zürich on Western Europe is reflected in Sergiusz Michalski (Reformation, p. 59) whose opinion is that Zwingli’s view considerably influenced the removal of images not only in Switzerland but in upper German territories. In 1981 Gottfried Locher wrote that Zwingli’s influence is considerably underestimated in England and Scotland. (See ‘Zwingli’s Influence in England and Scotland, Dates and Problems’ in Zwingli’s Thought, New Perspectives, Leiden, 1981, pp. 380–385). Each of these studies claims an increasing degree of influence for Zürich on the form of reformation. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s opinion is that Zürich was the strongest influence over England at the same time that Calvin led Reformed Protestantism everywhere else in Europe. (Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’ in Heinrich Bullinger. Life — Thought — Influence, Emilio Campi and Peter Opitz, eds., (Zürcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd 24, vol. 2, 2007, p. 891. While it is true, that during Zwingli’s reign there were few natural links between Zürich and England, there was frequent correspondence and recognition of Zürich as a model. In this paper MacCulloch goes on to demonstrate the unmistakable influence of English exiles returning to England after spending time in Bullinger’s Zürich (ibid., pp. 891–934). Bullinger took over the role of Leutpriester from Zwingli following the latter’s death at Kappel in 1531. None of these studies appear to recognize the formal, visual statement as an integral element of the larger impact felt by Europe and the British Isles.

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than one might think in view of the whitening influence of the fashion for the neo-classical taking hold there by the early nineteenth century. The practice of whitewashing in the Netherlands was due primarily to Calvin’s influence, but when reform took place in Geneva, led at first by Guillaume Farel and then Calvin, it followed a model established in Zürich twelve to seventeen years earlier. (It is not certain when Geneva’s churches were whitewashed. It might have been 1535, 1536 or 1541). Farel and Calvin could not have been unaware of the Zürich example, especially in view of Farel’s interest in Zwinglian reform earlier in his career. A strong argument can be made that when whitewashings became, for all intents and purposes, mandatory in England through Royal Visitors’ injunctions that the English, too, were following the Zwinglian model. In the last quarter of the fifteenth and through the first quarter of the sixteenth century Zürich was relatively small (5,000–6,000 inhabitants compared with Basel and Geneva’s 10,000).8 Views vary widely about the state of the economy in the Swiss Confederation on the eve of the Reformation. Some link the Reformation there to a recession which affected only the less affluent.9 Ulrich Gäbler suggests that a doubling of population growth beginning about 1470 had by 1530 created economic pressure relieved by mercenary contracts with foreign governments, but that this also created inflation and impoverishment for others. Whatever the complexities of its economy, by 1520 the grand projets of men like Burgomeister Hans Waldman,10 were made possible by the robust mercenary sector of the economy and in Waldman’s case, his own successful career in the military.11

Estimates vary from a low of 4500 to a high of 7000. See Potter, Zwingli, p. 53n.1 for details. 9 Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli, His Life and Work, trans. R. C. L. Gritsch, Edinburgh & London, 1983, pp. 5–6, 10. Wandel is emphatic that population growth that began in the 1520s reached crisis point only after 1550, and that the economy of Zürich territory (city and canton) was robust. Either way, during the last quarter of the century Zürich experienced a building boom, and many citizens — among the most well known is Hans Waldman — undertook major building projects to upgrade the city and put it, and their reputations, on the cultural map. Wandel emphasises further that the peasants of Zürich (canton) were not ‘divided among themselves by marked disparities of wealth, property, or labour’ during the first period of iconoclastic activity (1520’s) in Switzerland. Voracious Idols, p. 58. 10 The building of the Water Church (Wasserkirche, 1485) was financed by Waldman as were its grand murals (1479–1489), famous still in Zwingli’s time. 11 On Waldmann, see Garside, Zwingli, pp. 79, 102; Potter, Zwingli, p. 50. 8

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Zürich was sufficiently large and well situated geographically for news and information about its activities and changes taking place there to travel, and to make an impression extra-territorially for a number of reasons. Its cattle and agriculturally-based economy was dependent on trade between central Switzerland and Southern Germany; merchants from Italy passed through Zürich en route to the larger cities on the Rhine, with the result that buyers and sellers, merchants, and itinerant labour of all kinds made it a nexus of exchange.12 And, while it yet possessed no university and remained provincial in this respect, the religious foundations of the city were ancient and deep. Its well-known pilgrimage sites at Einsiedeln, Stammheim, and the lesser-known site at Regensburg13 attracted the devout from far away. Clergy on their way from Basel and Strasbourg had to pass through there. Thus, although not a great city according to any conventional criteria, it was strategically placed geographically in the middle of multiple lines of communication between travellers of all kinds.14 Further, it is well-established that humanist scholars and theologians from all parts of Europe were adept in procuring books and manuscripts from friends and contacts internationally located and that news coming through channels such as these contributed substantially to the flow of information. Zwingli, for example, had ‘book scouts’ and suppliers (lit. Lieferanten) consisting in friends and colleagues such as Glarean, Vadian, Peter Tschudi, Aldus Manutius and others, who lived at the centre of literary life, and to whom he would give requests for literature and who purchased books for him from, among other places, Cologne, Basel, Venice and Paris.15 Friendship and professional links, too, between individual reformers, their colleagues, and diplomats travelling between these cities cannot be discounted in any consideration of the movement of news and information from one place to another. For example, scholars often traveled from Zürich Gäbler, p. 11. See Potter, Zwingli, p. 179. 14 All economic information is from Gäbler pp. 7–11; Potter, Zwingli, pp. 48–53ff; Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 55–59. 15 See Walter Köhler, ‘Huldrych Zwinglis Bibliothek’ in Neujahrsblatt zum Besten des Waisenhauses in Zürich, 143, Zürich, 1921, pp. 1–32, esp. pp. 15–22. The pioneering work of Köhler on Zwingli’s library is now known to contain errors and therefore needs to be used with care. However, Zwingli’s published correspondence and The Zürich Letters attest to this. (See Rev. Hastings Robinson, ed., The Zürich Letters, 2nd series, 2 vols., Parker Society, Cambridge ,1845). 12 13

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to Basel and Strasbourg, Zürich or Strasbourg to London, or from Basel to Wittenberg, and so on. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch a significant body of correspondence about Edwardine England was uncovered in the seventeenth century by a scholar working in Zurich.16  Eschatalogical stories about Zürich appear in Stephen Bateman’s ‘The Doome Warning all men to the Judgements’ (1581), and it is well known that during Mary’s, as well as Henry’s reign before her, a number of leading evangelicals, such as Bishop John Hooper,17 and later Grindal, Cox, Lever, Whitehead, Becon, Sandys, Bale and Sampson, spent much of their time in exile in Zurich, in addition to Geneva and Frankfurt. 18 John Hooper, a Henrician exile, is particularly pertinent to this study. In the wake of Henry’s Six Articles, Hooper had fled to the Continent. He was in Strasbourg by early 154619 and arrived in Zürich sometime in March 1547, staying there until 1549 when, under Edward, the abolition of the mass made it possible for him to return to England. In his correspondence Hooper speaks of Zwingli’s early influence on him while still in England and also of Bullinger’s, with whom the Hooper family stayed in Zürich for a time. In a study of the influence of Zürich on Hooper, Edwin Deibler stated that although Hooper was already under the influence of Zürich before he arrived there, he became still further enamoured of the form of the Zürich

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant, London, 1999, p. 172. MacCulloch also notes that Calvin took a ‘keen interest’ in Edwardine England although he remained ‘illinformed about what was going on’. My emphasis. (MacCulloch, p. 173). See also The Zürich Letters, vols. 1–2, Parker Society, 1845. 17 John Hooper was born in Somersetshire ca. 1500, the son of a wealthy man. He was educated at Oxford, graduating in 1519, when he became a Cistercian monk (John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, Oxford, 1822, vol. III, ii, no. xxviii). He left the monastery after its dissolution by Parliament in 1536, and ‘most happily and auspiciously’ discovered the writings of both Zwingli and Bullinger (Hooper to Bullinger, 27 January 1546, Original Letters relative to the English Reformation. 2 vols., H. Robinson, trans., for the Parker Society, Cambridge, 1847, p. 33.) When Henry VIII’s Act of Six Articles made life in England unsafe for Hooper, he fled and settled in Zürich after a period in Strasbourg, also reformed. Hooper was deeply influenced by the reformation in Zürich, most notably in his position on vestments, but also in his liturgical ideas. It is not possible that he was unaware of the visual transformation of religious life in Zürich that was also central to spiritual reform. See Primus, pp. 3–34 for excellent analysis of Hooper’s theology and position on vestment symbolism. 18 Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’. 19 Letter to Bullinger, Jan. 27, ca. 1546 in Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, p. 34. 16

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Reformation while he lived there.20 About Hooper and Zürich, church historian W. Morris S. West wrote: As Hooper turned his face toward England it was with the conviction that he had found the church which in practice and in doctrine was the right one — the church of Zürich. It conformed closely to the Church of the apostles in all its simplicity and that was the criterion by which to judge all churches. Hooper felt it was his mission to make the English church as much like the church in Zürich as possible. Hooper returned to England with his beliefs fixed.21 Hooper was elevated by Edward’s court to Bishop and to the King’s Commission for Ecclesiastical Polity (March 1552) along with John à Lasco, providing another link between the Edwardine regime and Zürich. Ten years later a group of Marian exiles fled to Zürich (as well as to Geneva).22 In Zürich these men absorbed the practices of the reformed church which they came to consider their model.23 Little of an express nature was said about the whitewashing of the interiors of Zürich’s churches by Hooper, by the Marian exiles or by their biographers, other than in Zürich one found the church closest to apostolic form. In view of this, a few numbers might be illuminating to illustrate the strong link in the chain of evidence connecting England to Zürich.24 The English-Zürich correspondence of the late-Henrician, Edwardine and Elizabethan25 eras total six hundred fifty letters. Three hundred and sixty-two of these are dated 1531–1558 (Henry VIII d. 1547; Edward VI, r. 20 Bishop John Hooper, A Link Connecting the Reformation Thought of Ulrich Zwingli and the Zürich Tradition with the Earliest Pietistic Puritanism, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Temple University, Philadelphia, 1970, p. 274. See also MacCulloch, ‘Bullinger and the English-speaking World’, 2005. 21 W. Morris S. West, ‘John Hooper and the Origins of Puritanism’, Baptist Quarterly, vol. XV, 1953/54, p. 364; West is also quoted in Deibler, p. 277. 22 For detailed discussion of this, see: Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles, Cambridge, 1938; Deibler (above), and Gottfried W. Locher, ‘Zwingli’s Influence on England and Scotland’, Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives, Leiden, 1981, pp. 341–385. 23 Chadwick, The English Church and the Continent, p. 63, quoted in Deibler, p. 436. 24 These numbers were developed by Edwin C. Deibler, ‘Bishop John Hooper, A Link Connecting the Reformation Thought of Ulrich Zwingli and the Zürich Tradition with the Earliest Pietistic Puritanism’, Temple University, Ph.D. Dissertation, 1970, pp. 339–40. 25 See Original Letters Relative to the English Reformation, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1846 and The Zürich Letters, Cambridge, 1845.

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1547–1553,; and Mary, r. 1553–58). Two hundred and eighty-eight are dated 1558–1602 (Elizabeth, r. 1558–1603). Many of these were from leaders of the Church of England requesting advice from their Swiss brethren. These men were central to the development of the Puritan church and wanted to make over the English church in the image of Zürich. They could not have failed to notice the whitened walls in the city where they lived and prayed. It is very likely that the connection between apostolic form and blank, white walls would have been resonant for them. Thus, as most Church of England examples just mentioned post-date the whitewashing of Zürich’s churches, it is beyond doubt that news about events in Zürich, due in the first instance to the radical nature of Zwingli’s Reformation,26 subsequently to exiles resident there and to Bullinger’s skill as a networker, in particular his connexions with English divines, was circulated about western Europe and to the British Isles. Further, through Hooper, an expressly Zwinglian influence was brought to bear, followed by the influence of re-patriated Marian exiles when an active programme of bringing the Zürich church to England was set in motion. In the context of the above it follows that scholars have increasingly begun to see the agency of Zürich as a locus for developments in England along Puritan lines. Among these influences I would include the whitened church interior. Churches had already begun to be white-limed in England by 1547 as we have seen, but it was those reformers who had stayed in Zürich that introduced white-liming into their articles and injunctions as a requirement of reform. In this sense, it might be said that the practice was codified in England because of John Hooper and Archbishop Grindal.27 One scholar recently claimed for Zürich that of all the cities in which reformation activity was occurring, Zürich was possibly the most influential.28 Although in February 1522 Wittenberg had arrived at a realisation about images and had experienced iconoclasm (both encouraged by Karlstadt) earlier than Zürich, attempts at deep change had been aborted through the combined efforts of Martin Luther and the Wittenberg establishment.29 The Reformation which took place in Zürich city between 1520–24 is often referred to as ‘Zwingli’s Reformation.’ 27 See the visitation articles and injunctions: Grindal, VAI, York, 1571; EEA ii, 48 (Aylmer, London, 1577, no. 4); EEA 98–99 (Sandys, York, 1578, no. 31); EEA 111–12 (Chaderton, Chester, 1581, no. 6)., See also Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, pp. 320–321. 28 Wandel, Voracious Idols, p. 59. 29 Ibid., p. 59. 26

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Zürich, by contrast, had successfully and radically reformed itself without rioting and with government support. Other cities, for example, Basel and Strasbourg, while reforming during the 1520s did not achieve results comparable to those of Zwingli or Luther, notwithstanding the influential leadership of such men as Oecolampadius and Karlstadt. No other reform leader attained the degree of government backing offered to Zwingli that enabled him to carry through reform.30 The news of the comprehensive whitewashing of Zürich’s churches must have hit English shores before 1547, if only because of the connections demonstrated by the correspondence and the presence of returned exiles. But in addition there is the striking example set in 1524 for reforming Christians, of establishing ‘at a stroke’ as it were, an alternative visual model and symbolic identity for the Reformed church, now ‘temple’, and its people. There is, of course, significant symbolic value in the act of wiping something out, as in ‘leaving no traces’ as Bernard Wyss, a contemporary Züricher and reformed Catholic suggested in his account of the whitewashing written in 1526, two years after the event: ...all the pictures which were made with oil colours they chipped them away from the walls with stone axes [chisels] and whitewashed over them so that nothing was left behind.31 Wyss’s entry suggests not only the desire to remove something from one’s view, but also an absence of reverence for the object’s existence — in this case, traditional as well as current ecclesiastical practices involving painted altars, wall-paintings, statues and other forms of image.32 Concomitant with the obliteration of centuries of tradition, must be intended an unequivocal break with all that these traditions cumulatively represented. Such a break I do not intend to oversimplify the question of government backing for Zwingli’s reform efforts which I recognize is a subject of ongoing study. Whichever came first, the Zürich city Council’s predisposition to reform, or Zwingli’s zeal, the net result was that the city council backed and enabled Zwingli’s leadership in critical ways central to his political success. Indeed, the relationship may be said to have worked synergistically. 31 ‘...und alle Bild ab den Altären ze thuon und das Gmäl, so mit Oelfarwen gemacht was, abzebicken mit Steinaxen und wider zuo verdünchen, dass es nüt blibe.’ 32 The irreverence for the past and an absence of sentimentality are among Zwingli’s most complex characteristics, and are possibly the ones which enabled him to hold the hard line on images that he did, in spite of being an accomplished and talented musician in his own right, with all the sensibilities that enable one to not only appreciate music, but to pursue an amateur career as musician and composer as well. The origin of this irreverence is usually attributed to the Erasmian influence; sometimes also to Augustine. 30

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might set up, for a certain period of time, a form of ahistorical environment useful to the establishment of a new ethos and a new aesthetic, a tabula rasa operating not only at a literal level (as in the walls have been scraped clean, the altars stripped bare, the walls made blank), but at emotional, religious, theological, and psychological levels as well. It was a daring coup revealing profound insight on the part of Zwingli. Recent examination of the churchwarden’s records for the Grossmünster church in Zürich has led historian Daniel Gutscher to conclude that the Grossmünster was not, in fact, completely whitewashed for the first time in 1524, but much later in 1646.33 Gutscher notes two changes that took place in the seventeenth century: the church was completely painted white inside; and the portals were painted black and white.34 To this description Gutscher adds the following qualification: …This [action] refers really to the pictures [and statues] on the altars and shrines and retables, and the word ‘vertünchen’ shows that it concerned also the wall paintings. The movable items were brought into the sacristy…35 Gutscher, Das Grossmünster, p. 164. The cite for this information was problematic. As his source in Das Grossmünster Gutscher cited Staatssarchiv, G II, 123, Zürich. On a recent visit to Zürich neither the librarians, nor myself were able to locate the information cited to G II, 123. Files G II are receipts and the relevant section on ‘building works’ makes mention only of roof repairs, not painting, whitewashing or the preparation of lime. Other similar cites (e.g. GI, 123) did not yield this information either. Dr. Gutscher has since written to me confirming that this cite as printed in his book contains a typographical error. I have, since, been unable to obtain a copy of the correct pages from churchwarden’s account book. A conservationist who worked on the Grossmünster, Franz Andreas, indicated in a personal conversation that it is not possible to determine from extant paint samples to what extent the church was actually whitewashed in 1524 or 1646. (Personal conversation, June 2000). In the case of the Grossmünster, then, one would have to rely on the kinds of data that Gutscher has been studying in order to determine the extent of painting that was likely carried out. 34 Das Grossmünster, p. 164: ‘Es wurde jedoch im Erscheinungsbild völlig umgestellt, indem ertsmals die ››sowie ‹‹ das grosse Portl ausswendig›› mit ‹‹Anstrich und weysung›› versehen wurden.’/ ‘[The inside] was completely changed in appearance. For the first time the whole church inside and the big portal on the outside were painted and whitewashed. The remains of the frame made out of soot and charcoal may, presumably, come out of this epoch. […] They correspond to the then taste of the seventeenth century which loved the black and white contrast.’ 35 ‘Diese Aktion — sie fand hinter verschlossenen Türen statt — betraf nur die Altarbilder, — schreine und retabel sowie — das Wort ‹‹verdunchen›› deutet darauf — die Wandmalereien.’ Gutscher, p. 158. 33

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This opinion is based on the unlikelihood that sufficient scaffolding could have been found and erected or that enough lime could have been amassed in less than one week; it also relies on church records dating to 1646 which, by contrast, show large amounts of lime being prepared sufficient to paint the entire interior during a period when major renovations were being undertaken (interior painting, new roof, etc.) at the Grossmünster. Yet, while it may well be true that the Grossmünster interior was comprehensively whitewashed (floor to ceiling or clerestory) in 1646, Gutscher’s view discounts that several contemporary records clearly state that the church interior walls were whitewashed in June 1524; furthermore that Zwingli is quoted as praising his new white walls as being ‘beautiful.’ That painters could have reached as high as the bottom of the triforium using ordinary ladders, and that walls could have been whitewashed in significant part, is evident in the engraving, ‘Iconoclasm in the Netherlands’, 1566,36 where the ladders depicted do reach as high as the triforium (Fig. 4.3). Thus this possibility cannot be precluded as Gutscher claims, quoted above. It seems reasonable to conclude that walls had to have been whitewashed to a predominant degree in order to make the impression of whiteness praised by Zwingli, unless he was referring to ‘blankness’, which he was not. Georg Finsler stated in 1901 that wall paintings in the Grossmünster had not been completely removed as some believed they had been (because of references to chiseling in several contemporary accounts) because in the seventeenth century portions of some of them, obviously not removed, reappeared through their coat of paint.37 (This corroborates Gutscher’s view in part). At that time a conservator (Antistes) Johann Jacob Breitinger had some of these images (Spuren) remounted for safekeeping elsewhere. Figs. 4.4 through 4.7 reproduce a few recovered images which remain in the churches. Certainly painting out frescoed images or wall paintings would have been more expedient than chiseling. In the case of Zürich we know that whitewash was used to obliterate images not chiseled off and ‘to remove all traces of what went before’. But we do not know for certain how extensive the whitewashing was. Did it reach the height of the ladders depicted in Figs. 1.1 and 4.3? Or as high as the clerestory? As the ceiling? One must ask what the meaning was of Zwingli’s comment declaring the beauty of white walls if they had 36 See Michael Eytzinger, Novus de Leone Belgico eiusque topographica …., 1588, British Library. 37 Georg Finsler, ed., Die Chronik des Bernard Wyss, Basel, 1901.

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been ‘slobbered over’ with whitewash (as Collinson puts it), only partially or irregularly whitened (as Gutscher suggests), or not painted at all.38 Working from contemporary inventories modern historian Matthias Senn describes the Grossmünster in January 1519 (the month Huldrych Zwingli began preaching there) as a church with frescoes covering the walls of the whole church. It had fifteen side altars, a large, high altar dedicated to the founding saints Felix and Regula, with similar altars and pictures distributed in each side altar, at the entrance to the choir, in the side naves and crypt, and in the Chapel of the Twelve Apostles (Zwölfbotenkapelle).39 Between fifteen and twenty-seven altars stood within the main church prior to June 1524;40 the combined total for all of Zürich city’s churches was approximately five times this number.41 If this is accurate, then Gutscher’s statement does not fully account for the statements of Zwingli,42 Wyss,43 and Bullinger,44 who in 1524 and 1526 describe the events of the dismantling and whitewashing (Vertünchen) of Zürich’s church interiors in their chronicles and on which all histories of this story rely.45 If, as Gutscher explains, the whitewashing only covered the areas where altars, painted oil panels, statues and wall paintings had been, in point of fact, this represents a major proportion of the churches’ interior wall surfaces. Thus, it is important to recognise that whether or not the walls were whitelimed up There was also a fire in 1763, when the spires and tops of the Grossmünster’s towers were destroyed. The damaged sections were reconstructed in the Gothic-style that can be seen there today. Following the fire the interior was decorated in a Baroque style. Subsequent restorations in the 19th and 20th centuries returned them to their Romanesque appearance. 39 Mathias Senn, p. 33. 40 Gutscher quotes the number twenty-seven; Matthias Senn the number fifteen. See M. Senn, Zürcher Kunst nach der Reformation, Hans Asper und seine Zeit, Katalog zur Ausstellung in Helmhaus, Zürich, 1981. 41 Salomon Vögelin, Das Alte Zürich, Historisch und Antiquarisch, vol. I, Zürich, 1878, pp. 292–93. 42 Reported in Farner III, 490. 43 Wyss, Chronik, pp. 40–44, esp. 42. Of the three chronicles it is Wyss who reports the whitewashing. See also Wyss, p. 70. 44 Bullinger I, 367. 45 If the whitewashing was not as comprehensive as Wyss indicated, it was as a result of Wyss, Bullinger, Zwingli and, subsequently, Garside’s reconstruction of events, that the whitewashing of the interiors of Zürich’s churches has assumed almost mythic proportions to those writing about it until this day. Among the many accounts circulating, Garside’s account was repeated by Wandel in 1995 and with almost no changes, by Dillenberger in 1999. Among Swiss historians the story reads the same as Garside’s, notwithstanding Gutscher’s proposition that the Grossműnster had not been completely whitewashed until 1647. 38

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to the triforium, it is the impression of whitewashed walls — the concept of the whitewashed interior — that obtains, and which has been carried down through these last four hundred years not only through its association with Reformed, and especially Anglican, Calvinist, and Dutch Reformed churches, but through the example established in Zürich emulated by many; for example, by Guillaume Farel or John Calvin, re-patriated English Marian exiles, and many Dutch Reformed congregations (Figs. 3.20, 4.8, 4.9, 4.10). As a matter of comparison the church of Jan Hus, the fourteenth century Bohemian reformer, shares important fundamental similarities with the Reformed prototype established by Zwingli. Although variously described as a predecessor to the Protestant movement and as having no influence on it whatsoever, the aesthetics manifested in the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague and those of subsequent sixteenth century Reformed ecclesiastical interiors converge in their theological goals and visual appearance. Although instructions to the corps of workers responsible for the makeover of Zürich churches during those days of June–July 1524 were in fact not Zwingli’s alone, he was beyond a doubt a primary force driving the reforms in Zürich.46 That city and church governments had come to agree to the complete and final removal of images throughout all of Zürich was ultimately the result of three years of intense, tenacious lobbying and proselytizing on the part of Zwingli47 and fellow reformers, Ludwig Hätzer,48 Almost all scholars write about Zwingli’s decisive influence. See, for example, Pipkin/ Furcha, vol. II, p. 45; Eire, p. 76; Gottfried Locher, Zwingli’s Thought, New Perspectives, pp. x– xvi, 340–385. Again, Gäbler counters the influence attributed to Zwingli in some instances; for example, regarding the reliance on Scripture, a decree to this effect had already been issued in the fall of 1520 by the Zürich city Council (Gäbler, pp. 49–50.). It is clear that Zwingli’s influence continues to be debated. 47 It is Potter’s opinion that Zwingli fully intended to approach the tribunal from 1519 onwards, and that by 1522 Zwingli had won over enough well-placed people to be able to ‘urge upon them’ the convening of a disputation/public enquiry to discuss (and settle) the increasingly pressing issues of meat-eating in Lent, clerical marriage, and images. (Potter, pp. 97–98). Overall, Zwingli invested four years in the ‘persistent exposition’ of New Testament texts in German which ‘began to bear fruit in the moments leading up to the Zürich Disputation’ (Potter, p. 91). When, eventually, a new council was elected to office toward the end of 1522, the first public discussion on these issues was called and came to be known as the First Zürich Disputation. 48 The publication of Ludwig Hätzer’s small pamphlet The Judgment of God Our Spouse as to how One Should Hold Oneself toward All Idols and Images, according to the Holy Scriptures by Ludwig Hätzer published by Christopher Froschauer, in Zürich 24 September 1523, is considered to have significantly contributed to the iconoclasm. In this pamphlet Hätzer 46

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4.1. Hans Asper, Portrait of Huldrych Zwingli, Winterthur Kunstmuseum.

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4.2. Bird’s eye view of Zürich in 1576, Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

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4.3. Michael Eytzinger, Novus de Leone Belgico eiusque Topographiae et Historiae Descriptione Cologne, 1588. British Library. London. 4.4. The Grossmünster, Zürich. Detail of a faded wall painting of The Last Supper in the undercroft chapel. © Sacred Destinations.

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Figure 4-6: Frescoes at the Fraumunster, Zurich. Is on its way. Will send when it arrives

4.5. St Peterskirche, Zürich. Wall paintings. © Sacred Destinations. 4.6. Text panels in the Grossmünster, Zürich. © Victoria George. Scriptural text was painted onto the walls of the Grossmünster, and, it appears, scraped off again.

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4.7. Faded wall painting of the Virgin and Child, the Grossmünster. © Sacred Destinations.

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4.8. Jacobskerk, Utrecht. © Theo Jacobs, photographer.

4.9. Achiltibuie Free Church, northwest Scotland © Jim Downie, photographer.

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4.10. The Grossmünster, Zürich. Nave, looking east.

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Leo Jud,49 Heinrich Engelhard, and Konrad Schmid. The tensions created by the assimilation of evangelical preaching by significant numbers of Zürichers across society manifestly contributed to the need for the disputations convened to discuss reforms, and to the Council decision to ‘cleanse’ the churches sooner rather than later. In fact, according to Myconius, Zwingli had successfully convinced the Senate much earlier of the necessity.50

The Disputations Four disputations were held in Zürich between January 1523 and June 1524, each one of which was convened to address the issues of the mass identifies no fewer than thirty-three passages in the Old and New Testaments which prohibit the presence and use of images. This document was particularly popular and was printed in eight different German editions and one in Latin. This popularity Garside opines was due to the fact that it collected in one consolidated pamphlet, all arguments both for and against idols. The first section, sixteen pages long, presents a total indictment of images ‘from the Word of God alone’ (Garside, p. 111). The second section, containing the arguments in defense of images, is only six pages long. Zwingli himself refers to this pamphlet in the section on images in his own Short Christian Instruction (November 1523), ‘For this purpose, the little book that recently came out, “On the Abolition of Images”, will serve well because it has much scriptural evidence. Whoever does not have this, let him read the following passages...’ (§7, p. 68). In an earlier analysis, ‘Ludwig Haetzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, vol. 34, January 1960, pp. 20–36, Garside demonstrates Hätzer’s reliance on an earlier publication by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt published in Wittenberg on 27 January 1522, from whom Hätzer may have borrowed considerable portions. Notwithstanding, as Garside also points out, ‘the role which it played in the iconoclastic demonstrations in Zürich during late September 1523 is by no means inconsiderable’. Garside also suggests here that the influence of this pamphlet on Zwingli himself, was no less. This seems entirely plausible especially in view of Zwingli’s own willingness to refer his audience to Hätzer’s pamphlet. 49 Leo Jud was born Leo Keller (1482–1542) in Alsace. Jud was of Jewish extraction and the son of a Catholic priest. He replaced Zwingli in the position of Leutpriester in Einsiedeln (site of Zwingli’s first professional appointment) and was invited by Zwingli to Zürich in 1519 (shortly after Zwingli also moved to this city) to take up the position of stipendiary priest at Saint Peter’s (1 June 1522) (Potter, p. 81; ZI, 529; V, 718–20; VII, 119–20; X, 201–9; ZWA II, 161–6, 198–208). Jud had been at the University of Basel with Zwingli, along with Konrad Schmid of Kusnacht; both were students of Thomas Wyttenbach. Jud became one of the leaders of the reform movement in Zürich. He remained an indefatigable comrade-in-arms and dedicated friend of Zwingli’s. 50 Oswald Myconius was an intimate friend of Zwingli’s with whom he shared a long and prolific correspondence. He was Zwingli’s first biographer (Vita Huldrici Zwinglii in

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and images. Each disputation included different groups of men, invited or called upon primarily, but not exclusively, from within the ecclesiastical and political sectors of the community. The first of these, which took place 29 January 1523, was the cause of Zwingli’s writing of the Sixty-seven Articles,51 which he states in his introduction were prepared at the request of the Zürich people in order to give an account of his teaching to date. Approximately six hundred individuals attended, among them the Bishop of Constance, members of the Great and Small Councils, and clergy from Zürich city and canton.52 Discussion focused on the issue of authority: between Scripture and the papal authority of the Church, and between faith in Christ and any intermediate path to salvation.53 There are no minutes of the debate, only individual accounts.54 At the outset, this Disputation had been organised on the understanding that all argument would be based on Scripture alone. Johannes Faber, Vicargeneral of Constance representing the Bishop of Constance, attempted to assert that the ecumenical council would decide the issues, and was roundly countered by Zwingli that the present group constituted ‘a Christian assembly in the sense of the early church’ who would decide the issues accordingly.55 The Zürich city Council not only upheld Zwingli’s right Vitae Quatuor Reformatorem, Berlin, 1848), and also the successor to John Oecolampadius in Basel. 51 These propositions were published the following 14 July 1523 by the printer Christopher Froschauer for dissemination to the public. Published as the Commentary on the Sixty-seven Propositions, (Auslegen und Grunde der Schlüssreden) and as ‘Analysis and Reasons for the Concluding Statements’ Zwingli II, 11(14)–457. 52 The Sixty-seven Articles are described variously. Gäbler describes them categorically as not being Disputation theses, but consisting in summaries of previously delivered sermons (p. 66) consistent with what Zwingli’s says in his Introduction to the Articles. (Exposition and Basis of the Conclusions,. E. J. Furcha, trans., p. 1.). Stephens is more circumspect and says, ‘which Zwingli claims he had already presented in sermons.’ Stephens, Zwingli, p. 33. Gäbler is adamant that these articles do not represent a program for the reformation. (Gäbler, p. 181). Again, this is in contrast to Egli, Köhler, and Farner. 53 Myconius: ‘…yet one word led to another and they fell into discussions concerning the gospel, the intercession of the Saints, the constitution of man, and I know not of what else, so the day passed in this manner, not unprofitably, for all the multitude, whose number was about six hundred, came to realize that earthly things are nothing in comparison with heavenly things.’ Myconius, in Latin Works I, p. 12; see also Gäbler, pp. 67–68. For analysis of the First Disputation see Gäbler, pp. 63–71; Garside, Zwingli; pp. 127–145; Potter, pp. 95–104. 54 Z I: 472–569.

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to evangelical preaching, but determined that all clergy should adopt an evangelical approach in their work and passed an ordinance to this effect. This ordinance required preaching to be based on Scripture alone, and although this was not intended to be a break with Rome, in point of fact Papal authority had been seriously undermined, and the authority of local government to control worship likewise strengthened.56 To say this was a significant event for the Reformation would be an understatement, for this shift in power from the church to the state is still being debated today.57 Zwingli’s reply to Faber may also be taken as an indicator of the extent to which Zwingli both strove for, and perceived this movement, in this case this particular assembly, to represent a return to the apostolic church. The concept of the apostolic church, however ill-formed or ill-informed, in the mind of the Christian assembly was fundamental to the changes that would be made to the interior of the church. The second Disputation took place 26–28 October 1523. From the beginning it was intended to be a confederate affair. Those included were the Bishops of Constance, Basel and Chur, the University of Basel, the Great and Small councils, the clergy from canton and city, the lay public and citizens from all twelve confederate states.58 All three Bishops declined to attend, as did clergy from the confederate states, except Saint Gall and Schaffhausen, notwithstanding which it was attended by between 800–900 individuals.59 As before, every delegate was welcomed to express his opinion for or against the two principles in question: (1) ‘church decorations’ were not permitted according to Holy Scripture, and (2): communion was being celebrated as mass in a way inconsistent with the one instituted by Christ. The Council would decide these two issues on the merits, with the hope of achieving a peaceful resolution to the controversy. Prompted by complaints by the senior canon of the Grossmünster, Conrad Hoffman, about procedural deficiencies in the first two disputations, a ‘Third Disputation’ was held on 13 and 14 January 1524, that included only the Canons of the Grossmünster, members of the Great and Small Councils and all city clergy. It is frequently remarked that this discussion gave the appearance of a rehearsed exercise, favouring Zwingli and the reform Gäbler, p. 68. The transfer of authority to the State is considered by some its main achievement. 57 For example, Gäbler warns against over-estimating the significance of this Disputation (p. 71). 58 Gäbler, p. 77; II, 678:18–680:4. 55 56

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movement. In the event, the Council decided the issues in favour of the defendants (Zwingli et al.) and dismissed the concerns of Canon Hoffman and his supporters. Hoffman left Zürich at this time, and it is thought that his departure represented the moment when the opposition was definitively broken. A fourth discussion took place officially on 19–20 January 1524, which was much smaller still than the third. For the purposes of this chapter, possibly the most important of the disputations is the second, which had been called in response to the intensification of reform issues in the period immediately following the First Disputation (September 1523). The question of what to do about images had become particularly vexing and there had been several incidents of unofficial spontaneous iconoclasm60 which caused authorities concern, even for those who were ‘pro-reform.’ Leo Jud, as well as Zwingli, are often considered largely responsible for these incidents insofar as they preached openly and unequivocally condemning the practice of idolatry, already defined in the Sixty-Seven Articles presented at the First Disputation as ‘placing one’s trust in anyone or anything other than God.’ The Second Disputation ended with a consensus that there was no Scriptural basis for justifying images within the church — literally, that images should not be tolerated by Christians.61 As an outcome of the four disputations, between January 1524 and 20 June 1524, several interim decrees about images were issued by the city council. These addressed procedure, specifically the continued presence of images in the church, how one should ‘use’ them, reverence them and their elimination. The decrees are dated (1) 27 October 1523; (2) the second interim decree, 14 May 1524; (3) ca. 23 May 1524; and (4) 15 June 1524, when two decrees were issued, one of which declared the complete and final removal of images.62 Nothing in any of these decrees or disputations indicates Garside, Zwingli, p. 129. For example, Lorenz Hochrutiner and Wolfgang Ininger at the Fraumünster (Egli I, 159, Egli doc. 415); Lorenz Meyer at Saint Peter’s (Egli I, 861, 158–61, doc. numbers: 414, 415, 416); Thomas Platter at Hongg (Lebensbeschreibung, hg. A. Hartmann, Basel, 1944, 61–2); and Hottinger and Ockenfuss at Stadelhofen. (Morikofer I, 192; ZII, 665). 61 For a detailed discussion of the Second Disputation see Garside, Zwingli, Chap. 6. 62 A summary table of the Zürich decrees: 59 60

27 October 1523

Council’s Mandate for the Abolition of the Mass. This is the first interim decree issued initiating a succession of moderate decrees that fail to appease the more radical in the community.

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anything about interior (re)decoration, whitewashing or refurbishment; only that all images will be removed from the churches in an orderly manner, and that individual donors may remove and take home any painting or sculpture which they had commissioned or placed in the church. As a result of these developments Zwingli was forced to address in practical terms the question of what to do about images; that is, not only the images themselves, but the church interiors of which they formed an integral part, what Zwingli called ‘church decoration.’63 Following the Council’s official position adopted at the Second Disputation — that images could not be justified — something now needed to be done. On the Council’s recommendation at the close of the Second Disputation on 29 September 1523, a ‘decoration committee’ was appointed by the Council, tasked with the mandate to study the question of images and the mass, and to develop a praxis embodying their decisions. The ‘decoration committee’ consisted of Zürich’s three ‘people’s priests’ (Leutpriester): Zwingli, Leo Jud, and Dr. Heinrich Engelhart,64 each of whom was influential in his own right as a preacher within the reformed community. At the time consensus was reached at the close of the Second Disputation, among those assenting were a number of men who had been previously unconvinced about the necessity for change. There remained 10 December 1523. 14 May 1524. 16 May 1524.

21 May 1524. ca. 23 May 1524.

28 May 1524 (approximately). 15 June 1524. 15 June 1524.

20 June–2 July 1524.

Zwingli issues memorandum to Zürich City Council giving advice on images Second interim decree regarding images and the mass is issued. City Council requests a formal investigation and report from the ‘Decoration Committee’ on the abolition of the images and the mass. Decoration Committee report was made to the Council resulting in a five-point plan published one week later. ‘Zurich Council decree regarding Images and the Mass’ is made public (verbally) during this week. The decree includes the five point plan. Five-point plan is published (in print). Burgomeister Röist dies. City Council announcement of the abolition of images. One of two decrees issued on this day. Second decree reiterates the First Decree in stronger terms. Church cleansing and whitewashing.

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some opposition, however: Burgomeister Marx Roist was an influential and consistent opponent to any changes in either liturgy or church fabric. Then, on 15 June 1524, Burgomeister Röist died. The Zürich City Council was at last able to announce their intentions to remove all images, which announcement they made that very day. Röist’s death removed the last major political obstacle to a full-scale plan for the ‘final and complete removal of images.’65 The speed with which the declaration to remove images was published after Röist’s death suggests that the decision for the ultimate removal of images may have been made earlier, possibly in May, about the time of either the second or third interim decree.66 A team of workmen was also quickly assembled; it consisted in the three ‘people’s priests’, the same men who had been the decoration committee, plus two constables, guild representatives, the municipal builder and his locksmith, stonemasons, and general labourers who would be responsible for the makeover and for ensuring that vandalism and any other unauthorised destruction did not take place. The primary contemporary accounts of these events are located in Bullinger’s and Wyss’ chronicles, as well as in Zwingli’s own, edited by Emil Egli.67 Although in the aggregate these chronicles provide descriptions of the disputations, decrees, the ‘cleansing’ itself (20 June–2 July 1524) and the whitewashing, not one contains a description of the deliberations of the committee convened to advise on procedure, nor do the chronicles contain a description of the planned cleansing process. A report of this committee was requested by the Council on 16 May 1524, when it became clear that the moderate decrees had failed to appease the more radical individuals in the community. The report was made to the Council on 21 May 1524, resulting in a five-point plan (published approximately one week later) which allowed donors to retrieve images (paintings, sculptures, altars, etc.) they had given to the church. However, the report gave no further indication of removal plans. The organisation required to implement these plans speaks

A Short Christian Instruction, Pipkin/Furcha, eds., II, p. 65. Leutpriester and Canon at Mary Minster. (Gabler, p. 51). 65 Garside, Zwingli, p. 151, 158.. 66 This is Garside’s view with which I concur. However, Potter suggests it was normal for no records to be kept, and for decisions resulting from such deliberations to remain verbal. 67 Wyss, Chronik, pp. 40–44; Egli doc. 552; Farner III, pp. 485–88; Z IV, pp. 150–152; W. Peter Stephens, Zwingli. An Introduction to His Thought, Oxford, 1992, p. 61; Bullinger, 63 64

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to the preparedness of the committee, foreclosing any real possibility that events unfolded as they did in an unintentional or unpremeditated way. We have already encountered Wyss’s version, above. Bullinger’s account is very similar, as is Zwingli’s.68 Charles Garside’s own account 69 acknowledges the lack of hard data on internal committee deliberations indirectly through his use of conditionals throughout his description of this moment. About the June 15 decree he writes, The members of the committee on the problem of images may have devised it sometime after May 16; if so, it probably had not been used, because of Röist’s objections. If prepared then, it may not even have been shown to him. Or it may have been formulated hastily on the day of his death. In any event, the specific references in the decree to the three people’s priests and one man from every guild indicate that beyond doubt a solution to the problem of removal was ready. That later on the same day the council issued an even more strongly worded decree [Egli, doc. 546], emphasizing and reaffirming the contents of the first, is further indication of the Council’s preparedness. (My emphasis.) Only three documents — familiar ones now in the story of the 1524 iconoclasm — are cited to support the facts in this paragraph.70 Potter is more explicit on this point and says there are none. Thus, much has to be speculated. The absence of any account of the decoration committee’s deliberations represents a lacuna in the primary literature and may account for the slight commentary on the whitewashing itself in subsequent histories of the Zürich cleansing. Similarly, the lack of documentation of the decision to whitewash, or to strip and ‘re-decorate’ Zürich church interiors may suggest the ordinariness of washing with lime in the eyes of a sixteenth century Züricher. However, although whitewash may have been a normal feature of domestic buildings, the same was not true of churches. The silence surrounding these particular vol. I, 173–77. See also, Oskar Farner, Heinrich Bullinger am Grossmünster in Zürich, Zürich, 1942, pp. 6–7. 68 Bullingers Reformationsgeschichte, vol. I, 173–77; Z IV, 150, 1–152. 69 In 1966 Charles Garside wrote the first in depth study addressing Zwingli’s attitude to the arts. Contained within this monograph is an in depth analysis of Zwingli’s theology, the process of negotiation over the problem of images and a detailed history of their removal from Zürich ’s churches. See Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, New Haven and London, 1966.

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discussions may reflect the low opinion in which interior decoration was held, such that it was not worthy of mention, although it is hard to imagine such a huge transformation of one’s environment was not noteworthy. But it may also speak to the possibility that the decision to whitewash was made at a visceral level — the result of intuitive thinking — and that those involved were hardly aware of making a decision about colour at all, although this too seems unlikely, as mobilizing teams of painters and amassing hundreds of pounds of lime would tend to raise one’s awareness, if nothing else. Further, the church walls could have been left in a scraped and chiselled condition or, painted other colours or even, although more expensive, returned to stone, much as they, and many other cathedrals across Europe, are today. For these reasons I may be cautioned that there is little or no evidence to substantiate the proposition that the initiation of the whitewashing of the Reformed church interior was an emblem in its own right signifying reformed status or, as in the case of Netherlands, the process of reform. I suggest that while what I am proposing about whitewashing might be construed as arguing from silence or as unsustainable, the void in the record is conspicuous for a number of reasons and is, as well, legitimately open to interpretation. One suspicious fact jumps out; the records of the recommendations and decisions of the re-decoration committee are missing, were destroyed, or were never made, where other records, such as the ordinances and comments on them, were kept and are extant. This suggests a sensitivity to plans being made and eventually carried out. In contrast to the otherwise thoroughgoing organisation and premeditated nature of the makeover, the impression this gap gives, is that the profoundly radical nature of plans to whitewash was apparent to those involved; moreover, that this caused those concerned to keep changes ‘under wraps’ until it was no longer possible to reverse them, so radical and shocking were they certain to be. Furthermore, the pattern of whitewashing which develops after the example of Zürich substantiates the theory I am advancing: namely, that the Zürich example established an important precedent followed by other reforming communities whose theology was also iconoclastic and whose association of colour with sin, and whiteness with the holiness of God and with righteousness in general, were similar. The most notable cases include Farel’s and Calvin’s Geneva, Zwinglian-minded reformers in England and France, Reformed (Calvinist) communities in the Netherlands and, eventually, Protestant and Anglican churches in England and Scotland (Figs. 3.17–20, 4.9, 4.10).

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Wyss and Bullinger both wrote that the whitewashing was intended to be a matter of the ‘painting out’ of all traces of previous ‘corruption’.71 One might interpret their accounts of this event as though applying a coat of lime was the most natural and obvious thing to do under the circumstances, because whitewashing as we know had, historically, been an inexpensive method of refreshing the appearance of a building, of cleansing after the plague, and preparing walls for new interior decorations. It must be acknowledged that, in an important sense this is all true; it is also likely that it is for this reason whitewash has been taken for granted. There may have been, as Michel Pastoureau has suggested, a tendency developing for church interiors to contain more light, possibly to be lighter in colour, in the years leading up to the Reformation. Pastoureau is here referring to interior decorations, not windows.72 However until this moment there was no sect in the Christian Church whose churches, as part of a comprehensive programme to simplify and purify, were completely stripped bare of decoration and painted bright white as well, in addition to comparable changes in liturgy (the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux notwithstanding). The effect of a sudden appearance of a stark aesthetic, defined by silenced liturgy, juxtaposed to imageless walls all painted newly white, not to mention the luminosity of the whiteness, must have been enormous; and the cumulative effect of the same treatment for all churches, exponentially greater.73 Wyss, Chronik, p. 40–44; Egli doc. 544, and Egli doc. 546; Bullinger, I, 173–6; Z IV, 1–152; Farner III, 485–88; Garside, Zwingli, p. 158. 71 For a discussion of the role of the language of corruption, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, 1966. 72 ‘Les débuts de la Réforme ne se situent donc pas au moment où les églises d’Occident ont été les plus chargées de couleurs. Au contraire, ils s’incrivent dans une phase de polychromie déclinante et de coloration plus sobre. Mais cette tendence n’est pas générale, et pour les réformateurs elle est insuffisante; il faut faire sortir massivement la couleur du temple. Comme saint Bernard au XIIe siècle, Karlstadt, Melancthon, Zwingli et Calvin […] dénoncent la couleur et les sanctuaires trop richement peints.’ ‘La Couleur, Regards croisés sur la couleur du Moyen Age au XXe siècle’, Cahiers du Leopard d’Or, Paris, 1994, pp. 30–31. Pastoureau is not specific about the trends to which he is referring here. The implication is that the trend he describes begins sometime after the XII century, and was in place sometime before the Reformation, and that, following the line of thinking established by Saint Bernard, was taken up by the magisterial reformers, Karlstadt, Melancthon, Zwingli, and Calvin. 73 Konrad Schmid showed concern for the stress and shock that such a sudden removal of images would cause to the populace. Garside wrote, ‘He [Schmid] was evidently far more sensitive than Jud to the enormous strains which the traditional piety of the average 70

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The coherence of this aesthetic, at this stage perhaps in incipient form, has been characterised as an ‘aesthetic of simplicity’ by most. This aesthetic was not limited to liturgy only, as medievalist and historian of rhetoric Peter Auksi suggested, but was, on the contrary, the product of actively asserted theological views defining palpable aesthetic values in all aspects of reform. The reformed aesthetic would include the material, physical fabric of the church interior extending well beyond the ‘stripping of the altars’ and the simplification of liturgy. Just as Zwingli lobbied for the elimination of idolatry which he saw embodied in such things as the mass as sacrifice, belief in the intercession of Saints, and in polyphonic liturgical music which represented the product of human vanity and, therefore, self-idolatry among other things, so, using similar arguments in a logical extension of the same line of thought, he argued for the elimination of idolatry in the form of sculpted and painted idols in the church, and then to give the walls acceptable form. Within Switzerland, various cities were reformed in addition to Zürich and Geneva. So far, I have attempted to illuminate the example of Zürich and to show a connection between Zürich and England where similar whitewashings took place beginning in 1547. There is evidence, too, in Zwingli’s joyous response to his whitewashed churches, in his thinking about colour, and in an attitude of mind pervasive at the time, indeed, across centuries toward the colour white. Strong associations with ideas about washing and cleansing, with concepts of purity, righteousness and divinity, would shape an attitude of mind toward colour sufficiently not only to have caused the whitewashings to happen in this way, but may, as it were, justifiably be said to have mandated them.

Christian would experience by the immediate abolition of images to which he had been so long attached.’ Leo Jud was a very close friend of Zwingli’s, a supporter and ally in the Reformation. Schmid ‘urged instead that the Council would allow them to remain where they were, untouched, but that the people be instructed rigourously and continuously that “there is neither, life, holiness, nor grace in them.”’ (Garside, Zwingli, p. 139 quoting Z II, 705, 1–2). It is, indeed, almost unimaginable that tremendous shock-waves would not have been sent out from the epicentre of Zürich on July 2 1524, but Schmid’s comments address the removal of images and not the whitewashing as well.

V Coloured by the Bible (The One Source All Knew) ‘Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ Isa 1:18

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ithout question, the Bible, as the most influential text in western Christendom, was the driving force which shaped the thinking of the literate population from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment period, at which point it might be argued that the influence of the Bible began to wane as the normative text for European and colonial societies. For centuries until that point, the Bible had been the first or possibly the only text with which an individual would have had familiarity; and if only one book was owned, it would have been the Bible.1 Self-evident as this may seem, it is in fact pertinent to an examination of the patterns of thought during the Reformation about colour. While it may be true that interior walls of newly reformed Protestant churches2 were initially painted white to eliminate any Cf. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, G. W. H. Lampe, ed., Cambridge, 1952 and 1964, pp. xi, xiv; Alister McGrath, In the Beginning, 2001, pp. 2–3; Adam Nicholson, God’s Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible, New York, 2003, pp. xi–xiv. To put ownership of the Bible in perspective, however, Greenslade makes the analogy that with the advent of moveable type and mass printing the cost of owning a bible shifted from the equivalent of buying a house to that of a car. It remained expensive. See S. L. Greenslade, The Cambridge History of the Bible (CHOB), vol. 3, Cambridge, 1963, p. 424. 2 By ‘newly reformed Protestant churches’ I refer to: Zwinglian, Calvinist, Church of England, Presbyterian (Scotland), but not Lutheran. 1

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residual trace of religious imagery and to protect the onlooker from the temptation to venerate images, neither of these reasons suffices to explain the meaning that the white wall developed for a significant group of reformed congregations.3 Nor is it sufficient for understanding the numerous theological texts, biblical commentary, exegesis, sermons and period polemical tracts in which whiteness, purity, huelessness and the transparency of the ‘crystal clear’ truth of God is praised, while saturated colour, particularly when associated with the red hue, is condemned, demeaned or suppressed. This view is reflected in the writings of the more radical reformers, who eventually came to see in almost any religious image — in virtue of the inclusive nature of their definitions of idol (images found in the mind and anything on which the mind depended for aid might constitute an idolatrous image) — the potential for the attraction of the soul away from the contemplation of the invisible Lord toward man-made accounts of Him. Thus, where one seeks to reject the distractions and preoccupations of the ordinary human being in the material world, it made sense, was logically consistent with new doctrine, to remove those phenomena which most invoked or presented temptation to the soul. But to unpack the fundamental reasons underlying the conscious choice of the colour white in the form of whitewash as the medium for redecoration of the churches, and hence as the tangible basis for the establishment of a new, applied religious aesthetic signifying a reformed church, it is necessary to explore the spectrum of ideas relative to colour which would have been encountered between the years 1475–1560, the period during which the theologians and Magisterial Reformers were born, raised, and exercised their first round of influence. In addition to being the central, normative source for intellectual as well as spiritual and theological orientation from the beginning of a person’s life, the Bible was also the only book that was authorized to tell people how to live, how to think, and what to do.4 The Magisterial Reformers not only lived by the truth and authority found in the book of God’s Word, they fervently believed that every man, woman and child was entitled to read the sacred texts for themselves. Although a number of partial translations of the Bible had been made since the seventh century, for example in the form 3 Where reasons are given for whitewashings in both current histories of the Reformation and in contemporary chronicles, these are the two most often quoted reasons adduced; that is, until Veluanus in the Netherlands (1554) and Dowsing (1643). See Chapter II. 4 CHOB, vol. 3, p. 175

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of metrical paraphrases (poems) in Old English, portions of the Psalter (by Aldhelm, sometime shortly after 700) or of the New Testament by Saint Bede between 700–735 CE, the systematic movement to bring the Word of God to the laity only really began in earnest in the fourteenth century with the English theologian, scholar and priest, John Wycliffe. Before 1380 Wycliffe had been arguing that: The New Testament is…open to the understanding of simple men’ …[for] Christ did not write His laws on tables, or on skins of animals, but in the hearts of men.’5 In support of his own, heretical, position, Wycliffe argued that Saint Jerome’s translation of the Old and New Testaments into Latin (the Vulgate) was, after all, a vernacular translation prepared for the Latin communities of the Western Church and, moreover, the Septuagint was prepared for the Greekspeaking Jewish world.6 As the movement for popular vernacular translations grew, and the level of societal literacy rose, greater and greater numbers were absorbing the same formative information as the Reformers had done. As alluded to above, there were others before Wycliffe who translated portions of the Bible, but these were, for the most part, incomplete and in Old or Middle English and not particularly fluent or accessible in style. But the complete Bible under Wycliffe’s name, initially begun with the assistance of fellow scholar John Hereford, and with the very important subsequent collaboration of Wycliffe’s secretary John Purvey, fellow translator and Bible editor, was published posthumously in 1388, four years after the Reformer’s death. This edition included Purvey’s revisions to Hereford’s less fluent prose. The edition achieved widespread distribution notwithstanding establishment efforts to quash it.7 As many as one hundred seventy copies of the Wycliffe Bible survive in whole or in part, mostly in Purvey’s revised form. Although the number of copies of the first and subsequent editions actually produced in the sixteenth century is unknown, it is thought to have Regarding pre-Reformation translations of the Bible, see: G. Shepherd, ‘English Versions of the Scriptures before Wyclif ’, in CHOB, vol. 2, The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, G. W. H. Lampe, ed., Cambridge, 1969, pp. 362–387; in re Wycliffe, see CHOB, vol. 3, pp. 387–415; F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English, 3rd ed., New York, 1978, pp. 12–23; Benson Bobrick, Wide as the Waters, New York, 2001, p. 50. 6 Bobrick, 50–51. 7 F. F. Bruce quotes Thomas More saying, essentially, that it was fine for Catholic lay people and women to read English versions of the Bible; just not Lollards (heretic reformers). F. F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English, pp. 20–23. 5

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been in the thousands, or even tens of thousands; it was clearly widespread for it reached as far as Bohemia where the reformer Czech Jan Hus is known to have incorporated Wycliffe’s work into his own. From this we can surmise that the Wycliffe/Purvey translation had gained a solid foothold throughout the English speaking world and beyond8 and was widely read until the introduction of Tyndale’s New Testament in 1526. That Wycliffe’s Bible was influential on the English language itself is beyond doubt serving as a form of proto-dictionary contributing to the standardization of the language.9 Between Wycliffe’s Bible and the well known King James versions were two more: William Tyndale’s New Testament, of which an initial run of six thousand copies were made by a printer named Peter Schoeffer in Worms (a 1525 printing underway in Cologne was interrupted); and, another translation produced by Miles Coverdale, published in 1535–1536. Other versions of little consequence appeared on the market, but Tyndale’s New Testament written in fluid, accessible language was selling in England by April 1526.10 It was re-printed a second time already in 1526, then again in 1530, 1534, and 1552.11 Tyndale followed this with the Pentateuch (the five Books of Moses/Torah) in 1530. He was arrested in 1535 in Antwerp where he lived and worked in exile and burned at the stake in 1536, betrayed by Henry Phillips and condemned by Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII and others, for his efforts. Ironically, perhaps, (although nothing came of it), Anne Boleyn, a Protestant, had convinced Henry VIII to have a copy of the Bible placed in every church in England. The unproductive injunction Henry signed to this effect was renewed in 1547 by Edward VI when many Bibles were actually acquired by parish churches in order to give the public access to them. This policy was reversed by Queen Mary following Edward’s death, when the English bibles were removed and Latin ones substituted in their stead. Tyndale’s bible remained in use until the introduction of the Great Bible of 1539, the Geneva Bible of 1560, the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 and the Douay-Rheims Bible of 1582–1609. Most prefaces to the editions just enumerated, as well as the King James Version (KJV) of 1611, the modern Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3, p. 141. H. Hargreaves, ‘Wycliffite Versions’, in CHOB, vol. 2, p. 155; David Daniell, William Tyndale; a Biography, New Haven and London, 1994. 10 Printed in Worms by publisher, Peter Schoeffer. CHOB, p. 142. 11 Not without problems due to unauthorized interventions and printings, but a complete, revised and corrected edition was completed and printed by Tyndale in 1534. CHOB vol. 3, pp. 142–143. Unless otherwise specified, all references to the CHOB are to vol. 3. 8 9

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Revised Standard Version(s) (NRSV) and the English Standard Version will acknowledge their debt to Tyndale from whom they drew inspiration and built upon or borrowed what is generally also acknowledged to be extremely felicitious language. On the continent Luther’s translation of the New Testament, conceived in 1520, was published in 1522. Between 1522 and 1532 sections of the Old Testament were serially published and all but the Apocrypha were completed and delivered to the public by then end of 1532. (The balance was published by 1534). Before Luther’s Bible two other translations had appeared in Germany as early as 1350, with no fewer than forty editions in one form or another being printed between 1466–1518, the year of Luther’s Ninety-Nine theses. In the Swiss Confederation Huldrych Zwingli and his colleagues were also at work and in competition with Luther for the first German Bible. At its foundation the version being prepared in Zürich was based on Luther’s work, but it was those at Zürich who in the end published the first complete, collated version in German, albeit Swiss German, in 1533.12 (Luther’s complete Bible was published in 1534). Thus Scripture was not particularly widely read, except by students of Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, but was learned through ecclesiastical intermediaries, mystery or miracle plays. It was not just the everyman’s knowledge of the Bible that was lacking; bible reading throughout society, including the clerical population in monasteries and parish churches, was surprisingly uncommon — a state of affairs against which the Protestant rebelled. In Wycliffe’s time a priest might not even know the Ten Commandments, the Paternoster (Our Father), the Creed, or the Ave Maria (Hail Mary).13 One of the primary reasons this situation changed was the printing by the thousands of new translations of both the Old and New Testaments in vernacular tongues. In England this was accomplished illicitly until the reign of Edward VI, but the Scriptures were published and distributed nonetheless throughout the British Isles and on the Continent.14 It was not translated into any vernacular language until the earliest stirrings of the Reformation: a couple very early, partial vernacular translations

CHOB, pp. 105–7. Bobrick, pp. 48–51. 14 See any history of Wycliffe, Tyndale, or the Reformation in general for this history. 12 13

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were published in England before Wycliffe’s in 1388.15 As the Reformation gained momentum the demand for the right to read the Bible grew. More translations followed; complete editions in German, Italian, English, Swiss German, and Czech appeared on the market at what seems a dizzying pace, in: 1466,16 1488,17 1518,18 1522,19 1526,20 in Swiss German, 1530;21 in Italian 153222; German 1534 (complete edition),23 and in English again in

These were prepared in Old and Middle English by William of Shoreham and Richard Rolle. See Bobrick, Wide as the Waters, p. 51. 16 A Bible was printed in German in this year by Johann Mentelin at Strasbourg based on a translation made in c. 1350. See CHOB, p. 94. 17 The whole of the OT in Hebrew was produced at Soncino in Italy. CHOB, p. 49. 18 A German translation was produced by Sylvan Otmar at Augsburg only a few months after Luther had posted his theses. Otmar’s was based on the translation originating in 1350. There were thirteen editions of this Bible before Luther’s superceded it. 19 Luther’s New Testament was published in September of 1522 under the title Das Neue Testament Deutszch in an edition of 3000 copies. Neither the name of the translator, the printer (Mechior II Lotther) or the publisher (Lucas Cranach the Elder and Christian Döring) appeared on the publication. Luther worked as fast as he could to translate all parts of the Old Testament, but the complete Bible was not published until 1534. See CHOB, 94–95. 20 Six thousand copies of Willian Tyndale’s New Testament were printed in Worms by Peter Schoeffer. It was on sale in England by April, 1526. A second printing was made again in 1526, with further printings in 1530 and 1534. (CHOB, 142–43). 21 CHOB, p. 106. This represents the first printing of the complete Bible, including Old and New Testaments in one volume. Individual books in Swyzerdeutsch appeared before this date. 22 In 1532 an Italian translation of the complete Bible was issued in Venice. This work was reprinted six or seven times between 1532 and 1562, but the New Testament had been published already in 1530, and a still less accomplished translation already in 1504. CHOB, p. 110. 23 There was in fact a pre-Lutheran edition of the Bible and a number of other preLutheran portions of the Old and New Testaments as well as translations of the Psalms. The style of the 1517 edition of the bible was out of date and dense; Greenslade describes it as ‘dark and difficult’; Johann Mathesius, a colleague of Luther’s, found it ‘un-German’ by which I assume he meant, not vernacular. (CHOB, p. 104). During the autumn of 1534 the first complete Bible translated by Luther into German was published as a folio. (Parts of it had been printed already between 1522–24. It was issued by the Wittenberg booksellers, Moritz Goltze, Bartholomäus Vogel, and Christoph Schramm, in six parts in the order of Luther’s translation and printed by Hans Lufft. 1500 copies of this bible were printed in a revised, and splendidly produced form in 1540/41. (CHOB, p. 98). Many editions of various parts or single books were published in the cities of Erfurt, Augsburg, Strasbourg, and Nurnberg, and Basel (until 1527) in middle German ‘with an infusion of Low German’, making it comprehensible to a wide group of people. (CHOB, pp. 100–105). Further editions were made in 1536, 1541, 15

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161124 — to list a few editions only. Norman Sykes described the authority of the Bible in the context of Protestant society this way: [It was] no peculiarly insular phenomenon, nor was its use confined to devotional reading. It became the source of doctrine and of worship, no less than of piety and hymnody, the object of close and continuous study on the part of scholars as well as the vade-mecum of ordinary Christian laymen. Nor was its influence restricted to religious issues. It became the proof-text for systems of government and an ‘outline of knowledge for boys and girls and their parents’ (to adopt a modern phrase) in various fields of human interest, historical, geographical and cosmographical. At the outset stood its position as the supreme and sovereign standard of doctrine and belief in all churches which had thrown off the Roman obedience. And then he quotes the famous phrase of William Chillingworth: ‘THE BIBLE, I say, the BIBLE only, is the religion of Protestants.’25 (Original emphasis). As a boy Zwingli was taught Latin by his uncle, a dean at Wesen (Weesen), who had begun to groom him for an ecclesiastical career. At Wesen the primary texts studied by Zwingli were the Breviary, Missal, Vulgate, and the Lives of the Saints, after which he was prepared for university in Basel under the tutelage of another relative. Later, as a young scholar in Vienna and Basel, he continued his study of Latin and he owned a 1479 edition of the Vulgate. He began his study of Greek, possibly around 1513, in order to study the New Testament and patristic fathers. Subsequent to this, while parish priest in Einsiedeln, he also undertook the study of Hebrew. He owned a copy of Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica, and the Biblia Hebraica.26 It may be said without too much doubt, that he would have observed, as well as absorbed, the deep linkages under discussion in this chapter, initially from the Latin, but these must have been reinforced by his study of the 1545, and ten more between 1558–1607. Over sixty High and Low German editions averaging two thousand copies each were published between 1546–1600. (CHOB, p. 102.) 24 The King James Bible, known also as the ‘Authorised Version’. 25 William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants: a Safe Way to Salvation, Oxford, 1638 quoted in CHOB, p. 175. 26 Walter Köhler, Huldrych Zwingli’s Bibliothek in Neujahrsblatt zum Besten des Waisenhauses in Zürich, 143, Zürich, 1921.

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Greek (NT) and then Hebrew (OT) scripture to whose translation he also eventually contributed. It is appropriate, then, in addressing the reasons underlying across-theboard use of whitewash in reforming church interiors, to consider the ideas one finds in the Bible associated with whiteness, as well as the connections made about other colours which had, in turn, a set of relations to the colour white. The ideas about colours encountered in the Bible are of paramount import precisely because it was Scripture in which they are found, where typological significance is given to frequent use of colour names in specific roles, as with any other association (saints’ lives, biblical heroes and their attributes…). In the meanwhile it should not be forgotten that there were other religious and philosophical texts which were present and influential for the way in which they show the shape and nature of colour-thinking in operation in a setting contemporary with, or following, the Reformation. Some of these ideas have been explored in Chapter II. Equally important to acknowledge at the outset is that the King James, Tyndale and Wycliffe versions of the Bible quoted in this chapter are English translations of scripture from the Latin, Hebrew and Greek, and that the Bibles with which Zwingli and the other Magisterial Reformers grew up were neither the King James, nor the Tyndale or Wycliffe translations nor vernacular equivalents. Until such versions were created by Luther, Zwingli, and their colleagues as part of the Reformation movement they were no editions in their own vernacular forms. Nonetheless, the point I wish to make about colour-thinking in the Bible stands, perhaps less for ourselves in the contemporary world, but definitely for Zwingli’s world: specific symbolisms are attributable to the various colours cited in both the Old and New Testaments, including the achromatic colours, black and white. These symbolisms were transmitted to society at a fundamental level through the reading and study of the Bible in every language in which it was received. These symbolisms were normative, at a minimum for those who were literate, and play themselves out in a multitude of ways, both consciously and unconsciously, the whitewashing of church interiors being an instance of this. But before we embark on a consideration of the role of the whitewashed church within the Reformed communities, something should be said about the context of liturgical colour out of which Reformed colour symbolism emerged. To do so, we must consider the evolution of colour usage beginning with the Old Testament on which the earliest traditions were

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based. A polyglot table in Appendix I shows references to the colour white in the Old and New Testaments in the King James Bible, Lutheran Bible, Schweitzer-Deutsch (Zürich Bible), the Vulgate and Septuagint, to facilitate comparisons. Exodus 26:1–40 sets out the symbolic use of colours for the ancient Tabernacle God ordered the Israelites to build for Him: ten hangings of finely woven linen, including cherubim in gold and, in an unspecified way, the colours blue, purple and scarlet. A veil for the Holy of Holies (Ark of the Covenant) that was to be contained within the Tabernacle was also to be made of fine linen with coloured threads of blue, purple, scarlet and cherubim (Ex 26:31). Ex 28:2–43 gives instructions for making the sacred vestments to be worn by Aaron, Moses’ brother, and his sons who were about to assume the sacerdotal office. The colours of the holy garments for Aaron (High priest) are repeated three times in verses 6, 8 and 15. These were to be gold and blue, purple, scarlet (crimson), and fine linen (white) made, or embroidered, with ‘cunning’ skill.27 These five sacred colours appear to have been reserved for the high priest; for the ordinary priests no colour is clearly specified (Ex 28:40, 29:40, 39:41, 40:14). The decorations to the robe of the high-priest (pomegranate and gold bells) were to be embroidered in the five sacred colours. Super-added to this was the girdle of blue, purple, scarlet and white (Ex 28:40). The cloths of service were similarly decorated: ‘And of the blue, and purple, and scarlet, they made cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, and made holy garments for Aaron….’ (Ex 39:1). Much later following the death of King David, the building of Solomon’s Temple (given in 2 Chron. 3:10, 14) demonstrates that the same colours were used in the making and decorating of the Temple of Solomon as in the Tabernacle of Moses: And in the most holy house he made two cherubims of image-work, and overlaid them with gold …And he made the vail of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubims thereon (II Chron. 3:10, 14).

Notwithstanding that ‘fine linen’ or ‘white linen’ would very probably not have been the bright white that we know as a result of chemical bleaches, to my knowledge no one has ever challenged that the term, ‘fine linen’, was intended to signify the colour white. Fine linen was often the byssus linen which is naturally whiter than others. Josephus and Philo Judaeus suggest this also. 27

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At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple some of the singers were ‘arrayed in fine linen’ (white linen). (See Appendix 3). One might infer from this that the priests were also clothed in white. If this is so, then the pattern which was revealed to Moses during the forty days on the mountain (Ex 24:18, 34:28) was still observed in Solomon’s time; the colours gold, blue, purple, scarlet and white for textiles within the church and for vestments, and white for sacrificial garments. In her book, Colour in the Old Testament, Hebrew Bible historian Athalya Brenner defines the relationship between certain root words28 which she also refers to as ‘signs’, or ‘sound images’, relating to Biblical colour terms and the things to which they refer. She describes ‘visible colour factors’ in the non-linguistic world in the earliest stages of the development of preexilic Hebrew29 (Old Testament Hebrew) and middle Hebrew. She uses the technical term, lexeme, which includes the orthographic unit signifying a lexicographic unit, including various inflected forms. This is distinguished from a word. Due to the limited range of colour terms that existed in these very ancient times, the words for ‘white’ or ‘black’ necessarily referred to an array of values in a hue which included as referents ‘all light colours’ and ‘all dark colours’, respectively, developing out of the common-sense realities of day and night. Red included the ‘most highly saturated colours’,30 and ‘green’, a range of hue and values from ‘pale’ and ‘silvery’ to yellow-green.31 As the Hebrew language developed, new terminologies were introduced which refined and delimited older, pre-existing ones, but also articulated them more clearly. By the periods of pre-exilic and post-exilic Hebrew in the Old Testament (stages three and four in the archeologic study of language), the established primary colour vocabulary included terms equivalent to ‘white’, ‘red’, ‘black’, and two ‘younger’ colour terms, ‘yellow’ and, possibly, ‘green’, but not more.32 It is a limited palette with which the Bible was See Athalya Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament, Sheffield, 1982, pp. 26–27. Ibid., p. 56. 30 Ibid. 31 In this case mostly limited to vegetation, fresh or decaying. Colour Terms, p. 183. Brenner’s assessment of green — that in the case of green the colour terms used are mostly limited to vegetation ‘fresh or decaying’ — is born out in the NRSV, NEB, and KJ editions of the Bible. There are, at most, seven out of forty-four references to green, greenish, and greenness, that are ‘non-vegetative.’ 32 Brenner, p. 56. 28 29

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written; making it primary in a linguistic sense — white and black being introduced first as descriptors for night and day — as well as referential, for each of the colour terms also included non-chromatic properties associated with a particular colour.33 In this connection Brenner specifically mentions saturation and purity, but her examples also include the dazzle of pure white snow and the whiteness of milk (a different kind of white than snow, and lacking dazzle), examples of which will be discussed more fully below. It is significant that the earliest terms for white and black originally carried the signification of any ‘light’ or ‘dark’ thing; the red hue, any saturated colour, and that, furthermore, these terms included the non-chromatic attributes which often accompanied these colours. This offers a partial explanation for the connection between light and dazzle which often accompanies descriptions of one or the other, or of the colour white, especially in the New Testament. By middle Hebrew, blue, purple and scarlet had come to signify prestige and power through their association with wealth and rarity in virtue of their scarcity value as dyestuffs. This is worth remembering also, because it provides a basis for the later rejection during the Reformation, of colour on two counts: first, because of its signification of ‘wealth’, and second, by its association with pride, which frequently accompanies the wealthy, and is an ingredient of sin. The wealthy, of course, can afford to procure rare and expensive goods and dyes out of a preoccupation with a show of status, power, pomp or conspicuous consumption, any of which may be characterised as vanity.34 Black, the opposite of white, appeals to our intuitive logic as the colour most naturally situated in the colour scale to form a contrast to white. Black and white, good and evil, and light and dark (darkness and light), are binary Including ‘a wide range of chromatic values, but also other colour properties’ such as saturation, brilliance, lustre, and also light. Brenner, p. 74. 34 Because of its ultimate association with sin, consolidated in Eze 27–8; see also 1 Tim 6:17 (uncertain riches, vanity); Isa 14:12–21; Isa 3:16; Jer 48:29–30; Zeph 2:8–11; Ezek 16:49; Ps 73:3–12, but defined by Paul with inclusive detail in 2 Tim 3:2–5 (NRSV), it may not be hard to discern the connection between these expensive dyestuffs, pride in affluence (vanity), and sin. Paul includes on his list: ‘unclean deeds’: ‘fornication’, ‘theft’, ‘murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly’, but he adds to this list of vices, the characteristics of those who ‘oppose the truth’, among whom are, ‘lovers of money, [those] swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than God, holding to the outward form of Godliness, but denying its power.’ (2 Tim 3:2–5) (NRSV). 33

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constructions as commonplace as night and day. But in fact the colour black occurs with white in the Bible only a very few times.35 Lam 4:5 is significant because it is the only passage establishing an opposition of black and white in the Old Testament. In this latter example, both white and black, and purple and ashes are juxtaposed to one another in a series of similes to indicate the extent of Jerusalem’s desolation as a result of the sacking by the Babylonians. Purple, a notoriously expensive dye, is contrasted with ashes to indicate the fall of people of wealth from status, to one of desolation: Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were brought up in purple cling to ash heaps (Lam 4:5) It is a vivid image brought to bear: that of individuals clinging to ash heaps in ragged, soiled, purple garments, and it is created by the writer through reference to the colour of materials and the associations we make with them. The contrast of good living and devastation is reinforced by the colour opposition of the brightest of whites in contrast to black. purer than snow, whiter than milk, their faces are now, blacker than soot; … The fall of Princes from privilege (read, grace) runs parallel to purple and ash. We can see by example in this passage that, notwithstanding the primariness of the colours black and white in the lexicons of almost any language, where one might expect to find this contrast frequently, it occurs only rarely. References to light and darkness, by contrast, abound. And, it is clear from these that black, blackness and darkness are often used interchangeably, depending on translation, and that blackness is used to define the degree of darkness being described.36 In Esther 1:6 where it simply refers to the colour of marble and is not in opposition; in Mt 5:36 where it refers to the colour of hair turned white from black in an admonishment not to take the Lord’s name in vain; possibly in Lev 13:20 in connection with leprosy where hair is turned white, and black is implied, and in Lam 4:5 where white, whiter than milk, and purer than snow, is in direct contrast to black soot. 36 Appendix 2.1. 35

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It is the red-crimson-scarlet colour range that is contrasted with white as an analogue for a state of sin or guilt in contrast to its opposite, spiritual purity.37 And it is primarily in this relationship of contrast that the colour white symbolises God’s forgiveness which cleanses and brings about the purification process. Moreover, it is the hue comprising the red-scarletcrimson range which, in its saturation, and through its opulence, comes to signify the self-indulgence of sin, even standing alone, without the benefit of contrast. It is, furthermore, out of the colour of sin, that colour is removed to achieve a pure state of sinlessness. Perhaps the best known passage in the Bible contrasting colour is Isa: 1:16–18 (esp. Isa 1:18), in which sin is directly linked to scarlet and evil-doing directly to the stain of blood. The soul who has received God’s forgiveness becomes the cleansed soul, who, in turn, becomes ‘white as snow’. To provide some context verses 1:11–1:18 are quoted here: [11] To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of the goats. [15] … yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. [16] Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; … [18]Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. In the Vulgate this passage reads: [11] quo mihi multitudinem victimarum vestrarum dicit Dominus plenus sum holocausta arietum et adipem pinguium et

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sanguinem vitulorum et agnorum et hircorum nolui [15] …et cum multiplicaveritis orationem non audiam manus vestrae sanguine plenae sunt [16] lavamini mundi estote auferte malum cogitationum vestrarum ab oculis meis quiescite agere perverse [18] et venite et arguite me dicit Dominus si fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum quasi nix dealbuntur, et si fuerint rubra quasi vermiculus velut lana erunt38 No colour is explicitly mentioned in connection with the Temple about which Isaiah speaks, but blood is mentioned twice (Isa.1:11 and Isa. 1:15): once in reference to sacrifice (1:11) and once, figuratively, in terms of social injustice imposed on others. (1:15). Both sin and the soul that requires cleansing are examples of circumstances of which Isaiah despairs and which require physical or spiritual cleansing. It is in virtue of the specific colour contrast made between the reds of crimson and scarlet, and whiteness that pollution is signified. (Isa. 1:16).39 And, as Brenner This opposition of ‘red’ and white is very different than what one would find in ancient Greek or Minoan culture. See John Gage, Colour and Culture, London, 1993, on scarlet. 38 With regard to translations of the red colour in this passage Brenner notes that in the ancient Hebrew, the terms here for red can only be specified as ‘a kind of red’. This suggests that the nuances of crimson and scarlet, psychologically salient (as Brenner calls them) ones for the English-speaker, were not necessarily embedded in the original text. Brenner also makes the point elsewhere, that not all meaning was carried by the lexeme either. See Brenner, p. 39. 39 It should be noted that the chromatic term ‘crimson’ is a late medieval colour word. It appears in English for the first time in ca. 1440 (Partonope 5976 A mantel ‘Of rede saten full good cremesyn’). In 1462 as a ‘crymysyn clothe’; but in 1517 as a colour: ‘My gowne of crymsen velvet,’ (‘crimson’, A. adj. 1; 1517 Test. Ebor. (Surtees) V. 86). Until then the colour term in use was ‘scarlet’. The OED (‘scarlet’, A.n.1.a) records the first appearance of ‘scarlet’ in the English language in 1250 (Death 10 in O.E. Misc. 168 Þe Þat sittet i-schrud wiÞ skarlet and wiÞ palle.’),1386 in Chaucer’s Prologue to the Wife of Bath, (561 et seq.: ‘Therfore I made my visitaciouns/To vigilies and to processiouns,/ To prechyng eek and to thise pilgrimages,/ To pleyes of myracles, and to mariages;/ And wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes.’) and in Wycliffe’s New Testament in 1420 ‘Wo! wo! thilke greet citee, that was clothid with bijs and purpur, and reed scarlet’. (Wyclif ’s N.T., Rev. Xviii.16). Its history is somewhat more complicated. As with a number of textiles medieval lawyers and manufacturers sought to ‘fix’ certain colour concepts by referring to the method of manufacture with which a colour was associated rather than the colour itself (which tended to be more elusive). These were often the most expensive dyestuffs such as ‘scarlet’. John Gage found that ‘scarlet’ first entered the German language in the eleventh century signifying a ‘fine shorn woolen cloth of great value’. (Gage, p. 80). A 37

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remarks, ‘the call for cleansing is juxtaposed to a crimson-white opposition’ in verse 1:18.40 The crimson/white opposition expressing this transition from a state of guilt to purity is here rendered in colour terms; the analogue is colour removal — the process of removing colour, by cleansing or purging, until one has removed all traces of pigment, that is, sin, and reached a state of ‘colouredlessness.’ In the twentieth century, Jonathan Westphal pinpoints this analogue as one of the unique properties of whiteness: the ability to remove colour. (See Chapter II). It is possible that Isaiah (Is. 1:18) was influential in establishing the connection to iniquity which the colour scarlet now seems to possess, but there is evidence that this colour was associated with wealth and the corruption of spirit that wealth can bring, already in 2 Samuel. In 2 Samuel 1:24 the association between scarlet and luxury is made explicit, but it is offered in connection with a lamentation over the death of the leader, Saul, whose power and wealth enabled him to dress the women of Israel in scarlet and gold — itself a signal and signifier of these two things, and yet whose might did not protect him from death: Weep for Saul, O daughters of Israel! Who clothed you in scarlet and rich embroideries, who spangled your dress with jewels of gold. (2 Sam 1:24). number of ‘scarlets’ are recorded in just such a context that in terms of hue range from black and blue and green to white (which Gage also takes to be a cognate of ‘undyed’) in the early literature. (Ibid.) This is because the natural complement to the most expensive fabric would be the most expensive dye. In the Middle Ages this was the bright red, ‘kermes’ or ‘coccus’. It was not until the thirteenth century that the most frequent reference to ‘scarlet’ came to mean scarlet fabric in the red colour. Gage mentions the thirteenth century French poet, Merlin, who used the term escrelin as an umbrella term for all bright reds. (Ibid.). By the fourteenth century, the term referred only to red itself. (Ibid.). The term used by Jerome in the Vulgate, coccus, referring to an intense red in the red group from which scarlet is translated into English in the King James and Wycliffe bibles, itself has a long history that can be linked to the purples which were so highly valued and ultimately reserved for emperors in the ancient world. (Gage, pp. 15, 16). Coccus illicus was, in the third century, legally distinguished from the dyestuff used to make the colour purple, referred to as purpura, which was derived from a species of shellfish, sacri murici (sacred whelks) or triti conchylii (crushed shellfish) in the fifteenth century BC in Asia Minor and Greece. Because of its value and to retain the distinction, in the third century this was legally distinguished from the red animal dyestuff coccum illicus (an insect) that would eventually yield the red group to which scarlet belongs. 40 Athalya Brenner, ‘Colour Terms in the Old Testament’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series, 21, Sheffield, 1982, p. 76.

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Both Brenner and John Gage have also remarked that there appears to be a transition in the developing usage of colour language throughout time, from references to things in the material world, to referrants in the moral sphere.41 We can see that shift taking place here; with the colour scarlet as with white, a concomitant shift of meaning of this term which by Revelation has assumed an explicit signification of its own. In Revelation where one would seek to suppress immodesty and sin, the colour scarlet itself is suppressed. The state of colourlessness, rendered here as white, should be remembered. Huldrych Zwingli relies on the image of colourlessless42 to convey the virtue of spiritual purity to his reader, as does Stephen Bateman writing on Protestant reforms in England in 1569 where he invokes a similar message already in the title of his book, ‘A Christal glasse of christian reformation wherein the godly image maye beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme.’43 As if the transparency of glass were not sufficient to convey the godliness of the Reformed Christian, Bateman’s is ‘christal’ clear — dazzlingly clear — glass. There are over seventy-five references to the colour white in the Old and New Testaments44 which fall into three approximate groups: references to things, primarily in the Old Testament, to robes worn on festive or ritual occasions in both the Old and New Testaments,45 and to scenes of heavenly glory or redemption, primarily in the New Testament. Beginning in Ecclesiastes 9:8: Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment… (KJV) omni tempore sint vestimenta tua candida et oleum de capite tuo non deficiat… (Vulgate) There is a shift in meaning hinting at a standard of care to be maintained beyond the rituals stipulated in Leviticus to protect against contamination or disease, and which begin to point toward a moral and spiritual dimension. 41 42

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Gage, Colour and Culture, p. 16; Brenner, Colour Terms, pp. 76, 168. ‘The Shepherd’, Huldrych Zwingli Writings, vol. II, H. Wayne Pipkin, trans., pp. 81–2,

Stephan Bateman, London, 1569. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (DBI), count ‘over fifty’. DBI, Downers Grove, IL. and Leicester, UK, p. 944. 45 There is a tendency in the Old Testament for references to white to be to things, so that, in addition to Leviticus, where references are to the gruesome sores of leprosy and to the cleansing of the diseased, the objects signified by white include, for example, references to goats (Gen 30:35), teeth and milk (Gen 49:12), snow (Dan 7:9), the rods of Jacob (Gen 30: 43 44

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The colour term used in the Vulgate for the whiteness of this garment is candida, one of two frequently used words for the colour white in Latin. Candida means ‘clear’ and ‘white’ and connotes whiteness accompanied by lustre or dazzle, in contrast to albus describing the dull whiteness of chalk. Brenner offers, again in Colour in the Old Testament, an etymological explanation of the development of colour terms in pre-exhilic to Middle Hebrew for the development of a connection between whiteness, dazzle, and transparency (the candida concept). The evidence of pre-exilic Hebrew is limited but the lexemes for white and black, scholars believe, denoted, the difference only between light and dark, (black and white) in colour terms with the addition of a lexeme for red. By the period of Middle Hebrew, however, the situation had significantly changed, in part due to influences from Persian, Akkadian, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic.46 The language expands providing an indicator of the close connection between concepts and areas of reference to: ‘white’, ‘bright’, ‘clear’, hueless’, ‘light’and ‘pale’, with a probable focus on snow and wool.47 The terms reflect the fundamental levels of perception and conceptualisation of whiteness and luminance at the ‘moment’ written symbols for these phenomena enter the language.48 When the word ‘candid’ itself entered the English language near the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century it was literally a cognate of whiteness. The OED cites an instance from 1630 in Jackson (Creed VIII, xxvi. Wks. VIII 105) which demonstrates this: ‘Sending Him back to Pilate in a white or candid robe.’; Warburton in 1738, refers to a ‘candid appearance which does result from the Mixture of all Kinds of Colours’ providing here an example of both the close conceptual relationship between candidness and whiteness, but also, incidentally, referring to a popular, but misguided post-Newtonian understanding of the composition of the colour white.49 In both examples whiteness and candidness are co-extensive. But, to return to our discussion of instances of whiteness in the Old Testament, Daniel writes (11:35): [35] And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: 37), manna (Ex 16:31), wool (Ezek 27:18), the stripped branches of the trees (Joel 1:7), ripe grain (Jn 4:35 RSV) and hair (Mt 5:36), (Judg 5:10) (Esther 1:6), (Eccles 9:8). 46 Brenner, p. 176. 47 Brenner, p. 180. 48 Brenner, pp. 56–79, esp. 56–57, 168, 174, 177–178, 180–181. 49 Cited in OED: Div. Legat, I.54.

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because it is yet for a time appointed. (KJV) [35] et de eruditis ruent ut conflentur et eligantur et dealbentur usque ad tempus praefinitum quia adhuc aliud tempus erit (Vulgate) In biblical Hebrew the word variously translated as ‘cleansed’ (NRSV), ‘made spotless’ (NIV), or ‘to make pure’ (NASB, ESV), or white as in the above King James passage is, in fact, the lexeme whose area of reference includes ‘bright’, ‘clear’, ‘hueless’, ‘light’, ‘pale’, and ‘white’.50 Although translated as cleansed, the NRSV footnotes this same Hebrew term in the Old Testament as the declined verbal term for ‘to make white’ (lit., ‘made them white’),51 testifying to and reinforcing, no less in translation than in the original Hebrew, the deep connection between the idea of huelessness, ethical reformation and the ‘whitening’ of the soul, both as an emblem of the process of purification or of having been purified. The concept of whitening as ethical reformation which appeared in the Hebrew Bible would have been studied by Zwingli in the original, as it would have been also in the Vulgate and Lutheran translations at the basis of much of the Zürich Bible. William Tyndale did not translate Daniel so his rendition of the passage cannot be compared here. But the same nuance of whitening was retained subsequently in the King James Version, another early modern translation, although dazzle has been added to the whiteness. In still more recent translations the nuance is preserved: Some of these leaders will themselves fall victims for a time so that they may be tested, refined, and made shining white. Yet there will still be an end…52 (Daniel 11:35, NEB) Some of the wise shall fall, so that they may be refined, purified, and cleansed, until the time of the end, for there is still an interval until the time appointed. (NRSV) / Et de eruditis ruent, ut conflentur, et eligantur, et dealbentur usque ad tempus præfinitum: quia adhuc aliud tempus erit. (Vulgate). Brenner, pp. 26–27, 180. NRSV, Dan 11:34(d), p. 1146. 52 Another very similar reference, using similar language, appears in Dan 12:10: ‘Many shall be purified, cleansed and refined, but the wicked shall continue to act wickedly.’ (NRSV); ‘Many shall purify themselves and be refined, making themselves shining white, but the wicked shall continue in wickedness and none of them shall understand; only the wise leaders shall understand.’ (NEB). 50 51

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Athalya Brenner notes a ‘transferred sense’ of the biblical Hebrew term, whose terms of reference are listed above, denoting ‘purification’, moral ‘purity’, and ‘cleanliness’, each of these appearing also in Hiphcil, Isa 1:18, Ps. 51:9 in verb form, and therefore indicating a process. These developments Brenner takes as the link to a transferred sense of spiritual and moral purity. Brenner also describes a polysemic development leading to a signification of ‘to whiten’, or ‘bleach’ (cloth), as well as to ‘clean’, ‘polish’, or ‘smelt’ (heat), which appears only in Daniel, but is there nonetheless.53 The King James Version juxtaposes the concept of moral cleansing directly next to the concept of whitening as the purification process. The NEB is less strong. The passage, ‘to purge and to make them white’ in the Vulgate is translated by Jerome this way: ‘ut…et eligantur, et dealbantur,…’/‘so that they shall be chosen and made white.’ The Septuagint uses the language: καὶ

ἐκ τῶν συνιέντων διανοηθήσονται εἰς τὸ καθαρίσαι ἑαυτοὺς καὶ εἰς τὸ ἐκλεγῆναι καὶ εἰς τὸ καθαρισθῆναι ἕως καιροῦ συντελείας ἔτι γὰρ καιρὸς εἰς ὥρας. They are all traceable back to the Hebrew, discussed above.

In Psalms 51: 6–10 the connection between moral purification and ethical reformation is explicit. David prays for moral renewal. He laments: [6] Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. (KJV)/Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci; ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris. (Vulgate) [7] Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow./ Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor. [8] Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice./ Auditui meo dabis gaudium et lætitiam, et exsultabunt ossa humiliata. [9] Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities./ Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis, et omnes iniquitates meas dele.

Brenner, Colour Terms, p. 180. Apart from Daniel 11: 35 and Ps 51:9 these terms are otherwise generally employed in straightforward ways, in reference to animal fleece, for example: wood bark (‘bleached wood’); teeth, hair, clothes (‘white garment’); eyes (‘white of the eye’); whitewash (of the temple) and diseased skin (leprosy). According to Brenner there is also an Aramaic cognate which entered the language, underwent a shift, and became ‘to clarify’, ‘to explain’, suggesting enlightenment and elucidation, which concept is more often used in connection with the concept of light. 53

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[10] Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me./ Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis. Again Jerome uses the term dealbantor here, from the verb: dealbare, meaning to whiten. Thus, David is asking his leader to wash him and in so doing to whiten him at the same time. The two concepts are congruent. The key passage involving colour terms in Ps. 51:7 in the NRSV is translated without any variation at all. Psalm 51 is a prayer for deliverance from sin. In order to receive wisdom, the supplicant asks to be purged. It is a spiritual as well as metaphorical cleansing referred to here, not the statutory cleansings of Leviticus, but ritual nonetheless, as indicated by the presence of the aromatic plant, hyssop, thought to have magical powers and used in cultic rituals for this reason.54 This is an important passage to note for the connection between the concept of spiritual cleansing and the state of being, metaphorically, whiter than snow. Only when washed by the spirit of God will the supplicant be as pure as snow is white and ready to receive the ‘right’ spirit. In this one passage several important concepts are brought together that form a nexus of thought demonstrative of the kind of thinking I wish to demonstrate in this chapter; that is, the connections between concepts of inward truth, wisdom and light, purging/cleansing/washing, and purity/whiteness. These phenomena, one might also say, form the criterial conditions of right worship, because it is only when all these things come together that one is ready to worship in ‘right spirit.’55 Turning to the New Testament, we read in Matthew 17:2–5 that Jesus, who has taken Peter and James and his brother, John, up a high mountain, is transfigured before them. In the King James Bible, we read: 2] And [He] was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.56/ et transfiguratus See NRSV, Ex: 12:22 n.; Lev 14:51. The presence of hyssop here indicates that this was an event with at least some cultic value. 55 See Chapter VI, ‘Zwingli and the Reformed Aesthetic’ in which true and false religion is discussed and Huldrych Zwingli, ‘Short Christian Instruction’ in H. Wayne Pipkin, trans., Huldrych Zwingli Writings, In Search of True Religion, vol. II, Alison Park, 1984, pp. 43–76. Cf. also ‘The Shepherd’, in Pipkin, pp. 77–126. 56 This passage in the King James Bible tracks William Tyndale’s translation in all essential ways, e.g.: 54

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est ante eos. Et resplenduit facies ejus sicut sol: vestimenta autem ejus facta sunt alba sicut nix. [3] And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him./Et ecce apparuerunt illis Moyses et Elias cum eo loquentes. [4] Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias./Respondens autem Petrus, dixit ad Jesum: Domine, bonum est nos hic esse: si vis, faciamus tria tabernacula, tibi unum, Moysi unum, et Eliæ unum. [5] While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him./Adhuc eo loquente, ecce nubes lucida obumbravit eos. Et ecce vox de nube, dicens: Hic est Filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi bene complacui: ipsum audite. In the Vulgate verse 2 Matthew’s description of the Transfiguration uses the verb resplendere/to shine back light, glitter, to gleam, and albus for white. In Latin there are two words for the colour white, possibly three; one of these is the adjective candidus, used in a previous example, and the other is, ‘alba’, used here in Matthew. Alba is the colour white without lustre, like chalk; candidus means clear and white, or shining and white — a glistening or dazzling white, like the whiteness of pure quartz or of the sun. Clear in connexion with white in this context suggests a whiteness without any intervening atmospheric interference or discolouration. A third term used for whiteness, lampron, is a non-colour colour term often translated as white, meaning ‘brilliant’ or ‘bright’.57 Paintings, ancient and modern and across different media predominantly used the colour white, or a yellow, to convey this event (see Figs. 5.1, 5.3). In the English language King James version of the Bible the metaphor of ‘white light’ is used to convey the brilliant, blinding light being thrown off by the garments of the transfigured Christ. Here, it is the whiteness of the light which is used to express the concept of dazzle. Such a light, white-light, can be emitted only by the sun or something as, or more powerful than the sun, such as uncreated light, and, among the colours, may be represented [2] and was transfygured before them: and his face did shyne as the sunne and his clothes were as whyte as the light. [3] And beholde ther appered vnto the Moses and Helyas talkinge with him. 57 Gage, pp. 12, 60. Origen used this term for white, and he also used leukon. According to Gage Origen’s translator used candidus.

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only by white or, perhaps, yellow. We have been told God himself is the ‘Father of lights’ (Jas 1:17) and ‘the King of kings and Lord of lords who dwells in unapproachable light’ (I Tim. 6: 15–16); that God covers himself with light ‘as with a garment’ (Ps. 104:2), that ‘His brightness is like a light’ (Hab. 3:4); and that the light dwells with him (Dan. 2:22), so that it can be said that God is the light (and also salvation).58 The NRSV of Matthew 17:2 reads: ‘his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.’ The NEB follows King James very closely:59 and in their presence, Jesus was transfigured; his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as the light. Each of the above passages include descriptions of the phenomenon of divine light given off by Jesus’ robes during the Transfiguration. In the NRSV version of this passage the analogy is not literally to light itself, but to the dazzle emitted by the whiteness of Jesus’ robes. Light is implied by the combination of terms, white and dazzling, where white is used to suggest the kind or degree of dazzle intended. The light emitted by Jesus’ robes, or by Jesus’ being, through his robes is a supernatural brilliance. Any representation of this divine light must be consistent with ‘the wider cognitive system of the time’, and within this context, how the light who is Jesus Christ, the light of the world, the Son of God, might have been depicted. Testimony to the effort to depict in words this particular form of light is the recurrence of the array of terms — white-light/dazzle/shining/glistening/crystalline/radiant — in combined and recombined forms, to indicate the luminosity of Jesus. The white light of the Transfiguration was dazzlingly bright and had as its source the uncreated light of the Lord. In the hierarchy of things, it was brighter, and whiter, than any created thing or than anything which could be described.60 This is also true in the Transfiguration described in Mark 9:2–3, where Jesus’ clothes are dazzling white, but with a difference: And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; Elizabeth R. Achtemeier, ‘Jesus Christ, the Light of the World: A Biblical Understanding of Light and Darkness’, Interpretation 17, no. 4 O [sic],1963, pp. 439–449. 59 The NEB, Oxford and Cambridge, 1972 and 1995. 60 Cf. A. Hermann, ‘Farbe’ according to Hermann in the New Testament, ‘white is the colour of light, holiness, and the end of the world’, pp. 413, 414. 58

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as no fuller on earth can white them (KJ) (And his raiment became a dazzling white such as no one on earth could bleach them) (NRSV) This is the first instance of bleach being introduced to give measure to the dazzling whiteness of Jesus’ clothes. The concept of bleaching is ancient, to be sure; the word in English enters our language circa 1200, at which point it is synonymous with candidness, as candid/candida is with whiteness.61 The process reflected in the King James version of this passage, is to convey an unnatural brightness in fabric, exceeded in this case by dazzle. The King James Bible version of this passage retains the reference to the ancient bleaching method of fuller’s earth which gives measure to the contrast:62 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; as no fuller on earth can white them (KJV) Fuller’s earth is a clayish earthy substance used as a filtering (fulling) medium and as a catalyst in processing (cleaning or felting) wool.63 This process would not have achieved anything ‘exceedingly white as snow’, but it represents the state-of-the-art whitening method of the time. As a filtering medium, Fuller’s earth is a hydrous silicate of alumina; it would have left wools and other fabrics slightly off-white at best — certainly not a modern white — but cleansed of impurities such as natural oils to the extent technologically possible. Inadequate to achieve the whiteness to which we are now accustomed, it could absorb impurities or colouring from fats, greases, or oils. Thus, a characterisation of wool as exceeding the shining white of snow would be intended to convey, not only the brightest possible white (not justlight colour) achievable by this method, but much more. The comparison nonetheless reaches for a concept of whiteness untouched by any admixture, OED: ca. 1200 Trin. Coll. Hom. 57 ‘SumeÞ bere clene cloÞ to watere to blechen’; ca. 1225 Ancr. R. 324, ‘Wule a weob beon, et one cherre, mid one watere wel ibleched’; ca. 1440 Promp. Parv. 39, ‘Blechen clothe’ [v.r. blekyn], candido. 62 Webster’s Dictionary, Springfield, Mass., (1969), p. 337; Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 5, Chicago and London, 1997, p. 46; McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science, S. P. Parker, ed., New York and Washington,. D.C., 1944, p. 819. 63 In An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed., Rev. Walter Skeat, ed., p. 222, notes that ‘to full’ entered the English language through the French with both meanings, to felt and to clean, but that in low Latin the term signified, ‘to clean’ or ‘to bleach’, more than felting. Both processes involved pounding, beating or trampling. 61

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and incomparable to any other known form of naturally occurring whiteness. In the King James version of Mark 9:2–3 the concept of shininess is again introduced to convey the glare of snow and dazzle. Snow is a measure of absolute whiteness, and the glare of the brightest fresh snow is conveyed by ‘shining’; because of the presence of reflection, ‘shining white’ may be interpreted as dazzling white. As the most common description of purest and brightest conceivable white, there are numerous references in the Old and New Testaments to white that is as ‘white as snow’. In the New Testament in Matthew’s account of the Resurrection (Mt. 28:3), the angel who comes down from heaven to open Jesus’ tomb is wearing clothing described, again, ‘as white as snow’, and whose overall appearance is likened to lightening: [2] And suddenly there was a great earthquake an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. [3] His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; (KJV) / erat autem aspectus eius sicut fulgur et vestimentum eius sicut nix.64 (Vulgate) [4] For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. (Fig. 5.1) The angel, God’s representative, is dressed in dazzling, transcendental whiteness forming the center of a lightening-bright apparition; and, as if this were not enough to convey the event, it is accompanied by sound effects. Countless examples of mosaics, frescoes, paintings and prints, depict this moment of the Resurrection (Figs 2.3, 2.15, 5.5–5.8). And, finally, in Mark (16:5), the young man, (described as an angel in Matt. 28:5, above), who meets Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the tomb of the resurrected Christ, is dressed in white. [5] And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. (KJV) / et introeuntes in monumento viderunt iuvenem sedentem in dextris coopertum stola candida et obstipuerunt (Vulgate). 64 The Douay-Rheims translation follows Jerome. King James elaborates on snow by adding ‘as white as’ which is redundant: ‘And his countenance was as lightning and his raiment as snow.’

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5.1. Dalmatic of Charlemagne. The Transfiguration, back of garment, 14th Century. Museum of the Treasury, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican State. Photo Credit. Scala / ©Art Resource, NY.

5.2. Dalmatic of Charlemagne. Christ in Heaven Surrounded by the Church Triumphant, front of garment. 14th Century. Museum of the Treasury, St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican State. Photo Credit. Scala / ©Art Resource, NY.

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5.3. Fra Angelico, 1387–1455. The Transfiguration. ca. 1440–1445. Fresco. Museo di S. Marco, Florence, Italy. Photo Credit. Scala /©Art Resource, NY.

5.4. Detail from the Procession of the Martyr Saints. Mosaic. Byzantine, 6th century C.E. San Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. Photo Credit. Cameraphoto Arte, Venice. ©Art Resource, NY.

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5.5. Benjamin West, P. R. A., 1738-1820. The Ascension, ca. 1801. Berger Collection, Denver, Colorado.

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5.6. Resurrected woman. Detail of a window from the church of St. Vivien, Rouen. 15th century grisaille glass, 30 x 24 cm. Musée national du Moyen Age – Thermes de Cluny, Paris, France. Photo Credit. Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.

5.7. David Edwin, 1794–1869, after Rembrandt Peale. The Apotheosis of Washington. Stipple Engraving, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, U.S.A. / Art Resource, NY.

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5.8. Cornelis Cornelisz von Haarlem, 1562–1538, The Conversion of Saul, © National Gallery, Prague.

5.9. Francis Quarles. Emblemes and Hieroglyphes 1639, Emblem V, 14. ‘Open heaven, God as Amor Divinus’. In the reduced medium of a block print, heaven and heavenly light is depicted as unmitigated white light.

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5.10. Phillip de Loutherbourg. The Supper at Emmaus, 1797. Birmingham Art Gallery.

5.11. A diagram of the Planes of Nature. From. Charles W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible. 1902.

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In John’s account of the Resurrection (John 20:12), it is two angels, also dressed in white, who greet Mary Magdelene. In this version of the Resurrection the appearance of the angels is made to Mary Magdelene alone. Paralleling Zechariah, in Paul’s vision containing the allegory of the four horseman (Rev 6:2 ff.), four horses with riders are sent to accomplish God’s purpose. Here, the colours of the horses are distributed similarly to Zechariah (Zec 6:1–9)]: there is a white, red, black, and pale-green (NRSV), or silver (KJ), horse. The red horse is allowed to ‘take peace from the earth’, in which role he symbolises war and bloodshed65 (Rev 6:4); the black horse who, we are told, symbolises famine, holds a pair of scales on which to determine who will receive food (wheat) and who not (Rev 6:5); the pale-green horse, along with its rider, symbolises death (Rev 6:8). But it is the rider of the first horse to appear, the white horse, whom the author seems excited to have seen, and ‘who conquers and whom none can resist’:66 [1]…I heard one of the four living creatures call out, as with a voice of thunder, ‘Come!’ [2] I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow;a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. (Rev 6:1–2) (NRSV) It is generally accepted that John’s letter to Sardis is a warning about death. Sardis, an ancient city of glory and prodigious military strength, had become careless and unwatchful. (Is Paul then warning of the potential victory of the Parthian king?) In Rev. 6:10–11, after the opening of the Fifth Seal, the martyrs of the Word, those who had died in the battle for the spread of the Word of the Lord, are each given a white robe to wear while they wait for the Lord to avenge their deaths. Each martyr gets his for participation in the event, notwithstanding that victory is not yet complete; there is still more work to do, more martyrs to make. …they cried out with a loud voice, ‘Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the Cf. NRSV, Rev. 6:1–17 (4) n. Harvey writes that the white horse and the crown (or victor’s garland) symbolised the victory of the Parthian forces against Rome in an important battle which took place in CE 62 (see A. E. Harvey, The NEB Companion to the New Testament, Cambridge, 1970 and 1979, p. 833). W. M. Ramsey insists that white does not signify victory per se (The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia and Their Place in the Plan of the Apocalyse, London, 1904). 66 NRSV, Rev. 6.1–6.17 (2) n. 65

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inhabitants of the earth?’ They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow servants and of their brothers and sisters…(Rev 6:10– 11, NRSV). Harvey indirectly refers to the peculiar tenor of this passage when he writes, ‘Meanwhile, the martyrs could already enjoy their rightful place in heaven: they were given their white robes of purity, victory and service’,67 [emphasis mine]. He equates ‘their rightful place’ with receipt of ‘their white robes’, and draws our attention to the sense which is conveyed that these white robes are a ‘participants’ award’. While preceding Revelations chronologically, it is noteworthy that this same register is struck in 2 Chron 18:27. (Fig. 5.2). In the Revelation of John (Rev 19:11–13) which church tradition says was received while John was in exile on the island of Patmos, a rider on a white horse also comes.68 We are told, in this self-interpreting passage, that this rider is Truth and Faithfulness.69 He is clothed in a robe dipped in the blood of the Lord, and he goes by the name of The Word. The reference in Rev 6:2 to the conquering power that none can resist, becomes explicitly transferred in this subsequent passage (Rev 19:11–14) to Christ, who brings the Word of God to people on earth. Thus, it can be said, that it is Christ who appears in the following vision mounted on a white horse, who will conquer all and whom none can resist: [11] And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war./ et vidi caelum apertum et ecce equus albus et qui sedebat super eum vocabatur Fidelis et Verax vocatur et iustitia iudicat et pugnat. [12] His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself./ oculi autem eius sicut flamma ignis et in capite eius diademata multa habens nomen scriptum quod nemo novit nisi ipse. [13] And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God/ et vestitus erat vestem aspersam Harvey, p. 806. According to Harvey, the image of a white horse and rider in this chapter (19) is a new one. Harvey, p. 833. 69 Rev 19:11. 67 68

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sanguine et vocatur nomen eius Verbum Dei. [14] And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean./ et exercitus qui sunt in caelo sequebantur eum in equis albis vestiti byssinum album mundum. Although, as God, one cannot know his name, he is called the Word of God as the revealer of God. He rides a white horse like his army. One would be hard pressed to argue that this white steed was not intended to represent the Truth and Faithfulness of its rider in addition to its meaning as a signal of the victory of the Word over nations; in other words, His sovereignty.71 John makes this symbolism still more explicit in a following passage where he rejoices in the wedding of the Lamb to the Bride of God, the Church. For their marriage, he tells us, the Bride has been granted to be clothed with ‘…fine linen, bright and pure’ (Rev 19:8) and, we are told by Paul, this is because fine linen ‘is the righteous deeds of the saints’, variously interpreted as God’s people. (Rev 19:8).

White robes and garments The imagery of garments and clothing is centrally placed in the Bible. As a metaphor, and a reality, the symbolism of ‘putting on’, ‘taking off’ or the wearing of a particular garment, reaches into all spheres of existence: physical, moral, economic, social, and spiritual.72 Garments worn in everyday existence, as well as by God, are described. Although the colour of Jesus’ garments is very seldom disclosed, the New Testament is explicit about the A. E. Harvey, The NEB Companion to the New Testament, Cambridge, 1970 and 1979, Rev 19:12–15 n., p. 833. The diadem, which is a jeweled band across the brow was, according to Harvey, a mark of an oriental king (as distinct from the wreath worn by the Roman emperor); two diadems were sometimes worn to signify ruling over two kingdoms; ‘many diadems’ over the universe. 71 Certainly the symbolism is borrowed by his armies, the armies of heaven who, as his representatives and wearing white (either literally in the vision, or metaphorically as a symbol of the spiritual state of their souls), warrior for him and the Word. Apart from the diadems on his head, in this passage the victory of the Lord’s sovereignty, that of the Word over people, is everywhere indicated by white attributes — white steeds and white linen. These things are associated with the victory of the Word, and with Truth and Faithfulness. 72 Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p. 317,; Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Theodor Klauser; F. J. Dolger, ed., Stuttgart, 1950, p. 381. 70

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transcendent colour of the garments worn by God and His representatives, in the form of angels, or of the faithful. Clothing protects, displays, conceals, and represents attributes or issues often larger than the matter at hand. There are garments of festivity for celebrations, usually ‘fine and white’ (Ecc 9:8; Is 52:1); dressing up for one’s love, usually one’s ‘best’ (Ruth 3:3; Song 4:11); for weddings (Ps 45:13–14; Mt 22:11–12)73; in mourning ( 2 Sam 14:2; sackcloth as a rough linen for mourning (Jer 6:26; 49:3; Isa 15:3; 22:12–Jerome Dictionary p.234) and desolation (prison clothes 2 Kings 25:29; Jer 52:33), widow’s clothes (Gen 38:14, 19); or in sackcloth as a symbol of fallen status or repentance (Gen 37:34, Esther 4:1; Ps 69:11, Is 37:1). There is clothing of deceit: for example, false prophets in sheep’s clothing’ (Mt 7:15);74 Jacob wearing Esau’s clothing to trick his blind father (Ge 27:15–27:27) and the deceitful men of Gibeon (Jos 9:3–9:15) who secure a treaty with Israel under false pretenses (by wearing worn-out clothing) is an example of this. In the Story of Joseph clothing imagery signals a transition at every stage of its unfolding.75 Taken from the Bible and reflecting the status of the white robe as a symbol of holiness and truth (trustworthiness) are white robes of deceit that one also finds in Hildegard von Bingen. In a subsistence economy as existed during the time of writing both the Old and New Testaments, clothing had a high value due entirely to its scarcity and, as such, was an indicator of wealth. Equally, as the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery has indicated, in the context of such an economy the significance of clothing as a staple of life was easily transferred to an image of basic human need. By extension, it also functioned as a symbol of God’s provision for us76 in the form of a garment of faith.77 In the story of the High Priest and His Heavenly court,78 the angel of God is speaking to Zechariah, in his fourth vision. The angel shows to ‘How camest thou in…not having a wedding garment?…Then said the King to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away.’ 74 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing…’ 75 Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p. 320. 76 Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p. 318. 77 There are many such references in Revelation (see esp. Rev 3:4–5; 4:4; 6:1–2; 7:9; 15:6; 19:13–14. Images of clothing also appear as a symbol for one’s status in life, ranging from complete destitution (Job 24:7, 10 NRSV), to fantastic wealth (1 Kings 10:5; 2 Chron 9:4; Zech 14:14), and as a reflection of one’s spiritual status vis-à-vis the Lord as our Judge. 78 Peake’s, p. 647. 73

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Zechariah the high priest, Joshua, who is standing with the angel, along with Satan, who is on the angel’s right. (Zech 3:4) The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’ At which command, Joshua is clothed in clean garments. To Zechariah the angel said, ‘See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel.’79 The first reference to white robes occurs in 2 Chronicles 5:12. Solomon has completed the temple in Jerusalem — the house of the Lord — that God has asked him to build, and it is time to assemble the elders, tribal leaders, patriarchs of ancestral homes, priests, prophets and holy singers, in celebration. 2 Chron 5:12 is an account of this moment of assembly. The priest-singers have just come out of the newly consecrated temple, having ‘sanctified’ themselves, and are wearing ‘white linen’:80 Now when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves), …all the levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and their kinsmen, arrayed in white linen, with cymbols, harps, and lyres… (KJ) In both the NEB and NRSV versions of this passage, white linen has been translated as ‘fine linen’, suggesting a close, if not identical, meaning — in the case of, white and fine — of the term from which it was translated81 such that it might be translated (into other languages) either way while reinforcing the synonymity in the thinking of those doing the translating as well as of those reading these texts. If this is true, then either term, white or fine, would have parity of value in social terms, which it appears to do based 79 Filthy clothes represent the sin of both priest and people. The ‘clean turban’ (Ex 28.4) and apparel (Lev 8.1–9) symbolise ritual purity. 80 ‘The robes of the priests were white.’ A. Hermann, ‘Farbe’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, 358–447, esp. col. 377. Untypically, Hermann situates his discussion of the colour white in the context of the invisibility of God. He writes, ‘If people can visually take in God at all because of the very bright light around him, then he appears to people in a snow white robe and with woolly white hair…[lit. ‘Wenn Gott wegen der Lichtüberblendung seiner Nähe überhaupt wahrgenommen werden kann, erscheint er dem Menschen in schneeweißem Gewand u. mit wollweißem Haar (Dan. 7, 9f; Henoch 15,20; vgl Iust dial 31,2’]. Whiteness was also associated with purity. Ringgren, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Theologisches Worterbuch zum Alten Testament), eds. G. Johannes Butterweck and Helmer Ringgren, trans. J. T. Willis, Grand Rapids, 1974, vol VII, p. 439 81 Biblia Hebraica (Torah, Nevi’im u-Khetuvium), ed. R. Kittel, Stuttgart, 1937 and 1968. The Biblia Hebraica is a reproduction of the oldest extant Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament dating to 1008, and relied upon by scholars.

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on the variations in translation — making the refined things afforded by the wealthy, the corollary of refinement, excellence, and white things, equal in value as indicators of a special status. Fine linens, however, do not necessarily carry the additional meaning of purified or cleansed. This special occasion is not only a festive occasion82 at which the upper classes can show off their ‘finest’ threads. As the occasion of the consecration of the first Temple of the Lord, built by Solomon according to the Lord’s direction, it is an event of momentous importance, and a religious event. It is, therefore, not without religio-symbolic, as opposed to celebratory significance, that the priests, levitical singers and their kin, are all dressed in white. Moreover, these are people who hold a special place in society, but it is not only social standing that makes their places special. Theirs is standing with liturgical and sacred implications, so that it might be said that the signification of the white robes in this instance has been broadened here to include more than the standard of excellence signified by rare things (whiteness or fineness); that is, it has been broadened to include white robes as a sign of the rarity and importance of the event — which is a religious event — and of the excellence that should be made manifest in every action taken in relation and deference to it. Thus, white (or fine) robes in the Song of Deborah were worn by those of elevated status to set oneself apart from ‘those who walk on foot’; in 2 Chronicles they (white robes) are worn in honour of a sacred, as well as celebratory, occasion. There is here a broadening and transference of reference. Representatives of God — angels, priests, apostles, in addition to the wealthy riding on white donkeys and sitting on rich carpets — now wear white robes as a symbol not only of their special standing within the community, but also as sign of a ritual, or spiritual, connection to the consecration of the new temple, or to the House of the Lord itself. This extension of meaning of white robes to ritual, spiritual dimensions, is evident in Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes 9:7–8 the writer admonishes: [7] Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. [8] Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. … — (Ecc 9:7–8 NRSV).83 The editors of the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery share this view. Verse 8 is essentially identical in KJ, NSV, and NRSV versions, the only difference being that ‘thy’ is replaced with ‘your’. 82 83

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There is much ambiguity about the meaning of Ecclesiastes as a whole, although its message, it is generally agreed, points to the futility of all effort.84Anointing the head with oil, and keeping the garments white as an act of reverence for God is consistent with this interpretation, and although framed in the context of a message of despair — to seize the day for it is all we have — the presence of objective ritual, a central feature of which is the white garment, is important to observe, in addition to the suggestion of spiritual meaning, in the author’s admonishments. In the only apocalyptic book of Hebrew Scriptures, Daniel has four dream visions. The vision in Daniel 7:9 is an allegory of the passing of kingdoms of which there are four, making way for the divine judgment of God who comes in the form of the Ancient One. Four winds ‘introduce’ four beasts representing the Kingdoms, and as Daniel is watching them, thrones are set in place. The Ancient One appears and takes his place on one of the many thrones: his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool…(NRSV)85 The Ancient One represents God,86 who appears in white, so that in the Old Testament we find representations of God, and of His power, clothed in white. On this passage A. Hermann is straightforward, but it is clear that for him (Hermann) ‘Jahwe is light and therefore white.’ White is obviously the representative of or synonymous with white. 87 In the context of God, the Ancient One, the attempt to depict Him with snow-white hair and in snowwhite robes may be an attempt to portray Him as light itself, as Hermann suggests or, alternatively, rendered in white to indicate the light emitted from him, or both. Kraft held this to be so, so that the rendering of God’s clothes and hair as white was an attempt to portray the supra-terrestrial light emitted by Him. (Cf. Rev 20:11).88 The Interpreter’s Bible, New York and Nashville, 1956, p. 21. The NEB translates ‘purest’ as ‘cleanest’ presumably intending to convey, ‘whitest’: ‘his robe was white as snow and the hair of his head like cleanest wool.’ Clean, presumably washed, wool is substituted in the NRSV for pure wool; the terms ‘ purity’ and ‘clean’, are used interchangeably here. 86 Dan 7:9–14(n). 87 Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum: Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt, Theodor Klauser, ed., Stuttgart, 1950 and 1988. 88 God is surrounded by fire; indeed, out of His presence flames of fire are thrown, and He sits on a throne which miraculously has also become a ball of flames. The metaphor of 84 85

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Among references to clothing the most important occur in connection with Christ, to transcendence, and to salvation, and to the actions of ‘putting on and taking off’ a garment. Divesting oneself, or another, of a particular garment may function to denote the conquering of kings, the act of humbling, or repentance; or of investing someone with particular attributes, depending on the garment which is put on. In the realm of the morality of clothing two New Testament epistles (1 Tim 2:9–10;89 1 Pet 3:3),90 extol modesty in clothing and denounce extravagance in women’s clothing by contrast. James warns against giving preferential treatment to people in fine clothing (James 2:2–3) and Paul considers one of his virtues to be that he has never coveted another’s ‘silver or gold or clothing.’ (Acts 20:33 NRSV). Jesus was forced to wear the purple robe of a king — a symbol of opulence and worldly concern — in one of the final acts of humiliation and subjugation to which he was submitted. Dazzling garments of transcendent or heavenly beings have already been discussed in the context of dazzling white light, but should be mentioned again briefly in their connection to clothing. Here is the mixing of the familiar and unfamiliar — ‘the raising of something commonplace to a realm of beyond the earthly.’91 Mentioned above in the context of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Mt 17:2; Mk 9:3; Lk 9:29), was the Transfiguration of Jesus where his clothes become dazzling white (δτίλβοντα Χευκαλίαν/gleaming)92, as are those of the ‘Ancient One’ on the throne in Daniel’s vision (Dan 7:9); the angels in the Resurrection (Lk 24:4; Acts 10:30); or clothing in Matthew 28:3, described as ‘white as snow’. The redeemed saints in heaven are all also arrayed in white robes (Rev 3:4–5; 4:4; 7:9 [λευκός]; 13; 15:6; 19:13–14 [λευκός]). (Figs: 1.6, 5.2). In the Ascension, described in Acts 1, as Jesus disappears into the heavens, two men dressed in white robes (variously rendered as angels) suddenly and simultaneously appear out of nowhere. They have been sent to hair as white as snow was discussed above in connection with Brenner. It occurs frequently: in Numbers, Judges, Kings, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, and Mark, in addition to Daniel. There is nothing whiter, nor brighter, than snow, except the Light of the Lord. 89 1 Tim 2:9: ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; [10] But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. 90 1 Pet 3:3 (KJ) ‘Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting of hair, and of wearing of gold, or putting on of apparel…’ 91 Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p. 320. 92 Participial form of ‘to gleam’, as on metal/glänzend.

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reassure witnesses to the event that Jesus will return. (Figs 1.6, 1.7, 5.5) In figure 1.6 the angels stand to the left and right of Mary and wear halos, but others among the group of righteous also wear white robes). [9] When he [Jesus] had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. [10] While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood beside them. (Acts 1: 9–10, NRSV). Cumque intuerentur in cælum euntem illum, ecce duo viri astiterunt juxta illos in vestibus albis, … In Greek: καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο παρειστήκεισαν αὐτοῖς ἐν ἐσθήσεσι λευκαῖς

The image of white robes is applied throughout the New Testament. One earns the right to wear white robes through righteous conduct, and it is the faithful and those representing God who wear white robes, to signal this righteousness.93 (Figs. 1.8, 1.9, 5.2, 5.5–5.7). As the last and culminating example of this symbol presented here, at the end of Revelation (Rev. 20:11) in the scene of the Last Judgement, the great throne of the Lord is coloured white: Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them.

In Rev. 3:4, as part of Paul’s message to the representatives of the seven churches, a letter is written to the Christian church in the town of Sardis (western Asia Minor), well-known for its former, ancient glories, and currently ‘notorious for its luxury and licentiousness’ (NRSV, p. 367, n. 3.1–6) during the time of Emperor Domitian the Emperor had demanded of his subjects that he be worshipped as ‘Lord and God’, introducing for Christians, in addition to the issue of moral depravity, the problem of idolatry (showing reverence to a man-made God). In his letter to the church at Sardis John writes: Yet you have still a few persons in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes; they will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. (Rev. 3:4 NRSV). 93

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The Vulgate reads: Et vidi thronum magnum candidum, et sedentem super eum, a cujus conspectu fugit terra, et cælum, et locus non est inventus eis. (My emphasis.) In Greek: Καὶ εἶδον θρόνον μέγαν λευκὸν καὶ τὸν καθήμενον ἐπ’ αὐτόν, οὗ ἀπὸ τοῦ προσώπου ἔφυγεν ἡ γῆ καὶ ὁ οὐρανός, καὶ τόπος οὐχ εὑρέθη αὐτοῖς

In the Celestial Hierarchies Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite94 describes a hierarchical colour system emanating from the Divine Light, which, in relation to the earth, parallels what might be described as a proto-Newtonian theory of light. In the Bible the Divine Light is the origin of all light including the sun and stars and lights of heaven. Unitary at its source, in the heavens this light is luminous and transparent, but as it descends toward the earth it individuates itself in stages into separate colours of the spectrum at different levels. What determines the nature of colours at any stage in its descent toward the earth is the ‘assimilative capacity of the creatures belonging to these levels’95 in the hierarchical system the Pseudo-Areopagite describes, analogous to the absorption of wavelengths. Creatures below the heavens absorb light waves of the divine deity and take on forms of visible creatures in virtue of their colour the closer they get to earth. [A]dmitting through the spiritual and unwavering eyes of the mind the original and super-original gift of Light of the Father who is the Source of Divinity, which shows to us images of the all-blessed Hierarchies of the Angels in figurative symbols, let us through them again strive upwards toward Its Primal Ray. For this Light can never be deprived of Its own intrinsic unity, and although in goodness, as is fitting, It becomes a manyness and proceeds into manifestation for the upliftment and unification of those creatures which are governed by Its Providence, yet It abides eternally within Itself in changeless 94 The works of Pseudo Dionysius, the Areopagite were translated into Latin from the Greek by John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 847) on commission by Charles the Bald. 95 Ernest Benz, ‘Colour in the Christian Visionary Experience’ in Colour Symbolism, Six Excerpts from the Eranos Yearbook 1972, 3rd. ed., Dallas, TX, 1988, p. 97. The analysis in this paragraph follows Benz.

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sameness, firmly established in Its own unity, and elevates to Itself, according to their capacity, those who turn towards It, as is meet, uniting them in accordance with Its own unity. On the ascent toward spirituality which takes one back up this hierarchical structure of spiritual ascent, the initiate’s goal is to become as like as possible to the Divine Spirit, that is, to become one with God. This process is described as receiving ‘the Ray of Divine Deity’ and those who do so are as ‘bright and spotless mirrors’. (Fig. 5.8, 5.9, 5.10). By taking Him as Leader in all holy wisdom, to become like Him, so far as is permitted, by contemplating intently His most Divine Beauty. Also it moulds and perfects its participants in the holy image of God like bright and spotless mirrors which receive the Ray of the Supreme Deity. Which is the Source of Light; and being mystically filled with the Gift of Light, it pours it forth abundantly, according to the Divine Law, upon those below itself.96 The Pseudo-Areopagite uses the metaphor of a bright and spotless mirror to express the attributes of the Divine Spirit reflected in the initiate. The first two of these, luminosity and brightness, are attributes of light, whose source is God and whose ray is its vehicle. Spotlessness intensifies the unbroken stream of light reflected in the recipient mirror which is the initiate’s soul, and may also be taken as a concurrent metaphor for the clean state required in order to receive the Light. In a subsequent passage in which the symbolism of colour is explicitly discussed, these attributes are, in turn, linked to white and to truth. The Scriptures also liken the Celestial Beings to brass and electron, and many coloured jewels [cf. Eze. 28:13, Rev. 15:6]. Now electron, resembling both gold and silver,97 is like gold in its resistance to corruption, unspent and undiminished, and its undimmed brightness; and is like silver in its shining and heavenly lustre. But the symbolism, of brass…must resemble that of fire or gold. Again, of the many coloured varieties of stone, the white represents that which is luminous, and the red corresponds to fire, yellow to gold, and green to youth and vigour.98 Ibid., p. 17. Electron is an alloy of gold and silver. 98 Celestial Hierarchies, pp. 52–53. 96 97

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Here Dionysius analyses the symbolisms he finds in metals and in colours. Gold, silver, and brass have non-chromatic qualities of imperviousness to degradation, and of lustre and brightness. He draws fine distinctions between these and chromatic attributes: uncompromised brightness is contrasted with shining and heavenly lustre, brass with gold and fire. As we saw previously, among the colours white is linked to luminosity as distinguished from the undimmable brightness of gold and the lustre of silver, both of which are lower levels of light than luminosity or dazzle; and yellow, which one might associate with the colour of light, is linked to gold, and also to fire, as its chromatic equivalent. White is then linked to the ethical and spiritual qualities of truth and transparency in a narration of the Apocalyptic Riders of Rev. 6:2 by John the Evangelist where horses symbolize obedience and tractability. The gleaming white steeds, then, denote clear truth and that which is perfectly assimilated to the Divine Light. In this passage the horses are not only white, but also shining, which description is very likely intended to suggest the dazzling properties of the whiteness. Although the coat of a perfectly groomed horse (as I assume the horses of the apocalyptic riders would be) in any colour would glisten; it is not insignificant that the physical attributes of shining whiteness are juxtaposed to the spiritual attributes of truth and transparency. This is because the shining would be perceived as light, which in turn invokes the notion of the Divine Light emitted by God who, in turn, is True, and who is the Father of Light. The absence of dazzle in connection with white in Hebrew scripture accounts for the general view that references in the Old Testament to white are to things, such as milk, teeth, hair, wood — things that are opaque and have no luminosity; and that a reinterpretation of light was introduced in the writing of the New Testament.99 In contrast, then, New Testament references to this colour developed shining, dazzling attributes, assume supernatural brilliance and the quality of a heavenly or transcendental reality. Centuries later Charles Leadbeater’s synthetic concept of the higher spiritual plane, rendered as a diagram in, Man, Visible and Invisible, reflects elements of mystic Christian influences (as well as Buddhist and Hindu) that would describe God a pure, clear, un-yellowed, light. (Fig. 5.11). As a material ‘stuff’, colour manifests a connection to the condition of worldliness in several ways: in virtue of the simple fact that it is only through 99

Brenner, pp. 74, 188.

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the existence of colours that we see the world at all, and because it was also perceived as a covering layer. Arguments originating with the ancient philosophers about the source of colours were ongoing, but there was still an abiding sense that the stuff of colour was material in some form. This provides, by extension, a connection to original sin where, one might argue, that to transcend the worldly, one must also transcend the world of colour; that to reach the spiritual realm of the transcendental, of colourlessness, huelessnesss and dazzling clarity, one had to leave the material world of colour behind. The first generation of Protestant theologians and Reformers such as Zwingli and the other Magisterial reformers were more often than not also humanist scholars who had personal collections of books of all kinds, in Zwingli’s case an extensive library. Widely diverse references to the white colour and its relationship to transparency and honesty demonstrate a consistent attitude of mind, and examples from texts as various as, Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Zwingli, John Foxe and others, whom the humanist and sixteenth and seventeenth century scholar would have read, saw in whiteness the transparency of light, the colour closest to God, and the purity of the Godhead.100 Perhaps one of the most significant references to white is to the Pharisees’ tombs in Matthew 23.27. In this passage the Pharisee praises his own piety and purity, or purity in piety: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even the tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ Jesus, for whom pride in one’s piety is no better than any other kind of human pride, in response explains that the tax collector who begged for mercy was more pious than the Pharisee who uses his piety to assert superiority over others and who, therefore, lacks humility. To further clarify his meaning in Matthew 23:27 Jesus likens the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs, whose ‘purity’ is superficial and misleading: 100 The artist Mondrian, who was raised in a strict Calvinist household, held that because the colours we see are refracted light off of surfaces and because they make the world visible in a material way are in an essential sense ‘corporeal’ in themselves. Mondrian classified them accordingly as ‘outwardly’ directed. Unrefracted light is, perforce, ‘inwardly’ directed so that we are, in an equally important sense, still looking at the same light when we encounter unrefracted light. In sum, this suggests that the purer the colour, the closer to pure light and the more inward and spiritualised it is. See Piet Mondrian, The New Art —The new Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James, eds., New York, 1986, p. 36.

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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. (KJV). The Vulgate reads: Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia similes estis sepulchris dealbatis, quæ a foris parent hominibus speciosa, intus vero pleni sunt ossibus mortuorum, et omni spurcitia ! In Greek: Οὐαὶ ὑμῖν, γραμματεῖς καὶ Φαρισαῖοι ὑποκριταί, ὅτι παρομοιάζετε τάφοις κεκονιαμένοις, οἵτινες ἔξωθεν μὲν φαίνονται ὡραῖοι ἔσωθεν δὲ γέμουσιν ὀστέων νεκρῶν καὶ πάσης ἀκαθαρσίας.

You will recall that this story (Matthew 23:27) appeared in many references to whitewash in English already by the thirteenth century. (See Chapter 1). The tale, ‘The Pharisee and the Tax Collector’, also appears in Luke 18:9, but without the narrative of Jesus’ response or the colour references. The connection between whitewash and hypocrisy is familiar to us today and, of course, has everything to do with the painting over of something while leaving the original — which connotes something quite different than the new layer of whitewash — intact. While the main objective of this passage in Matthew is to bring home to the Pharisees that true piety is located in the interior of a person, not in outward appearances — in this case beautiful whitewashed tombs, the saying of prayers and other ritual observances — it is also important for the association with uprightness, righteousness, and holiness which it manifests, and which, by the writing of Matthew, was well established. Those who have been found to be upright at the Last Judgment wore white robes, and the whitewashed sepulchre may be seen as representing a form of perfection attained, recognizable to both parties in the objective symbol of whitewash or whiteness. The perfectly whitewashed tomb was, for the Pharisees in this example, an instance of their having successfully met a standard of perfect piety or of ritual with respect to prescribed observances of the dead. In this story Jesus rejects the posture but, significantly, not the symbol.

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In addition, Jesus acknowledges the beauty of the whitewashed sepulchres implied in which is the notion of perfection, even if he found their whiteness unconvincing as a gesture proffered as proof of righteousness. One must wonder, what would have been the effect of polychromatic decorations on these tombs? Would either Jesus or the Pharisees have been able to make the same assertions if these tombs had been polychromed? For reasons discussed below, I suggest the answer is no. Another example of a reference to whitewashing occurs in Acts 23:3. Paul is in Rome and has been imprisoned. He has been brought out of his cell to stand before the council and chief priest in order to determine of what he has been accused: While Paul was looking intently at the council he said, ‘Brothers, I have lived my life up to this day with a clear conscience before God.’ (2) Then the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near him to strike him on the mouth. At this Paul said to him, ‘God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! (3) Are you sitting there to judge me according to the law, and yet in violation of the law you order me to be struck?’(4) The relevant passage reads in the Vulgate reads: Tunc Paulus dixit ad eum : Percutiet te Deus, paries dealbate. Et tu sedens judicas me secundum legem, et contra legem jubes me percuti ? (Emphases mine.) In Greek: τότε ὁ Παῦλος πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶπεν, Τύπτειν σε μέλλει ὁ θεός, τοῖχε κεκονιαμένε: καὶ σὺ κάθῃ κρίνων με κατὰ τὸν νόμον, καὶ παρανομῶν κελεύεις με τύπτεσθαι;

The editors of the NRSV footnote the term ‘whitewashed wall’ to call attention to the fact that its meaning is obscure, and they suggest that it might mean, a tomb, as in Mt 23.27, above: ‘God will strike you, you whitewashed tomb!’ (Acts 23:3, NRSVn.). As such, the priests and council might be said to be ‘full of dead bones’ (that is, ‘rotten on the inside’), ‘whitewashed’ on the outside in virtue of their

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authoritative status as judges, to give the appearance of moral, or spiritual, uprightness (read, purity). Without such status, these men would not have been in a position to sit in judgment on Paul. Taken in combination with Matthew 23: 27, the criticisms expressed in Acts 23:3 appear to be directed in both instances to the hypocrisy of the miscreants, precisely for the reason that the whitewash of the tomb (or wall) was a recognised, objective symbol of being holy, ritually purified and, therefore, morally clean. Thus, when someone who purports through his behaviour (whitewashing the tomb as the Pharisees did) or through the wearing of white robes (as the high Priests and council members may have done in Acts 23:33) to be holy, pious, or lawful, he becomes like the whitewashed tomb of Matthew; that is, in virtue of one’s exterior appearance pretending to be pure, symbolised by the whiteness, when one is not. Whether the author of Acts 23:3 intended to mirror the language of Matthew, using the language ‘whitewashed wall’ instead of ‘whitewashed tomb’ is uncertain. Whether he intended to invoke a literal image of a white wall — because so many white-robed priests collectively would have given the appearance of a ‘wall of white’, is also unclear; but that the author intended to call attention to hypocrisy, in contrast to the semblance of purity and piety through the opposition of the colour white with the ‘impure’ qualities of his judges, is evident. There are still other important ways in which the symbolism of white and its association with the divine light of God provides a compelling model, as rationale for Protestant reformers. I have suggested above how the symbolism of the white garment equips the Protestant reformer with an appropriate, relevant, ready-made and accessible, sign of reform. But Jesus Christ, the light of the World, the Lord as light, and the colour white as the chromatic equivalent of this light is equally compelling, as synchronicity of the two concepts allows the Protestant to literally ‘paint in’ a new frame of reference for an image of God that is consistent with Protestant theology and the prohibition against images. It offers the mind, which is to be redirected away from its dependence on sensorium (either reformed or ‘re-programmed’), a new, non-anthropomorphic image of God to be contemplated in its stead. The sacred, and now chastened, white church will be literally infused with, and will emanate, this same form of light a least symbolically. This is not the multifaceted, refracted light of diadems rendering a human approximation of the Lord’s splendour on earth, but an attempt to bring oneself closer to the unified, transcendent light of the Lord read about in both the Old and New Testaments.

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The depiction of divine light as dazzling whiteness renders the connection between whiteness and dazzle a very important one. It should be noted for the reason that the literature upon which one’s education is based, and the texts upon which one’s faith is predicated, definitively shape one’s thinking about colour and are central to the structure of one’s colour-thinking — whether in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German or English. Whiteness and dazzle are central terms in what was a relatively fixed array of colour words that included noncolour vocabulary (‘dazzle’ and ‘shining’ being prime examples) to express the concept of divine light; indeed, to convey the very concept of God’s presence.101 That Zwingli was aware of the white garment as a symbol for the ‘cleansed’ conscience, and that he consciously used it, is evident in the conclusion to his ‘Words of Baptism’ written in May 1525, in which he says: May God grant thee that, as thou art dressed bodily in the white garment, so at the Last Day thou mayest appear before Him with a clean undisguised conscience! Amen. The Lord be with you. Go hence in peace!102 (Emphasis mine). Here, being dressed in the white garment is equated metaphorically with a clean, undisguised conscience. There is a causal connection between the two indicated by Zwingli’s words: ‘so at’, with the result that Zwingli suggests one cannot appear with a clean conscience until one has, metaphorically, put on this particular robe. In his mind, the ‘putting on’ of the white robe and the attributes of being clean and undisguised, morally and spiritually, are directly equated. An earlier reference to the white garment occurs in The Shepherd (1524):

Potter suggests just such an assimilation in Zwingli, natural to human beings at large, in a discussion of Zwingli’s education and the influences to which he was likely exposed, as best they can be reconstructed. In a discusssion of the via antigua (Realists or Thomists) versus the via moderna (Nominalists or Occamists) Potter writes, ‘The young Zwingli may have picked up from his Vienna days some comprehension of at any rate the existence of such schools of thought, just as a student of a later age would know of a Marxist of Whig interpretation of history without being able to fully define either.’ Potter, Zwingli, pp. 15–16. It is this kind of assimilation through osmosis, in combination with express learning acquired through assiduous study that I suggest is the case with Zwingli and his ideas about colour. 102 See B. J. Kidd, ‘The Form of Baptism’ (May, 1525) in Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, pp. 423–24, esp. p. 424. 101

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‘Here the Shepherd should carefully guard against putting on a hypocritical dress for the True One, so that he decks himself out with cowls and hooded mantles while he is inwardly full of avarice — as for the most part the monks and theologians of this time do. (…) [T]hey bow low, but they have an arrogant disposition; they wear a white shirt, but are more unchaste than the wild boar; high shoes and hats, but are full of envy and hatred; murmur many psalms, but leave the clear word of God, etc. The simple people learn by such works to live a life of hypocrisy.’103 Zwingli speaks of white robes again in the fourth chapter of ‘On the Providence of God’ (1530): By uprightness and purity of life, the soul admonishes us, the favour of the Deity is to be won by white raiment, says the flesh. The spirit gives up its dwelling place, the blood namely, for the sake of its Lord, the flesh declares that the purple mantle in which it wraps itself is enough.104 In this critical way, the whitewashing represents not the painting out of all images, although it was that too — the eradication of material interventions described in Chapter I — but the painting in of a new symbol signifying one’s membership among the renewed spiritual congregation. In view of the quoted passages examined before and in this chapter, particularly Zwingli’s delight in the Grossmünster’s whitened walls and his own reflections on the white garment of faith quoted just above, it seems inconceivable that he could have been unaware of the symbolism involved in the act of painting Zürich church interiors white with lime. Rather, it seems more likely that he found in Zürich’s decision to cleanse a sense in which, not unlike the redeemed saints of Revelation, that the Zwinglian church had put on its white robe of true faith

Huldrych Zwingli, ‘The Shepherd’ in Huldrych Zwingli Writings, vol. II, H. Wayne Pipkin, trans., Allison Park, PA, 1984, p. 91. 104 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘On The Providence of God’ in The Latin Works and Correspondence of Huldrych Zwingli, vol. II, Samuel MacCauley Jackson, ed., William John Hinke, trans., Philadelphia, 1922, p. 163. 103

VI Zwingli and the Reformed Aesthetic ‘What you give to the senses you take away from the spirit.’ 1 Huldrych Zwingli

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uldrych (Ulrich) Zwingli (1484–1531) was born and raised within the traditional Catholic church, in the rural district of Toggenberg in the Swiss Alps. Educated at the humanist universities of Vienna (1498– 1502) and Basel (1502–6), he was called to Zürich as a preacher in January 1519 by an unsuspecting canonry who endorsed him primarily for his antimercenary views.2 A contemporary, or near-contemporary, follower and acquaintance of Erasmus, and one of the so-called ‘magisterial reformers’,3 he is central to any discussion of the origins of the Reformation in Europe. It was Zwingli, in fact, who through his decisive influence on Zürichers and their government,4 first accomplished a wholesale, city-wide transformation of churches, including not only reformed music and liturgy, but reformed interiors, which had been systematically divested of their objects and interior detail, and consciously painted white, as we have already read. Letter to Martin Bucer from Zwingli, 9 June 1523, Z VIII, 80–81. (Cf. Z II, 696, 13–14). G. R. (George Richard) Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge and London, 1976, pp. 45, 66. 3 Part of the mainstream Lutheran, and Reformed church stream of Protestantism. (McGrath, Introduction to Reformation Thought, p. 6.) 4 The subject of Zwingli’s involvement with and influence on the Zürich town council and of the ramifications of Zwingli’s politics generally is a subject of sustained academic study in its own right. Wayne Pipkin, A Zwingli Bibliography, Pittsburgh, cites sixteen publications in 1972 on this subject; see Zwingliana for more recent publications. In his biography of the reformer, Myconius, a contemporary and friend of Zwingli’s, gives an indication of his political influence recognised already in 1532, the year after the reformer’s death. Myconius writes: ‘After this because the gospel strongly showing its strength was esteemed as the truth from heaven, by the greater part, and especially had been received by the Senate of Zürich, 1 2

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Zwingli’s views on images are difficult to assess because his ideas changed over the course of his life: in different essays, written at different times, he makes different statements about images, each of which contains nuances with a range of implications. There has been debate among Zwingli scholars, both for this reason and because Zwingli did not take up the issue of images as a serious matter as early as he might have, nor did he openly agitate for their removal until, arguably, he was pressed by events. To this reserve a range of motivations has been attributed, ranging from naïve or arrogant indifference or evasion to an acute, potentially explosive issue (idolatry/ iconolatry); to wily political self-interested manoeuvring in the interests of political self-preservation. However, it is generally agreed that in practice Zwingli’s position on visual material in churches was to disallow any images within sacred worship but to allow them elsewhere, as long as they were not of a nature likely to elicit reverence or to be openly worshipped. But this was in practice only, because, as we shall see, his position as articulated in written form was considerably more radical, as was the eventual makeover of Zürich’s church interiors. Scholars generally agree that Zwingli’s major works on the subject of images are found in the Exposition of the [Sixty-Seven] Articles (January 1523);5 and the Council of Two Hundred [this includes the Small Council (50 men) combined with the Large, or Great Council, numbering 162, totalling 212], the man [Zwingli] began to plan how he could put things into a better state, and that everything might be in order, whatever changes seemed especially to pertain to the furtherance of the gospel were made at the earliest opportunity. …Therefore the Senate decreed on the persuasion of Zwingli’s celestial spirit [that ecclesiastical offices should be reduced, a conjugal adjudicatory body set up]…and persuaded them that the worship of images must be abolished, the mass utterly done away with, and the Lord’s supper restored.’ (My emphasis). Quoted from ‘Original Life of Zwingli’, (1532), written by Oswald Myconius the year following Zwingli’s death, in Ulrich Zwingli: Early Writings, vol. 1, S. M. Jackson ed., New York and London, 1912, 1–26, esp. p. 14. By contrast, Ulrich Gäbler emphasises that Zwingli’s political and theological influence has become exaggerated. (Gäbler, pp. 51–52). For further discussion of Zwingli’s relationship to the governing bodies of Zurich and to the politics of the Swiss Confederation see McGrath, 147ff., Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, Manchester, 2002. Myconius’s biography indicates a receptivity to reform in Zürich which pre-dates Zwingli’s arrival. This receptivity is often offered as a partial explanation for the speed and success of reforms in Zürich. One can detect this receptivity in the above passage. See Gäbler, p. 8, for a concise summary of the Zürich cantonal and city government structure. 5 These appeared in print in July 1523 in a volume also known as An Exposition of the Articles, or An Exposition and Basis of the Conclusions or Articles. I use the January date here because this was the date by which the Sixty-Seven Articles had been thought through by

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in his tract Advice Concerning the Mass and Images (December 1523); in the Commentary on True and False Religion (March 1525);6 and in An Answer to Valentin Compar (April 1525).7 Because in Valentin Compar Zwingli brings together in a more coherent form all of the statements he has made over time about statues and images, this later text is usually considered Zwingli’s most mature, as well as comprehensive, piece of writing on the subject.8 Zwingli himself considered it so.9 However, with respect to the identification of Zwingli’s position on the relationship of religion to the visual arts, more emphasis is placed on Valentin Compar than is, perhaps, justified. A close reading of earlier writings discloses that Zwingli’s discussions of idols and idolatry in, for example, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles (January 1523) and A Short Christian Instruction (November 1523) already establish the basis for the church ‘cleansings’ and whitewashings that took place between 20 June and 2 July 1524, and for what he later said about images in 1525 and beyond.10 For this reason, in addition to Valentin Compar, the following discussion will focus on the development of Zwingli’s position on images in these key texts, written between 1523 to1524.11 Zwingli and prepared for oral public argument at a disputation. Although, in the event, the dialogue did not take place, the arguments thus prepared were subsequently published in print in Zürich by Christopher Froschauer, Zwingli’s publisher, the following July. 6 De vera et falsa religione commentarius. See in the Commentary, (S. M. Jackson, (ed.), Durham, NC, 1981), the section ‘Statues and Images’, pp. 330–37, originally published in March 1525. This material is subsumed in Valentin Compar (Eine Antwort, Valentin Compar gegeben), published one month later. 7 See Peter Auksi, p. 343. 8 See Carlos Eire, War against the Idols, Cambridge, 1986, p. 83; see also Charles Garside, p. 162. 9 Z IV, 15, 84. 10 Although Zwingli would deepen and further articulate his views on images versus idols in Valentin Compar, from these earlier texts one can see not only his position on idols and idolatry, but also his views on images: in what an image consists for Zwingli, what our relationship to them should be, and their place within the spiritual life of a Christian believer. 11 Garside holds that Zwingli’s decisive position on this question did not appear in print until the summer of 1525 (see Garside, p. 77) after a series of events, including the Second Disputation (26–28 October 1523), forced him to deal with this question, and laying the groundwork for An Answer to Valentin Compar in early 1525. Similarly, G. H. Williams remarks on Zwingli’s ‘evasions on both images and the mass’ in October of 1523, and of the intellectual influence on Zwingli of Ludwig Hätzer’s popular tract against images, published by Christopher Froschauer in Zürich on 24 September 1523. Williams calls this tract ‘a major link in the chain that was to lead to Zwingli’s great treatise against images.’ Like Garside, Wil-

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Many scholars hold that Zwingli’s position on images was arrived at reluctantly and only under pressure from his community;12 and it is true that a concern with images, painted or sculpted, as distinct from idolatry in general, was not on Zwingli’s agenda in 1518 when he moved from Einsiedeln to Zürich.13 Nor, indeed, was he concerned about the issue, it would seem, when he started preaching against the veneration of the saints (mid-1519),14 purgatory (1519),15 financial payments (1519),16 the proscription against meat-eating during Lent (March, 1522), celibacy (July, 1522),17 or the mass (August, 1523).18 Charles Garside holds that Zwingli’s decisive position on the relationship between the visual arts and worship did not appear in print until An Answer to Valentin Compar was published in the spring of 1525;19 liams emphasizes the influence of Hätzer’s pamphlet on Zwingli and identifies the publication date of Valentin Compar as the key date in Zwingli’s articulation of a point of view on images. Williams suggests further that Hätzer’s pamphlet played a critical role in making Zwingli cognizant of the pressing importance of this issue. 12 Such as Hans Freiherr van Campenhausen, pp. 98–99; Garside, Zwingli, pp. 77; chap. 8, esp. pp. 99, 137; see also Eire, 1986, at n.5 above, p. 79, and Williams, p. 92. 13 Zwingli took up his new appointment as people’s priest (Leutpriester) of the Grossmünster on 1 January 1519. See Oswald Myconius, ‘Original Life of Zwingli’, in Ulrich Zwingli: Early Writings, S. M. Jackson, trans and ed., 1912, p. 8; Ulrich Gäbler, p. 44, Garside, Zwingli, p. 16. 14 See Garside, pp. 93–98; Gäbler, p. 49. However, at this juncture Zwingli still allowed their invocation. See the ‘Letter to Beatus Rhenanus’, 7 June 1519 (Z VII, 181. A Short Christian Introduction, 1523, represents his first systematic presentation of this subject, but it also had been debated publicly with Francis Lambert in July 1522. 15 Gäbler, p. 50. 16 See Myconius, 1912, at n.10 above, p. 9. 17 In A Friendly Request, published on 13 July 1522, Zwingli urges the propriety of clerical marriage (The Latin Works and Correspondence of Huldrych Zwingli, W. J. Hinke (ed.), Philadelphia, 1922 (hereafter LWC), vol. I, pp. 166–96), and again on 22–23 August 1522 in the Archeteles written to the Bishop of Constance (Archeteles: Reply to Bishop’s Admonition, in LWC I, 254). See also the 49th Article (Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles), p. 296, and Z I, 225, 226, nn.1–2. 18 In The Canon of the mass, published in August 1523, Zwingli criticised the mass as sacrifice, although he leaves freedom of choice in many other outward matters. In May 1524, with A Proposal Concerning Images and the mass, he argued for the abolition of the mass. See Stephens, p. 37 et seq. In the summer of 1523, Zwingli criticised the intercession of the saints, but had not reached an opinion on ecclesiastical art. Garside emphasises, that in all the sixtyseven Substantiations to the Conclusions, images are mentioned only once, ‘and then only in passing.’ (See Garside, pp. 98–9.) 19 See Garside, p. 77. An Answer to Valentin Compar (Eine Antwort, Valentin Compar gegeben) was written in response to Compar’s critique of the Sixty-Seven Articles. Compar was

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that is, only after a series of events, beginning with the Second Disputation in Zürich (26 October 1523) forced him to deal with the question. In the same vein, G. H. Williams describes the intellectual influence on Zwingli of fellow priest Ludwig Hätzer’s popular tract against images as ‘a major link in the chain that was to lead to Zwingli’s great treatise against images (Valentin Compar).’ Hätzer’s pamphlet, ‘A Judgment of God Our Spouse Concerning How One Should Regard All Idols and Images’ was written sometime in the autumn of 1523, before the Second Disputation.20 Williams emphasizes the Reformer’s continuing ‘evasions on both images and the mass’ as late as October of that year;21 and, like Garside, he identifies Valentin Compar as the key event in the articulation of a point of view on the subject. Some, including Williams, W. P. Stephens and Ulrich Gäbler, explain this reticence partly by the fact that Zwingli, the politician, not wishing to traumatize the general population, was prepared to wait for the abolition of images until the new preaching had won the people away from their dependence on them.22

a burgher from the nearby village of Uri. See K. D. Kluser, ed., ‘Der Landschreiber Valentin Compar von Uri und sein Streit mit Zwingli’ in Historisches Neujahrsblatt, Gesellschaft für Geshichte und Alterthümer des Kantons Uri, I, Altdorf, 1895, p. 38. See also Garside, Zwingli, Chapt. 8, esp. pp. 99, 137. I do not share Garside’s conclusion that the absence of any specific discussion of ‘images’ as opposed to ‘idols’ is evidence that the Reformer had not fully articulated his position on images until Valentin Compar. 20 Published by Christopher Froschauer in Zürich, under the title, Ein urteil gottes un-/ sers eegemahels/ wie/ man sich mit allen götzen und/ Bilnussen halte soll/ uss der/ heiligen gschrifft gezo-/ge durch Ludwig Hätzer. (Hereafter the ‘Judgement’). The text of the pamphlet is reproduced in Charles Garside, Jr., ‘Ludwig Hätzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, vol. 34, Jan., 1960, pp. 20–36, and Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, pp. 109–15, where it is reprinted in part. Garside states the exact date of publication is not known; further, that it is unknown whether Hätzer wrote it after arriving in Zürich in 1522 or while still in Wädenswil. Since then, Carlos Eire has identified the date on a copy the treatise in the Beinicke Library, Yale University, which places the publication of the Hätzer text in ‘Anno MDXXIII Jar’. (Eire, p. 79n.107). It is likely this was before October (1523) because at the opening of the Second Disputation, Leo Jud refers to its having been written ‘some days before.’ The text of the pamphlet is reproduced in Charles Garside, Jr., ‘Ludwig Hätzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, vol. 34, Jan., 1960, pp. 20–36, and Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, pp. 109–15, where it is reprinted in part. 21 See Williams, The Radical Reformation, Philadelphia, 1975, p. 92 and Garside, ‘Ludwig Hätzer’s Pamphlet’, esp. p. 21. 22 See Williams, p. 90; Gäbler, pp. 71, 76, 82; Garside, Zwingli and the Arts, p. 77; MacCauley in LWC, p. 37.

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Here, the evidence which suggests that Zwingli moderated his views in his relations with the public for strategic reasons, points to the possibility that he may have arrived at a clear position earlier than the printed work suggests, but chose not to speak out. Three dissenters from the general view are Carlos Eire,23 Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Matthias Senn. While acknowledging that Zwingli was slow to consolidate his stance, Senn sees a clear position in the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles published in July 1523, as I do.24 Eire explicates the unfolding of Zwingli’s position while public crisis brewed, from which one can infer Zwingli’s points of view until Valentin Compar, which for Eire is nonetheless his ‘most complete statement.’25. Altendorf opines that although the rejection of the veneration of the saints seemed a weightier issue than the rejection of images, Zwingli’s published views against the veneration of the saints effectively amounted to a statement about images. Altendorf adds that Zwingli’s position, apparently against images, nonetheless remained ‘traditional’— until he implemented his radical changes and became associated with the altarless, imageless, holy space.26 This is, for the most part, accurate. Zwingli tolerated images already in situ until the two houses of the Zürich City Council confirmed a decision to remove them. That decision, made one year before Valentin Compar was written, was radical, and the places of worship thereby created, no less so. It is for this reason that Compar may be interpreted as a position summary as much as, or more than, a pronouncement.27 See Eire, 1986, pp 76–83, for his exposition of Zwingli’s early thought on images. The English translation is from HZW, I. See above in re: the Exposition of Articles, originally a set of arguments prepared for public debate scheduled for 29 January 1523. The referenced comments of Matthias Senn are found in: M. Senn, ‘Bilder und Götzen: Die Zürcher Reformatoren zur Bilderfrage’ in Marianne Naegeli and Urs Hobi, eds., Zürcher Kunst nach der Reformation : Hans Asper und seine Zeit : Katalog zur Ausstellung im Helmhaus, Zürich, 9. Mai bis 28. Juni 1981, Zürich: Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, 1981, pp. 33–4. 25 Eire, p. 83. 26 That is, ‘traditional’ within the parameters of a longstanding church tradition of those against, like Bernard of Clairvaux, who did not like having images in the church, but tolerated them because of a perceived plebeian necessity for them. (‘Apologia to Abbot William’ in Cistercians and Cluniacs, Michael Casey, trans., Kalamazoo, 1970, §XII, 28. Bernard did not hold that images jeopardized the ability of the ordinary worshipper to practice true faith. 27 Altendorf shares this author’s view that the space created in Zürich makes a very strong statement on the subject, although in this context Altendorf does not mention the whitewashing of the church interiors. His comment at least recognises that the altarless, imageless, sacred space brought into being in June–July 1524, represents a strong, if not completely coherent, statement by Zwingli on the subject of images within the church. See 23 24

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Thus, while events had given Zwingli many opportunities to take a clear position before Valentin Compar was published, it may be true that on balance the reformer demonstrated reticence to act. But it is not accurate, as Williams suggests, that it was only with Compar that one saw ‘the establishment of that hostility to the pictorial in religion which has characterized the sacramentarian Reformed tradition ever since.’28 Zwingli’s hostility to images was clearly established and in evidence by January 1523, in the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles, A Short Christian Instruction (November 1523), and in his support of Ludwig Hätzer’s pamphlet, On the Abolition of Images, which was published a short time before A Short Christian Instruction. The pamphlet collected in one place all of the references in Scripture that could be used to justify the abolition of images, and it was this aspect of the pamphlet as much as anything that Zwingli recommended to his readers. However, another, ultimately more important purpose of the pamphlet was to communicate the scriptural justification (which Hätzer found primarily in Deuteronomy 27:15) for the abolition of images altogether.29 This is a view to which Zwingli would eventually subscribe.30 For now it suffices to say that in the section of the Short Instruction entitled ‘Concerning Images’ (§7), Zwingli recommends Hätzer’s pamphlet to his readers and reproduces Hätzer’s itemisation of no fewer than thirty-seven citations to passages in Scripture in support of arguments for the abolition of images from worship practices. Hans-Dietrich Altendorf, ‘Bildloskeit und Konzentration auf das Predigtwort wurden vor allem für Aussenstehende’. Also relevant are: ‘Für Katholiken und Lutheraner, zum characteristikum reformierten Christentums zwinglischer Prägung’, ‘Zwinglis Stellung zum Bild und die Tradition christlicher Bildfeindschaft’, in Bilderstreit. Kultur Wandel in Zwinglis Reformation, Zürich, 1984, pp. 11–18. 28 See Williams, pp. 91–93. 29 Z II, 692, pp. 11–12. 30 In this context it should be acknowledged that the question is still an open one as to who among those speaking publicly about reforms initiated the groundswell in the population at large that led the Council to vote voluntarily to remove images and to whitewash. To the extent that it was not due to Zwingli’s leadership but, for example, to Leo Jud’s more radical and vocal views on this subject, or to Ludwig Hätzer’s pamphlet, is ultimately of minimal consequence for this discussion. Jud looked to Zwingli for leadership, and by all accounts did very little without Zwingli’s knowledge and approval (see Karl-Heinz Wyss, Leo Jud, Seine Entwicklung zum Reformator 1519–1523, Bern and Frankfurt, 1976, pp. 176, 177, and Leo Weisz, in Leo Jud, Ulrich Zwinglis Kampfgenosse, Zürich, 1942, pp. 38–48, emphasises rather their close relationship and the specific important contributions which Jud made to the cause

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As Eire has identified, the tract is divided into two sections: (a) scriptural passages in support of the argument against images, and (b) a refutation of Catholic arguments in support thereof. The arguments that Hätzer presented may be categorised according to three theses: (i) God the Father forbids us to make images; (ii) God intends us to destroy images; and (iii) ‘the deeds of those who have done away with images and idols will be praised and glorified.’31 The benefits of this tract are readily apparent, and Zwingli availed himself of these, as did many others. Hätzer’s tract assembled all scriptural passages that could be brought to bear on the subject in one consolidated package; one need look no further. Eire is correct: the third thesis, ‘that God will reward those who destroy idols’, is not only inflammatory but provides the rationale for iconoclasm, even officially unsanctioned iconoclasm. It does something else too: it establishes iconoclasm as a ‘good work’ in the eyes of God. As a corollary to the removal of images, or as integral to the process of eliminating them ‘as though nothing before was there’, whitewashing may be seen to be part of program of ‘good works’. In material form whitewashing in this context embodies one of the paradoxes of whiteness itself, (discussed earlier in Chapter II): while it obliterated as white paint does, the iconoclasts also used it to ‘paint in’ the new. For them, the new surface could not have failed to possess instantaneous symbolic meaning; it represented a good work in the eyes of God and a new order begun. The sentiment is similar to that identified in the Netherlands of the 1660s, discussed in Chapter III. of reform. However, Jud himself mentions, in a passage quoted by Weisz, that it was ‘Master Zwingli’ who had ‘proved’ that human commandments issued by popes and bishops need not be obeyed. (See Weisz, p. 42). Thus, while Hätzer’s pamphlet clearly made an impression on Zwingli (see ‘Concerning Images’, in A Short Christian Instruction, HZW II, 68), it would seem from Weisz that other local reformers understood it was Zwingli who had articulated the stand. Sergiusz Michalski’s opinion is that the image dispute was initiated by Jud, followed by Hätzer (who was influenced in turn by Karlstadt’s Treatise on Images (Von Abtung der Bylder), Wittenberg, 1522, who was then headed off by Zwingli who did not want revolutionary tactics to play into the hands of the Catholics. Carlo Eire holds that Zwingli’s attack on idolatry was formulated during the controversy over images in 1523–24. (See Eire, 1986, at n.5 above, p. 83.) Eire emphasizes the political strategising that may be responsible for a protracted public position of reticence on Zwingli’s part. (On this point, see also Michalski, p. 52.) 31 Here, I follow Eire, p. 80, and Garside, ‘Ludwig Hätzer’s Pamphlet Against Images: A Critical Study’, Mennonite Quarterly Review, vol. 34, Jan., 1960, pp. 20–36; Garside, Zwingli, pp. 109–115: (i) ‘Got unser vatter und Eegemahel verbüt uns die bilder zemacht.’ (ii) ‘Got heisst die bild zerbrechen und von der straff deren die sy habend und eerend.’ (iii) ‘Die deren die bild und götzen abgethon hand wirt gerümpt und prisen.’

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From his earliest statements on the subject, Zwingli rejects the didactic justification of images — one of the oldest arguments advanced in support of them by iconophiles — because, in his view, it was by contemplating the Word of God in prayer that one gets closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.32 As for the notion of illustrating the acts of the Saints, thereby setting examples for the faithful, Zwingli denies it is possible to depict or to teach the qualities of holiness or saintliness by means of a painted or sculpted image: Now let someone show us where they have painted or copied this faith. …This we cannot learn from walls, but only from the gracious pulling of God out of his own word. …We recognise here that the image leads only to external weakness and cannot make the heart faithful. We see externally what the saints have done, but images cannot give us the faith wherein all things must come to pass. If we now have pure and undefiled faith, see, we will ridicule ourselves for having had so ignorant and weak a faith that we imagined images admonish us — when, in fact, everything without faith is in vain. A Short Christian Introduction , November, 1523.33 By January 1523 in the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles Zwingli was preaching unequivocally that to seek forgiveness or salvation in anything other than God, whether in heaven or on earth, was to seek it in the creature, and that to appeal to images was to defile one’s faith. In A Short Instruction, written after Hätzer’s tract, and just seven months before the whitewashing of Zürich’s churches, this view is reiterated, and the use of images linked not only to a state of defilement but also to ignorance. In A Short Christian Instruction there is a section dedicated entirely to the subject of images, from which the passage above is quoted.34 It is preceded by a section entitled ‘Concerning the Abolition of the Law’, which is an On True and False Religion, in LWC, III, 331. §7, ‘Concerning Images’, A Short Christian Introduction, in HZW II, p. 70. 34 Toward the end of the Second Disputation, an official mandate was passed (in October 1523) requiring the publication of this instruction booklet for distribution to rural communities (and their pastors), with a view to educating and instructing clerics and parishes generally in the new evangelical approach to worship. The overarching goal was to achieve a degree of unity of position in the new faith on issues that had changed radically and with which existing priests and pastors would be inexperienced, or even baffled. This booklet was accompanied by a ‘preaching tour’, designed to provide explication and support to communities in need of still further guidance. The preaching tour seems to me a modern concept, not unlike a ‘book tour’ accompanying the publication of a book. By mid-November, the booklet was in distribution 32 33

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indictment of man-made rules and ceremonies — indeed, of anything at all consisting in an material nature. (My emphasis.) It is in fact in this preceding section that Zwingli makes one of his few specific mentions of ‘images’ (as opposed to idols), and of ‘church decorations’ both of which he categorically condemns, along with all the other trappings of Roman Catholicism. He writes: In the third place, we Christians are also free from all those laws imposed on us for the purpose of making us pious or good. Herein belong all papal laws not grounded on the word of God: prohibition of foods, commands to chastity, vows, auricular confession, sacrifices, financial payments, indulgences, and the whole worthless business. We are also free from humanly devised teachings devised by men, such as intercessions to the saints, purgatory, images, church decorations, ordering masses, the purchase of vigils and other things, etc.; for they are not based on the word of God. The foundation of everything is the sole word of Christ in Matthew 15:9: ‘They honour me in vain if they teach the teachings and commandments of people.’ In short, according to Luke 16:15 all that is considered good out of the teachings of humankind is an abomination before God. 35 [My emphasis]. Here, images and other decorative arts found in church interiors are put on a par with monasticism, confession, the mass, indulgences and other means devised by Rome to extract monies from the faithful. At a minimum these statements testify to a willingness to stand behind a condemnation of images and the uses to which they had been put. But they may also be taken not only as an indication that images had assumed greater importance in terms of the popular political agenda at hand in Zürich, but as a measure of Zwingli’s growing disdain for them and their value. If Zwingli had been undecided about images in January of 1523 when he wrote the Exposition of and the tour underway. The first tour of duty included Konrad Schmid, Wolfgang Joner and Zwingli. The booklet, A Short Christian Instruction (Kurze, christliche Einleitung, Z II, 628– 63), was written by Zwingli, and is generally regarded as one of the most concise statements of the Zürich Reformation, as well as its first ‘official confessional statement.’ (Pipkin, In Search of True Religion, vol. II, p. 46; see also Pipkin, ‘In Search of True Religion: The Spirituality of Zwingli as Seen in Key Writings of 1524’, in Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli After Five Hundred Years, Allison Park, PA, 1984, p. 118; Gäbler, p. 80). The English translation is found in HZW, II, 43–76. 35 A Short Christian Instruction, §6, pp. 62–67, esp. p. 65.

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67 Articles, the opinion expressed in these passages suggests he had reached an unequivocal position by the autumn of that year. This view is reiterated in 1524 in The Shepherd, in which images and symbolism of all kinds are said to be not only obstacles to worship, but actively detrimental to the worshipper and his faith. [If ] a person considers something good on the basis of reason and does not learn what is right and good from God alone and his word, the same has erected an idol in himself, namely, his own understanding and judgments. ... for he beings with wizardry...with hypocritical pretense he sells himself before people as true and righteous. And just as apes are well-pleased with their offspring so are also the people pleased with their inventions. ... The Christian people never lived godlier and more innocently than when no human additions or obligations were added to the simple word of God. ... and if one depends on his works then he looks around for help with the works and accordingly returns to the priestly and monkish murmurings of the psalms, to the holding of masses and to the increase of church decoration ... [this] brings to the false shepherd the milk and wool of the sheep.36 Here one sees the concept of imagery and idolatry extended not only to images and church decorations conventionally conceived, but also to the psychological details of an individual’s interior interactions with his faith. According to Zwingli, an object’s placement in a church, simply by virtue of the perceived sanctity of a church, conferred on the object an especially honoured, even sacred, status. Because of this, Zwingli concludes, people are induced to show greater reverence to any artefact placed within a church than they would if the artefact were seen in a secular setting.37 Elsewhere, though, Zwingli suggests that one reverences an image (painted or sculpted) because of what the image depicts, as is the case, for example, of portrayals of Saint Anne at the pilgrimage site of Stammheim, where it is the image that confers sacred status on the site, not the other way around.38 For these reasons Zwingli concludes that images of all kinds should be left outside the worship space. Remember that in the Sixty-Seven Articles The Shepherd, ZII, pp. 97, 11, 112. ‘Above all they are not to be tolerated in churches for everything we have therein is sanctified’ (HZW II, 71; Z II, 14–19). 38 Z IV, 101, 29–32; 104, 12–14; 122, 27–29. 36 37

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Zwingli suggested that religious images outside of the church were acceptable, especially if they were geschichtewyss.39 Because these statements were made before the churches were ‘cleansed’, Zwingli appears to be offering an incipient rationale for the emptying out of some visual materials from the church interior while leaving others in place. But by the writing of A Short Instruction Zwingli had also come to the conclusion that religious images should not be on display inside or outside of churches. He stops short of recommending that images kept within the home be eliminated. But he does not stop far short. In A Short Instruction he suggests that images should be eliminated from one’s ‘chamber[s]’: However, with regard to the images and the paintings which we have in churches, it is evident that they created the danger of idolatry. Therefore, one should not leave them there any longer — nor in your chamber, in the marketplace, or anywhere one shows any kind of honour. Especially are they intolerable in the churches, for everything we have there is holy to us.40 (My emphasis). It is clear that Zwingli argues a lack of scriptural justification for images. But underlying this is the issue of ‘true religion’ versus ‘false religion’, where true religion is defined as ‘living according to the Spirit’ and false religion as living ‘according to the flesh.’ It is the living in the flesh, worldly living, that hinders true faith. Vesting one’s faith in a saint — or praying to an image of a saint — is, precisely, placing one’s faith in the worldly, that is, responding emotionally to an embodied stimulus as though it were the Holy Spirit. That the act of projecting one’s hopes onto a man-made object was not an expression of True Faith was a primary theme in Zwingli’s theological opposition to images. The role of the emotional or affective response to the visual was equally important in his appraisal of the arts in the context of faith because of the part the affective played in drawing people into an emotional or sensual relationship with an object as part of worship. One might say that a concern to strip away everything extraneous to worship and to suppress the man-made underpinned his spirituality and was the engine of change with respect to his visual reforms. Whether one thinks Zwingli places more emphasis on the strict word of God in Scripture, or on the pursuit of true spirituality, the outcome was to be a stripped-down, essentialist aesthetic. The object of the aesthetic was to represent visibly the grace bestowed upon 39 40

See HZW II, 70–71; Z II, 658, 19–20. HZW II, p. 71.

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the believer in the form of faith by the invisible beauty of God. It is a cliché to state that the reformed Protestant practised a faith that denied a place for the visual, or material. This is not true of Luther or even entirely true of Calvin. But it is true that Zwingli mistrusted visual representations of things; also colour as a material form of seduction and disguise and as a manifestation of vanity. His mistrust of the eye to withstand the draw of images and of colour had certain concrete implications for his attitude toward the visual.41 The conception of colour as a covering layer or as that whichsimulates the material world of the flesh is an ancient one — as I have tried to show in Chapters II and V. An early indication of this view is found in the Archeteles: Reply to Bishop’s Admonition, written in August 1522, where Zwingli wrote: ‘For the things which are of human wisdom, however coloured and decked out, can deceive, but not the things of God.’ In this short passage, a disdain of colour and the colourful is discernable; Zwingli conceives of colour as a covering layer, a way of dissembling or disguising the true, as an overlay veiling the Truth. Ultimately, this view provided the impetus and rationale to strip all ‘artistic’ materials away from the material forms of worship, such as liturgy, altars, vestments, and images. Zwingli’s position on the visual would be equally extreme regarding both colour in general and colour as used within the church in particular. As Garside skilfully showed in 1968, by the end of 1523 Zwingli had, in theory, demolished any justification for religious images.42 By that time, the scope of Zwingli’s definition of ‘idol’ had become extremely broad; an idol might include any sculpted or painted images of a religious subject, historical or otherwise, inside a church or out, in tabernacles and shrines, within the home, or even in the mind.43 It is somewhat surprising, then, that 41 See Zwingli, Archeteles, LCW I, 203. Cf. M. Pastoureau, Jesus le Teinturier, Paris, 1997, pp. 32–35: ‘La couleur c’est ce qui cache. …’ 42 Garside wrote: ‘Thus by November 9, 1523, the Reformer seemed to have annihilated, in theory at least, any opportunity for the further creation of religious art either of a specifically ecclesiastical and public or of a more generally devotional and private character.’ See Zwingli and the Arts, p. 150. 43 October 1523. See Z II, 705, 32–33; Z III, 798). The issue is complicated still further by the factor of context, which Zwingli also raised in connection with his definition of ‘idol.’ Zwingli recognized that the siting of an object was an element in the establishment of that object as a sacred one. (Z IV, 102, 21–24). The question, then, of what constitutes a sacred space and who confers sacredness — the space/context on the object or the object on the space adds another complicating dimension to the definitional question. See On True and False Religion (March 1525), pp. 334–338.

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the consensus view — the view of Walter Rüegg (1957), Garside (1966), and others — which holds that Zwingli’s attitude about easel paintings, wallpaintings, sculptures, and other images was not negative, and that it was only religious art with symbolic or spiritual purposes that, from Zwingli’s point of view, posed a problem for the Christian.44 The reason most often adduced in support of the view that Zwingli was not against images in a wholesale fashion was that, on more than one occasion, Zwingli declared himself not to be. One of the earliest of these often-quoted declarations appeared on 15 June 1524, shortly after the publication of the final order to remove pictures from Zürich churches: I don’t say this in any way out of personal prejudices because nobody else admires pictures, statues, more than I, but what is counterproductive to piety cannot be allowed, and has to be relentlessly removed according to the order of the authority.45 In this passage Zwingli asserts a kind of impartiality with respect to the inherent, or artistic, value of images, as distinct from their religious function. But one can see he is justifying their removal from Zürich’s churches nonetheless. In 1525, he makes a similar assertion in his Letter to Valentin Compar where he claims to admire pictures more than most,46 which strikes at least this author as disingenuous: The first reason that pictures annoy me little is because I cannot see them well, and also that I have more than other people joy in Cf. Walter Ruegg, ‘Zwinglis Stellung zur Kunst’ in Reformation: Zeitschrift für evangelische Kultur und Politik, VII, 1957, pp. 271–282, esp. pp. 274, 278–80; Garside, pp. 171–172; Campenhausen, 1957, pp. 99–100; Potter, pp. 114–115; Z III, 906, 1–2; Z IV, 84, 95–6, 106. 45 Commentary on True and False Religion: ‘…alioqui nemo magis miratur pictures, statuas et imagines quam nos; at quae sic offendunt pietatum , ferri non debent, sed constanti magistrates autoritate aboleri.’ Z III, 906, 1–2. Quoted in Farner III, 489: ‘Ich sage dies keineswegs aus persönlicher Voreingenommenheit; denn sonst bewundert miemand Gemälde, Statuen und Bilder mehr als ich. Aber was der Frömmigkeit so antössig ist, darf nicht geduldet, muss veilmehr auf Befehl der Obrigkeit unnachsichtig auf die Seite geschafft werden’ [‘I don’t say this in any way out of prejudice because nobody else admires pictures, statues, more than I, but what is counter-productive to piety cannot be allowed, and has to be relentlessly removed according to the order of the authority’]. 46 See Samuel M. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli: The Reformer of German Switzerland, 1484–1531, New York, 1901, p. 478, quoting ‘Reckoning of the Faith of Huldreich Zwingli to the Roman Emperor Charles’ (3 July 1530). 47 ‘Ich gdar ouch mich wol für einen unpartiigen leerer in der sach dargeben uß vil ursachen: die erst, das mich die bilder wenig verletzen mögend,daβ ich sy übel sehen mag [weil 44

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beautiful pictures and statues.47 In the Commentary on True and False Religion (March 1525) Zwingli claims for a third time that there is no one who is a greater admirer of paintings than himself. I am not speaking from personal feeling, for no one is a greater admirer than I of paintings and statuary; but those that offend piety ought not to be tolerated but to be abolished by unyielding command of the authorities.48 In these passages Zwingli asserts his admiration for painting to demonstrate that he is no enemy to pictures, although not without leaving some room for doubt. He offers two curious explanations that belie his claim to admire pictures and statues. First, he explains that he has a visual handicap in his short-sightedness, that he cannot even see pictures very well, in effect offering his poor eyesight as a defence against accusations of prejudice. After all, how could he hate something he cannot even see properly? Secondly, when he says ‘pictures annoy me little’, while it is likely that he is trying to suggest that he does not mind pictures, he also suggests that, had he been able to see images properly, he might have been annoyed by them more than he was— indeed, that he does feel a degree of irritation caused by pictures, but only ‘a little’ as opposed to ‘a lot.’ While most commentators discount this statement, one has to wonder what would have been the outcome of his having 20/20 vision? This is not to suggest he abhorred paintings to the extent that he sought rabidly to destroy them on any pretext. But it seems he was not, at a visceral level, indifferent to them at all. For these reasons, Zwingli’s statements defending his personal admiration for pictures ring hollow, more like a politician’s rhetoric designed to appease an anxious public fond of its images, than a firmly believed point of view.49 ich sie (um meiner Kurzsichtigkeit willen) nur undeutlich, schlecht sehen kann], ouch das ich für andre menschen lust hab im schönem gemäld und standen bilden …’, in Ein Antwurt Huldrychen Zwinglis Valentino Compar Vreggeben, from the third article entitled: ‘Von dem bildnussen,’ Z IV, 84, 23–25. Cf. Farner III, p. 489 and Garside who translates this passage as: ‘Images are able to delight me less, since I cannot see them well.’ (Zwingli, p. 77). 48 Commentary on True and False Religion (March 1525) in LCW III, 337 (Z III, 906, 1–2). The same comment appears also in the Answer to Valentin Compar. (Z IV, 84, 25–26). 49 Michalski’s comment on Luther’s declaration ‘that he is not happy about images’ might be applicable here. Michalski describes a comparable statement by Luther about painted and sculpted images as ‘more of rhetorical ploy than an intended declaration’ because Luther soon thereafter argued against the iconoclasts. See Michalski, pp. 47–48.

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6.1–6.5: Title pages from Zwingli’s publications by the printer, Christopher Froschauer, 1523–1525. 6.1. ‘Der Hirt’/‘The Shepherd’, 1524. 6.2. ‘Welche ursach gebind ze ufzuren welches die waren ufrhrer sygind’/’Those Who Give Cause for Tumult’, 1525. 6.3. ‘Ein Antwurt Huldrychen Zwinglis Valentino Compar… Vreggeben’/’An Answer to Valentin Compar’, 1524/1525. 6.4. ‘Nachhut von dem Nachtmal’/’The Action or Practice of the Lord’s Supper’, 1526. 6.5. Von Clarheit unnd gewüsse oder unbetzogliche…/On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God.

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6.6. 16th century drawing of the Grossmünster interior, Zürich. Johannes Wick, Chronik des Chorherren, 1586. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

6.7. The Grossmünster, a second view. 16th century chronicler’s rendering of the remodelled interior. Central Library (Zentralbibliothek), Zürich.

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6.8. David Roberts, Interior of St. Gommar, Lierre, 1850. Wallace Collection, London.

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The position Zwingli maintained toward paintings and sculpture was more lenient than his written words would suggest, both with respect to the domestic use of images in society generally, with regard to his congregation, and in his own work, although his written discussion of the matter continued to develop into something still more radical by 1525. A number of Zwingli’s own publications included images of Jesus Christ, the saints and even God the Father (Figs. 6.1–6.5). He also used visual propaganda, as did Luther and other reform activists in Zürich, Germany and England, to agitate against the Church of Rome, although Zurich has received less attention than comparable Lutheran or English propaganda.50 Fig. 2.8 shows a flysheet depicting the allegorical image of the ‘Godly Mill.’ The caption for this image reads, ‘This have two Switzer made.’ Originally published by Christopher Froschauer, the flysheet rapidly achieved wide circulation. Instead of the usual ‘Host Mill’, it contains an allegory of spreading the pure Word.51 It shows God in the clouds (above left) who has ‘re-activated’ the mill; divine rays of light emanate from Him reaching down to the millhouse itself. Christ pours the four evangelists as ‘grain’ into the mill; Erasmus bags the flour that the mill produces; and Luther makes dough out of it. Four men implement the task of disseminating the bread/Word thus produced: Karsthans (Karl-Hans), an iconic farmer stereotype representing the ordinary man (who wields a flail in the background); Erasmus, Luther and a fourth, unidentified individual who distributes the Word (some take to be Zwingli). The Pope, surrounded by clerics, raises his hand to the unidentified man who is handing him a text in a gesture of indifference. He accepts the book, but then tosses it to the ground along with the others. We know that Zwingli was involved in the creation of this sheet because of a letter he wrote to Oswald Myconius (25 May 1521).52 In this letter he acknowledges having given the pamphlet its title, having ‘invented the illustrations with Füsseli’, the draftsman of the image, as well as discussing On comparable visual Lutheran propaganda, see R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, Cambridge, 1981 and Oxford, 1994; for print media in England (1550–1640) see Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, Cambridge, 1991. The Zurichzentral Bibliothek possesses a collection of Zürich Reformation propaganda prints. 51 This passage follows Christine Göttler, ‘Das älteste Zwingli-Bildnis? — Zwingli als Bild-Erfinder: der Titelhozschnitt zur ‘Beschribung der götlichen müly’, Bilderstreit: Kulturwandel in Zwinglis Reformation, Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Peter Jezler (eds.), Zürich, 1984, pp. 19–40. 52 This would be John 6:32–36. See Göttler, pp. 19–20. 50

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with Füsseli certain lines from the Bible that seemed to him relevant to its message.53 Zwingli also says that he corrected the composition so that the main emphasis was turned away from Luther to God and Christ.54 Those who maintain the consensus view that Zwingli was not against images in a wholesale fashion usually cite the evidence of his book publications and his own statements in defence of his position on images, as we have already seen. Although this propaganda sheet was printed in 1521, before the image question had fully emerged in Zürich (Jud’s sermon, Hätzer’s pamphlet, and Zwingli’s publications addressing the image question all took place after 1521), both the propaganda sheet and the subsequent illustrations to the Zürich Bible, Die gantze Bibel, published by Froschauer in 1530, indeed show that Zwingli was not committed to aniconism, or opposed to images of any kind. I interpret Zwingli’s embrace of certain images and not others as illustrating a conceptual distinction between ‘pictures’ and ‘images’ in his mind; that is, between fully rendered polychromatic religious narrative or portrait, and prints or drawn images. Although never approached in these terms by Zwingli or his contemporaries, I posit this conceptual difference existed relative to colour and affective response; and that it made all the difference to Zwingli and what he says about religious images. An important aspect of the colour and affective response issue is the realism created by colour which distinguishes it fundamentally from the essentially black and white block print. Colour is an indication of life — of blood in the veins — which by this time had been used by artists for millennia to arouse emotional and religious responses in people, if not to convince observers of the realism of figures on view. About polychrome sculpture Roberta Pascarelli wrote: [In figural sculpture,] colour represents signs of life: the gaze becomes alive and penetrating with coloured irises; a rosy complexion and pink lips imply pulsating blood and a blush of emotion. We subconsciously take cues from the colours of nature: red can signal beauty or danger; ... White ... a bloodless loss of vitality; we turn pale when sick.55 In Zwingli’s case, the pink bosom of the Madonna and flesh and wounds of the dying Christ were among the images most likely to incite pulsating Ibid. Ibid., p. 19. 55 Roberta Panzanelli, ed., The Color of Life, Los Angeles, 2008, p. 2. 53 54

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blood and the blush of emotions in his flock, but he considered any such affective response totally inappropriate to worship and certainly not an indicator of faith. In a critical sense, the ‘black and white’ printed image, renders acceptable even those images of Jesus Christ and God, which the same in painted media or polychrome sculpture, alive with life and engendering raw emotion, would not be.The biblical illustrations do not expressly have propaganda as their goal as does the Godly Mill, and in this essential way they differ from it. But book illustrations, propaganda and broadsheets, indeed all of the printed media, cheap and otherwise, were essentially highcontrast images printed in black ink on a ‘white’ ground. They involved little in the way of nuanced chiaroscuro or drama that could be delivered by the brush. The world of print media was complex as Tessa Watt has shown; it changed over time with editions and market, it communicated, educated, entertained and influenced people, but it did not worry the Reformers. In visual terms conveying a message on the printed page — still a relatively new but wildly popular endeavor — accompanied by words, would condition society to a different kind of visual experience. The concept of the page, blank and otherwise, text, and the colours black,white (and red), would become as normative as polychromy and gilt had been. Watt shows that printed media in England during the sixteenth century often comprised ballads to be sung, a device not unknow in Christian history for delivering information. Indeed, she writes, ‘the broadside was not only a text to be read. It was also, in fact, primarily, a song to be sung, or an image to be pasted on the wall.’56 The number of printings of this the Godly Mill attests to its general circulation and wide use. Christine Göttler described these flysheet images as ‘silent pictures’ (die stummenden Bild). 57 Idioms aside, ‘silent’ is a puzzling operative descriptor. Could she be referring to colour and affective dimension? In the previous pages on Zwingli’s writings, we have seen what constituted an idol for Zwingli and what his thoughts were about religious images. These views and his specific comments about paintings were reiterated and further elaborated in a couple of texts published after 1524. The most direct and most often referred to of these occurs in only two texts: (1) An Answer to Valentin Compar, written in early 1525, and (2) Commentary on True and

56 57

Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge, 1991, p. 6. Ibid., p. 21.

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False Religion, (March 1525).58 These references to painting are infrequent, but important. In addition to claiming that he derives more pleasure than the next man from beautiful pictures and statues,59 in Valentin Compar Zwingli distinguishes between venerated and un-venerated pictures as the definitional criterion for whether something constitutes an ‘idol’ or not. This is consistent with earlier texts and also with writings Zwingli will have read from the first iconoclastic controversy, by such authors as John of Damascus.60 This remains objectively problematic as a reliable criterion because of the problem, identified by Hätzer and taken up by Zwingli, of ‘idols of the mind.’ Still, Zwingli here attempts to further refine the distinction between ‘venerated’ and ‘un-venerated’ by discriminating between ‘idol’ and ‘picture.’ An idol is defined as an image with the additional element that is venerated; any other visual representation is a picture: Dear Valentin, do you understand that we call an idol a picture of a helper, of somebody, who gives consultation [lit., oder dero eer wirt angethon, somebody who is capable of giving consolation], but pictures we call images of everything which is visible, but which is not made to raise seductive hope and which is also not venerated. …Nobody is so stupid as to consider necessary the demolition of pictures and statues when they are not venerated.61

58 Z III, 900 ff. The Commentary was written in the fall/winter of 1524, and published in March 1525. For its English translation, see Commentary on True and False Religion, in LWC III, 43–343. 59 ‘Die erst, das mich die bilder wenig verletzen mögend, daß ich sy übel sehen mag; ouch das ich für andre menschen lust hab im schönem gemäld und ständen bilden’ (Z IV, 84, 24–25; also Farner III, 489). 60 According to Walter Köhler Zwingli owned a copy of John of Damascus’s,‘De fide orthodoxa,’ (‘Expositio accurata Fidei Orthodoxae’). See ‘Huldrych Zwinglis Bibliothek’, in Neujahrsblatt zum Besten des Waisenhauses in Zürich, 143, Zürich, 1921, item 83. The first edition of the ‘Fide Orthodoxa’ was printed by Johannes Faber in 1507. The first Greek print edition of this text (with some additions) was printed in Verona in 1531, the year of Zwingli’s death. Joseph Hurst Lupton, trans., St John of Damascus (The Fathers for English Readers), London 1882. p. 65. 61 ‘Verstand aber eigenlich, lieber Valentin, das wir einen götzen heissen: ein bildnus eines helffers oder trosthuffens, oder dero eer wirt angeton; bilder nennend wir aber glychnussen eins yeden dings, das da sichtbar ist, aber zu gheiner abfurigen hoggnung nit gemacht, ouch nit vereret wirt’ (Valentin Compar, Z IV, 96, 9–13).

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Here, in a slightly different formulation than we saw earlier, Zwingli re-asserts that secular pictures were not at issue, and reassures his reader that images which are not venerated need not be destroyed., Zwingli is likely referring here to the concepts of dulia versus latreia — that is, to honour appropriately shown to those holy figures associated with God, in contrast to worship due to God alone, but the problem remained that a clear distinction between the kind of image likely to be venerated and the non-venerated is never articulated. How would one know that honour shown a saint was not tainted by a sense of consolation derived from looking upon his image? How does one distinguish between two different renderings of, say, Saint Paul? Or is Zwingli here referringto inner idols of the heart and mind of the kind suggested in The Shepherd, and not to painting and sculpture at all? In still another passage in Valentin Compar, Zwingli again defends the existence of non-religious images, which he has just defined as pictures. They [the iconoclasts] do not distinguish between the venerated pictures which we call idols, and other pictures. The iconoclasts mean they should destroy all pictures, but really they should do that only with the idols. … The iconoclasts sin toward the pictures because what does not serve to belittle God, and what does not give anger tothe Christians and what does not seduce, be it carved or painted, the First Commandment does not mean that [one should destroy them].62 Zwingli suggests that an iconoclast is unable to distinguish between a venerated and a non-venerated image and so destroys both equally. He classifies such an action as a sin because it is not justified by the Word of God. He seems not to identify himself with the iconoclasts or iconoclasm, as though it were not the destruction of images that fell within the category of ‘idol’ that constituted iconoclasm, but something else, a purification process, perhaps. It is possible that Zwingli here was distancing himself from revolutionary tactics, or at least demonstrating his respect for social order in the face of accusations of encouraging unrest. If this is true, it lends weight to the possibility that his position on images was, indeed, shaped by politics as much as theology. In the Commentary on True and False Religion, he reiterates his assertion that non-religious imagery is harmless, and need not be removed, but this time he clarifies what he means by ‘harmless content’: 62

Quoted in Walter Rüegg, pp. 278–79. No specific reference to an original text is given.

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No one is so stupid as to think that we ought to do away with statues, images, and other representations, where no worship is offered them; for who is affected by the flying cherubim on the mercy seat or embroidered on the curtains, whether for their mystic meaning or for decoration, or by the palms, lions, oxen, pomegranates, and such like ornaments cunningly wrought in Solomon’s temple [cf. I Kings 6:1–38]? Again, when they are worshipped, who is so senseless, not to say faithless, as to think they ought to be tolerated?63 He reassures his reader that there is justification for the destruction of images only if they are worshipped, and that there would be justification for the destruction of images that are not worshipped only if the Bible had commanded that all statues and images be destroyed. But the harmless images mentioned in this passage belong to the category of decorative art. What happened to the geschichtewyss images that Zwingli specifically sanctions in the Short Christian Instruction of November 1523? This latter type of images is not mentioned here. In the Instruction he wrote, ‘Where anyone would have them outside the church as a representation of historical events without instruction for veneration, they may be tolerated.’64 In the earlier passage, historical narratives are permissible as long as they remain outside the sacred vessel of the church. Has Zwingli changed his mind? Has he not yet thought through the implications of his remarks? Is he being careless or disingenuous? On closer examination, some confusion can be detected in A Short Christian Instruction. Zwingli confirms that those images described in I Kings, Chapter 6 and Deuteronomy, Chapter 4 are permitted: [F]lower patterns, lions’ heads, wings, and the like that can never be taken as God and as aids [are not forbidden]. For Solomon would not have let such trees and flowers be made in the temple, nor would God have ordered the making of the menorah, if they had produced the danger of idolatry.65

Commentary on True and False Religion, LCW III, 331. A Short Christian Instruction, HZW II, 71; Z II, 658, 19–20). 65 See HZW II, 70. 63 64

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About the images then in the ‘churches and chambers’ which must be destroyed because they had become objects of reverence66, Zwingli’s position remains relatively consistent. We can see this in the passage already quoted from the Short Christian Instruction, where he writes of such images, ‘Especially are they intolerable in the churches, for there everything we have is holy to us’67 (my emphasis). But what has now become of historical images — those portraying the humanity of Christ, the Holy Family and the Saints? These are not addressed. Seeping through the statements quoted just above, both from A Short Christian Instruction and from the Commentary, is a thinly veiled rising level of energy in opposition to images, perhaps an incipient commitment to the eradication of all narratives of the Christian story. In the Instruction Zwingli outlines a distinction between historical representations of Biblical stories (including Christ in his humanity), and idols which, in practice, would be very difficult to interpret. The distinction appears to lie in the relationship of the viewer to the image, and not within the image itself. I suggest this has everything to do with colour and the realism of painted pictures. In the Commentary, Zwingli feels obliged to remind his readers that he is only talking about images within the church, because images placed there are more vulnerable; but this is not always clear.68 For example, Section II of this same text begins: Second, that is not permissible to have images, even if they are not worshipped, is plain from the fact that the reason which leads them to assert that images can be made use of betrays our vast coldness; first, in that there is no love of God in us, for that is a sufficient spur to right living; second, in that it is not safe to conform to any image 66 Garside acknowledges that the term geschichtewyss was ambiguous in 1523. He suggests however that two years later (in Valentin Compar) the ambiguity was cleared up; that an art with Christian content was permissible as long as it was devoid ‘of any liturgical and ecclesiastical content or purpose but [?and] also of any spiritual dimension.’ (Garside, p. 172.) What Garside appears to be describing here is actually a psychological difference, similar to the one objected to by Zwingli. The broadsheet illustrations, historical engravings and illustrations in Zwingli’s own publications conform to these criteria, but it is extremely hard to imagine how to paint this difference. 67 See HZW, II, 70–71. 68 For example, see p. 332. Such contradictions are often only implied, but are nonetheless perceptible. The compounded ambiguities found here contribute to the continued debate on this subject.

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but His who wishes not to be represented in visible form. … An image can rouse some trifling and fleeting emotion, but it cannot kindle love.69 In the above passage Zwingli perceives no good reason for the existence of images at all, and so even ‘historical ones’ are no longer exempted. The reason Zwingli gives is precisely that what is aroused in the worshipper is trifling and fleeting emotion, which, although admittedly affective, constitutes neither pure worship, nor true faith. The criteria for distinguishing historical from religious images are part of the ill-defined and problematic scope of the Reformer’s position. It is one of the positions taken in this chapter that affective content is a central though implicit definitional criterion for distinguishing historical or secular from religious images. Obvious as this may seem to a modern mind, this way of distinguishing the religious from the historical entailed that one could not differentiate one category from the other based on the thing depicted, but rather on how, and whether, that thing was emotively or seductively rendered or received. Initially, Zwingli held that historical narrative images might be permissible in homes, in or on civic buildings, or in books, including the Bible. Indeed, at the same time that Zwingli was preaching against images and overseeing their removal from Zürich’s city churches, images of an illustrative nature depicting Christ, the Holy Family, the Saints, and even God the Father, appeared in essays of his published by Froschauer, making it unequivocally clear that certain depictions of the Holy Family were sanctioned by him.70 Such images, of which five examples are shown in Figs. 6.1–6.5, accompanied the majority of Zwingli’s essays in a variety of combinations. Most of these prints employed traditional Catholic iconography combined and re-combined wthin a relatively standardised set of compositions rendered in woodblocks or engravings.71 The illustration for the title page of The Commentary on True and False Religion, LCW III, 333. As of January 1523, Zwingli was the official censor for the city of Zürich. (Egli doc. 319). In this capacity it is difficult to imagine that he was not involved in establishing guidelines for publishing, and would not have seen, been aware of, or approved the inclusion of these images in his own publications. Campenhausen states that in practice it was never images of Christ that were at issue, but of Mary, the saints and relics. See ‘Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation’, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (hereafter ZKG ), 68, 1/2, 1957, p. 97. 71 These images may well be from pre-Reformation woodblocks and plates. When Christopher Froschauer began his press in Zürich in 1521, there were no trained draftsmen or cut69 70

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Shepherd, (Der Hirt) published in March 1524,72 shows Christ, the true Shepherd, healing, giving guidance, or performing a miracle. (Fig. 6.1). A very similar image is included in the title page to Those Who Give Cause for Tumult (Welche ursach gebind ze ufzuren welches die waren ufrhrer sygind), 152573. (Fig. 6.2). Here the image of Christ attending to the poor and the lame fills the entire picture frame, which lacks the traditional renaissance border observable in Figures. 6.4 and 6.5. Instead, the bibliographic details of the book make up the surround of the image, but the iconography of the image is otherwise essentially identical to Der Hirt. There are countless preReformation examples of Christ depicted in this role and posture. The same woodcut is used for the title page of Valentin Compar, 1524/1525 (Fig. 6.3), which shows Christ holding a cross surrounded by cross-carrying martyrs (or disciples). This is repeated again on the title page to the essay Nachhut von dem Nachtmal (The Action or Practice of the Lord’s Supper) (1526) (Fig. 6.4). Earlier in 1522, the baptised Christ appeared on the title page of The Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God (Fig. 6.5). In this image Christ’s hands are raised, palms outward, in the traditional gesture of blessing. In still other images, not shown here, are depicted the Fall, other miracles performed by Christ, and the Last Supper, each printed in black and white, and relying on thoroughly conventional iconography that, if isolated from its by-line, would not otherwise signal a Protestant tract. From the illustrations in these ters for books. For this reason he went to Basel, where the craft of printed-book illustration was already well underway. It was then he discovered the work of Hans Holbein the Younger and began to employ him. Chronologically it is possible that the images in Zwingli’s books after 1521 could be by Holbein, but they are not. The first time Holbein collaborated with Froschauer was in 1524, on the title page to the New Testament. The work Holbein did for the 1524 edition of the Bible was used in subsequent editions by Froschauer. (See Stultifera Navis, Mitteilungsblatt die schweizerischen Bibliophilengesellschaft, Basel in: Bulletin de la société suisse des bibliophiles, No. 3/4, Basel, 1946, p. 106 and Paul Leeman-Van Elck, Die Bibelsammlung im Grossmünster zu Zürich, Zürich, 1945, pp. 105–6; see also Leeman-Van Elck, Die Offizin Froschauer, Zurichs berühmte Druckerei im 16. Jahrhundert, Zürich and Leipzig, 1940. 72 Z III, 5–68. The Shepherd, 1524, is found in English translation in HZW, II, 77–126. The first printed English translation of a Zwingli work was The Shepherd, printed in London,1550, under the title, ‘The ymage of bothe pastoures, sethe forthe by that mooste famous clerck, Huldrych Zwinglius, and now translated out of Latin and into Englishe by John Wernon Synonoys. A most fruitefull and necessary boke, to be had and redde in all churches, therewyth to enarme all symple and ignorant folkes, against the ravennige wolues and false prophets.’ (HZW II, 80). 73 Z III, 355–469, Those Who Give Cause for Tumult, 1525 (also known as The Troublemakers).

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figures it is evident that it was not to images per se that Zwingli objected, or even to the fact that some depicted the undepictable God, the Father; rather, these were illustrative, un-colored, used graphic techniques as opposed to painterly ones, and were not likely to have the wrong kind of effect on the consumer. As early as 1515, Zwingli wrote the following in the margins of his copy of Erasmus’s Lucubrationes: The common people think that God is placated by victims of cattle and by corporeal things. But even since God himself is spirit: mind: not body, it is obvious that like rejoices in like: doubtless [H]e [i.e. God] is above all to be worshipped by purity of mind. And today the mass of Christians worship God through certain corporeal ceremonies: whereas the piety of the mind is the most pleasing worship. For the ather seeks such worshippers as will worship him in spirit, since he is spirit.74 (Punctuation is original.) As we have seen, for Zwingli outward forms of worship had little value, precisely because they were material in form, and because they did not constitute appropriate forms of worship. True Christians pursued a spiritual path of worship, consisting almost completely in ‘inner experience’; the outward expression of their worship was irrelevant. Zwingli found increasingly problematic the idea of giving material form to the ‘substance and philosophy’ of Christ. Worship became synonymous with prayer; and concerns about external forms of prayer, which Zwingli believed hypocritical, describing them as ‘clamour before men’, would eventually lead to his definition of ‘true’ prayer as silent.75 What Zwingli wanted, as Garside points out, was nothing less than an irreducible purity of worship — in other words, an absolutely private prayer; the individual withdrawn from the

Quoted in Garside p. 37. The term lucubrationes refers to a work done by lamplight, i.e. night study. The book entitled Lucubratiunculae aliquot was published by Erasmus in 1503 (Antwerp: Th. Martens). It was an anthology of works including the important Enchiridion. For a comprehensive list of the many other works included in this volume, see R. J. Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe, vol.II, Edinburgh, 1993, p. 12 n.9. In subsequent printings, this book was entitled simply Lucubrationes. 75 P. Auksi in his article, ‘Simplicity and Silence: The Influence of Scripture on the Aesthetic Thought of the Major Reformers’, Journal of Religious History, vol.10, Dec. 1979, pp. 74

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world and from his fellow men, absolutely alone in communion with his heavenly Father. 76 Ecclesiastical accessories were also added to this list in early summer, 1524. Thus in April 1525 he argues in favour of eliminating music from the liturgy on the same basis as that for sculpture and painting; that is, because God’s prescribed form of worship did not include music.77 Taken to its logical conclusion, the denial of value to any material form of worship would seem to lead to the elimination of any physical (visible) form of the church.78 This would effectively also mean the elimination of the institution of the church as we know it, and as any Christian of Zwingli’s time would have known it, Reformed or otherwise. For this reason, Zwingli recognised the necessity for some form of liturgy and, one may infer, for the existence of church buildings.79 For Garside, this tension was ultimately central to the development of Zwingli’s position. 343–64, addresses, in addition to simplicity, the condition of silence as part of the reformed aesthetic. I concur in the emphasis Auksi gives to the notion of silence in this article, but believe that (the) colour (white) has a role in the aesthetics of both simplicity and silence, which Auksi overlooks. (See above, Chapt. I). References to silence in Zwingli may be found in: Archeteles, p. 220; Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles: 21st Art., pp. 180–81, esp. 181; 52nd Art., p. 320; Z II, 349, 21–23, Z IV, 120, 16f. Some secondary literature to consider: Wandel, p. 181; Potter, pp. 114, 121, 191; Garside, p. 30–46. See also James Dunnett, ‘The Architecture of Silence’, Architectural Review, October 1985; Ambrose G. Wathen, The Meaning of Silence in the Rule of Benedict, Cistercian Studies Series, no. 22, Wash. D.C., 1973; G. W. Bromiley, The Silence of God, Grand Rapids, 1962. In her essay, Christine Göttler (p. 21) refers to ‘silent pictures’, ‘die stummenden Bild’, which is a term used by Zwingli in the Answer to Valentin Compar. This reference is to pictures without words (those in churches), as contrasted with black and white printed flysheet pages, which included text. 76 Z II, 349, 21–23; Garside, Zwingli, pp. 42, 45. 77 Organs were silenced in June 1524; vocal music was silenced on 12 April 1525; see Garside, pp. 41–58, esp. pp. 57–58. 78 The ‘visible church’ to Zwingli was the ‘entire believing people’ and was universal: ‘The church, first of all, insofar as it is fitting to speak here about it, is taken to be all those who have built all their confidence and security of salvation in Christ, as He says in Matthew 16:18 .... Thus one finds in the word of Christ, that this Christ-believing church is all those who trust in Christ’ (The Shepherd, pp. 109–110). By ‘physical’ forms I mean to include any visible form of the church, including not only church building but also liturgy, music and prayer, as distinct from the ‘visible church’, meaning ‘the people.’ See A Short Christian Instruction, pp. 64–65. 79 ‘Zwingli was fully aware that some kind of public worship is imperative for the life of the visible church within the city. The inner content of worship must have some exterior form’ (Garside, p. 45). See Garside, (pp. 43–46), for a discussion of this point in which architecture

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Zwingli was opposed to itinerant, outdoor preaching, and this fact is often cited as evidence for his belief in the necessity of a corporate structure. There is a tension between these two positions, which infuse Zwingli’s thinking throughout his career, and is analogous to the tension between ‘freedom from liturgy’ and the ‘necessity for liturgy’ identified by Garside.80 Thus, while Zwingli’s commitment to the reformation of the church initially included only the liturgy and the relationship of music to it, it grew to include any ‘outward’ forms whatsoever, in a drive to bring the necessary outward form of the church into line with the inner demands of worship as dictated by God and communicated through Scripture; yet this position could not be taken to its logical conclusion without obliterating the corporate church altogether. The gradual articulation of these inner demands and how they are manifested in the practical world is a central and controlling factor governing changes not only to the liturgy itself, but to the physical fabric of the visible church, as an expression of the worshipper’s relationship to his faith and, perhaps also, of the Holy Spirit speaking through the practice of worship. ‘Right’ worship of true faith entailed focusing on the ‘right object’ of faith — God, the spirit of God (the Holy Spirit), and nothing else. One’s gaze had to be turned inward to reflect on the Holy Spirit and on the higher spiritual realm, and to transcend the material realm in this process. As we have seen, in A Short Christian Instruction Zwingli stated that anything inside the churches, anything at all, was holy.81 While painted images and sculpted figures were not to be tolerated because of their vulnerability to becoming objects of worship or idolatry, this statement still suggests that the walls must also in some sense reflect holiness (or, alternatively, that holiness must somehow inhere in them, certainly in the space contained by them) in virtue of their presence within the holy vessel and of the place of worship. That Zwingli saw this space as the idealised, irreducible space of the patristic temple is a distinct possibility. In the Archeteles (August 1522) Zwingli had already contrasted ‘Gospel simplicity’ with the luxury of his Roman Catholic contemporaries.82 In The Shepherd of 1524, Zwingli suggests that he did, indeed, have a sense of what the sacred space should be like: and interiors have no role. I suggest that they must have had a role for the same reasons, albeit one generally unacknowledged by Reformers. 80 See Garside pp. 41–44. 81 See HZW II, 70–71. 82 Archeteles, in LCW I, 235.

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The Christian people never lived godlier and more innocently than when no human additions or obligations were added to the simple word of God.83 Clearly, in this passage, the godly is associated with ‘innocence’, and ‘innocence’ with the ‘simple.’ The emphasis on simplicity suggests an Erasmian belief in the existence of a pristine condition of the early Christian community. In associating simplicity with the apostolic age, Zwingli may have been following Erasmus’s lead, or that of Eusebius, whom he had also studied.84 He is alluding to an idealised age, during which the content and form of Christian lives were thought to be closer to the spiritual content of the word of God in virtue of the absence of any of the material elaborations of later Roman Catholicism. In the Archeteles, Zwingli accuses the Roman Catholic Church of having made inappropriate, self-aggrandizing innovations, and claims that the Reform movement wanted ‘to abrogate innovations too freely introduced and to restore the old by right of recovery.’85 The assumption of the superior status of the spiritual lives of early Christians is linked to a minimalist programme where no nothing inessential existed, or was even desired.86 The association of the ‘right’ path with the ‘true’ church — that of the ancient pre-Gregorian church — and primitive simplicity had implications for the physical fabric of the church (the church structure and interior decorations), just as it did for painted images and idols, liturgy, and music, although they are rarely spoken about explicitly. Each of these things was a form of worship within the Christian church. That these errors of form must also have been conceptually linked in Zwingli’s mind to notions of primitive simplicity is clear from the two references above,87 and is indicated again in the discussion of the ‘Abolition of the Law’ in A Short Christian Instruction.88 83 The Shepherd, HZW II, 111. See also in the Archeteles: ‘The Apostles preached the teachings of Christ in all their purity.’ 84 Zwingli does not appear to have owned a copy of Eusebius’s Church History. Köhler mentions a copy of the Church History in Zwingli’s library (Köhler, no. 125), but A. Schindler does not. However, a couple of editions [?copies] of Eusebius’s works were owned by the Stiftsbibliothek, which are now lost: see Germann, no. 173 (Historia ecclesiastica, Rufinus, trans.), 636 (Chronikon). 85 Archeteles, pp. 271, 282. 86 Ibid., p. 266. 87 The Shepherd, p. 111 and Archeteles, pp. 271, 282. 88 A Short Christian Instruction, sect. 6, pp. 62–67.

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In this section, Zwingli enumerates what he sees as the now invalid practices of the Jewish faith described in the Old Testament. These included the ceremonies of the Old Testament, that is, the external sacrifices: the washings, the burning of incense and candles [which] have been abolished together with the costumes, vessels, form of temple, etc: for these things have been only a pointing to Christ.89 He specifically rejects the traditional (Mosaic and medieval) form of the temple showing the glory and splendour of the Lord by means of its colour and precious materials. Further, he says, when Christ came ‘these things ceased as a shadow ceases when light comes.’90 In metaphoric terms we are accustomed to hearing of the coming of Christ as the coming of light, but there is a sense in which the new light replacing the shadows spoken of in this reference invokes a more concrete visual image: not of a nimbus surrounding Christ, but of a physical space previously darkened by paintings and stained glass, which for all the glory and splendour which it was their task to show, absorbed light as (coloured) pigments do and, physically as well as metaphorically, created a space in shadow. What Zwingli suggests here is not just the elimination of idols contrasted with divine light — both of these things being metaphorical references to light and darkness — but a picture of dark corners literally becoming light ones. This conjures up an image not unlike the one I cited earlier by Gottfried Keller, where the colours in the world evaporate like a mist on a window pane, leaving a world of pure, white, colourless surfaces. At the outset of the text Divine and Human Righteousness (July 1523), Zwingli equates the Godly, the Pure, the Righteous, the (eternal) Good and Truth. He defines Divine Righteousness as ‘a light which illumines every person.’91 God as ‘essentially righteousness, goodness … and truth itself ’,92 and the Beautiful as the ‘pure, just and righteous.’ These linkages render the Divine Light of God, the Beautiful, the Just, and the Righteous, as well as the True and the Pure, virtually univocal in their meaning. Being pure and undefiled means not just that there are no pollutants present, but that there is no mingling with any kind of uncleanness or temptation. ‘Clean’ is defined Ibid., p. 62. (My emphasis). Ibid. 91 See HZW II, 19. 92 Zwingli, Divine and Human Righteousness, p. 19. 89 90

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as ‘spotless’ as in ‘without the admixture of temptation and desire’;93 ‘pure’ does not mean ‘honest’ as in ‘honest works’ but is defined as ‘clean.’ Quoting Psalm 11, the visual analogue that Zwingli brings into play here is silver ‘seven times purified, thus well cleansed of all dirt’, which, as Zwingli further explains, means ‘that nothing may be found in them that resembles earthly temptations.’94 In this paragraph, Zwingli concludes prescriptively that ‘he who is righteous must be unmingled and freed from any temptation and selfish desire.’95 The cleansing of earthly temptations seems of paramount importance, as it features in the explications of purity, righteousness and cleanliness, equally. That earthly temptations have a very low status in the hierarchy of things is further borne out by their characterization as ‘dirt.’ This is strong language, made even stronger by Zwingli’s transparent disapproval of desire and the disparaging visual picture conjured up by the mention of worthless (brown) grime. The opposite state, of purity and righteousness, appears in many cognate and related forms. It is ‘wholesome’ (meaning in its entirety), ‘undefiled’, ‘unalloyed’, ‘unmingled’ and ‘untainted.’96 Innocence plays a role here in Zwingli’s concept of the ideal Christian, too, as it is also used interchangeably with being ‘untainted’ as well as with ‘purity’, suggesting another indissoluble connection between innocence, purity, untaintedness, and godliness. The goal of a true Christian is to lead a life as ‘pure, clean, unspotted and right as God wants it’, as described in Matthew 5:48: ‘You must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.’97 It is precisely the difference between the mingled and unmingled that distinguishes the human from the Divine. A critical component of this line of thinking is the way in which Zwingli visualizes these attributes. As we have seen in the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles, Zwingli condemns any of the outward forms of righteousness in which people indulge (these serve only to convince one’s fellow man of one’s own virtue), including righteousness through visual or ceremonial means. ‘Note too’, he says, ‘what sort of righteousness it is which struts its stuff before people with cassocks, signs, vestments, and you will find that it is nothing but sheer hypocrisy.’98 About ceremonies, Zwingli says: ‘Ceremonies Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 6. 95 Ibid., p. 7. 96 Ibid., pp. 7, 10. 97 Ibid., p. 7. 98 Ibid., p. 13. 93 94

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do nothing whatever either for divine or human righteousness.’99 In this statement he includes anything material or visual: ‘[A]nything’, he says, ‘is hypocrisy which seeks to appear beautiful in human eyes. ... It is deception and sin.’100 This ‘perfection’ Zwingli describes here consists in following the example of Jesus, whose attributes are unmingled with any other qualities (specifically, earthly temptations), and whose Word cannot be mingled with human pretence.101 What these pretences are Zwingli has already described in the Exposition and in Divine and Human Righteousness (see the above references). Beyond this, Zwingli seems to be describing the totally actualised attributes of God expressed, in Thomist theology, as ‘His perfections.’ God’s perfections, or transcendental attributes, are found in Him in a unified way. That which is also described as ‘innocence’, or purity, may equally well be called His Righteousness , Beauty, or Truth. Zwingli’s concept of beauty is, as one might expect, inextricably linked to his theology, and like his theology contains elements that can be identified as Aristotelian, Platonic, Augustinian, Thomist, Scotist, medieval and ‘modern.’102 Although W. P. Stephens refers to a major gap in Zwingli research on scholastic influences in Zwingli’s work,103 his biographers have each, to a degree, analysed different aspects of these influences. Such influences reflect the via antiqua in which he was originally educated, the years at university in Vienna and Basel during which he studied in both traditions, the via antiqua and the via moderna, and subsequently during his tenure as Parish priest at Glarus and Einsiedeln where he studied intensively Ibid., p. 20. Ibid, p. 13. 101 Ibid., p. 25. 102 The complete works of Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus were either in Zwingli’s library (see Schindler, 1993) or the Stiftbibliothek (see Germann). For Aristotle, see Schindler: nos. 10, 11, 12, 13. For Plato see Schindler, 170 (Musurus edition, 1513; Ficino edition, 1517). For Augustine, see Schindler, nos. 16, 17, and Germann 213.1, 213.2, 737.5, 629, 464, 214, 266, 523; for Aquinas, see Germann, 724.2, 94.2, 130.2, 571.1, 130.2, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 269. For Duns Scotus, see Schindler, 63 and Germann 83, 500. A complete set of Erasmus’s works were in Zwingli’s personal library and in the Stiftbibliothek. See Schindler, nos. 69–87 and Germann, pp. 333–34. Plotinus does not appear in Schindler, Germann, or in Walter Köhler’s Huldrych Zwingli’s Bibliothek (Zürich, 1921). Köhler holds that Zwingli knew about Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, but it cannot be proven that Zwingli had actually read him. See Köhler, no. 348. 103 See Stephens, Zwingli’s Theology, p. 6. However, see G. R. Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 15–46. 99

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the Latin classics, thechurch fathers, and Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.104 The personal influences of the mostly humanist scholars he met during these formative years, particularly in Basel, such as Beatus Rhenanus, Erasmus and Thomas Wyttenbach105 (who is thought to have been one of Zwingli’s teachers at Basel), are also evident.106 In his personal library, there were over five hundred books,107 the contents and scope of which is currently being studied. The concept of beauty itself, described by Zwingli in the Providence of God and in Divine and Human Righteousness, comprises the Godly, the Beautiful, and the Pure. ...as David says in Psalm 11 [Ps. 12:6], ‘The words and sayings of the Lord are pure; they are like silver refined and cleaned of all dirt, 104 Ibid. It is thought that while he was at Glarus Zwingli primarily studied the Latin classics, among whom were: Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Caesar, Pliny, Aulus Gellius and Valerius Maximus, meanwhile continuing his study of Greek and Hebrew. (Potter, pp. 26–43). At Einsiedeln (1516–18), he read the Greek New Testament, Tertullian, Jerome, Lactantius, Lucian, Suetonius, Varro, Ovid and the Greek fathers, especially Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostum. He also began to read Erasmus. (Potter, p. 43; Eire, p. 77). Zwingli enumerates these in Z XIII, 839–54. 105 Thomas Wyttenbach, an influential humanist scholar, was one of Zwingli’s teachers during his time at Basel. See Stephens, pp. 6, 23–25; HZW I, 126; HZW II, 40 n.4, and Rudolph Staehelin, Huldrych Zwingli, sein Leben und Wirken nach den Quellen dargestellt, I, Basel, 1895 and 1897, p. 40. 106 In a footnote discussion of the question of the various influences on Zwingli, W. P. Stephens observed that Walter Köhler, for example, found an absence of influence of the via moderna in either Zwingli’s library or his writings; that J. F. G. Goeters regarded Zwingli as Scotist rather than Thomist; that Büsser found Thomist influences particularly in Zwingli’s understanding of secondary causes, and that J. V. Pollet finds specific Thomist influences, but argues, in the end, for associating Zwingli with the via moderna. Eire states uncategorically that (Erasmian) humanism guided Zwingli to his transcendentalism, primitivism, and scripturalism, Eire, p. 77–78. See also Pipkin, 1984, at n.33 above, pp. 117–31, esp. p. 117. Pipkin’s view is that, from his humanist background Zwingli absorbed the neo-Stoic philosophy even more strongly than the neo-Platonic, and that overall too much is made of Zwingli’s humanist background, because Erasmus’s influence was more in the spiritual sphere, than in the intellectual. Pipkin believes that it is the church fathers, notably Augustine, Origen, Jerome and Chrysostom, whose influence can be detected in Zwingli’s spirituality most strongly. The writing of each of these church fathers were in Zwingli’s library. The influences of each of these individuals, or their schools, are the subject of ongoing research and will only be discussed here where relevant linkages may be drawn. 107 Alfred Schindler, Huldrych Zwingli’s Bibliothek. At the time of writing the manuscript for this book, Schindler’s Bibliothek was a work-in-progress updating and correcting Walter

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indeed seven times purified, thus well cleansed of all dirt,’ it must needs follow that nothing may be found in them which resembles earthly temptations. From this it becomes readily apparent that divine righteousness is as far above human righteousness, ...as God is above humankind. It follows then that we cannot come up to his righteousness; ...we may not attain to the measure of his beauty, innocence and purity.108 Purity is defined as that which is without the admixture of temptation and desire, and this admixture, as one might expect, is described as a material thing: dirt. I mentioned earlier (Chapter V) in the context of a discussion of colour-language in the Bible that a shift took place in view of colour from a material covering to a de-materialised light.109 Being morally and spiritually ‘clean’ and ‘spotless’ brings one closer to God, who is perfection itself. Although we can never achieve God’s perfection (‘for it is impossible, as long as we live, to be that pure’),110 the purer we are, the less covering we carry, the more divested we are of vanity and other material concerns (a form of admixture), the closer we are to Perfection, the Beautiful, the Just, the Righteous, and to the Truth. In this state we can wear (the garment of ) the light of the Lord. That Zwingli did not place much store in painting or architecture has already been said. Music, however, did hold a special place for him (much discussed by scholars), and it is thought that this is because it was central to the traditional education he received in Latin and music,111 not to mention his own strong proclivities and talents.112 A relative indifference to painting and sculpture might be explained as owing to a scholar’s regard

Kohler’s work on this subject. It was accessible online through the Zürich Central Library at: Zürichzentral Bibliothek.http://www-zb.unizh.ch. A book by Schindler on Zwingli’s library has not been published during this interval and in 2010 I was unable to find it at the web address cited. I am not convinced, however, it is unavailable. For the interested scholar ZwinglianaI, not to mention Dr Schindler himself, might provide information on this project. 108 ‘Divine and Human Righteousness’ in HZW II, p. 6. 109 See also M. Pastoureau, ‘La Couleur’, p. 30. 110 ‘Divine and Human Righteousness’ in HZW II, p. 7. 111 Z VII, 126, 9–14; Garside, 15n.35. 112 Contemporaries considered Zwingli to be a musician of not insignificant merit; he practised music privately even after it was eliminated from the liturgy. See Garside, pp. 73–75. This fact is often quoted.

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for the trivium, and might further suggest a preference for an Augustinian concept of beauty based on measure, ratio of parts and an appreciation of the mathematics and the harmonics of architecture. But this was not the case. For Zwingli, beauty was not located in painting, sculpture, or architecture, as it was for Augustine, but in a strictly religious, or spiritual, context. Although he claimed to love painting as much as any man,113 buildings were functionally necessary and the paintings on the walls of buildings were, in an ecclesiastical context anyway, indifferent, annoying, or an impediment.114 While one of the characteristics of beauty, according to Zwingli’s concept of it, was the unity of parts, this unity was not based on measure but on the unity of God’s attributes. Zwingli defines the principle of beauty almost as a kind of intellectual beauty, rather as Plotinus did. But in Zwingli’s case the intellectual beauty is divine beauty, that is, not to be found in the realm of the senses, nor even in that of reason, but in the realm of faith and of the spirit. In other words, beauty was perceived by the mind derived during a meditation on God, and the closer to God one became in imitation of Him, the more intellectually beautiful one was also. Particularly relevant in A Short Christian Introduction115 are the emotional connections Zwingli makes between images and notions of ‘defilement.’ The concept of ‘defilement’ naturally enough conveys the notions of ‘pollution’ and of ‘mixing’, a less virulent form of pollution, but for Zwingli defilement was also anything made with the intention of being beautiful in the eyes of people.116 Visual hypocrisy was as real as moral hypocrisy, and both were forms of defilement. If everything that appears beautiful to the human eye is deception and hypocrisy, then by implication Truth does not lie in that which engages our senses or emotions. Zwingli is not only suggesting a transcendence of the material (and a focus on the spiritual), he is also talking about a deep disengagement from the visual world of colour and the senses. In the context of this brief discussion of defilement and pollution in Zwingli’s thought, it is not difficult to see that wall paintings, along with altars, vestments and other ecclesiastical paraphernalia, were perceived as 113 Z III, 906, 1–2 (Latin original); in English translation in Commentary on True and False Religion in LCW, vol. III, p. 337; also Valentin Compar, Z IV, 84, 25–26. 114 Farner III, p. 489. See also the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles, HZW, I. 115 Approved by the Council and issued November 1523. In translation, this appears in HZW, II, 43–76. 116 Divine and Human Righteousness, p. 13.

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encrustations, and as accumulations of growth around the core, or essence of a thing. In this context the whitewashing of the church interior walls is easily construed as the painting out of images and, in this way, as a cleansing of walls and of pollutants introduced by ‘papists’ for their own personal ends. At another level the whitewashed wall may be construed as symbolizing the unmixed, the unmingled, and the unpolluted, as a denial of the material and visual altogether, analogous to the colour white itself and to the simplicity and purity of God. Obviously, the elimination of images played a key role in the re-orientation of a person’s focus away from idols and images and toward the task at hand that of right worship. But the role that colour, its symbolisms and powers, played, to invoke affective responses in the process of reorientation has largely been ignored. This is probably because the colour which replaced idols and images was very often white, (or a very light colour such as ‘stone’) in the form of a lime wash and, therefore, perceived by many as either a ‘de-basing’ medium (to quote John Charles Cox),117 and therefore not as a pigment, or as no colour at all, that is, as a non-colour. For these reasons, the whiteness of whitewash has been overlooked as a colour in its own right with properties and powers that all colours share. As part of Zwingli’s aim, quoting Garside, ‘to bring the form of worship into line with the content of worship’, it is fitting that the place of worship should reflect the same irreducible purity as right worship itself. In a perfect world, in Zwingli’s world, the liturgy would be completely devoid of any superfluities or any man-made ‘additions’ to the place of worship itself. In virtue of its status as the purest colour, the colour devoid of any additives or impurities, the whitened wall would not only invoke symbolically the notion of a direct visual link analogous to unmediated access to God; it would also function as a symbol for the purification process itself, which has been undertaken for the righteousness of the souls of the congregation. In addition, the metaphoric value of this colour allows it to operate as an analogue for the Light of God, His simplicity, invisibility, purity, truth, and transparency; qualities which no other colour, or surface, could offer. Although Zwingli eventually rejected scholasticism, even to the point of using the names of Aquinas and Duns Scotus as derogatory terms,118 he had 117 See Chapter I: Churchwardens’ Accounts from the Fourteenth Century to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, London, 1913. 118 Archeteles, pp. 260, 261, 274.

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studied both in great detail beginning with his brief sojourn at the University of Vienna as a necessary part of the liberal arts curriculum at Basel.119 In Aquinas Zwingli would have found reinforcement for the notion of the simplicity of God which he describes in Divine and Human Righteousness,120 as well as for a black/white dualism in which black represents all things dark, and white is used extensively as an analogue for the pure, the simple, the true, the light, and the transparent, all of which parallel the attributes of God and His simplicity.121 This way of conceiving the simplicity of God has relevance particularly if considered in the context of colour thinking in an ecclesiastical setting. It is also relevant to the form/content issue alluded to above, because it suggests another level at which parallels between form and content may be made. Simplicity of form is an obvious example, which, in the context of the liturgy and the elimination of idols and ecclesiastical accessories, has been analysed by Garside, Peter Auksi and others. But what about the wall surface and the signification of its colour? Zwingli rejected the inclusion of any images within the church on biblical grounds, but he also had theological and moral objections to expensive and colourful surfaces in 119 See Potter, pp. 13, 15, 65, 86. According to Schindler Zwingli owned one volume of Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Quodlibetales questiones santi Thome, Venice, 1501). Significantly, the Stiftsbibliothek did not possess any of Aquinas’s work, nor that of any other scholastic (Germann). Potter emphasises the depth of Zwingli’s study of Aquinas (p. 65); it is known that Zwingli studied Aquinas and Scotus at Basel. The colour ideas contained within the Commentaries would have been a relatively early, formative influence in Zwingli’s life. 120 Zwingli’s concept of the transcendental attributes of God, which includes the simplicity of God, reflects Saint Thomas’s influence. 121 Aquinas employs various metaphors and analogues of white in his Commentaries on Aristotle’s Works (found in Commentaries, The Aristotelian Commentary Series, Oxford, 1993–95), in which he associates white with the concepts of the infinite, the absolute (polar opposites/termini), simplicity, purity, transparency, and truth, which are all, either directly or indirectly, attributes of God. In his Commentaries, explicit ideas about the nature of colour do emerge, in conjunction with an equally specific understanding of how colour functions metaphorically and analogically, and with what we naturally and obviously associate specific colours, most notably, black and white. Zwingli could not have failed to notice, or absorb, some of the colour ideas contained in these texts with which he was certainly familiar. To give an example: in one of several passages about simplicity Aquinas writes: ‘Thus in every composite there is something which is not it itself. But, even if this could be said of whatever has a form, viz., that it has something which is not it itself, as in a white object there is something which does not belong to the essence of white, nevertheless, in the form itself there is nothing besides itself. And so, since God is absolute form, or absolute being, He can in no way be composite. … Hilary touches upon this argument when he says: “God, who is

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general, as earthly temptations and indicators of vanity.122 He particularly rejected the colours red and gold for their signification of opulence and self-aggrandizement, and in so doing demonstrated that he recognized the symbolic values which colour conveys. He also not only literally streamlined the liturgy and liturgical accessories, but the entire visual environment by stripping it to its barest essentials. In its place was a colour that historically signified the very simplicity, righteousness and honesty that he was determined to recover. By the twentieth century, a background of whitened walls had become normative for the interior of many churches. Thus while the blankness of the Reformed wall plays a significant role in its perceived whiteness, this should not blind us to the fact that a blank white wall was not normative for the Church in 1524, with the exception, perhaps, of certain Benedictine (and Cistercian) orders. That any colour would have had to be carefully considered in view of its potential for adding symbolic value to a surface is obvious if one recognizes the objections voiced about certain other colours. The normative nature of the whitewashed church interior wall has effaced this significance. Any discussion of the colour thinking of the magisterial Reformers will be seriously affected by the fact that there are relatively few references to colour in their writings. There are at least three possible reasons for this: (1) That there was little reason to discuss or even mention colour as, in the context of their agenda, it had little or no bearing on matters at hand; (2) in an economy where colour was associated with sin, impurity, and ‘papism’, colour would have been suppressed as undesirable; and (3) colours were cited but only minimally and often in imbedded, coded terms. In a sense, all three explanations are true, as the following discussion will serve to illustrate. Zwingli is no exception to the above general observations. When he speaks about colour, with the exception of red, it is of ‘colour’ in general, strength, is not made up of things that are weak; nor is he Who is light, composed of things that are dark.” ’ (Q.3. Art.7.) One might ask of this passage, why Aquinas chose white to explicate his point about simplicity. Might Aquinas have chosen red or blue just the same? The answer to this is, I think, theoretically, yes. Any colour would have served the point of his argument about form and compositeness. Yet only whiteness offered Aquinas the connection to the Light that is God and the implied opposition of darkness (in addition to black). In this paragraph, we find references to God as Light, the absoluteness of white, its non-compositeness (simplicity), and the implications of a number of other attributes that it shares with God. 122 Archeteles, pp. 203, 205.

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or of the things he associates with colour in general, such as abuses,123 defilement,124 sin,125 pride ,126 and vanity.127 Further, one is more likely to find references to absences or inversions of colour; terms such as ‘uncoloured’, transparent, clear, pure, or untainted. All of these are, in fact, non-colour terms, suggesting colour by its absence, by its removal, or through association with either desirable or undesirable things. These statements also suggests a basis for the removal of colour if, as I believe is the case, Zwingli perceived colour to be a covering, disguising layer. On this view colour, too, would then have to go, the only acceptable thing to have inside being nothing. Whiteness, in addition to its symbolism of righteousness and purity as a colour, is the closest possible representative of nothing that there is, being colour without chromatic content. Thus, while Zwingli’s views on images continued to develop between 1519 and 1526, there are significant elements of his thinking identifiable in writings before January 1524, the month the second of the two disputations on images took place128 that are sufficient in themselves to actively support a decision not only to ‘re-decorate’ the churches, but to whitewash them as well. The following year Zwingli wrote in the Commentary on True and False Religion, ‘It is false religion or piety when trust is put in any other than God. They, then, who trust in any created thing whatsoever, are not truly pious (emphasis mine).’129 This view has considerable, as well as clear, implications Ibid., p. 282. Ibid., pp. 266, 290. 125 Ibid., p. 253. 126 Ibid, p. 54. 127 Ibid., p. 54. 128 The 3rd Disputation took place 13–14 January 1524; the 4th Disputation on 19–20 January 1524. 129 Z III, 674, 21–24; 669, 17–25; Z III, 92, 97–98, (the 51st Article); in English, Zwingli Writings, p. 315. By 1524, in fact, Zwingli’s concept of creature had become all-inclusive, encompassing anyone or anything that was not God: music, images, saints, popes, and any expression of ourselves (our will, our opinions, or our ‘good works’), enumerated in the Articles, the Instruction, and The Commentary, but stated forcefully in 1525 were subsumed under the rubric of ‘creature’. Between 1519 and 1522 veneration of the saints was rejected. Bernard Wyss (a contemporary of Zwingli’s) noted this at the time. (See Wyss, Chronik, pp. 11–12 in Georg Finsler ed., Basel, Quellen zur Schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte, 1, Basel, 1901.) Before very long, Zwingli’s attack on idolatry would be extended to include an attack on ‘works’ as well. See Article 19; also Z II, 271.20–272.20 and Z III, 50.11–51.1. Regarding the opinions of men Zwingli wrote in March 1524, ‘Without doubt if a person considers something good on the basis of reason and does not learn what is right and good 123 124

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for any human creation, be it idea, object, or Christian tradition. By this definition of creature alone, the arts, liturgy, indeed, all man-made creations, such as images and idols, the intercession of the saints, papal authority — anything but Scripture — lose their justification for existence within the religious context. On this view, anything not explicitly sanctioned by Scripture should by rights be edited out of the ecclesiastical scene.130 The identification of white with the good, and of the sensuality of colour with sin and vanity is a familiar, although not exclusive one. It is found in the Bible and in every generation of literature to come down to us in the West ever since.131 The identification of the good with light by association with God as light, and with its chromatic representative, the colour white, is perhaps less obvious, but it is brought into play in these texts through the language of God as light. The concept of God as light may be banal to us moderns, but it is a central metaphor in the Bible, which Zwingli frequently invoked in his writings. In the Christian tradition, persons of faith were those touched by, or filled with, God’s light. In both Reformation Germany and Reformed Switzerland, those who accepted God’s word were bathed in God’s light; and those unable to share in the reformations of the faith (to return to the True Faith) were characterised as living in shadow and darkness.132 It is a relatively small step from this to an identification of those who remain in shadow with the darkness of the devil who lurks in unlit places, and eventually with the anti-Christ himself. This same dualistic language permeates Zwingli’s writing on this subject, and although the use of metaphors of colour is infrequent, the dualism of light and dark and of from God alone and his word, the same has erected an idol in himself, namely, his own understanding and judgments. Such an idol will be thrown over with difficulty, for he begins also externally with his wizardry, that is, with hypocritical pretence he sells himself before people as true and righteous. And just as apes are well-pleased with their offspring so are also people with their inventions’ (The Shepherd, HZW, II, 97.) This position is pervasive throughout his subsequent body of work. 130 Garside strongly emphasises this view: that Zwingli did not order the removal of images because they were worldly, but because they were not ‘sanctioned by Scripture.’ See Garside, p. 46. 131 See Chapter V, ‘Coloured by the Bible’. 132 For example, in the introduction to Divine and Human Righteousness addressed to Nicolas Wattenwyl, Dean of Bern Cathedral, Zwingli wrote, ‘Just as all Christians everywhere rejoice in the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ which your fatherland, my dearest brother in Christ Jesus, the pious city of Bern, accepts and daily grows in, so I especially rejoice in your conversion from darkness to light’ ( HZW, II, 3).

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lightness and darkness is pervasive and, as applied in the physical world, may be interpreted as black and white. A frequent metaphor permeating Zwingli’s writings is the concept of the Divine leading the individual out of darkness into light. Although to the modern mind, this analogy is little more than a cliché and hardly needs to be explained, it should not be discounted as a powerful metaphor resonating with meaning for Zwingli, if not for most reformers and lay people alike during this period. Certainly it appears frequently enough to establish that God was associated with the light, not only in the Bible as has already been shown, but metaphorically, in the mind of Zwingli and his fellow reformers. For example, in the Archeteles, one of the earliest of the texts examined in this study, Zwingli writes of his vision for the church: ‘The Most High God causes all the hearts of all nations to be so illuminated by the divine ray that they may become one in one faith and possess him who is one.’133 In the Archeteles alone ‘darkness of error’, indicating those not following the true word of God, is referred to half a dozen times more, and the light of God many more times.134 Thus, discussion among scholars about Zwingli’s position on images continues. Debate has persisted because his views were complicated; they developed over time, were not altogether coherent and, with respect to religious images, they were radical.135 Zwingli emphatically distinguished between religious and secular images, but his explanations required a high degree of discernment that makes them hard to interpret in practical terms. He demolished any basis for the making or display of any religious images, but sanctioned ‘historical’ ones featuring religious personages. He defended what we would now call secular images, both his own admiration for them, and their continued right to exist in the face of destruction by iconoclasts still more radical than he, while he made other statements against all religious images, both the worshipped and the not-worshipped. This was confusing, not only because it was breaking new ground theologically but Archeteles, p. 292. E.g. pp. 212, 284, 223, 289; see also the Providence of God, esp. p. 68. 135 Peter Auksi recognises Zwingli’s views on this subject were ‘multifarious’, but correctly emphasises that the driving force in Zwingli is the imperative to ‘discover verus dei cultus’ [Z II, 604] and his ‘single-minded reformulation of the nature of belief itself ’, as it is the mind which prays. See P. Auksi, ‘Simplicity and Silence: The Influence of Scripture on the Aesthetic Thought of the Major Reformers’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 10, no. 4, Dec. 1979, pp. 343–64. 133 134

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also because the individual was being asked to relate to the painted or carved representation.136 The first reference to colour in the Archeteles (August 1522)137 is to blackness. Writing to Hugo von Hohenlandenberg, Bishop of Constance, to defend himself against accusations that he is a ‘destroyer of the Lord’s fold’, Zwingli describes the behaviour of the Bishop’s ambassadors, three scholars sent to Zürich to set Zwingli straight, as cowardly.138 Hiding themselves ‘like cuttlefish in their own inky blackness’, they are among those who have managed to avoid listening to the truth of the Word as it is actually written in Scripture. With the help of God, Zwingli writes, ‘I have so strained and purified and cleared this blackness that their purposes are evident to all.’ Zwingli’s strategy, as always, was to expose his foes, and this he set about doing in this letter. Zwingli’s containment effort — to clarify the issues and in the process expose the true motives of his opponents — is characterised as taking the quality of opacity out of the covering ink. Zwingli does not exactly say that he takes all colour out of the cuttlefish’s ink, although he ‘strains’, ‘purifies’ and ‘clears’ it, but enough of its black contents are removed that one can see through it and recover sight of the truth. Zwingli uses this metaphor of the ‘black fish’ or the cuttlefish a twice more in this letter.139 In each instance, this metaphor is used to indicate the blackness that provides cover to the ‘no-good’; and his talk of blackness ‘purified and cleansed’ is used to indicate a return to the truth.140 Zwingli refers numerous times to the darkness inhabited by those who refuse to give up human ceremonies: ‘they stumble about in the darkness of 136 For example, in A Short Christian Instruction (1523), in a denial of claims made for the didactic value of images Zwingli characterised images as no more, or no better than, ‘a wall’ when he lumps walls and images together as though they were literally the same thing. (Commentary on True and False Religion in LCW, III, p. 331.) It is hard to accept that this comment does not reflect to some degree his recognition of the power of images to engender affective responses. The traditional objections to images were also made: that they amounted to no more than the materials out of which they were made. 137 Written as a reply to an ‘admonition’ sent to the Chapter of the Grossmünster on 24 May 1522, containing thinly veiled criticisms of Zwingli’s theology and of his influence on religious affairs in Zürich. Zwingli responded to the Bishop’s admonitions based on his view that the letter was really intended for him. See Archeteles in LCW vol. I, New York, 1912, pp. 197–292. 138 Archeteles, p. 289. 139 In addition to p. 202, these also occur on pp. 257, 260. 140 Ibid., p. 202

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human devices’;141 they ‘are wandering in the darkness of human traditions’;142 he speaks of ‘one [who] was darkness, but now is light’,143 and of his reforms as letting light into shadow.144 In each of these metaphors blackness is linked to the human, to human devices and traditions; light is linked to God and the Grace of God. Blackness itself is also invoked as a punishment. It awaits those who choose not to hear the Word of God.’145 It is also used to invoke the notion of despair reminiscent of the palpable doom of Lamentations 4:5–8, which befell those who had become over-confident of their power.146 Consistent with Micah 3:6 and Jeremiah 4:28, blackness is said to be the colour of evil. In the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Conclusions Zwingli compares the hypocritical whiteness of the Pharisees’ tombs to the hypocrisy of the clerics and scholastics, which he characterises as blackness itself.147 At the outset of the introduction to The Shepherd,148 Zwingli uses a visual metaphor to describe the Reformed pastor — in contrast to the unreformed priest — by referring to ‘the colour and shape of a true shepherd painted with clear strokes.’149 The use of the term ‘shepherd’ (Hirt) for pastor was common in Zwingli’s early writings and is not important here, but the invocation of a visual image itself, composed of colourless materials, is. Zwingli also warns his readers that the ‘picture’ [mental image of the shepherds] he intends to draw will not offer any ‘pleasant incentive[s] for the flesh’, and indeed, his exhortations to faithless priests are, precisely, to give up material pomp

Ibid., p. 226. Ibid., pp. 236, 277. 143 Ibid., p. 279. 144 Ibid., p. 279. 145 Zwingli, the Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles, Twenty-sixth Article, p. 203. 146 Archeteles, pp. 212, 223, 284, 289; The Shepherd, p. 83. 147 Twenty-sixth Article, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Conclusions, p. 202 (‘How they are like whitewashed tombs’), p. 203: ‘…the pharisees and scribes, whom in our day we consider to be the monks, priests, nuns, scholars, who are as black in colour as the others [Pharisees]’; p. 204: it follows that vestments, crosses, clerical garb, the tonsure are not simply ‘good or evil’, but they are totally evil.’ 148 Z III, 5–68. The Shepherd was a sermon given by Zwingli in October 1523, on the third day of the Second Disputation, to an audience of 900 individuals. It was written-up and published in March 1524 at the request of a friend, and dedicated to Jacob Schurtanner, an evangelical preacher at Teufen, Appenzell. 149 ‘Wirtsu in dem ersten teil die farwen und gstalt eins rechten hirten finden mit gwüsser [sicherer, klarer]’ (Der Hirt, Z III, 7, 1–2.). 141 142

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and splendour acquired through the false, self-aggrandizing practices of the traditional church.150 That Zwingli should couple a warning not to look for pleasures of the flesh (read, ‘senses’) in a picture painted with colourless materials is apposite; it is as though he were saying, ‘You will find no visual gratification here; the picture I am creating does not have colours in it.’ This sentence contains one of the relatively few mentions of colour in Zwingli’s oeuvre. The term ‘colour’ itself is used metaphorically to indicate the ‘character’ or ‘nature’ of the evangelical pastor Zwingli intends to describe. This is a legitimate and ordinary use of the term, but by associating ‘colour’ with the term ‘paint’, Zwingli has carried the colour metaphor out of the realm of ‘character’ and into the artistic realm. Certainly, in the context of his times paint would have been synonymous with colour in the sense that you would not have had the one without the other, so that by inference it may be said Zwingli has invoked the notion of colour in this metaphor. It is, however, ‘colour painted with clear strokes.’ There is room for interpretation; one cannot be certain whether Zwingli intended to suggest that the paint being used to create the image of the true shepherd was transparent (untinted, untainted) or, indeed, whether Zwingli was going to describe the colour (character, appearance) of the shepherd in a decisive way impressing upond his audience an unmistakable character profile. The metaphor may have been intended to work both ways, but Zwingli’s use of the words ‘stroke’ and ‘paint’, combined with his initial warning that there would be no rewards for the senses, suggests he intended ‘clear’ to refer to the ‘colour’ of the medium — the paint — rather than the decisiveness of the metaphorical brushstroke.151 Zwingli sets up a contrast between the ‘false shepherd’ decked in pomp and splendour and the ‘true Shepherd’, created out of transparent materials. Here, the picture painted with transparent brushstrokes becomes a metaphor for the absence of visual, sensual gratification, which the ‘true shepherd’, in Zwingli’s view, does not The Shepherd, HZW,77–124. This reference is found on pp. 81–82. Luther made a similar comment, quoted by Richard Haydock in his commentary on Lomazzo’s Tratto dell’Arte, that ‘God should be painted with clear colours.’ To this Haydock responded ‘that God should not be painted at all.’ Quoted in Patrick Collinson, From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: The Cultural Impact of the Second English Reformation, University of Reading Stanton Lecture, 1986, p. 23. The thrust of Collinson’s argument in the Stenton Lecture is that between the first and ‘second Reformation’ in England there was a loss of connection to Catholic tradition which enabled the second generation of reformers to become iconophobic rather than iconoclastic. 150 151

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seek. Conventionally, the cardinal virtue of charity was often linked with the mystic colour scarlet. The writings of Saint Gregory the Great (r. 590– 604), Alcuin (730/40–804) and Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) each confirm this. Old churchmen also looked upon the chasuble itself as the chief of the sacrificial vestments.152 Earlier in The Shepherd Zwingli had already drawn attention to the red hood of the canon of Constance (his nemesis Johannes Faber), about whom he speaks with disdain.153 It is precisely shepherds such as Faber, dressed in a canon’s expensively dyed red robes, who incur Zwingli’s reproaches.154 In this essay, splendour, artifices and avarice are all associated with being in darkness.155 Artifice is also likened to hypocrisy, and elsewhere ‘clouds of hypocrisy’ are linked with the blackness in which a cuttlefish hides itself.156 Simplicity is again associated with piety and innocence, and when combined with ‘sensible godliness’ makes the ‘ideal home and dwelling place for God.’157 Figure 2.17 demonstrates the manifest visual impact of the cardinal’s red robes; in Figure 4.6 we see an uncovered wall painting of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child extant in the Grossmünster. She is also wearing red, typical for her, but nonetheless eye-catching. Although Zwingli referred to colours relatively infrequently in his writings, that he had absorbed biblical ways of thinking about them is certain from his references to the colour of Pharisees’ tombs, white robes, the red robes of canons, and, of course, the ubiquitous ‘light of the Lord.’ In the following example from the Providence of God, Zwingli is writing about the persistent struggle between the spirit and the flesh. The mind, which flows from the spirit of God Himself, seeks communion with Him. This is why it is eager for the truth and the right and ‘yearns for light, purity and goodness.’158 The body, on the other hand, ‘inclines to idleness, laziness, darkness and dullness’ and is ‘indolent by nature and without reason.’159 Neither side of this duality is ever totally victorious over the other; indeed,

See Rolfe, p. 122. The Shepherd, p. 82. 154 For examples, see Archeteles, pp. 235, 266, 282. 155 Ibid., pp. 82–3. 156 Ibid, p. 202. 157 Ibid, p. 84. 158 Providence of God (1530), in LCW and Correspondence, vol. II, ed. W. J. Hinke, Philadelphia, 1922, p. 161–62. 159 Ibid., p. 163. 152 153

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each side forever strives to prevail over the other. In the context of this discussion, Zwingli wrote the following passage: The soul is never so kept under that it forgets itself forever, it is never so downtrodden by the arrogant tyranny of the flesh as not to give warning however late. … Hence also, to come back to the subject, the flesh not only growls at the spirit, but in a spirit of pretence and mockery copies its works. By uprightness and purity of life, the soul admonishes us, the favour of the Deity is to be won; by white raiment says the flesh. The spirit gives up its dwelling place, the blood namely, for the sake of the [L]ord, the flesh declares that the purple mantle in which it wraps itself is sufficient.160 The soul guides us, Zwingli says, by showing us the path of uprightness and purity that, if followed, will bring ‘the favour of God upon us.’ Zwingli recognizes here the iconography of the white garment bestowed upon us by God as the symbol of our righteousness, or of our reward for being righteous, being an upright, pure, spirit. Zwingli goes on to say that for the flesh, which does not care about true righteousness, it is enough to give the appearance of an upright and pure spirit, to simulate its good works, in a spirit of mockery. Whether the ‘good works’ referred to are intended to be symbolized by the ‘white garment’ in this passage and in this sense are subsumed by it, or whether the garment is something worn as a genuine reward for the practice of true faith as described in Revelations 6:11, is unclear. In light of this passage, it it might be argued that Zwingli would not have used the white garment to symbolise the whitewashing of his city’s churches, since the white garment (as well as the Pharisees’ tombs) are invoked by him as examples of hypocritical behaviour. Zwingli recognised the white colour of the tombs as a symbol of purity and of righteousness. Would he have wanted to invoke any other image for his church? A parallel analogy is made in the case of the spirit and the purple mantle. The spirit transcends the body in order to commune with the Lord, but the flesh determines that it is sufficient to don the purple mantle that only simulates that exalted status. In each of these cases, the iconography is an established one taken directly from both biblical testaments. It is used by Zwingli as a kind of visual shorthand to convey concepts he is confident will

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Ibid., p. 163.

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be familiar to his readers.161 The Good, too, is hueless, because it is beyond the material world, from which colour is inseparable. The suppression of colour in order to transcend the material is evident in Zwingli’s thought. Where the Good is ‘painted’, it is painted ‘with clear strokes.’ Purity, which is the absence of admixture (pollution), is ‘untaintedness’, a colour term in origin.162 The Good, the Pure, the Beautiful, which we all seek because of their transcendence of the material, lack hue; because of their proximity to God these things are close to the source of light. And white, as the closest chromatic equivalent to light, derives special value from being the opposite of darkness and of black, as good is the opposite of evil. The aesthetic values introduced by the Reformers radicalised the architectural interiors of the ecclesiastical world, as well as the ways in which these spaces were used. The polychromy that Reformers replaced had been in use for nearly a thousand years.163 The mosaics of ancient Christendom and the painted murals on heavy Romanesque walls gave way to the stained glass and diaphanous architecture of Gothic churches, beginning with the French Abbey of Saint Denis in the twelfth century.164 The proliferating altars, images, sculptures and stained glass continued to develop throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and by Zwingli’s time had long been an accepted fact of life.165 The intensified use of polychromy during this period was felt even in such relatively provincial centres as Zürich, and 161 Later in this text, Zwingli writes about ‘word paintings’ ‘…because they saw that the divine benefits could not be worthily proclaimed by any word painting.’ 162 On the connexion between ‘taintedness’, colour, and paint, see Chapter II. 163 Although Methodius (autex. XV, 6), writing in the early 4th century, actually gives us the first example of the sanctioning of images, Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) is traditionally credited with their legitimisation in his classical instruction on the right use of images: ‘aliud est enim picturam adorare, aliud picturae historia, quid sit adorandum, addiscere.’ Quoted in Campenhausen, Tradition and Life in the Church, A. V. Littledale (trans.), London, 1968, pp. 181–83. 164 For a very general discussion of the patterns of polychromy in church interiors preceding the Reformation, see M. Pastoureau, ‘Regards croisés sur la couleur du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, La Couleur, Colloque Organisé a l’Université de Lausanne, 1992, pp. 27–45. 165 Many references to the intensification of colour, either in the form of stained glass, altars, sculptures or images, may be found in various histories of art and architecture, of the church and of iconoclasm. A few examples: Otto von Simpson, The Gothic Cathedral: The Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (New York, 1956 and Princeton, 1989, p. 5 and chaps. 2 and 3; Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 21; Ivan Brooks, ‘On the Appreciation of Colour in England’, Downside Review, Exeter: The Catholic Records Press,

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was remarked upon by Zwingli.166 Whether the colour found in churches was an expression of the divine light — ‘splendor veritatis’ (the radiance of Truth) — or a material intervention obscuring the Truth was, in my view, the fundamental issue at stake in Reformation discussions of images. In contrast to the Roman Church, the Reformed sects manifested a streamlined, simplified, monochromatic aesthetic in which colour — both in language and in churches, in fact, in anything ‘made-by-human-hands’ in which one might take pride — was dismissed as pure vanity. We might recognise a secular form of this aesthetic in the modernism of the first quarter of the twentieth century. In consideration of this, the question of ‘the beautiful’ might not be a totally inappropriate one to explore in the context of Zwingli’s theology or his writing, and its relationship to colour. Garside wrote in 1966 that one cannot talk about the relationship of Zwingli to the arts in terms of aesthetics as we know it, for this would be to cast ‘the events of the time into a foreign, not yet existent land.’167 Garside’s comment about aesthetics offers an opportunity to consider the question of Zwingli’s concept of beauty, and what relationship, if any, Reformed theology had to the phenomenon of colour. It is true that, in the mid-sixteenth century religion and the liturgy, not aesthetics, were at the creative ‘heart’ of western Christendom. Nevertheless, permeating Zwingli’s writing is a language focused very much on the subject of beauty, albeit perhaps a spiritual beauty, and his efforts to bring both the form and content of worship into line with one another introduced an aesthetic as distinct and identifiable as the ‘multi-form’ polychromatic one it challenged.168 vol. 54, Cambridge, 1936, pp. 189–203, esp. pp. 192–193, Pastoureau, ‘Regards croisés’, pp. 29–30. 166 Cf. Z IV, 107, 8–109, 30. 167 See Garside, p. 4. This is true, in a sense, of any aesthetic considerations up to the time of Kant, in that certain objects were not set aside as ‘specialised aesthetic objects.’ However, it is not true in the sense that aesthetic judgments could not, and did not, exist. (See Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Ancient Greece to the Present, Tuscaloosa and London, 1966, pp. 21–23.) Peter Auksi does not seem to take issue with Garside on this. His opinion is that while there was no coherent position on aesthetics (by the Magisterial Reformers), there was a trend toward simplicity. See Auksi, p. 361. 168 The idea that this is the major thrust of Zwingli’s modus operandi is Garside’s. See Zwingli and the Arts, p. 97. That this provides a framework within which the whitened church interior (as opposed to the ‘bare’ church interior) not only makes sense at spiritual, symbolical, and ‘propagandistic’ levels, but could be said to be demanded by the theology of the Reformed Protestant is the subject of this book.

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It is in large part due to the complete eradication of images within all of Zürich’s churches — the suppression of the visual — that there has been so much interest in Zwingli’s views on images. Rarely, if ever, however, has anyone considered Zwingli’s views on either colour or beauty.169 Yet it is, in essence, to his views on colour, and their relation to sensual stimuli and emotional, even sexualised, responses on which the issue of the eradication of images really turns. Zwingli railed against images of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the saints in some of his writings, but it was always the emotional, even sexualised response aroused in the observer, that offended him the most. It was to the vanity of the Cardinal’s red robes that Zwingli reacted, not to robes themselves.170 (Associations made in the Bible with red are discussed in Chapter V). Its association with vanity and sin — as well as with Christ’s blood — are well established 171 and may be traced back, in a sense, 169 Or Luther or Calvin. Michel Pastoureau is one of few colour historians who have addressed the subject of colour in the context of Reformation thinking. See Pastoureau, 1997, at n.39 above, pp. 33, esp. p. 33 n.33, 34; also ‘La couleur: Regards croisés sur la couleur du Moyen Age au XXe siècle’, Actes du colloque organizé par Philippe Junod et M. Pastoureau à l’Université de Lausanne, Paris, 1994, pp. 27–45; ‘La Réforme et la couleur’ in Le Bulletin de la société d’histoire du Protestantisme français, vol.138, July–Sept. 1992, pp. 323–42, and ‘L’Eglise et la couleur des origines à la Réforme’, in Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartres, vol.147, 1989, pp. 203–230. For the views of another historian see Attilio Agnoletto, ‘La “cromoclastìa” delle riforme protestanti’, in Rassegna, VII, 23/3, September 1985, pp. 21–33. 170 Although there is red in the illustrations to the 1531 Zürich Bible and on a handful of title pages, this must be regarded as ‘printer’s ink’, and as ‘speaking’ pictures, associated with the Word. Such images were in a class of their own. Christine Göttler concurs on this point. See ‛Das Älteste Zwinglis-Bildnis? — Zwingli als Bild-Erfinder: Der Titielholzschnitt zur “Beschreibung der götlichen müly” ’, Kulturwandel in Zwinglis Reformation, Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Peter Jezler (eds.), Zürich, 1984, pp. 19–40, esp. p. 21. 171 Michel Pastoureau addresses the concept of colour as distraction, as disguise and falsehood during the Middle Ages ‘and beyond’ in his book, Jésus chez le teinturier. See pp. 33–34. He also discusses the associations made with the colour red and particularly the ‘diabolical’ due to its association with hellfire, the unjustly spilled blood of Christ, and the red fox, who symbolizes trickery. See Pastoureau, 1997, pp. 30, 32 and 32 n.30; Gage, 1993, addresses the association with blood, but also by some with charity. He cites the example of a French poem, the Ordene de Chevalerie, in which at his investiture a knight wears white ‘to show his cleanliness of body’, then a scarlet cloak ‘to remind him of his duty to shed his blood in the defence of the Church.’ By the mid-14th century artists, as well as the church, he says, ‘were becoming more precise in their use of allegorical colour.’ (p. 84). Charles Garside focuses his study of Zwingli on his views on images and the arts, and not at all on the connections between Zwingli’s concept of beauty, or his ideas about colour and their impact on the larger question of images and church interiors.

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to the idea of colour, especially saturated, bright, or expensive colours, as the seducer of men’s eyes and souls. These considerations demonstrate that Zwingli not only had strong views about the exclusion of images from the church, but that the visual reforms he initiated were not simply rejections of ‘papism’, or the suppression of the sensual (sculpture, painting, colour, dazzle), but a positive visual substitution representing a new aesthetic. His views about colour, paintings, sculpture, silver and gold, informed his decisions, though perhaps not consciously, about the re-decoration of Zürich’s church interiors. Some of this thinking was deeply influenced by associations made between concepts of purity, huelessness, transparency, clarity and truth, all of which he considered attributes of God and His righteousness.172 Importantly, God’s attributes are also the qualities that make up His beauty, in the image of which the ‘true’ Christian strove to re-cast himself.173 The nexus of associations in Zwingli’s thinking about images, colour, beauty and faith, are complex, but nonetheless central to the rationale underlying the normative use of whitewash in Reformed Protestant churches up to the present day. In Zwingli’s parish church in Zürich, the Grossmünster , there had been a large high altar dedicated to founding Saints Felix and Regula, as well as sixteen side altars and a monumental wooden cross hanging in the choir. Other decorative and ecclesiastical riches had been distributed throughout the nave, in the entrance to the choir, the galleries in the transept, and the Chapel of the Twelve Apostles (Zwolfboltenkapelle).174 The walls were were rich in paintings.175 Fig. 6.6 and 6.7 show two sixteenth-century illustrations 172 Zwingli refers to ‘the white garment’ or ‘white shirt’ several times to indicate a clean conscience or righteous soul, or the semblance of one. Cf. Chapter III where several such passages are quoted. Particularly relevant here is Zwingli’s reference to being dressed in ‘the white garment’ at the rite of Baptism. Considering Zwingli’s denunciation of special vestments (Z II, 252) and his preference for ordinary lay clothes for ministers (in sober colours), it is hard to imagine any requirement for a special (white) garment for baptism. However, Zwingli’s reference in the conclusion to his ‘Words of Baptism’ (at the bestowal of the chrism) suggests that the child being baptised was expected to be or was, metaphorically, clothed in white. That Zwingli accepted the concept of the white garment of faith is at least clear. See B. J. Kidd, ‘The Form of Baptism’ (May 1525), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, Oxford, 1911, p. 424. 173 The Shepherd, pp. 42: 8–14. 174 Salomon Vögelin, Das Alte Zürich, vol. I, Eine Wanderung durch Zürich im Jahr 1504, Zürich, 1878, pp. 292–93. 175 Vögelin, p. 292; also Matthias Senn, ‘Bilder und Götzen’ in Zurcher Kunst nach der Reformation, Zürich, 1981, p. 33. There are receipts in the State Archives that mention clean-

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of the Grossmünster after the Zürich Reformation. The bricked-over choir has been reopened, and whitewash removed revealing a frescoed blind arcade. Pews, stained glass and more stained glass have been introduced into the choir and nave during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These appointments have eliminated the material evidence of the cathedral’s radical history. Fig. 4.8 shows the interior essentially as it looks today. The new look created by the imageless, altarless church may not, in light of subsequent design revolutions, appear particularly streamlined to an observer today; but in contrast to its former decorative and religious content, the Grossmünster interior was considered ‘bare’ and ‘ugly’, especially to those outside Reformed communities who remained committed to Roman Catholic traditions.176 However, although unrecognizable as a thing of beauty, these changes represented a nascent aesthetic that would eventually become associated with the Reformed church in general, especially with the Calvinists, the Church of England and the Puritans. Painting the interiors of Reformed churches would become a specialised genre in the Netherlands by the mid-seventeenth century. The genre of architectural interior portraits survived into the nineteenth century, as David Roberts’s (1796–1864) paintings of the whitened interior of the church, Saint–Gommaire in Lierre shows. (Fig. 6.8).177 Thus, while it is unlikely that Zwingli was concerned ing pictures in which a few specific paintings are named dating to 1476, 1482 and 1489. Senn writes that the walls had been completely covered in paintings, but Vögelin, writing a century earlier, is much less certain about the extent of the polychrome painting. At the time of his writing, pilasters, columns and arches had a thick covering layer of grey paint on them and the stone walls were whitewashed. Vögelin cites F. Keller, who wrote in 1844 that the half-round columns that filled the cornices of the arches had colourful spiralling stripes on them. Vögelin relies on 16th-century chronicler Bernard Wyss for his information about the whitewashings of 1524, but also mentions that in the 17th century (the time that Gutscher says the walls were whitewashed for the first time), the images had started to bleed through and had to be painted over again. Thus, the reason for the 17th century whitewashing may not have been the ‘preference for white and black decoration’, as Gutscher says, but either the ‘tidying up’ of the walls, or the re-obliteration of images. (See Vögelin, p. 293). 176 Hans Stockar, a contemporary from Schaffhausen who had travelled to Zürich, saw the re-decorated Grossmünster, and commented that the church interior was ‘bare and ugly.’ See Farner III, 490, (mentioned in Chapter II). Erasmus was not pleased. He made the Basel iconoclasm famous in his letter to Willibald Pirckheimer, 9 May 1529, no. 2158 in Life and Letters of Erasmus, J. A. Froude, (trans.), London, 1894. 177 Scottish painter David Roberts, RA, came to specialise in orientalist paintings of Spain, North Africa, Egypt and the Holy Lands, predominantly architectural and topographi-

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with the subject of aesthetics per se, that he was concerned with beauty is nonetheless evident on many pages of his writing. That his responses to phenomena in his environment were shaped by his sense of aesthetics I hope I have also made clear. His idea of beauty consisted in a vision of Christ on earth, instantiated in a visible church — the congregation of Christian believers — returned to a ‘true’ faith from a ‘false’, misdirected one, and brought together in a place of worship purified by Protestant reforms in such a way as to approximate the simple, pure space of the Apostolic, or primitive, church. The aesthetic he introduced is described evocatively by Garside: From 1525 on, the Liturgy of the Sermon and the Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper were celebrated in the austere whiteness of Zürich churches amid the awesome stillness which the Reformer had so ardently desired. His achievement was scrupulously maintained by his friend and successor … Heinrich Bullinger.178 Not only were Reformed Zürich churches stripped of images, they were also painted white, possibly only in part,179 but sufficiently to generate the impression of, and still more importantly, to create the concept of, the whitened church. The aesthetic established during the Zürich makeover was, in fact, not entirely new. In the twelfth century both the Cistercians and Carthusians, expressing similar values, argued against superfluous and extravagant decoration in monastic church interiors and architecture. In 1125, the influential Cistercian abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) wrote the Apologia to Abbot William, in which he criticises the Cluniac order’s use of gold, silver, paintings and a grand building style in their churches.180 Bernard complained cal subjects. Both Roberts’ paintings of Saint-Gommaire and of the Shrine at S. Lierre reflect the influence of the seventeenth century Dutch architectural painters. (Figure 1.13, 1.14, 3.29, 6.8) In this genre would be the paintings of Abel Grimmer (c.1570–bef. 1619), Peter Neefs (c.1578–c.1655), Gerard Houckgeest (c.1600–1661), Anthonie de Lorme (c. 1600–c. 1673), Daniel de Blieck (c.1600/20–1673), Henrick van Vliet (1611/12–1675), Emmanuel de Witte (c.1616–1691/92), Pieter Saenredam (1597–1665), Isaak van Nickele (c.1633– 1703), Job (1630–1693), Gerrit Berckheyde (1638–1698), and others. 178 See Garside, p. 179. 179 I refer here to the opinion of the modern historian of the Grossmünster, Daniel Gutscher, that the Grossmünster was not completely whitewashed until 1646. (See discussion Chapter IV). 180 See the discussion above. The English translation of the Apologia is found in Cistercians and Cluniacs, St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William, Michael Casey (trans.), Kalamazoo,

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of the way images distracted attention in church from true personal worship, prayer and contemplation.181 Referring to the Cluniac churches who were being accused of self-indulgences, Clairvaux speaks of ‘their sumptuous finish, the astonishing paintings that confuse the eye during prayer and which are an obstacle to devotion.’182 He continues, The very sight of such sumptuous and exquisite baubles is sufficient to inspire men to make offerings, though not to say their prayers. … If you show someone a beautiful picture of a saint, he comes to the conclusion that the saint is as holy as the picture is brightly coloured. When people rush up to kiss them, they are asked to donate. Beauty they admire, but they do not reverence holiness.183 The ridicule in this passage is a critique of the Cluniac monastic community, not of the general lay public. But the point stands. Both Zwingli and Calvin expressed views comparable to those expressed by Clairvaux. Zwingli was highly contemptuous of the sensuality of sculpted and painted images in the church, which he believed were designed more to stimulate an emotional-sexual response in the viewer than a spiritual one.184 Zwingli wrote: The blessed holy women are represented so voluptuously and seductively as if they were put onto the altars so that man would 1970, esp. p. 65. Bernard sanctioned the use of images for lesser, lay mortals, ‘carnal men, incapable of spiritual things.’ See Apologia, p. 64. 181 St Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Apologia to Abbot William’ in Cistercians and Cluniacs, (XII. 28), pp. 63–64. Bernard’s criticisms were intended for the Cluniac Order. He not only allowed that images might remain in non-monastic churches, but clearly says that bishops are obliged to include painted and sculpted images in them to promote religion or spirituality, in the lay person who cannot be inspired any other way. Images made for mere entertainment value were not condoned. (See Apologia, XII. 28, p. 64.) 182 Translated by Casey, Cistercians and Cluniacs p. 63. The original of this passage reads: ‘Ipso quippe visu sumptuosarum, sed mirandarum vanitatum, accenduntur homines magis ad offerendum quam ad orandum. Sic opes opibus hauriuntur, sic pecunia pecuniam trahit; quia nescio quo pacto, ubi amplius divitiarum cernitur, ibi offertur libentius. Auro tectis reliquiis saginantur oculi, et loculi aperiuntur. Ostenditur pulcherrima forma sancti vel sanctae alicujus, et eo creditur sanctior, quo coloratior’ (S. Bernardi abbatis clarvae-vallensis, p. 915). Another translation of this famous passage may be found in Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, p. 7. 183 Quoted in Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, p. 7; see also, Apologia, XII, 28, p. 65. 184 Cf. Zwingli, The Shepherd, (p. 108) and Apologia to Abbot William (XII, 28, p. 65). Cf. also Capitula XXXVI on art in Carta caritatis (1119); the Instituta capituli generalis quoted in Jean-Francois Leroux-Dhuys, Cisterican Abbeys, Paris, 1998, p. 39, and the Rule of Benedict, mentioned above.

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be provoked by them to voluptuousness and lust. Here stands Magdalena, she is painted like a prostitute so that even vicars ask, ‘How would anybody be attentive or pious during mass when all the females and the eternally pure and untouched mother of Jesus pulls out her bosoms?’185 A series of Cistercian statutes, written by Bernard in 1119–25 (Stat 10, Stat 20) and 1145–50 (Stat 80), and read by Zwingli, denounced gold, silver, jewels, and silk (Stat 10), sculpture and paintings (Stat 20), and stained glass (Stat 80). While the exact dating of these statutes remains unconfirmed186 it has been shown that they were almost certainly written by Bernard, not Stephen Harding, the abbot at the time of Bernard’s arrival at Citeaux. Twentieth-century scholar Conrad Rudolph is still more precise and gives 1115–19 as the years in which they were composed 187 That the elimination of figurative sculpture and painting from this order is the result of Bernard’s influence is reflected in the record, although the practice began to be relaxed in some Cistercian houses beginning around 1152, the year before Bernard died.188 In addition to the Apologia and the statutes, Bernard had also requested one of his monks, Aelred of Rievaulx, to write De Speculo Caritatis on artistic distraction.189 In 1121, Jean de Toscane (Guigues 1er, Prior of Chartreuse) codified rules for the Carthusian order that were officially adopted by most houses by 1128.190 Among these was a rule forbidding the use of ornament, colour, or tapestries in churches.191 ‘Die seligen Frauen stellt man so üppig und verführerisch dar, als ob man sie zu dem Zwecke auf die Altäre stellte, daß die Männer dadurch zur Üppigkeit und Wollust gereizt würden. Hie stat ein Magdalena so hüerisch gemalet, daβ ouch alle pfaffen ie une ie gesprochen haben: “Wie könnt einer hie andächtig syn meß ze haben? Und die ewig rein unverseerd magd und muoter Jesu Christi die muoß jire brüst harfür zogen haben.“’ Quoted by Rüegg, in ‘Zwinglis Stellung zur Kunst’ in Reformation Zeitschrift für evangelische Kultur und Politik, VII, 1957, pp. 271–82, esp. p. 277. 186 ‘The Principal Founders and Early Artistic Legislation of Citeaux’ in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture vol. 3, Cistercian Studies Series 89, Kalamazoo, 1987. 187 See M. P. P. Lillich (ed.), Cistercian Art and Architecture, Kalamazoo, 1987, p. 29. 188 Ibid., p. 21. 189 Ibid., p. 21. 190 See ‘Guigo I (Guigues 1er), Prieur de Chartreuse, ‘Consuetudines Carthusienses’ in Coutumes de Chartreuse, Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1984. 191 De ornamentis XL/1–3’: ‘Ornamenta aurea vel argentea, preter calicem et calamum quo sanguis domini sumitur, in ecclesia non habemus, pallia tapetiaque reliquimus. 2. Feneratorum et excommunicatorum munera non accipimus. 3. Cartulam quoque quam de quibusdam talibus rebus conscripseramus, hiuc scripture iniecimus’ (chap. p. 40, p. 245). 185

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John Cassian (d. circa 435), represents a long monastic tradition against superfluities going back to the fourth century. His promotion of ‘unceasing concentration upon God in prayer’, the elimination of distractions to this end, ‘conquering [temptation]’ (in Zwingli’s case idolatry in heart and mind) in the pursuit of ‘contemplation of God with purity of heart,’ and ‘worship [as] an act of the mind’, are all things which Owen Chadwick has identified as qualities of Cassian’s program. 192 They are shared by Zwingli as we have seen point for point. In his writings on the visual, however, Cassian is not concerned with superfluities and excesses of decoration as distraction from worship as with Clairvaux. Cassian’s real interest is in the question of idolatry, of making images of Christ at all, which he calls ‘anthromorphite heresy’, ‘pagan superstitions’ and ‘pollution’. Cassian talks about eliminating ‘admixture’ from true [purified] worship, and of true prayer as silent.193 In this, Zwingli also shares ground with Cassian. Both Bernard and Zwingli call attention to the presence of colour in connection with the physical beauty of pictures. Both describe a kind of emotional or sexualised excitability provoked in the viewer by the appeal to the senses.194 In Bernard’s view a primary raison d’être for paintings within the churches had always been to attract donations and gifts.195 He scorned brightly coloured paintings, although he allowed that they were necessary aids for the layperson with inferior spiritual abilities.196 Both writers contrast the holiness or blessedness that should be the motive for creating art in a sacred context with ulterior motives detected behind the art. Both questioned the value of a system that sets up this kind of conflict of interests, which can only detract from true devotion. 192 John Cassian: The Conferences (Chapt. X, IV–VI), Boniface Ramsey trans., in Ancient Christian Writers, The Works of the Fathers in Translation, vol. 57, Walter J. Burghardt et al., eds., New Jersey 1997, pp. 373–76. 193 Cf. the Rule of Benedict, p. 52, and Zwingli, Archeteles, p. 220; Exposition of the SixtySeven Articles, 21st Art., pp. 180–81, esp. p. 181, 52nd Art., p. 320. 194 St Bernard, Apologia in Cistercians, XII.28 and 29 and Zwingli, quoted above, n. 193. 195 ‘Let me speak plainly. …It is for no useful purpose that we do it, but to attract gifts. You want to know how? Listen to the marvels of it all. It is possible to spend money in such a way that it increases; it is an investment which grows. …For some unknown reason, the richer a place appears, the more freely do offerings pour in’ (Bernard, Apologia, XII, 28). 196 Saint Bernard, XII, 28, p. 65. The main thrust of Saint Bernard’s criticisms was directed to the scale of the architecture (Saint Bernard, XII, 28, 63) and to the sculpted columns and other images in the cloisters (Saint Bernard, XII, 29).

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To the point is their shared christocentricity of approach to questions of faith and worship.197 Both men speak of seeking hope in Christ only, in sharing his suffering and imitating his humility, which leads both to the rejection of superfluities, the renunciation of self-complacency, of self–importance, of pride, and of the visual. In his Apologia, Bernard reminds us of the ‘simplicity of heart’ taught by Jesus, and contrasts this with pharisaism (No. 10), and hypocrisy (Nos. 5, 11). He emphasises inwardness (No. 12), and the superiority of authentic love and purity of purpose over any consideration of outward formal observance (Nos. 6, 10). The parallels between this critique and Zwingli’s are striking, notwithstanding that the former was intended for monks, the latter for all of society, lay and ecclesiastic alike. This is not to say Zwingli desired all lay people to live as monks (although a case could be made for Zurich as a monastery–like environment for laypeople), but that his criticisms of the obstacles to devotion were the same as the founder of a great monastic order, and that they yielded comparable standards for the interior treatment of churches.198 Statute 20 of Bernard’s Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis says:199 ‘It is completely forbidden to have sculptures. As for paintings, they are permitted only on crosses, and the latter must be of wood.’200 Chapter 52b of the Rule of Benedict reads: The place for worship shall be what it is called: nothing else shall be done there, nothing alien to worship stored there. When the Work of

Z I 458, Z II, 27. (Refer to second discussion point, First Zürich disputation.) See also Potter, p. 65. 198 Zwingli did not appear personally to own a copy of St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William. However, the Stiftsbibliothek possessed multiple editions of his works. (See Die reformierte Stiftsbibliothek am Grossmünster Zürich im 16. Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der neuzeitlichten Bibliographie.Wiesbaden, 1994; entry nos. 21 and 215 consist in volumes of Bernard’s collected works, 1508; nos. 69 and 10, Sermons and Opuscula). As the library to the Grossmünster school the Stiftsbibliothek was very familiar to Zwingli. It is inconceivable that Zwingli would not have read Saint Bernard’s works there. 199 In Joseph-Maria Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, Louvain, 1933; also Henri d’Arbois Jubainville, Étude sur l’état intérieur des abbayes cisterciennes et principalement de Clairvaux, au XIIe et au XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1858, Paris, 1858, pp. 28–35; Capitula XXXVI of the Carta caritatis Prior. The Carta caritatis was the first set of rules established for the Cistercian order. They were confirmed by Calixtus II in 1119. The Instituta capituli generalis in ninety-seven chapters was promulgated in 1134. (Arbois de Jubainville, p. viii). and Bernard’s Apologia between 1115–19 or 1119–25. (See above). 200 See Lillich, 1982, at n.187 above, p. 39. 197

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God is ended, all shall go out in deep silence, and God shall be held in reverence (emphasis mine).201 Sculptures and paintings were forbidden anywhere within any of the monastic buildings (cloister, refectory, hostel, or any room in the monastery); gold, silver and jewels were proscribed as decoration except on the chalice and fistula; silk was disallowed except in the stole and maniple. The dominating principle of each of the Statutes (nos. 10, 20, 80) governing these things was the minimum, that is, simplicity. Cistercian architecture was devoid of colour and decoration because it distracted. Bernard not only perceived monastic art to be a distraction, but believed sensory images were a barrier to religious contemplation. Any stimulus to imagination would interfere with the ‘discipline of the eye.’ But images and decoration were also rejected because the Word was without form or dimension. Where art was admitted into the monastery, as described by Elizabeth Melczer and Eileen Soldwedel, Bernard’s aesthetic was present ‘to provide a setting conducive to contemplation by reflecting the simplicity, order and collective nature of community life in purity of line, superior structural harmony and serene luminosity.’202 The ‘austerity’ and functionalism of the Cistercian ecclesiastical interior then, was designed to offer no stimuli which could distract from contemplation203 interiors were filled with light as an aid to contemplation. Melczer and Soldwedel have suggested that this might be because Cistercian architects had been influenced by Bernard’s light imagery in which the sunlight is used to symbolise the physical presence of the Divinity in the sanctuary, pure clear light in the Cistercian context being a form of representation of God.204 God is, further, explicitly associated with white light. In his Sermon for the Seasons, Bernard refers to ‘The white light and most pure refulgence of the Godhead’ and to the light of God;205 in Song ‘[O]ratorium hoc sit quod dicitur, nec ibi quicquam aliud geratur aut condatur. expleto opere dei, omnes cum summo silentio exeant, et habeatur reverentia deo. ut frater qui forte sibi peculiariter vult orare, non inpediatur alterius inprobitate.’ The Rule of Benedict, chap. 52, the monks of Glenstal Abbey (trans.), Dublin, 1994, p. 244. 202 See Elisabeth Melczer and Eileen Soldwedel, ‘Aesthetics of St Bernard’, in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, vol. I, Kalamazoo, 1982, pp. 32–34. 203 Ibid., p. 35. 204 Ibid., pp. 35–36. About light imagery in Bernard, Melczer and Soldwedel wrote that ‘Illumination is made variously part of the qualities, attributes, substance and activity of the Word, God the Father, Christ, the virgin, the soul and the just’ (p. 35). 205 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Seasons, Priest of Mt Mellary (trans.), Dublin, 1925, vol.2, p. 279 and vol.1, p. 198. 201

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of Songs he speaks of the ‘Word as light’;206 and of God as the Father of all light.207 Such references are more than frequent in Bernard’s writings and are paralleled in Zwingli’s. Zwingli did not, as Bernard did, have an architectural programme with the express purpose of giving architectural form to the Reformation equivalent of the Rule of Saint Benedict. Unlike Zwingli, Bernard concerned himself with architecture in addition to curtailing over-investment in rich interiors and images. Bernard began his polemic with a condemnation of the immoderate scale and grandeur of churches: ‘Not to speak of their enormous height, their immoderate length, their vacant immensity…’208 But it is important not to overlook the fact that Zwingli’s programme of reform nonetheless implicitly shared many details with Bernard’s.209 While less poetic in his writing, Zwingli frequently employs the image of light to describe God’s attributes such as Justice, Truth, Purity, the Word or God’s grace. It is difficult for us to understand, let alone explain, how Zwingli, who claimed to have loved art as much as anyone,210 could have been responsible, through his leadership and influence, for the wholesale destruction of a city’s art.211 Zwingli’s attitude to the arts, as a subject separate from the question of idolatry, was not as unequivocally positive as he maintained — as his occasional disdain for painted images betrays.212 But it was not wholly On the Song of Songs IV: 197. On the Song of Songs I: 65. 208 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Apologia ad Guillelmum, cha p. p. 12 (XII, 28), written 1125, translation published in Cistercians and Cluniacs. Similar views were expressed by Alexander Neckham and Hugh of Fouilloi. See Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, New Haven and London, 1986, p. 6. 209 Parallels with the ideals of the ‘primitive church’ that may be perceived in Eusebius, and much later with those of Vatican II, should also be noted. (See Chapter I of this dissertation; see also Michalski, p. 1). 210 Farner III, 489; Z III, 906, 1–2; Z IV, 84, 25–26. 211 For Zwingli’s claims to love art see, Z III, 906, 1–2, and Z IV, 84, 25–26. See also chapter V of this dissertation. Regarding the destruction of art and artefacts in addition to the description of the iconoclasm described in Chapter I, see Garside, p. 80n. 14, where he states that not one sculpture from pre-Reformation Zürich has survived (therefore nothing is known of sculpture from this period), and that ‘scarcely a tenth’ of pre-Reformation painting has been preserved.’ (Emphasis mine.) See also Walter Hugelshofer, Die Zurcher Malerei bis zum Ausgang der Spätgotik, I, in Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, 30, (1928), Part IV, pp. 20–21and Campenhausen, ‘Die Bilderfrage in der Reformation’ in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 68, 1/2, 1957, pp. 96–128, es p. p. pp. 100, 105. (Also published in Traditionen und Leben, Tubingen, 1960, pp. 361–407. 212 See Z IV, 121, 14–15. 206 207

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condemning either, as his initial, confusing equivocation on this subject and his essay, An Answer to Valentin Compar, also attest.213 For while Zwingli’s theology clearly prohibited images and idols very broadly defined, he remained in practice indifferent to their existence until events forced his hand. Still, it was not his indifference that caused the churches to be whitewashed. Clearly, as Zwingli’s response to Hans Stockar shows,214 he found the colour white to be most beautiful.215 But aesthetic considerations based on visual delight would have provided an insufficient basis for either the retention or elimination of a visual programme, as the removal and destruction of images in Zürich churches itself demonstrates. Erasmus, Luther and even

Huldrych Zwingli, Valentin Compar, eine Antwort gegeben in Huldreich Zwinglis Samtliche Werke, Berlin, Leipzig, Zürich, 1905–, critical edition still in progress, IV, pp. 84–115. (Pages 84–115, the third of four articles in Valentin Compar, address the subject of images). 214 See n.1 above. 215 ‘Wir haben ze Zürich gar hälle Tempel: die Wänd sind hupsch wyss!’ Farner III, 490. Different scholars have translated this comment differently. See Chapt. 1, n. 13. On the subject of the colour white within church interiors, it is worth reminding the reader that the architect Andreas Palladio also believed white to be the most appropriate colour for churches. (See Chapter II). In 1570, he wrote, ‘Of all the colours, none is more proper for churches than white; since the purity of colour, as of life, is particularly grateful to God. But if they are painted, those pictures will not be proper, which by their signification alienate the mind from the contemplation of divine things, because we ought not in temples to depart from gravity.’ See The Four Books of Architecture, A. K. Placzek (ed.), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 82. Palladio’s words mirror those of Leon Battista Alberti, who had published his book, De Re Aedificatoria (On the Art of Building in Ten Books), 1485 in which he says much the same thing. .Vitruvius, Cicero and Plato, who each wrote about the ideal form of temples — including choice of colour— were either in Zwingli’s library or in the Stiftsbibliothek associated with the Grossmünster to which Zwingli had access and with which he was intimately familiar. Cicero and Plato in particular had been carefully studied by Zwingli; but the fact that the Stiftsbibliothek possessed a 1511edition of De architectura (Vitruvius) printed in Venice is astounding. (See entries 232, 698, Germann). This testifies not only to the humanist bent of Zwingli and his colleagues, but also to the fact that architecture, as a subject of consideration, was not off the map. See Martin Germann, Die Reformierte Stiftsbibliothek am Grossmünster Zürich im 16. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 1994: entries 232, 252 for Vitruvius; entries, 163, 258 for Plato (Opera Omnia); entries 221, 222, 419 for Cicero (Opera). Other important texts which contain ideas about architecture and colour in a sacred context such as Eusebius’ (Auctores historiae ecclesiasticae) and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s works were also in the Stiftsbibliothek, entries 173 (not obtained until 1523) and 21, 215, respectively. According to Walter Köhler, Zwingli also possessed complete editions of Plato, Cicero and a copy of De officiis (Köhler, no. 70) which, if accurate, would verify that Zwingli was personally aware of Alberti as an author. 213

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Zwingli at one time regarded images as ‘child’s play’,216 which might have rendered them harmless, yet it did not. Nor did the fact that images gave aesthetic pleasure create the problem. But sensual distraction (physical and visual pleasure) in addition to idolatry was an issue, as Zwingli’s comments in the letter to Martin Bucer, 9 June 1523, demonstrate.217 Almost exactly the same sort of comment is later made by Calvin in 1536.

See The Praise of Folly, Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (ed.), New York, 1941, p. 66; for the Luther reference see Luther’s Works, pp. 40, 69; Carl Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany, p. 62, and Eire, 1986, at n. 8 above, p. 67. For Zwingli’s comment on it, see Z II, 733. 217 Letter to Marin Bucer, 9 June 1523, Z VIII, 80–81. (Cf. Z II, 696, 13–14.) 216

VII Calvin and Colour-Thinking ‘[W]hatever holds down and confines the senses to the earth is contrary to the covenant of God; in which, inviting us to Himself, He permits us to think of nothing but what is spiritual.’ (John Calvin, Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses, CR 24.387)1 ‘You can only establish perfect piety when you turn away from visible things, which are for the most part either imperfect or of themselves indifferent, and you seek instead the invisible, which corresponds to the highest part of human nature.’ (Erasmus, The Enchiridion.Fifth Rule) 2

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any scholars acknowledge that the clearing of churches in Geneva was accomplished by Guillaume Farel before Calvin’s arrival on the scene in 1536. Farel, a zealous reformer and preacher in his own right, had been sent in September of 1532 by the Bernese government to promote evangelism in the city. As a result of his efforts iconoclastic rioting, church 1 CR 24.387. On this same point Zwingli writes: ‘He says that God is a Spirit, whence also that those who will worship him can or should do so in no more just a manner than by consecrating their mind to Him.’ (Z III.853). 2 Desiderius Erasmus, A Book Called in Latin Enchiridion Militis Christiani and in English The Manual of the Christian Knight, replenished with the most wholesome precepts made by the famous clerk Erasmus of Rotterdam, to which is added a new and marvellous profitable Preface (London: Methuen and Co., 1905). See: The fifth rule: Chap. xiii. Accessed from http://oll. libertyfund.org/title/191/5534/682908 on 2010–09–27.

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‘cleansing’, disputations on reform, and an edict, had seen to it that there was, effectively, nothing physical remaining in the churches for Calvin to remove in the way of catholic visual and material culture. Nonetheless, in the world of scholarship, in accounts of Genevan reform under Calvin, few question that John Calvin was responsible for the whitewashing of church interiors or for the paradigmatic Calvinist aesthetic. (Fig. 7.1, 1.15). Either the facts are obscured or lost or, in the form of documentary evidence, is considered unimportant so strong is the idea that it is not probed or probelmatised. Or, perhaps, as with Zürich, the decision to whitewash was just never recorded and has come down to us as received history..3 Secondary literature is clearly confused about when whitewashing actually took place in Geneva, although, as I have already suggested, few, if any, doubt that it did.4 The dates usually quoted by historians for the whitewashing of church interiors in Geneva are: 1532–34, 1535, 1536, 1541, or 1543. The year 1532 marks Farel’s arrival in Geneva.The year 1536 heralds an important shift in the nature of iconoclasm and reform in Geneva, not only because, for all practical purposes, the churches had been fully ‘cleansed’ by this time as a result of Farel’s evangelical preaching, but also because reform was officially adopted by the General Council of Geneva in May, 1536. In June, 1535 a Disputation took place at the Convent at Rive. Immediately following this, or one month later, iconoclasm took place in Geneva which is related to incitement to abolish idolatry heard at Rive. Thus plausible occasions forwhitewashing of church interiors include the months following the Disputation at Rive 30 May–June 24 (iconoclasm, then, July or in August); after reform became official in May, 1536; following Calvin’s returned to Geneva after exile (13 September 1541) and had the support of the magistracy behind him;5 following the commencements The quotation refers to a major theme of the EnchiridionI, so it appears in a number place. See: Enchiridion, Ch. 4, 6, 7, 12, esp. 13). 3 The records for many events in the Reformation are missing, lost, or never existed, so this is not unusual. One case in point: although there were records for the refugee churches in London for the period 1564–68 (covering the period of the great wave of iconoclasm in the Netherlands), the archivist at the Guidhall in London informed Crew these have been lost. Records before and after this window are extant. See Crew, p. 44n16. 4 Some authors do not comment at all on the colour of church interiors in Geneva and some describe them simply as ‘bare’. 5 Indeed, the very day that Calvin returned the Small Council (Petit Conseil) assembled a committee to assist Calvin in drawing up the ordinances for Geneva’s Church. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation, Louisville, 1994, p. 84.

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of operations of the consistory in 1542 (leading to the 1543 date perhaps); or even after Calvin’s death (May 1564), just as Daniel Gutscher argues was the case for Zürich one hundred fifty years after Zwingli’s death. (Changing fashions in architecture and a form of cultural metabolism acculturating one to whitened churches would account for whitened interiors in this latter case, relating more to classicism than to iconoclasm.) (Fig. 1.18, 1.19). But if the moniker, ‘Calvinist interior’ is anything to go by, outside dates for whitewashing should have happened sometime after the Rive-related iconoclasm and before 1564.6 A summary chronology of key events relating to Geneva and whitewashing: 1532: Guillaume Farel arrives in Geneva as a representative of the reformed canton of Berne. His assignment is to preach reform to the Genevans, and convert whom he could. His preaching efforts have been described as ‘spectacularly unsuccessful’, but those of Antoine Fromment, his colleague were effective. Intermittent iconoclastic events are recorded; these accelerate after 15 May 1534 when Berne’s dominance of the Combourgeoisie is clearly evident. June 1535: Disputation at the Convent of Rive takes place. (It began at the very end of May (30th/31st/1 June); debating did not end until 24 June). As a direct consequence of the Rive Disputation there were a series of spontaneous iconoclastic campaigns against images. Whitewashings may have occurred as a matter of repair following these. 25 May 1536: the General Council voted unanimously ‘to live henceforth according to the law of the Gospel and the Word of God…and to abolish [lit. ‘delaisser’, to forsake] all Masses and other ceremonies and papal abuses, images and idols.’ Citizens were also forbidden at this time to go outside the city walls to attend Mass elsewhere. To this end whitewashing may have taken place at this time in order to annihilate papal culture and establish a new basis for worship. August 1536: Calvin arrives in Geneva for the first time. Whitewashings would not have taken place immediately following his arrival, but he does write to a friend that much in the way of papal material culture had been eliminated already. Had churches been whitewashed by this time? October, 1536: Lausanne Disputation (one week); followed by an Edict of Reformation issued by Berne who governed the canton of Vaud, establishing the Reformation in the Vaudois, and including the elimination of all vestiges of Catholicism. Whitewashing may have taken place at this time or thereabouts. This edict was followed by a second regulating the moral life of the people consistent with Reformed moral values. September, 1541: Calvin and Farel return to Geneva following their expulsion in 1538 by the city government. The city is under a different magistracy in 1541 and although Calvin continued to experience resistance to his policies, the politics were significantly changed from the time when the two men were banished from the city. In 1541 they are secure in their authority to act. November, 1541: The Ecclesiastical Ordinances, written by Calvin, are issued. These would radically re-organise Genevan society along lines Calvin determined were outlined in the New 6

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Beginning in 1546 a policy unilaterally implemented by the ministers of Geneva suddenly prohibited the use of names for children considered to be too closely associated with Catholic tradition and ritual (read popish ‘superstition’). Ministers began arbitrarily assigning names to children during the baptismal rite over and above parental objections and over-riding names popularly and traditionally in use in the region. If the ministers had their way, the penalty for non-conformance to the new naming policy was excommunication. The controversy engendered riots in Geneva as well as considerable ill-feeling toward the French-born ministers who were considered to be over-reaching their authority. It seems highly unlikely that an item such as images, which were pollution and filth to the reformed, would have remained in churches until 1546 if the routing out of all vestiges of Catholic superstition had progressed to the detailed level of baptismal names.7 Therefore, if whitewashing was a Calvinist phenomenon it must have taken place before 1546 and not after Calvin’s death.8 As a practical matter it would seem that re-painting walls would have taken place as part of the process of ‘making good’ damage done to church interiors during the iconoclasm, making it unlikely that it took place as late as 1543, eight years after the unsanctioned iconoclasm of 1535. Indeed, it would be extremely surprising if repairs had not been made, especially in view of the amount of physical damage sustained during the rush to eliminate idolatry in what has been described as violent and riotous stripping of

Testament and would blend civic government with religious, social, and moral regulation. Calvin might have written into these ordinances that church interiors be kept whitewashed (or some other colour), but he does not address the interior décor of the worship space at all. 1543: A date quoted for the whitewashing of church interiors by Andrew Spicer (The Reformation World, London and New York, 2002, p. 513). This date indicates whitewashing took place one year after the commencement of operations by the Consistory, established in 1542. This is plausible, the Consistory would have had time to find its feet, establish its authority and make things happen, but whose idea was it and where is the event of whitewashing recorded? 7 The Ordinance for this appears in the Register [of the Company of Pastors of Geneva] for 1546 under ‘Concerning Baptism’ as follows: (5) As for the names given, the ordinances of Messieurs shall be observed, both for avoiding superstition and idolatry and for removing from the Church all that is foolish and unseemly.’ 8 I wish to thank Richard Rex for pointing out this connexion to me. The first protest occurred in 1546; the issue continued to dog the magistracy and to negatively impact the acceptance of the Consistory. See Naphy, pp. 144–156.

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the churches.9 Illegal iconoclasm continued until the disputation at Lausanne in 1536, when an official decision was made to reform the Vaud and civic and religious unrest was eventually quelled. As a matter of religious and political reform, the erasure of all traces of popish imagery, that is, of the past, was typically a critical move in the establishment of a fresh start for a church desirous of renewal, and the ‘making good’ of walls a positive move in terms of establishing a positive association with the new environment. A spiritual and physical tabula rasa, makes sense in this context and would be consistent with patterns established elsewhere where militant reform developed. It is possible Calvin acquiesced to the physical circumstances as he found them because it was efficient for a busy man to do so; or perhaps he made good use of Farel’s image-breaking reputation to adopt the situation as he found it because it reflected what he would have done himself had he been required to initiate the process of physical reform. Perhaps, in Calvin’s view, church buildings belonged to the category of adiaphora; he may not have had an opinion one way or the other about the colour of church walls, so that the question of ‘what to do with church interiors’ after Catholic idols and images had been removed, was of no concern to him.10 From his writings we know that foremost for him was the elimination of the deformation of the visible church that was ‘execrable idolatries of the papists; and, therefore, images.11 The very first iconoclastic incident in Geneva in 1530 was by Bernese troops who had been stationed there to sustain opposition to the Duke of Savoy. See Bruening for an excellent summary of the politics involved. 10 Calvin’s concept of the visible church includes the body of Christina faithful. His concept of true faith and piety is predominantly Zwinglian where the ‘true’ Is contrasted with the ‘superstitious’ and false. See Ganoczy on this point (pp. 205–7); and since God is spirit and true worship is in spirit only, stripped of anything unnecessary (material, carnal, devised by men: rituals, ceremonies, superstitions, and such true worship did not depend on a specific place, time or building (as with Zwingli). From this one can infer that the building or space in which one worshipped conferred nothing of value on the practice of faith or expressions of piety. ‘Those who think’, Calvin wrote, ‘that the ear of God is moved closer to them in a temple, or consider their prayer to be more sacred in a holy place, are acting according to the crassness of the Jews or Gentiles who adore God carnally. Against this it has been prescribed that we adore God in spirit and truth, without any distinction between places.’ Quoted from Ganoczy, p. 207. This passage is from the Institutes, III. XX.29: ‘The Necessity and Danger of Public Prayer’ p. 30. ‘Not church buildings but we ourselves are temples of God…’ 11 See Alexandre Ganoczy, for discussion of Calvin’s appraisal in the first edition of the Institutes of the deformities of the Roman Church which, Ganoczy suggests, was as close as Calvin got at that time to defining reform. For Calvin the ‘true church’ was ‘buried’, in The 9

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As we shall see, we know he noticed colour and recognised symbolisms associated with things, as a scholar and in a lay context alike. While it is clear that Calvin would not have approved of the violence and disorder that took place before he arrived, but which did not hinder Farel, to transform churches in the face of much local opposition, it is likely he would have approved of chastened interiors.12 My conclusion about the phenomenon of Calvinist interiors, therefore, the background to which is developed in this chapter, is that the churches may or may not have been whitewashed during the period of evangelical reform initiated by Farel and carried through by Calvin, but if it was, the model for this interior was actually a Zwinglian one. The whitewashed interior was most likely transmitted to Geneva via Farel (if indeed churches Young Calvin, David Foxgrover and Wade Provo, trans., and Philadelphia, (French, 1966) and 1987 pp. 201, 225–230. The following is example from Calvin’s letters which contains the idea of reform to which Ganoczy refers and also that of pollution and execrable idolatries: ‘He [God] hates and chiefly holds in detestation the idolatries and superstitions by which he is dishonoured, and which more grievously offend than every other thing. Think for a little on what takes place among you. They adore stone and wood; they invoke the dead; they trust in lying vanities; they would serve God by ceremonies foolishly invented without the authority of his word. The true doctrine is buried, and if any one wishes to have it brought forth, he is cruelly persecuted. Do you think that God can bear with such pollutions and blasphemies against his own honour? St. Paul bears witness that God had sent the plague on Corinth, because the holy Supper had not been so reverently treated there as it ought. (1 Cor. xi.) Then what must we expect, seeing that it has already, for so long a period, been converted into such an execrable sacrifice as is your mass?’ (Letter to Mr Le Curé de Cernex (1543) in Calvin’s Letters, vol. I, p. 364). (My emphasis). 12 It seems plausible that the choice of the colour white in Calvinist church interiors was theologically mandated, at least in significant part, by specific ideas about the colour white that one finds in the Hebrew and Christian bibles, biblical literature and exegesis. Moreover, the whitewashed Calvinist interior yielded concrete value in terms of the ways in which its attributes would mirror Reformed theology while actually disciplining the eye and soul. During a period in which society was being required to re-orientate its spiritual and visual self, to wean itself from a dependence on material surrogates in worship, the visual reminder of the task at hand would have been apposite as well as useful. It is a short distance between accepting a role for whiteness in the context of metaphorical language, and the whitewashing of church interiors as a natural solution to the problem of purifying walls sullied by popery. In this critical sense I would like to suggest here, as I have elsewhere in this book, that there is more to whitewashing than a coat of paint; instead I would suggest that an image of an altogether different order was being painted in. It might be said, in the form of whitewash — patently non-figurative and non-mimetic — the church donned a metaphorical white garment in attestation of its own spiritual cleansing and regeneration. In this sense the whitewashing represents the seal of the act of cleansing and renewal.

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were whitewashed sometime between 1532 and 1564), who had wanted to bring Zwinglian reform to the city. From there the association of Calvinism with the stripped, whitewashed interior was carried to the Netherlands (the first pastor arrived in 1544; fifty Calvinist ministers arrived from Geneva, England, Germany, and France and Swizterland in 1566).13 In the Low Countries whitened interiors were promoted by men such as Veluanus and his readers. John Knox, the founder of Scottish Presbytarianism, was also resident in Geneva as a religious exile in 1554; again between September 1556 and January 1559, where he was minister to the foreign congregation at the Église de Notre Dame la Neuve, the New Church of Our Lady in Geneva, now the Calvin Auditorium. He would have brought the association ‘whitened’ and ‘reformed’ to Scotland. ) From the Low Lands the idea was disseminated internationally from where, aided by the press it received through the medium of the architectural painters Pieter Saenredam, Emmanuel de Witte, the Berkheyde brothers, and others, the whitened interior had the support of the English ‘Puritans’, Archbishops Grindal and Hooper, among them, (who had been exiled in Zürich and Strasbourg), and also the Puritan, William Dowsing. Each of these Englishmen either ordered, or saw to it, that churches under their authority were whitewashed. (Figure 3.23).

Early Genevan Reform A number of disputations between leaders of reform and traditionalists were held in Switzerland between 1532 and 1536.14 The two most important for our purposes were the Disputation at the Convent of Rive during June, 1535 (lasted most of the month until 24 June) at which Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret argued the reform cause against Pierre Caroli, a Sorbonne doctor of theology representing the establishment. One month after the conclusion of debate, in August, but linked to this disputation, an extensive outbreak of iconoclasm erupted during which most images in Geneva’s churches were 13 Crew, pp. 1, 6; note however that clandestine Protestants had been active there since 1518. Luther’s publications were read almost as soon as they were printed. See Crew, p. 6. 14 (1) Late January, 1534: Guillaume Farel debates Guy Furbity, Sorbonne-trained, Dominican Friar (2) June 1535: Disputation at the Convent of Rive (3) October, 1536: Disputation at Lausanne.

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removed or destroyed. Farel had been preaching against the Mass and images throughout Geneva during the intervening month.15 The second disputation which concerns us is that at Lausanne in October, 1536, at which reform was officially accepted for the entire canton of Vaud. Present at the Lausanne disputation on the Protestant side were Farel, Pierre Caroli (who, previously receptive to reform ideas, had changed sides by this time), Christophe Fabri, Antoine Marcourt, and John Calvin who, in this venue, did not argue the specific issue of images and idolatry at all. (Indeed, Calvin did not speak at this event until the disputation was nearly concluded).16 Following the conclusion of proceedings, Berne issued an edict ordering the cleansing of all churches and the elimination of all Catholic ceremonies in places of worship within its jurisdiction. Geneva had adopted by edict the new faith in the spring of 1536; but the Berne edict included sanctioned iconoclasm with the goal of irreversibly establishing reform through evangelical law. Between these two events, the Mass had been abolished in May, 1535.17 The Berne edict, written by magistrates on behalf of the Council of Two Hundred and dated 19 October 1536, reads: [We] announced [the decision] to overthrow [or pull down] idolatry of every kind, papal ceremonies, and man-made traditions and ordonnances which do not conform to the Word of God. To this end we mandate and command each and everyone of you, the bailiffs, magistrates, chatelains,18 lieutenants, advoyers and other officials, to go from one church to the next within your authority, as well as to cloisters and monasteries, and immediately once these things are seen [take them down];’ that all priests, provosts, deans,

See Eire, pp. 140–144 for detailed analysis of Rive Disputation. Le Chroniqueur, Recueil Historique et Journal de l’Helvetie Romande,…1533–1536, Lausanne, 1836, pp. 340–41. Bruening has noted this fact about Calvin also; in Bruening’s view Calvin’s contribution to the debate is exaggerated which, indeed, I also think it is. See Bruening, p. 141. 17 Bruening, pp. 32–35; Gordon, p. 70. 18 The châtelaine was a local official of the Seigneury who administered estates that came under its supervision. It was usually held by a citizen and was essentially a fiscal and administrative post. See: The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, trans. and ed., Grand Rapids, 1966, 82n.4. 15 16

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canons, cures, vicars, chaplains, abbots, [prieurs], monks, nuns, and all other persons known as ‘people of the Church’, do expressly as commanded by us forthwith and remove [lit. ‘to deport’] all ceremonies, sacrifices, offices, institutions and papistical traditions; and in such a manner to completely stop doing them in order to avoid our bad graces and grievous punishment; also you will expressly recommend without delay to take down all images and idols as well as the altars in the said churches and monasteries; … /…However [this] has to be done in good order without tumult while giving the people the command to listen to the Word of God… We, the appointed officers, command you once again to execute this our command with all diligence and we command that your subjects obey this order [lit., ‘command’] without exceptions, contradictions, opposition or allegations of any kind under penalty of our indignation, because we wish it to be so. Dated Thursday 19 October 1536.19 The original reads: ‘[Nous] avons advisé d’abatre toutes idolâtries, cérémonies papales, traditions et ordonnances des hommes non conformes à la Parole de Dieu. A. ceste cause et effect mandons et commandons à tous et un chacun nous bailliffs, advoyer, chastelains, lieutenans et aultres officiers que, incontinent avoir vues icestes, vous transpourtiez d’une église en l’autre , et aussy ès cloistres et monastères que sont soubs votre charge et office et à tous prestres, prevosts, doyens, chanoines, curés, vicaires, chappelains, abbés, prieurs, meennes [moines], nunins [nonain] et toutes autres personnes appelées gens d’Eglise, de notre part fassiez exprès commandement de soy incontinent dépourter de toutes cérémonies, sacrifices, offices, institutions et traditions papistiques, et de toutellement cesser d’ycelles, entant qu’ils désireront d’éviter notre male grace et griefve punition; aussy vous expressement recommandant sans dilation abatre toutes images et idoles, aussy les autels estans dans lesdites églises et monaslères; touteffois cella par bon ordre et sans tumulte, auxdits personnages et tous aultres nous soubjects faisant commandement d›ouyr la Parolle de Dieu, ès lieux plus prochains où les prédicans sont déjà constitués et cy après avec le temps seront par nous ordonnés et députés; … A ceste cause à vous nous susdits officiers desrechief commandons de en toute diligence exécuter cestuy nostre mandement; et à vous nous soubjects d›obeyr à ycelluy sans exceptions, contradictions, oppositions ne allégations qnel conques, soub peine de notre indignation, car ainsy le voulons. Datum jeudy XIX octobris, anno 1536.’ Ibid., 341. The original is found in: Sammlung Schweizerishcher Rechtsquellen, XIX Abteilung. ‘Les sources du droit Suisse, XIXe partie: Les sources du droit du canton de Vaud, C. Époque bernoise, I. Les mandate généraux bernois pour le Pays de Vaud, 1536–1798’, Regula MatzingerPfister, ed., Basel, 2003, p. 14: no. 2d–e. The original differs only in orthographic detail. About Bernese edicts Michael W. Bruening points out that: ‘The first order of business was the organized physical removal and/or destruction of all Catholic ornamentation, 19

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The order is thorough. It requires the total elimination or destruction of all catholic cultic objects and art (altars, paintings, sculptures, vestments, and liturgical ware). There is, however, no requirement to ‘make good’ the walls ‘as though nothing had been there before’, as one finds in comparable Edwardine proclamations promulgated beginning in 1547; no ordinances commanding ‘détruis[er] les traces du passé’ such as is recorded by Goulemot in his commentary on Protestants and their culture.20 There is, significantly, no requirement to whitewash either, and no subsequent declarations or narratives that I have identified indicating that whitewashing took place. Two well known narratives of the iconoclasm are recorded by contemporary Christians on opposite sides of the religious divide; that of Jeanne de Jussie, a noblewoman and nun in the Convent of Saint Claire in Geneva and that of Antoine Fromment, an evangelical preacher working with Farel and the city of Berne committed to bringing reform to Geneva. In her journal Jussie describes iconoclastic activity and physical violence in Geneva and its suburbs between 1526 and 1535,21 when she and her sisters, left Geneva for Annecy, France, to take refuge. (The order was dissolved during the French Revolution.) Jussie’s narrative begins in 1526 with the rising political tensions between the ruling Savoy family and the Swiss Federation including including altars, images, and vestments. The Bernese hoped to weaken attachments to the old faith by eliminating all visible remnants of it. Only when that process was fully under way did Berne issued a second edict, which defined the religious and moral laws the people were to follow.’ In Bruening as elsewhere, there is no reference to whitewashing as part of this process nor is there in any of the decisions made by the local government regarding the reformation process. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground, Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528–1559, Dordrecht, 2005, p. 142. The removal of images was not quite as organized as Bruening suggests here. There were significant episodes of spontaneous iconoclasm pre-dating the edict and also following the disputation during which people were riotous if not large in number and when images were randomly destroyed, This was usually followed by a disputation to settle the precipitating crises. The Lausanne cathedral was stormed immediately following the disputation in that city, as were churches in Geneva following the Rive Disputation. Priest and others attempted to hide images and to protect other cult objects. But, that images, altars and vestments were, one way and another, eliminated from the churches in unsanctioned iconoclasm, is clear. 20 Jean M. Goulemot, Paul Lidsky, and Didier Masseau, Le voyage en France: une anthologie des voyageurs français er étrangers en France, aux XIX et XX siecles, Paris: Laffont, 1992, cited in Catharine Randall, ‘The “Protestants’ Progress”: Reading Reformed Travel Literature in Early Modern France’, Religion & Literature, vol. 29, no. 3 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 21–41, University of Notre Dame. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40059710, pp. 23–24. 21 No churches in the inner-city of Geneva were affected by this iconoclasm.

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Geneva. The relevant passages to our purposes begin with the arrival of Guillaume Farel in 1532. Jussie describes the events surrounding Farel’s first and successive preaching campaigns, as well as the proselytizing work of Antoine Fromment. Fromment’s campaign, initially clandestine, then in open defiance of local government, also began in 1532. We can experience vicariously the rising tide of violence and iconoclasm which began in 1533 and continued, more or less episodically, but brought with it extensive damage and violence until the aftermath of the Rive Disputation in 1535. Under Jussie’s pen, Geneva was a genuinely frightening place to be. We read about the iconoclasm at the Franciscan Monastery at Morges which left nothing but the emptied building; iconoclastic activity in other churches in the suburbs of Geneva. following the iconoclastic events of July, 153422 about which she commented that, ‘it was a brutal thing to see such poverty in the House of God’; and, perhaps most poignantly the visit to her own convent on 24 August 1535 when an iconoclastic horde enters and smashes statues, burns paintings, and departs, leaving the convent doors wide open.23 Yet there is no mention of anything relating to the transformation of churches in what we might characterize as a ‘building’ phase of reform, where something is put in place (whitewash or another colour) of that which was removed.(Figs. 7.2–7.3). Antoine Fromment accounts for the progress of reform, of associated politics, strategies and dangers. Neither Jussie nor Fromment approaches details of church interior transformation closer than references to ‘idolatry’, ‘images’, ‘altars’ and, in Jussie’s case, the fearsome violence of the iconoclasm.24 Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, Carrie F. Klaus, ed. and trans, Chicago and London, 2006, ebook edition: loc: 1589–94. 23 ‘Item rompirent le tableau du grand autel mont riche et brulerent toutes les imaiges de boix. Rompirent la grand verriere dernier le grand autel qui estoit belle ewt riche. Et par toutes les chappelles, ou il y auoit des imaiges entaillées des benoists saincts et sainctes, rompirent et de gasterent tout. …Et par toutes les eglises ou ils peurent entré, firent le semblable. …[Ils] rompirent la sacristie, et les aournements qui estoient fort bien composé pour la decoration de telle maison dedié a dieu. Leuerent toutes le serrures et ferrementes et prirent tous àournements qui trouuerent, et enporterent tout auec le reloge du conuent, toutes les couuertes et linges des frères, tellement qu’il ny demourat que l’edifice vuide.’,[‘tellement qu’il n’y demeura chose aucune, sinon l’edifice tout vide’], (My emphasis). Helmut Feld, ed., Jeanne de Jussie, Petite Chronique, Einleitung, Edition, Kommentar, Mainz, p. 16B (fol5r); Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, A Poor Clare’s Account of the Reformation in Geneva, Carrie F. Klaus, Chicago and London, 2006, loc: 987–93, 994–99. 24 Antoine Fromment, Gustave Reilliod, ed., Les Actes et Gestes Merveilleux de la Cité de Genève, 1532, Genève: Jules Guillaume Fick, 1854. 22

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One significant entry in Bernese records is quoted by Louis Villiemin for payment to workmen who ‘[re]paved where altars had been’ (‘qui pavèrent là où les oultars etaient’ / lit., ‘where altars were’) for which they were paid 3 livres 6d.25 Whitewashing usually accompanies such repairs, but this entry appears to address specifically emptied altar locations. This is qualitatively different in nature than an order to make disappear Catholic images by whitewashing entire walls or interiors. In 1535, three days after the reformation of churches in Neuchâtel, Guillaume Farel wrote: ‘through the grace of our Lord we now have a large and handsome [beautiful] place in which to preach; because it is beautiful to see [that] all has been cleared from the church.’26 This comment mirrors Zwingli’s exclamation praising the beauty of his newly reformed worship space, but Zwingli proclaims their whiteness as an integral component of their beauty; Farel praises their relative simplicity and the openness of de-cluttered space. Although canton-wide reform activity did not advance without resistance, Villiemin’s description of the progress of conformance to the October edict is truly impressive for the sense of rapid-fire iconoclasm it conveys: Immediately the magistrate went to Cossonay and took down all of the altars there, beginning at the monastery and finishing at the villages of the Chatelaine...the magistrate from Lausanne went to Luven, destroyed all, ruining idolatry [there]…The next day at Savigny they took down all of the ‘good works’ at the convent church… Next, at Morges, they did similarly… Aussitôt le bailli s’est rendu à Cossonay et y a fait abattre tous les autels, commençant au monastère et finissant dans les derniers villages de la châtelainte…le bailli de Lausanne etait a Luvens, gatant tout, ruinant l’idôlatrie, … Le lendemain on a fait descendre de Savigny les biens de l’église et du couvent…Il s’est ensuite rendu à Morges, où il a réformé semblablement… At the end of a still longer list than is quoted here the chronicler concludes:

Le Chroniquer, Recueil Historique et Journal de l’Helvétie Romande, renfermant le récit de la Reformation de ce Pays… 1533–1536, Lausanne, pp. 341–43. The Bernese city records should be re-reviewed, but funding did not permit this for this book. 26 Par la grâce de notre seigneur, nous avons (maintenant pour prêcher) lieu beau et large; car il fait beau voir ce qu’il a été nettoyé de l’eglise.’ Comité Farel, Guillaume Farel, p. 227. 25

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‘Ainsi s’en vont les idoles de bois et de pierre.’ /[And] In this way the wooden and stone idols were sent away….27 If Villemin is accurate the sweep through the canton of Vaud was thorough and swift. There was, therefore, little with respect to ‘purifying’ churches that Calvin would be called upon to direct. Yet, despite Jussie’s detailed account and the thoroughness of Fromment and Villemin, I have identified no documentary evidence in the major narratives of the reformation of Geneva whose writers observed, or even just reported, the whitewashing of the city’s church interiors.28 This is surprising in view of the strong, even legendary, association of Calvinism with the bare, whitened interior, and because of the fact that whitewashed interiors are widely reported in the historiography of the reformation of Genevan church interiors. Montaigne (Michel Eyquen de M. 1533–1592), the essayist and moderate French Catholic, wrote a travel journal of a visit made to Rome with several friends and his brother during which he travelled through Germany, Switzerland and Italy between June 22, 1580 and November 30, 1581. On this tour he made it his practice to attract as little attention as possible and to live as much as possible as an authentic local resident.29 Among other things he ate and talked with villagers and local magistrates and gentry, visLe Chroniquer, pp. 341–43. I have already commented on Jussie’s narrative: Élie Brackenhoffer’s journal, Voyage en France 1643–44 (Henry Lehr, trans., Paris, 1925) is interesting for what it does not say; for Brackenhoffer neither describes nor comments upon church interiors. His descriptions of domestic arrangements, furnishings, interior décor, and such convey an absence of luxury, but not so with respect to clothing which he describes in detail for men, women, and young people as ‘sumptuous’ (pp. 48–54). He lists the churches in the city. About the Temple of Saint Pierre he says only that it is the principle church in the city and very old; that there is a square in front of it, and above the roof a stone sculpture of an eagle with two heads (evidence that Geneva was once an imperial city); two towers in one of which there is a small clock just as there is in many other buildings in the city. (Voyage, p. 9). He describes a student-award ceremony in Saint Pierre (p. 16), death and funerals (truly rather bleak: ‘Pas d’oraison funèbre, pas de chant, pas de commémoration, beaucoup moins encore de sonneries de cloches en cette occurrence, mais quand un home meurt, il meurt.’ (!) (p. 21). (My emphasis.) Brackenhoffer describes the Lord’s Supper, which presents an interesting case: there are two long tables covered in white linen on which there are four cups placed upside down. The plate holding the bread is covered with a napkin. Beside the table are two bottles of white wine which is poured into the (?stoneware) jug (lit. ‘cruche’); and the bread one uses is white, made of wheat flour. (‘par terre, il ya une grand bouteille du vin blanc, ...et dans un plat du pain, ....Le pain que l’on emploie est blanc, fait de farine de froment’ (p. 18). 29 Montaigne, p. 884. 27 28

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ited local churches, and introduced himself to local curates of both Catholic and Reformed faiths, which he recorded in his journal. One of the first towns on his journey was Meaux, where he visited the Abbey of Saint Faron and the Church of Saint Stephen. Montaigne was shown around the abbey by a resident monk, and at St Stephen’s he conversed with the Treasurer at length, and yet although following the religious wars Meaux had become a predominantly Protestant town, no mention is made of differences between the two churches or of Meaux’s religious history at all. Montaigne visited the church at the town of Mulhouse in the canton of Basel precisely because he was curious about the churches of non-Catholics: (‘for they are not Catholics here’) yet all he found to say was that Mulhouse 30 was like the others ‘throughout the country’ (Switzerland) and are in generally good condition. This was so ‘for there is almost nothing changed, except for the altars and images, whose absence was not found disfiguring.’31 This and the following description of Swiss churches in the 1580s is surprising: Their churches have inside the appearance I have told of elsewhere. On the outside they are covered with images, and the ancient tombs are still intact; on which there are prayers for the souls of the departed. The organs, the bells, the crosses of the belfries, and every sort of image in the stained-glass windows are intact, also the benches and seats of the choir. They put the baptismal fonts in the former place of the high altar, and they have another altar built at the head of the nave for the Lord’s Supper; the one in Basel is on a very fine plan…there is no church so small as not to have a magnificent clock and sundial.32 Montaigne was not allowed to enter Zürich due to precautions being taken because of the plague; but he recorded a conversation with a Züricher which has some bearing on the state of ecclesiastical interiors there; he wrote: [T]his Thursday [M] spoke to a minister of Zürich, a native… and found that the Züricher’s first religion had been Zwinglian; from 30 The village of Mulhouse was apparently not in the canton of Basel, actually, although Montaigne took it to be so; rather, it was a free Imperial city allied with the Swiss Confederation. See, Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works of Montaigne, Donald M. Frame trans., Stanford, 1957, p. 877n.1. 31 Montaigne, p. 877. 32 Ibid., pp. 878, 879.

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which this minister told they had come closer to the Calvinist, which was a little milder…Of his own private judgement he inclined more to the extreme of Zwingli, and praised it highly as the creed that came closest to the primitive Christianity.33 And at Schaffhausen: ‘the capital town of one of the cantons of the Swiss of the religion I have mentioned above, that of the people of Zürich…we saw nothing rare.’ Montaigne did note the whitewashing practices in Germany, Austria and the Alps where, he observed, the city had on retainer a whitewasher ‘who re-painted any wall [of Lutheran churches!] that became soiled.’34. The houses in Germany and Austria, were also often repainted which, Montaigne added, ‘gives them a flourishing appearance.’35 Calvin was no different than the Magisterial Reformers had been in wanting a definitive change of direction and he was as concerned as the first generation had been that idolatry not be permitted to creep back into the Church.36 Following the Disputation at Lausanne he wrote to his friend, Francis Daniel, that ‘idolatry must be removed from the hearts of all!’ 37 He intended to be thorough. Les ministres cherchent en même temps par une bonne instruction à bannir celles qui séjournent dans les cœurs. Un édit les invite à enseigner soigneusement les enfans, jeune espérance de l’Eglise, et il enjoint aux baillis d’exhorter en tous lieux les pères et les mères à tenir leur famille sous une discipline chrétienne; sous peine, ajoute l’ordonnance, d’êlrc punis en leurs corps ou en leurs biens. Le peuple

Ibid., p. 885. Ibid., p. 903. 35 Ibid., p. 897. 36 In 1527 Zwingli wrote to a Bernese official, Thomas van Hofen, that ‘it would be difficult to preach the gospel in Geneva ‘because of hundreds of monks who would be opposed to it’ and, indeed, until 1532 evangelical influence in Geneva was negligable. A series of isolated events reported in contemporary journals demonstrates that there were Protestants in Geneva, but neither their number nor their confidence had reached a critical mass sufficient to challenge the establishment or to act openly as a group The tables had turned by 1534 when Reformers began preaching in the Rive Monastery. 37 ‘Iam ex multis locis idola et altaria labefactari coeperunt, ac brevi futurum spero, ut quod adhuc superest repurgetur. Faxit Dominus ut ex omnium cordibus idolatria corruat!’ Herminjard, 4:89 (no. 573), Martianus Lucanius [Calvin] to Francois Daniel, Lausanne, 13 October 1536, quoted in Bruening, p. 134. 33 34

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est grossier, la loi se montre sévère. Ce que la persuasion n’obtient pas, le bras séculier se charge promptement de l’accomplir.38 It is possible that whitewashings took place and were just not recorded. If so, this suggests that whitewashing was so ordinary an event by this time, having been established in Zürich and elsewhere ten years earlier, that it was not deemed worthy of mention. This seems unlikely in view of the transformative nature of an all-white church and in view of Calvin’s concern that idolatry be eliminated irrevocably. Further, as Michael Bruening has written, Calvin and his colleagues: ‘quickly realized that neither the preaching of the gospel nor the mandates of rulers were sufficient to produce the godly society the reformers desired. Even education had limited value in the short term; catechesis was a start, but it would only bear fruit after a generation.’39 More measures, irreversible and effective ones, needed to be taken. All of the Protestant Reformers, Luther, Karlstadt, Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, and Farel among them, relied on the New Testament, in particular on the apostles John and Paul, but also Matthew, for direction with respect to issues relating to the form that worship should take.40 This in turn led each, with the exception of Luther, toward a Reformation theology that would, when played out in the material world, express itself in an aesthetic Louis Vulliemin, Le Chroniqueur, Recueil historique et journal de l’Helvetie Romande, renfermant le récit de las Reformation de ce pays. 1533 1536, Lausanne, 1836, p. 343. 39 Bruening, p. 134. 40 The nature of Paul’s influence on Calvin began to take root early in Calvin’s life and was pervasive and deep. The immensely influential LeFèvre d’Étaples, who is considered to be largely responsible for the shaping of French humanist thought, wrote an influential commentary on Paul’s letters which Calvin read as a young student. Theodore de Bèze describes Calvin’s assiduousness in studying scripture (de Bèze, Life of Calvin, p. 20) and LeFèvre’s exegesis of Paul was almost certainly among the books he read when young. Calvin himself, published an exegesis of Paul and cited Paul frequently. A simple word count in Calvin’s collected works yields nearly 1000 references to Paul; too numerous to analyse here. But, for a more meaningful sense of Paul’s influence on Calvin see Bruce Gordon, Calvin, New Haven and London, 2009, p. 46 and also the the Gordon index (‘Calvin and Paul’) in which numerous references to aspects of this relationship are noted. Regarding Matthew: one example will suffice to illustrate my point: Matt. 23:3; 16:6. Calvin uses this passage to illustrate his concept of ‘purity’ which is central to all aspects of his theology: ‘Nay, rather, why did the same Christ elsewhere will that men beware the leaven of the Pharisees [As explained by the Evangelist Matthew, ‘leaven’ means whatever of their own doctrine men mix with the purity of God’s Word [Matt. 16:12]. What could be clearer than that we are commanded to flee and avoid their whole doctrine?’ Institutes, II.1204.43. 38

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of radical reduction and simplicity.41 Luther represents an exception to this general statement primarily because of his position on Christian freedom, but also because he believed that the practice of visually depicting the sacred and holy would wither of its own accord, once the general population had become spiritually educated through the reading and study of the Old and New Testaments. The search for ‘true piety’, and the reformulation of the liturgy that resulted led, first, Zwingli, later Calvin, to aesthetic criteria for liturgy and church that was committed not only to simplicity, but the eradication of all distraction in worship, visual and, in the case of Zwingli at least, also auditory. The appearance of the stripped down, bare, white, silenced interior would earn the liturgical and expressive form of their movements a reputation for austerity, and repression, and not without cause.42 It was the literal application of the biblical enjoinders of John and Paul, discussed below, that established the outline for aesthetic renewal of the traditional church43 and which brought Calvin and Zwingli reputations for extremism, in their own time as well as now.44 Present in incipient form, particularly in the Pauline Epistles, but also in Matthew, reformed criteria intended to return the Church to the purity of patristic form; this was also called ‘primitive’, reflecting a concept of simplicity in the form of worship and a focus on the worship of the word of God, significant elements of which are also essentially Cistercian, or Benedictine, in form. (Saint Benedict was dedicated to establishing a form of worship that both Zwingli and Calvin would also embrace.) 45 Ideas about the primitive Church were inspired and This might be a controversial point; there are some who argue against. I acknowledge there are nuances to the form this simplicity takes depending on reformer. 42 McGrath expressly mentions this with respect to Zwingli’s former humanist colleagues. McGrath, p. 52. 43 Peter Auksi, ‘Simplicity and Silence: the Influence of Scripture on the Aesthetic Thought of the Major Reformers’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 10, no. 4, (Dec. 1979), pp. 343–364. 44 Calvin frequently warned against extremes of all kinds. There are nearly 120 references to the word ‘extreme’ in the Institutes, in his various tracts and treastises, and in his letters, and they are each cautionary. The irony of Calvin’s reputation as an extremist is evident in this context. 45 With elements. See Chapter IIn.159. Alexandre Ganoczy agrees: ‘Among the great spiritual masters, Augustine and Bernard exercised a dominant influence.’ See discussion ofthe influence of Bernard of Clairvaux. Ganoczy, p. 59: ‘Among the great spiritual masters, Augustine and Bernard exercised a dominant influence.’ 41

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shaped in general outline initially through the influence of Erasmus. Indeed, Bouwsma would say about the Erasmian influence that ‘[e]xcept for their [Erasmus and Rabelais’s] refusal to abandon the Papal church, there was little in the reformism of Erasmus and Rabelais that did not become a permanent part of Calvin’s reform program.’46 Although the details of Calvin’s reform program are not clearly articulated as Ganozcy has shown47 the idea of the primitive church was sufficiently clear in concept and emotive in impetus to drive the sixteenth century reform project, and Calvin is no exception to this. Ideas about the early, uncorrupted Church were reinforced through the philological study of biblical literature in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and the close reading of the church fathers among whom were Vigilantius, Origen, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, each of whom decried images.48 In the balance of this chapter, we will briefly consider certain influences that shaped Calvin in his formative years, including his university studies; extensive travel, as either student, scholar, or exile; and his intellectual community at large: elders, mentors, cohorts and fellow theologians such as Erasmus, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Guillaume Farel, Martin Bucer, and Zwingli. We will analyse his theology, reflected in the teachings and doctrine of the Calvinist movement. The main thrust of this chapter is Calvin, the theologian’s, way of thinking about colour, his use of colour metaphor in the Institutes and other writings, in exegesis, and in praxis; in particular the transformation of Geneva’s ecclesiastical interiors. The status of the colour white in Calvin’s writings is less strident than for Zwingli, but that purity was paramount to him, that the colour white or denial of colour represented a form of purity and righteousness, and that colour in whatever spectral sphere was conceived as a form of garment that could be worn, is true. It is accepted as fact that the colour white was the colour of choice for the churches of ‘Calvinist’ Geneva; walls were whitened in Geneva 46 William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: a Sixteenth Century Portrait, New York and Oxford, 1988, p. 13. This holds true for Zwingli also. 47 There is no ‘precise and practical plan of action… although there is an outline of one.’ (paraphrased). See Ganoczy: ‘The Outline of Calvin’s Plan for Reformation’, pp. 225–230. 48 I would go as far as to say that Zwingli and Calvin sought to create a secularized version of the Benedictine Rule, where the practices of faith, the form of worship, and a strictly corporatist form of government which determined one’s behaviour in the visible community (the Church itself ), is concerned. This is not an idea that I can explore in depth here, but the relationship between these models of reform merit deeper consideration. 49 Calvin’s first biography appeared the year of his death in 1564 authored by Theodore de Bèze, but others followed — one by Nicholas Colladon in 1565, another expanded and

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at some point. The historiography of Geneva and Calvin have represented it thus and for this reason the Calvinist whitewashed interior has taken on the force of fact. However, as suggested above, the primary evidence for this is minimal. When precisely this occurred and for what reasons churches were whitewashed in Geneva remains an open question in my view, but that there is an aesthetic consistency between tenets of reformed theology, reformed theological aesthetics, and the simplified, whitewashed interior, is not in doubt in my mind. The same connexion may be found between Zwingli’s theology, aesthetics and material reform. However, historically the case of Geneva remains a more complicated phenomenon. Thus, one of the major objectives of this book remains to demonstrate how the aesthetics of Calvin’s theology contrive to make sense, or to demand, whitewash as a solution to the image problem in Calvinist ecclesiastical interiors. (Figures 7.4).

Calvin’s Formation Calvin was born at Noyon, Picardy, in the north of France in 1509. He was only twenty-two and still engaged in studies at university at the time of Zwingli’s death at the Second Battle at Kappel in 1531. In the period approaching the time of Zwingli’s demise Calvin had been studying variously at the Universities of Paris, Bourges and Orléans. Very little hard evidence exists to confirm the details of Calvin’s life during his formative years as a university student, law student, lay theologian and future reformer.49 Thus, the exact dates of Calvin’s arrivals in and departures from Paris, Orléans and Bourges are uncertain and largely unsubstantiatable. We know he was sent to the University of Paris when he was very young, sometime between ten and fourteen years of age. It is arguable whether this was as a precocious boy scholar to study theology, but that is possible.50 In 1523 Calvin was sent to study at the Collège de Montaigu in Paris where

corrected version by de Bèze in 1575 — establishing between them the traditions with which more recent and contemporary historians have had to grapple about the reformer’s life. Many questions remain unanswered. See Bruce Gordon, 2009, for the most recent, excellent biography of Calvin; also Alexandre Ganoczy, David Foxgrover and Wade Provo, trans., The Young Calvin, Philadephia, 1987, which remains an unsurpassed standard. 50 The question is mentioned in most biographies of Calvin. An example is Ganoczy, p. 57.

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he remained for four years and would have taken a BA and an MA. 51 There is no evidence to show conclusively that he began his studies of theology while in Paris, but that is believed to be the case.52 Certainly, informally this was true.53 It is thought that he left the University of Paris to take up the study of civil law at Orléans (there was no civil law at Paris at this time), but there is no documentary evidence for Calvin’s presence at there.54 Scholars believe he left Orléans in 1529 — within a year — to study with the famed legal scholar Andrea Alciati at the University of Bourges, where he remained until returning to Paris in 1531 for a two year period.55 As we have seen (Chapter V), Zwingli had published his first important tract, Divine and Human Righteousness, in July of 1523. Between Zwingli’s emergence onto the Reformation scene, the Reformation in Zürich, and Calvin’s career at the Collège de Montaigu, there had been time enough to encounter the events at Zürich second-hand and to read Zwingli’s work, although some historians hold that Calvin did not do the latter, as least until the late 1520s. There is plenty of evidence that at the University of Paris, at the Collège de Montaigu, and especially considering the circles within which Calvin moved, 51 The Collège was demolished during the French Revolution; the site now contains the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève facing the Panthéon. On its frieze are the names of illustrious intellectual and cultural alumni of the Collège, including, of course, the name of John Calvin. McGrath, p. 21. 52 Ganozy, pp. 231–32; McGrath, Calvin, p. 26. If Calvin did attend university at this time he would have completed the quinquennium by 1527/1528 which would have permitted him to continue with advanced studies in theology, law or medicine. Ganoczy’s discussion of the leadership at the Collège de Montaigu during the time Calvin was there (1524–end of 1527/beginning of 1528) and of its possible influence on Calvin’s formation is more insightful than most biographies, (pp. 57–60), but Ganoczy confirms that not one shred of evidence exists for the details of the reformer’s life during this period (pp. 60, 61), as does Gordon.. 53 Bruce Gordon describes Calvin’s theological training well. He says: ‘Calvin read himself into scripture’ Bruce Gordon, Calvin, Philadephia, 2009, p. 3; Gordon also confirms that Calvin never formally studied theology. 54 McGrath, p. 32. 55 I have encountered no references to a visit by Calvin to Zürich before Zwingli’s death (1531), before Geneva’s reform (1535) or his own arrival in his soon-to-be-adopted city. It would have been difficult, however, for the young theologian to avoid hearing about reforms in Zürich and it is equally hard to imagine that Calvin was not drawn there to see them. Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, was to work closely with Calvin; according to Theodore De Bèze (p. 52) Calvin would eventually go to Zürich at least once in 1549 along with Guillaume Farel, to attend a meeting with Bullinger and others on consubstantiation. He would have seen Zürich’s churches then of course, but Geneva’s churches had also been reformed, if not whitewashed, by this time (1549).

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that he would have been at an important hub of ideas, discussions, and publications — scholastic, untraditional and heretic, including controversy and rumour about Luther and Lutheranism — circulating throughout the city at this time.56 It would, therefore, be surprising if knowledge of the Reformation in Zürich had insufficient visibility to reach Calvin at the University of Paris. Ganoczy is strong on this point and says that within the circle of LeFèvre d’Étaples and Gérard Roussel with which Calvin was associated, that Zwingli’s Commentary on True and False Religion, written at the request of Frenchmen, dedicated to Francis I, and published in 1525, was well known in this circle. Moreover, Ganoczy demonstrates that Calvin relied on and borrowed from this and others texts by Zwingli in several of his own, particularly concerning Calvin’s position on images, baptism and his opposition to the Mass.57 The connections between Lefèvre, Farel, Zwingli and Calvin are complex, because they form a network of formative influences and bonds that crisscross countries and decades and even generations of reform; the men shared opinions, goals, and as many friends and colleagues, as well as divergent points of view on important theological matters and contrasting political strategies for achieving them. To be sure, there were very real, unresolvable doctrinal differences between them; yet underlying their reformed thought was the fundamental, formative influence of Erasmus;each drew deeply on the Pauline epistles and was committed to reform of the Church, its ritual and material culture. LeFèvre was also influenced by Luther and Oecolampadius.58 Lefevre believed, however, in gradual reform and that this could be accomplished from within the institution itself, in marked contrast to Zwingli, Farel or Calvin. Thus, each of these men would find very different ways of implementing reform. Farel had been an associate and disciple of LeFèvre’s who was also an equally conspicuous influence on Luther and Calvin; on the latter directly through their friendship and also through the mutual connection with Farel.59 The influence of Zwinglian theology on Lefèvre and Farel was

This view is supported by Ganoczy, p. 231; William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin, a Sixteenth Century Portrait, New York and Oxford, 1988, pp. 10–12, McGrath, pp. 49–50. 57 Ganoczy, offers a detailed comparison of texts, shared language and doctrine pp. 151– 158. 58 Heller, pp. 44, 57–8. 59 Heller, p. 43. 56

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palpable; 60 from Lefèvre’s correspondence with Farel we know that Lefèvre had abandoned the concept of the Mass as sacrifice and lost confidence in the cult of saints by July 1524, one month after Zurich’s Reformation.61 Equally, Farel’s theological orientation has been described as Zwinglian and Lefevrite. Farel corresponded with Zwingli the same year. The correspondence between all three is substantive and extensive. Farel represented a conduit through whom the Erasmian-Lefevrite and Zwinglian influences would be taken to a number of cities in whose reformation he played a central role.62 The Zwinglian influence only waned after Calvin settled in Geneva in 1536,63 but by then the Reformation in Geneva was well underway, notwithstanding that Farel perceived it to be faltering and Calvin wrote that reform in Geneva was in an appalling state. The Mass had been abolished; images had been removed from churches, and the walls, possibly, also whitewashed. Carlos Eire has written that Farel wanted to bring the Zwinglian model to Geneva and strove to do so.64 That Farel sought to emulate Zwingli’s reformation and initated reform in Geneva before Calvin’s arrival demonstrates that a direct line may be drawn between ‘Calvinist Geneva’ and the material and visual discipline demanded by Zwinglian theological aesthetics. Farel was one of the few French reformers motivated to action early — by 1523 — and he is on record praising Zwingli in 1527 ‘for scattering the darkness with his learnings’.65 It is impossible that he was unaware of the events that took place in Zürich in 1523 and 1524. A Zwinglian influence on Farel is thus an important consideration in attributing the whitewashing of churches in Geneva to Calvin, although it may have taken place during Calvin’s watch. As already suggested, the dominating influence on Farel became Calvin following the latter’s move to Geneva; but the influence was reciprocal; Farel remains an important link between Zwingli and Calvin, notwithstanding the latter’s independence of mind.

Many scholars make this point: see Gordon, Calvin, p. 15, Eire, pp. 123, 186, Paraphrased from Heller, p. 43. I am not suggesting a causal link between reform in Zürich and Lefèvre’s evolution, only a congruence of events and ideas that supports the claim of a network of ideas and developments linking them. 62 This is a widely held view. Cf. Eire, War, p. 186. 63 Comité Farel, Guillaume Farel, pp. 27, 29. 64 Eire, War, pp. 166, 193. 65 Herminjard, 2.18. 60 61

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Other cross currents that are simply beyond the scope of this book exist between these men and Philip Melancthon, Martin Bucer, and Heinrich Bullinger and these are obviously important in Reformation history. Alas, because of space constraints we must focus in this chapter only on Calvinist Geneva, Calvin, his aesthetic values and colour-thinking. It has been said, after all, ‘that Calvin was the Genevan Reformation.’66

Genevan Reform after 1536 After arrival in Geneva in 1536, Calvin remained there at the behest of Farel to assist with the Genevan reformation encouraged and fomented by the latter, beginning in 1532. Farel had already preached against images in the town of Montbéliard as early as 1524,67 in Aigle in 1526, and in Neuchatel, 1529. He had been on evangelistic campaigns also to Metz and Strasbourg (1525–26), to the country of the Vaud, the Jura, and Morat. He had been responsible for the elimination of images inside churches in the town of Neuchâtel in 1530,68 and, of course, he had preached several times in Geneva in 1532–33;69 and he was the primary representative of Reform at the Disputation at Rive70 that determined the religious fate of Geneva — that is, its commitment to reform.71 As seen from discussion above, it not clear whether Farel prompted the whitewashings of church interiors following the iconoclasm after Rive, or whether whitewashings followed sometime after this, say in 1536 or later, when reform had taken deeper root. Also plausible is that the whitewashing of interiors of churches was eventually, systematically, and structurally imposed pursuant to Calvin’s influence with ratification by the magistrates of the Consistory; after November 1541 and or later.Andrew Spicer quotes the date of 1543 for the whitewashing of church interiors,72 Richard Rex, Lecture, Divinity School, University of Cambridge, 11 November 1998. Comité Farel, Guillaume Farel, p. 118. 68 Ibid., p. 118; Donald McKim, ed., Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, Louisville and Edinburgh, 1992, p. 135. 69 Olivier Fatio, et al., Men, an Idea: the Reformation, Geneva, 1985, p. 17. 70 Comité Farel, pp. 324–325. 71 John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber, eds., The Identity of Geneva, The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, Westport, CT., 1998, p. 36n. 19, 21–22; p. 37n 27. 72 Andrew Spicer, ‘Architecture’, in Andrew Pettigree, ed., The Reformation World, London and New York, 2000, p. 513. 66 67

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approximately one year after the Consistory commenced operations and its recordkeeping began (Les Régistres de Genève). This later date suggests a couple things: that the whitewashing of churches in Geneva was a corporate decision, or at least one ratified by the magistrates if advanced by Calvin or Farel. The political grip held by Calvin and the Consistory on the city by this time was secure. In histories of the Genevan reformation one reads that Geneva officially adopted reform in the autumn of 1536 as a result of the Disputation at Lausanne. This is when by decree the Mass was abolished and images and altars and any other vestiges of the ‘old faith’ were removed from the churches. (See text of edict, above.) But the decision that these same changes should be made had, in a sense, already been made for Geneva during the Disputation at Rive just mentioned, under Farel’s leadership. 73 The contemporary chronicler Antoine Fromment, suggests that the iconoclasm associated with the Disputation at Rive took place more or less immediately following a sermon preached by Farel shortly after the Rive Disputation, an action led, in the main, by a small group of bourgeois iconoclasts. According to Fromment, Farel requested the Council of Two Hundred to assemble ‘so that whatever was decided would remain firm.’ The following Sunday, on the eighth of August, Farel ‘let himself be carried by the crowd to [the Cathedral of ] Saint Pierre where he preached, and ‘after which the images were taken down.’74 Fromment’s comments show that, in contrast to the examples of Zürich and Strasbourg, events following the Rive Disputation involved spontaneous rather than legal iconoclasm and were not the result of decisions taken by local government. In the case of the Rive Disputation the corporate governing body would have been the Reformed caucus in conjunction with the Council of Two Hundred (les Seigneurs) in Berne or, if later, the Genevan Consistory.

Comité Farel, Guillaume Farel, pp. 325, 326, 327. Fromment, quoting a man named ‘Vespres’ reports that Farel requested the Council of Two Hundred to assemble :‘afin que ce qui y sera résolu demeure ferme.’ The following Sunday, the 8 August, he; ‘se laisse porter par la foule a Saint-Pierre’ where he preached: ‘après quoi on met bas les images.’. in Antoine Fromment, Les actes et gestes marveilleux de la cité de Genève noouuellement conuertie a l’Euangille faictz du temps de leur Reformation et comment ils l’ont receue redigez par escript en fourme de chroniques annals ou hystoyres commençant l’an MDXXXII, Gustave Revilliod and Jacques Flournois, eds., Geneva, 1854, p. 144. 73 74

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7.1. Interior view of the Calvin Auditorium / John Knox Chapel, Geneva.

7.2. Restored ceiling of the Maccabees, Temple Saint Pierre, Geneva.

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7.3. Whitewashed ceiling (detail), Calvin Auditorium, Geneva.

7.4. Interior of the Church of the Madeleine, Geneva, 1975.

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7.5. Portrait of John Calvin.

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7.6. Two partial pages from a meeting held on 23 August 1643 describing deliberations about the interior colour scheme for the Temple Saint Pierre, Geneva. On the agenda were interior paint colours for the Temple. White was chosen for the walls and a stone colour for the trim. State Archives RC 142 fol. 316.

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Returning to historical evidence for 1535, a notice issued by the Bishop on 13 June of that year after the Rive Disputation commenced stated, among other things: …aucuns citoyens bourgeois et habitants en ladite cité…ains ont renoncé tous les saints sacremens de notre sainte mere l’Église, marié les prêtres et religieux, abattu et mis à terre les croix, images de Notre Dame, Saints et Saintes du Paradis et les église, voulant du tout annihiler la chrétienté et mémoire de notre Rédemption, la passion de notre Sauveur et Rédempteur Jésus-Christ.75 (My emphasis). / Certain bourgeois citizens and inhabitants of the [said] city have renounced all of the holy sacraments of our holy mother the Church; priests and other people of the church have married; the cross and images of Our Lady, Saints and Paradise have been battered and thrown to the ground, with the goal of annihilating all of Christianity and the memory of our redemption, the passion of our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. The above passage confirms that at least some images were removed from churches (‘…abattu et mis à terre les croix, images…tout annihiler’) in Geneva by 13 June 1535. To ‘annihilate’ anything at all suggests complete, irreversible destruction, in this case, of any physical object or image associated with traditional Christian practices. This passage does not refer explicitly to the whitewashing of church interior walls, or to the scraping away of images as happened at Saint Gervais (‘les murs furent gratées’) (see below); it must also be conceded that the tenor of this passage may simply reflect the Bishop’s distress over events. Yet some images were removed from some churches before the disputation at Rive as we have seen; some during; and some after, for example, as a result of decisions made at the Disputation at Lausanne. Clearly there was iconoclasm and the destruction of images throughout the early 1530s in the canton of Vaud and in Geneva from May 1534.76 Any one of these possibilities, or all of these, cumulatively, allows for the removal of images from Geneva’s churches during Farel’s ‘tenure’ before the arrival

Ibid. For a comprehensive but refreshingly straightforward account of the extremely complex political environment created by competing rulers and governments, in which the equally complex religious foment took place, see Bruening, pp. 31–46. 75 76

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of Calvin, although Calvin as noted previously, was resident in Geneva by August, 1535 and attended the Rive event. That images had very likely been removed is clear from a letter Calvin himself wrote from Lausanne to his friend Francis Daniel about the state of reform in which he found Geneva on 13 October 1536: Already, in many places, the idols and altars of Popery have begun to disappear, and I hope it will not be long before all remaining superstition shall be effectually cleared away. The Lord grant that idolatry may be entirely uprooted out of the hearts of all.77 This was written two months after Calvin’s arrival in Geneva. Its tone suggests he is referring to a large project already underway, and with completion in sight. To what exactly Calvin refers remains unclear: to the physical removal of images and altars from the churches (and their possible destruction), or to the whitewashing of walls, both or neither? These questions and others posed in this chapter demonstrate how fuzzy facts concerning the details of the Calvinist interior really are. It is possible that Calvin is referring specifically to Lausanne and not to Geneva at all, or to the project of reform in general throughout the Confederation.

Calvin’s theology As previously discussed, Calvin is known to have visited or lived for periods of time in a number of French and Swiss cities, among them Paris (1523–1528,1531–1533), Orléans (early 1528–Spring 1529), Noyon (after Paris: 1529, 1531, 1533), Bourges (1529–1533), Claix (1534), Basel (1535/6; 1538), Lausanne (October 1536),78 Strasbourg (1536, 1538–41)

Bonnet, p. 46. Lausanne officially joined the Reformation in August 1536. Letters of John Calvin, vol. I, Jules Bonnet, trans., New York, 1972, p. 44n. Carlos Eire mentions that Lausanne reformed in 1535. He refers here to the fact that idols and images were already being removed before Lausanne officially declared reform. See War Against the Idols, Cambridge, and New York, 1986, p. 107. Calvin visited there during the Disputation of Lausanne, 2–9 October. See Bonnet, p. 44–45 and John Calvin, Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church, vol. I, Henry Beveridge, trans., Grands Rapids, 1958, lxvii. Whether events on or around either of these dates included whitewashing is not clear. 77 78

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and, of course, Geneva (August 1536–38; 1541–1564).79 Both before and after he joined the Reformation in Geneva and assumed the mantle of renowned reformer, he traveled extensively, either due to flight as in 1533,80 exile (between 1538–41), or as a representative of the Reformed Church, attending colloquia, disputations, and negotiations. By 1518 the controversy about Luther was current affairs in Paris, although France’s own humanist theologians would supercede Luther in topicality in the 1520s.81 Not only was Calvin in Paris during a critical period of the emerging French evangelical movement when various tracts, essays and publications critical of the established church were circulating, he was also there during the Placard Affair.82 Bruce Gordon has described this period as intense, exciting and perilous, involving a ‘whirlwind of events.’ 83 As a traveler he would have seen the cleansed churches of Basel (reformed and whitewashed interiors in February 1529) and of Strasbourg (purged and over-painted in 1530)84 before taking up residence in Geneva, the town which would become indissolubly connected with his name and with him as the creator of one of most rigorous interpretations of the reformed faith that had ever existed — including the ‘blank’, ‘bare’ and ‘whitened walls’ of the Calvinist ecclesiastical interior. Calvin probably did not read any of Zwingli’s writings until the late 1520s, although Luther’s writings were in printed circulation in Paris and elsewhere at this time and were widely read.85 We know at a minimum that The brief biographical chronology in this chapter is based on Theodore de Bèze, The Life of Jean Calvin, Henry Beveridge, trans., Philadelphia, 1909; J. T. McNeill, Institutes, ‘Intro.’, 1960, p. xxx; Owen Chadwick, The Reformation, London, 1990, pp. 82–86, Alister McGrath, A Life of John Calvin, Oxford and Cambridge, MASS, 1990, pp. 1–78; see also Ganoczy, The Young Calvin. 80 Probably lasting for one year, that is, November, 1533–1534. See J. T. McNeill, ‘Introduction’, Institutes, p. xxx. 81 Gordon, p. 13. 82 Bruce Gordon reminds his readers to keep a perspective on the question of anti-establishment or protestant publications in circulation in France at this time. He notes that only a small proportion of what was printed in France was contentious material, roughly eighty publications out of 2,500 texts printed between 1521–30. See Gordon, Calvin, New Haven and London, 2009, p 16. Still, if one takes into account that it only requires one document well publicized to bring down a government, the effect of eighty texts being read by significant numbers of people could, and did, reach a critical mass. 83 Gordon, p. 8. 84 La Petite Chronique, p. 20. 85 Ganoczy, p. 62. 79

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by 1538 (seven years after Zwingli’s death) Calvin had a detailed knowledge of the Zürich reformer’s writings, as this is when references to Zwingli and Zwinglianism were included in a revised and expanded version of The Institutes,86 the first edition of which had been published in French two years earlier. Calvin had already published his Commentary on Seneca in 1531 intended, among other things, to put the young scholar on the literary map,87 and in 1536, his first two religious tracts, prefaces for French translations of the Old and New Testaments prepared by Calvin’s cousin, Pierre Robert Olivétan, described by McNeill as ‘ardent’ texts, were published88 By then Zürich had been reformed for ten years not only in liturgy, but in its church interiors as well. It would have been difficult for Calvin to avoid being acquainted with Zwingli’s theological reformation — his views on the liturgy and idolatry — or the methods used by Zwingli and the city council of Zürich to achieve the reformation of that city’s church interiors.89 It is, moreover, almost impossible to imagine that the sheer drama of the gesture — a complete Zürich makeover in whitewash — could have failed to make an impression on Calvin; or that he would have been unaffected by the magnitude of the organization required to bring the visual transformation about. In a general discussion of iconoclasm in Switzerland and Geneva, Carlos Eire adduces three reasons for his focus on the city and canton of Zürich in his own account of Reformation history.90 In summary they are these: that Switzerland produced the most influential iconoclastic theology — that McNeill, Intro, xxxiv. A review of the Institutes shows a small number (4–5) of direct and rather more indirect references to Zwingli (70). Among these see Institutes, I, XI, 10, 737; CR XXI.III.XX, 1304. In his text, War Against the Idols, Carlos Eire briefly traces Zwingli’s influence on Calvin identifying certain similarities between the texts of the two men. See Eire, p. 217; Sergiusz Michalski takes a more traditional view of Calvin’s position vis-à-vis Zwingli stating that Calvin had little respect for the Zürich theologian because, in Calvin’s view, Zwingli’s writings were disorganized. (See CR XIV.215, 253; OS IV 3701). A review of Calvin’s Institutes reveals that none of the references to Zwingli, either direct or indirect, are in connection with the subject of images. 87 Gordon, pp. 22–27. 88 J. T. McNeill, ‘Introduction’, Institutes, pp. xxx. 89 It is an interesting phenomenon that when almost any historian writes of this process they make reference to the stripping of the churches by saying that they were ‘purified’ or ‘cleansed’, always in quotations. 90 Carlos M. N. Eire, The War Against the Idols, The Formation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, Cambridge and New York, 1986 and 1989. 86

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of Zwingli; that Switzerland was the first area where iconoclasm became a consistent policy involving an established pattern of ‘Protestantization’ of cities; and, finally, that the republican structures of Swiss towns permitted a more intense participation of the populace in the process of Reformation, allowing for the use of iconoclasm as a political revolutionary tactic.91 I concur with Eire and thus, for the reasons just mentioned, we must conclude that there is every chance that Calvin was aware, and in more than a general way, of the details of Zürich’s makeover programme by 1537. Eventually Calvin did meet Zwingli’s successor in Zürich, Heinrich Bullinger, fellow theologian and reformation leader. Bullinger and Calvin had associated closely with one another while involved in protracted theological negotiations regarding an accord on the Eucharist which, in addition to the question of adult versus infant baptism, was the most divisive issue for developing Protestant sects. A solution to the Eucharistic question was stipulated to in 1549 when the two men signed an understanding that included agreed language on the Lord’s Supper. The agreement, called the Consensus Tigurinus (the ‘Zürich Agreement’), came long after the establishment of the Reformation in both Zürich and Geneva. It is mentioned here only by way of demonstrating that while Calvin did not personally know Zwingli, he had come to know Bullinger, had worked with him, and had visited Zürich at least once along with Guillaume Farel to attend a meeting with other Divines on consubstantiation.92 This means he had seen Zürich’s churches, although possibly not until 1549.93 Bullinger was, famously, committed to networking and cultivating friendships throughout the European Continent and in England with as many leaders, theologians and academics as possible. These relationships and the network of associates thus developed would prove a substantial source of Zwinglian influence to the west of Zürich. Ibid., p. 107. de Bèze, p. 52. Historians now tend to doubt the accuracy of all facts related by de Bèze in his biography of Calvin (see Ganoczy on de Bèze), but according to de Bèze this trip was made. There is a letter from Bullinger to Calvin referring to a visit by him and Farel during which they discussed the sacraments. This letter is dated 1 August 1549 and would seem to corroborate de Bèze. The Register, (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes), pp. 124–27. 93 Famously, Bullinger was committed to networking and cultivated friendships throughout the European Continent and in the British Isles, especially England, with as many leaders, theologians and academics as possible. These relationships and the network of associates thus developed would prove a substantial source of Zwinglian influence to the west of Zurich, particularly in England, but also in Geneva. 91 92

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The Spiritual Programme Two of the most commonly cited phrases in Calvin’s oeuvre, ‘soli Deo gloria’ (to God alone be the glory) and ‘finitum non est capax infiniti’ (the finite cannot contain the infinite) are central to his theology of worship and to his attack on idolatry. There are over seventy-six references to the concept ‘soli Deo gloria’ in the Institutes alone. Many of these include references to ‘finitum non est capax infiniti’ because they concern the question of images and representation, 94 to wit: ‘[If ] we would have one God, let us remember that we can never appropriate the minutest portion of his glory without retaining what is his due.’ (Book I. XII. 3). God’s omnipotence is expressed through the first phrase, ‘to God alone be the Glory’; transcendence over the material world is expressed in the second, ‘the finite cannot contain the infinite.’ Two corresponding convictions motivating Calvin’s drive for reform are summed up in these famous sound bites: (1) the belief that it was only through the worship of God that human beings could achieve any knowledge of the Godhead, the reality of God being otherwise completely inaccessible, and (2) the belief in God’s complete ‘otherness’95 and incorporeality. Relying on the Gospel of John 4:23–24: [4:23] But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship him. [4:24] God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.96 Calvin, like Zwingli, held that the only form of worship appropriate to God was ‘spiritual worship. ’ Throughout the Institutes as well as in his 1543 treatise, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church, Calvin speaks about the nature of worship and its central position in the Christian religion; about understanding the true source from which salvation is to be sought; and about the sin of idolatry.97 In his search for a new liturgy that would Cf. the Institutes: I.II.2; I.VI.4; I.X.2; I. XI.1; I. XII.1; I. XII.3; I.XII.9. He wrote in his Commentary on John’s Gospel that God was ‘as different from flesh as fire is from water’. CR 47.90. 96 ‘In…truth’, meaning: ‘in accord with God’s nature seen in Christ.’ NRSV, 130 n. 4.24. 97 Institutes, I.XIII.24 (‘Knowledge of God the Creator / We are taught one essence of God…’); III.XX.29 (‘Prayer which is the chief exercise of faith / (‘The Nature and value of 94 95

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yield appropriate honour due to God and respect His immateriality, Calvin organised his theology around the principle that, because God is spirit, He desires to be worshipped spiritually.98 To do anything else would be to restrict His infinity. Thus Calvin’s attack on Roman Catholic idolatry was an indictment of the mingling of the spiritual with the material in worship. To paraphrase Eire: Calvin continually emphasized the juxtaposition of the divine and the human, the spiritual and the material, and the transcendent and omnipotent with the material and contingent.99 Calvin was absolutely clear that God is ‘improperly’ worshipped whenever he is presented to the worshipper in a visual symbol or representation, a connection which he expressed various ways — but utterly consistently — throughout his writing. The line of argument and the consistency also parallels Zwingli; an example of this in Calvin may be found in the following passage from the Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses: [W]hatever holds down and confines the senses to the earth is contrary to the covenant of God; in which, inviting us to Himself, He permits us to think of nothing but what is spiritual.100 Because of this Calvin would interpret the manufacture of images as a diminution of God since His spiritual and divine attributes would be, according to any theory permitting representation of the Divinity, necessarily represented by finite means. Such representation in any media entails description in some form — delimiters — be it words, or colour and form, which places its object in space and time. Since God is both infinite and eternal, representation of the Divine imposes unsanctionable limitations on His being. A little more scathingly than in his Commentary on Moses, and

prayer’); IV.X.14 (‘Church Laws and traditions, and the Christians’s conscience before God, 1–4’). 98 CR XXIV.350. Cf. also CR V.324 (1538 Catechism; CR VI.16). 99 Eire, p. 197. The Platonic element reflected in this dualism is not irrelevant to the subject of this study, and provides another basis other than Scripture on which the empowerment of the colour white in this context may be explained. (See Chapter II ‘Colour Theory’). It is also true, perhaps not incidentally, that Plato perceived white to be an example of the ‘the pure’. (Cf. Philebus 53a). Calvin had studied Plato; he knew Plato’s texts well and refers to them in his own writings, including in the Institutes. Calvin does not cite the Philebus in the Institutes. Although it is possible that he may not have read it, these Platonic ideas could have been absorbed from other sources. Other references to the colour white occur in Plato’s works. 100 Commentary on the Four Last Books of Moses, CR 24.387.

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with a slight shift in emphasis, Calvin reiterates this point in one of many comparable passages in the Institutes. He wrote: ...this brute stupidity gripped the whole world — to pant after visible figures of God, and thus to form gods of wood, stone, gold, silver, or other dead and corruptible matter — we must cling to this principle: God’s glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to Him. (Institutes , I.XI.1)101 In addition to detracting from God and demonstrating ‘brute stupidity’, Calvin also associates visual depiction of the Godhead with corruption and defilement of Him. Still, he maintains the existence of images to be a defect in humanity, not of the world of matter per se. The image is both a blight on and a corruption of the pure essence of God’s being, and also a falsehood in virtue of its attempt to portray God’s infinite spirit.102 Calvin is emphatic about this consistently employing a ‘language of pollution’ in this and related contexts. And so, the possibility of any image of God is denied for the reason that material stuff (image) pollutes Him: To man we assign only this: that he pollutes and contaminates by his impurity those very things which were good. For nothing proceeds from a man, however perfect he be, that is not defiled by some spot. It cannot be over-emphasised, the importance of the introduction of ‘spotlessness’ as a sign and, eventually as the seal, of purity and cleanliness. It is a non-colour term that I would argue suggests whiteness for the reason that it is almost impossible to imagine a spotless red, pink, orange or blue (any colour). In one segment later in Book I.XI.2 Calvin reiterates that the visual is a departure from God, this time citing Isaiah, and emphasising the familiar Platonic dualisms of the material vs. immaterial; corporeal vs. incorporeal;

101 In this same passage Calvin goes on to cite Exodus: 20:4, in which God forbids the making of any graven image of Himself. Calvin’s conclusion is that God, ‘without exception repudiates all likenesses, pictures, and other signs by which the superstitious have thought he will be near Him.’ Here, Calvin is referring to another of the arguments against images: the belief in animated images, which is based on the principle of ascendence. Initially promulgated by St Basil (d.386), this idea took root in the Middle Ages, and became one of the largest sources for the loss of Papal support by the public. Calvin considered this phenomenon, which ultimately resulted in the Cult of the Saints, to be the work of the Devil — the Antichrist. In these respects, images of God were both pollution and the Devil. 102 Institutes. III.XV.3.

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visible vs. invisible; pure and sullied; the measurable and immeasurable, and so on. This dualism recalls the Erasmian influence. As with Zwingli, purity of faith and of doctrine was of paramount importance to Calvin. In his collected writings references to purity outnumber all other references to colour or to colour and white or whiteness combined. References to wisdom, power and purity; righteousness, holiness and purity; righteousness, innocence and purity; chastity and purity; purity of heart; God’s perfect purity; God’s golden purity; God’s supreme purity (to name only some of the mentions), occur almost 220 times in Calvin’s Collected Works.103 As one might readily surmise, purity is essentially opposed to uncleanness and sordidness. As a goal for the true Christian, it attends all other attributes. References to ‘colour’ are also frequent (there are eighty-five of them). For the most part, these take the allegorical or figural forms still well known to us: of being ‘under the colour’ meaning to give the outward appearance, show, or pretext of something; also to indicate being ‘under the authority of ’. The expression may, for Calvin, also indicate giving to an action the specious appearance or verisimilitude of something less false; to afford ground or context,104 signifying appearance, pretext, reason or artfulness. Calvin uses the expression ‘under colour’ in each of these senses although, in contrast to Zwingli, having colour or being ‘under colour’ of something is less often indicative of deceit or hypocrisy.105 Still, colour remains a covering 103 These occur primarily in the Institutes. See Institutes, John T. McNeill, ed., Ford Lewis Battles, trans., Philadelphia, 1960. There are many other examples of discussion of purity. Included here are one or two citations for each by way of example: Wisdom, power and purity(8 references): Institutes I.I.2. Righteousness, holiness and purity (8 references): Institutes, I. XV.3,4; I.V.8; I.VIII.2. Righteousness, innocence and purity: (8 references): Institutes II.I.1; III. XI.2; III.XII.4. Purity of doctrine (62 references): I.III.II; I.XI.13: (e.g. ‘as long as doctrine was strong, the church rejected images…’); IV.VIII. Ancient purity (15 references): I.XI.13; IV.IV.3; IV.XVII.14 Chastity and purity (4 references): II.IV.43, 44 Purity of heart (32 references): I.XV.4; II.VII.4 God’s perfect purity (11 references): I.I.1, 2; I.XV.4 God’s golden purity(1 reference); III.V.10. God’s supreme purity (2 references): II.VIII.3; II.VIII.4. 104 Oxford English Dictionary I.12.ed., s.v. colour, ‘under the colour.’ 105 Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), I.7.2; I.13.22; I.15.3; III.4.9; III.V.10; III.10.2; III.19.10; III.20.13; III.21.4; IV.7.30; IV.13.10; IV.14.18; IV.17.16; IV.18.2; Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church, vol. I, Reply by John Calvin to letter of Cardi-

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and frequently it is a cloak; it is worn like a garment and may be put on or taken off. In the Institutes (IV.VII.30), Calvin addressed the origin and growth of the Roman Papacy in the former sense. He wrote: ‘The Roman See as it exists today retains only the colour and empty shell of the ancient see…’ Here colour signifies the outward shell of the See’s former self. (Institutes, I.XV.3). When Calvin wrote: ‘There is more colour to the cleverness of those who explain Adam was created in God’s image because he conformed to Christ….’ he refers to artfulness, even nerve. Certainly, in both examples the reference is to appearance, presentation or art, in this sense, to artifice and guile; yet the tone lacks the impassioned sense of condemnation one finds in Zwingli’s invocations of the same expression. On another plane, elsewhere in the Institutes (III.IV.29) Calvin indicates that colour is of absolutely no consequence to him, in stark contrast to Zwingli’s feelings about the cardinal’s red robe. Presaging a distinctly modern, even late twentieth century disdain for formalities, Calvin verges on claiming that all external form is a matter of adiaphora: If they understand that it makes no difference in God’s sight whether they eat meat or eggs, wear red or black clothes, this is enough and more. The conscience, to which the benefit of such freedom was due, is now set free. Consequently, even if men thereafter abstain from meat throughout life, and ever wear clothes of one color, they are not less free. (Emphasis mine.) This is confirmed by Calvin’s comments in the tract entitled The Decree Published in the Second Session of the Holy Council of Trent, written in response to (and titled after) meetings pursuant to Trent in January 1546. Calvin has nothing but ridicule to heap on the self-important councilors of the Church whose social distinction from and authority over ordinary citizens becomes in Calvin’s hands a transparently and flamboyantly man-made construction. In this passage the uses of colour command no respect, and the men dressed in their frippery are buffoons: nal Sadolet: ‘in its true colours…’; ‘in what colours almost every man…’; in The Necessity of Reforming the Church: ‘fair and gaudy colours…’; ‘in their true colours…’; in An Admonition showing the Advantages which Christendom Might derive: ‘To give some colour to their fiction…’; ‘change upon the colour or the nature…’; ‘pictures in what colours they please, decking…’; Calvin’s Tracts and Treatises, volume II: ‘fanatics who, under colour of the eternal…’. All English quotations are from the translation by Ford Lewis Battles, Philadelphia, 1960. (My emphasis).

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Now, if a deacon of the Roman Church is only distinguished by a red cloak, he will carry his head over those of all the bishops. However, it is of no consequence to me what rank each of them holds. I will give them no trouble on that head. Nay, I will readily allow the mitres to be vanquished by the hats, provided they do not bind the Holy Spirit to their masks of recent invention, and maintain, that wherever the purple glare is seen, the Council is duly assembled.106 (My emphasis). Consistent with colour symbolism established in the Bible, here above, as in the chapter on ‘Christian Freedom’ (Institutes, III.19.9) Calvin acknowledges the colour purple as the social symbol it had, indeed, been in Western society for over one thousand years by this time denoting the highest of social stations. References to purple in Reformers’ hands were usually accompanied by accusations of vanity, arrogance, and profligate wastefulness and in this passage we find no exception. But Calvin, while allowing the status symbol to remain, declines to allow attributes to be stereotyped such that they are permanently affixed to the royal colour. Purple remains a hue that the affluent can afford and may wear if they so choose, but without any assurances that social or moral stature would accrue to its wearers thereby: Away, then, with uncontrolled desire, away with immoderate prodigality, away with vanity and arrogance — in order that men may with a clean conscience cleanly use God’s gifts. Where the heart is tempered to this soberness they will have a rule for lawful use of such blessings. But should this moderation be lacking, even base and common pleasures are too much. It is a true saying that under coarse and rude attire there often dwells a heart of purple, while sometimes under silk and purple is hid a simple humility. Thus let every man live in his station, whether slenderly, or moderately, or plentifully, so that all may remember God nourishes them to live, not to luxuriate. And let them regard this as the law of Christian freedom; to have learned with Paul, in whatever state they are, to be content; to know how to be humble and exalted….(Institutes, III.19.9). Thus, while Calvin recognises a tendency to arrogance by those who are sufficiently wealthy to wear purple robes, he stops short of condemning 106 ‘Acts of the Council of Trent with The Antidote, Decree Published in the Second Session of the Holy Council of Trent. On the Decree of the Second Session’, in Tracts and Treatises, vol. III, p. 59.

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such people outright. He allows for the possibility that even those whose socio-economic status entitles them to wear purple dyestuffs may be crude as individuals and not genuinely elevated at all in any meaningful sense. Likewise, those who wear rags may be morally and spiritually refined. And, so, while Calvin is not blind to colour and its symbolisms, what it does indicate has little or no real value to him, with the exception, perhaps, of highly saturated, bright colours, associated with the harlot: Again, every corner of the globe is filled with pictures said to have been painted by Luke, as at Cambray, and many other places. And in what form? [I]n such colours as one might be expected to employ in painting an abandoned woman.107 In On the Necessity of Reforming the Church presented to the Imperial Diet at Spire (1544) Calvin shows his disregard for colour coding andempty formalities again, only with regard to priests and vestments: Because with us the hands of priests are not anointed, because we do not blow into their face, because we do not clothe them in white and suchlike attire, they think our ordination is not duly performed. But the only ceremony we read of, as used in ancient times, was the laying on of hands. (My emphasis.)108 The white garment is here disparaged as an empty symbol no different than any other. And, were it not for the reference in this passage to the laying on of hands, Calvin’s tone would suggest a rejection not only of ceremonials but of most, or even all, forms of symbolism. Taking into account the views reflected in the two passages just quoted, we can infer that Calvin rejected the attribution of any durable meaning to colour symbolism, in clothing, vestments, or anything else for that matter; none of this material stuff was of any consequence. Still, ultimately Calvin finds a basis for distinguishing colour symbolism that cannot be entirely discounted. He asks how the colour of the white baptismal garment (and one might infer from this, by extension, also of the robe of righteousness), could be so powerful? We find that notwithstanding

107 ‘An Admonition Showing the Advantages Which Christendom Might Derive from an Inventory of Relics’ in On the Reformation of the Church, in Tracts and Treatise, vol. I, Henry Beveridge, trans., Grand Rapids, MI, p. 320. 108 Ibid., p. 174.

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a statue’s white robe, it remains a ‘puny’ object, and men are foolish to be persuaded by its colour, even if it is white.109 At last, behold the Idol (puny, indeed, in bodily appearance, and white in colour, but by far the foulest and most pestiferous of all Idols!) lifted up to affect the minds of the beholders with Superstition. While all prostrate themselves in stupid amazement…’ The ‘behold the Idol…white in colour…but…foul and pestiferous…’ is a direct reference to Matthew 23:27 in which the widely accepted value of the colour symbolism of whiteness is acknowledged, if indirectly, through the grammatical construction of the sentence: whiteness has equal standing to the foul and pestiferous; this is not doubted. Several more important passages may also be found in ‘The Nature of the Sacrament’ and in the ‘Psychopannychia’ in which Calvin demonstrates his command of colour symbolism and acknowledges it place in metaphorical colour thinking: It is no new thing for Scripture to designate glory, festivity, and joy, under the figure of a white robe. It was in a white robe the Lord appeared in vision to Daniel. In this garb the Lord was seen on Mount Tabor. The angel of the Lord appeared to the women at the sepulchre in white raiment; and under the same form did the angels appear to the disciples as they continued gazing up to heaven after their Lord’s ascension. In the same, too, did the angel appear to Cornelius, and when the son who had wasted his substance had returned to his father, he was clothed in the best robe, as a symbol of joy and festivity. (Dan. 7:9; Matt. 17:2; 28.3; Mark 16:5; Acts 1:10; 10:30; Luke 15:22.) After we take up our residence in the land, we feed abundantly. White robes and rest are given us. But Jerusalem, the capital and seat of the kingdom, has not yet been erected; nor yet does Solomon, the Prince of Peace, hold the sceptre and rule over all.110 In this important passage Calvin embraces the iconography of the white garment.

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p. 386. 110

On the Reformation of the Church in Tracts and Treatises, vol. III, Edinburgh, 1958, Calvin, Psychopannychia in Tracts and Treatises, vol. III, p. 467.

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The Discernment of True (Pure) Piety At a fundamental level, the matrix through which the theologians of reformed tradition viewed the practice of faith is constituted by four central passages from the New Testament: (i) 2 Corinthians IV. (especially Cor. 4:16: ‘For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.’)111 in which Paul may be said to describe the nature of ‘true piety’;112 (ii) Matthew: Matthew suffuses Calvin’s writings, is cited either generally or with specific citation over four hundred times;113;(iii) John 4:24, in which John addresses the form of worship (‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and See also: Ephesians 5:25–26. 2; Corinthians IV.16–18 reads: (16) For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. / ‘Propter quod non deficimus; sed licet is qui foris est noster homo corrumpitur tamen is qui intus est renovatur de die in diem.’ (17) For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. / ‘id enim quod in praesenti est momentaneum et leve tribulationis nostrae supra modum in sublimitatem aeternum gloriae pondus operatur nobis.’ (18) While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. / ‘non contemplantibus nobis quae videntur sed quae non videntur quae enim videntur temporalia sunt quae autem non videntur aeterna sunt.’ 112 There are over eighty references to various passages in Corinthians in the Institutes. 113 For Zwingli Matthew 6:6 was particularly relevant: ‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet [chamber], and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.’). This is not a passage on which Calvin relied particularly as it was for Zwingli; indeed this specific passage is not cited in the Institutes. This may not be surprising since Calvin supported the practice of singing the psalms during worship services. Matthew 16:6, however is frequently mentioned in the context of the unadulterated religious practices where the trope of the leavened Pharisean bread id equal to man-made, hopelessless futile, even silly, practices. One example will suffice: Calvin wrote: ‘As explained by the Evangelist Matthew, ‘leaven” means whatever of their own doctrine men mix with the purity of God’s Word [Matt. 16:12]. What could be clearer than that we are commanded to flee and avoid their whole doctrine? By this it is made very clear to us that in the other passage, too, the Lord would not have the consciences of his people troubled by traditions peculiar to the Pharisees. ‘Jesus said to them, “Watch out”, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ It was true piety expressed in spirit, more than true religion expressed through form which Calvin sought through observance of these passages. 111

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truth’);114 (iv) Colossians 3:16 (‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing in another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.’). In Book I of the Institutes Calvin defines piety as: ‘the union of reverence and love to God which the knowledge of his benefits inspires.’ (Institutes, I.II.1). While expressive, this passage gives no directives for the ‘look’ of true piety in a world where people inhabit buildings, sit or stand to pray and look at walls. In the same chapter he goes on to define religion which he describes as a faith pursuant to which a person relies solely on God for all his needs and on no one or nothing else. One can see from this latter statement that it is only a small step from the form of worship implied by the apostles John and Paul and the worship space suggested in Matthew 6.6, to specific directives that would yield the silent, contemplative, imageless worship space associated with Calvin. In Book I.I.1 of the Institutes where Calvin describes the nature of true piety and the pious mind; he also defines faith and religion. About the pious mind he writes that it: …does not devise for itself any kind of God, but looks alone to the one true God; nor does it feign for him any character it pleases, but is content to have him in the character in which he manifest himself, always guarding, with the utmost diligence, against transgressing his will, and wandering, with daring presumption, from the right path. In Book I.II.1 Calvin describes true piety itself: True piety does not consist in a fear which willingly indeed flees God’s judgment, but since it cannot escape is terrified. True piety consists rather in a sincere feeling which loves God as Father as much as it fears and reverences Him as Lord, embraces His righteousness, and dreads offending Him worse than death. And whoever have been endowed with this piety dare not fashion out of their own rashness any God for themselves. Rather they seek from Him the knowledge of the true God, and conceive Him just as He shows and declares Himself to be. (Trans. Ford Lewis Battles). Described here is an inward looking faith that does not require the material world for its existence or expression. Calvin, like Zwingli, distinguished 114 Again, John 4:24 is not cited by number all that frequently by Calvin but the idea contained within it is, as are the terms ‘true piety’.

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between the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ man and wrote of this on many occasions.115 In a passage in On the Harmony of the Gospels he discusses popular piety and associated religious duties (officia pietatis). Here Calvin spoke of the hypocrisy of those ‘who pretend pietas by outward signs and grievously pervert it by sticking in carnal worship alone.’116 For Zwingli ‘right’ worship in ‘true’ faith entailed focusing on the ‘right’ object of faith (‘piety toward God’), in the right form in contemplation of God’s word and nothing else). In ‘true’ piety one’s gaze was turned inward in reflection on the Holy Spirit, without consideration of earthly or carnal things.117 Any spiritual reliance on any other entity of any kind other than God entailed a critical shift from the inward to the outward world and from the inward to the outward, material man, even if this reliance was held in the mind and for which there was no surrogate object. As we saw in Chapter VI, Zwingli defined an idol as any being (or object) onto whom one projected one’s hopes; and Calvin does similarly in the passage quoted above. False religion which projects itself outside of the spirit was, precisely, vesting one’s faith in the worldly. In addition, through Corinthians and Colossians, as Peter Auksi has pointed out, the Magisterial Reformers tacitly claimed a new dimension for the words renovari and renovatio, to indicate ‘a far reaching renewal of the whole nature of man’, by which was meant a rediscovery of the spiritual man through Christ, in emulation of Him as the only true image of God, and in emulation of his simplicity, ‘the simplicity that is in Christ’ (2 Cor. 11:3).118 Thus Auksi aptly characterises the new image of faith as a ‘stark and internal imitatio Christi’, further observing that to this, the sixteenth century reformers added ‘a distrust characteristically ascetic but often left inarticulate. The distrust which Auksi correctly identifies encompasses ‘graces, crafts and arts’ which could strengthen the naturalism of the ‘outward man,’ those denounced by Paul 119 to whom Calvin refers in this passage from Book I.XI.2:

In Calvin’s complete works, references to ‘outward’ outnumber those to inward, but they are both frequent, approximately 205 to 115. 116 OC, 45:3241; the Institutes I.IV.4. 117 For more on the inward evidence of God, see Eire, pp. 201–208. 118 Auksi, p. 357. On this point Auksi relies on Gerhart Ladner, The Idea of Reform, Cambridge, MASS., 1959, p. 44. 119 Ibid., p. 359. 115

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We see how openly God speaks against all images, that we may know that all who seek visible forms of God depart from him. Of the prophets it is enough to cite only Isaiah, who is most emphatic in presenting this. He teaches that God’s majesty is sullied by an unfitting and absurd fiction, when the incorporeal is made to resemble corporeal matter, the invisible a visible likeness, the spirit an inanimate object, the immeasurable a puny bit of wood, stone, or gold. [Isa. 40:18–20 and 41:7, 29; 45:9; 46:5–7]. Paul also reasons in the same way: Since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to judge the Deity to be like gold, and silver, or a stone, carved by the art or devising of man.’ [Acts 17:29]. From this it is clear that every statue man erects, or every image he paints to represent God, simply displeases God as something dishonorable to his majesty. Man in imitation of Christ as the only sanctioned image of Him is a theme which Zwingli and Calvin share and which Calvin wastes no time in introducing in Book I of the Institutes. In Book I.XI.8, concerning the impiety of attributing a visible form to God, the reader finds one of the first of many references to man’s requirement for ‘naturalism’ in which distrust of the tangible and visual is clearly evident. Calvin writes: The god whom man has thus conceived inwardly he attempts to embody outwardly. The mind, in this way, conceives the idol, and the hand gives it birth. That idolatry has its origin in the idea which men have, that God is not present with them unless his presence is carnally exhibited, appears from the example of the Israelites: ‘Up’, they say, ‘make us gods, which shall go before us […]’ He adds, In consequence of this blind passion men have, almost in all ages since the world began, set up signs on which they imagined that God was visibly depicted to their eyes. (Institutes, I.XI.8.) Calvin is much more empathic here about the foibles of man than is Zwingli on similar issues; he recounts Horace’s humourous jibe about pagan idols (Hor. Sat. I.8): ‘I was once the trunk of a fig-tree, a useless log, when the tradesman, uncertain whether he should make me a stool, &c., chose rather that I should be a god.’ How could man, Calvin asks, who is ‘an earth-born

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creature who breathes out his life almost every moment’ make a statue out of a ‘lifeless trunk’ and then confer on it the name of God?120 (Institutes, I.XI.4). There is more, much, much more, that Calvin writes on this subject throughout the Institutes and other works; much of it parallels, at a minimum in outline, arguments that Zwingli also made to his public, although in style and tenor substantive differences between the men are clearly evident. Nonetheless, as central to Calvin as to Zwingli is John 4.24: ‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth’121 which served as a central premise for his search for a new liturgy that would enable a renewed Christian to obey God and show honour to Him in an appropriate way.122 Adherence to John 4.24 is reflected in the quotation from Calvin’s Commentary on the Four Books of Moses which appears as the epigraph to this chapter. He appeals directly to John 4:24 in this passage from Book IV.VI.4 of the Institutes: Since we are the true temples of God, it is necessary that we pray within ourselves, if we wish to invoke him in his true temple. And as for that gross and fleshly opinion, let us relinquish it to the Jews or Pagans, since we are directed to invoke the Lord in spirit and in truth, without regard to place. (John IV: 23). Zwingli dedicates the Forty-fourth Conclusion of his Sixty-seven Articles to this very point: ‘True worshippers call upon God in spirit and in truth without any clamoring before people.’123 Paul, too, praises silent song in Colossians 3.16 124 to which Calvin and Zwingli125 both refer. Zwingli comments expressly on Paul’s praise of silent song: Here Paul teaches us, not the howling and mumbling found within

Institutes, Bk. I.XI.4. Z I, 463. See also, HCW I, Zwingli’s Writings, vol. 1, pp. 179, 283; HCW II, p. 112. 122 “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.” (CR XLVIII. 323.6, XXIV.350). 123 HCW I, p. 283; Z I, 463, 13–14). This theme is reiterated in the ‘Twenty-first Conclusion’ (HCW I, pp. 178–179; Z I.224–226); in ‘The Shepherd’ (HCW II, p. 112, ZIII:52). 124 Col. 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing in another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” 125 HCW I, Forty-Fifth Article, vol. 1, p. 285. 120 121

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the temples, but he shows [us] the true song, which pleases God, that we might sing praise of God with the heart, and not, like the Jewish singer, with the voice.126 On this point Calvin is not a severe as Zwingli. The spoken word had primacy, but music was admitted to Calvin’s reformed service because he recognized the capacity of music to deepen the experience of worship and a sense of connection to God.127 Thus, for Calvin, as with Zwingli, the form of worship centred on Christ as sole mediator between man and God, on prayer as the only form of true worship, a combination that Garside would characterize, as we have already seen, as bringing the ‘form and content’, ‘form and substance of worship into line with one another.’128 Calvin never rejects completely all material forms of worship as did Zwingli, but his position on true piety and worship would mean that outward forms of practicing faith would be determined by the inward demands of pious devotion as the institution of the Church was reshaped and given new form in line with its purified (ideal) spiritual content. The Word of God found in scripture would be the touchstone for everything. True faith would be defined as the belief that God is our Father and that he is true to us; that true piety is a combination of reverence, honour, and obedience with respect to Him, combined with a nuanced form of fear. None of this required the ceremonies, vestments, hours, gestures, substances, or paraphernalia introduced by the Roman Church after the ‘primitive’ era. That this apostolic age represented an ideal standard in all aspects of faith and worship in the minds of the sixteenth century Reformer is generally accepted and was no less true for Calvin.129 The exalted position Calvin held of the notion of the primitive church calls attention once again to its importance, because it defined ‘the look’ of true piety in the rejection of the previous one ZII.350. Institutes, III.XX.31–33, esp. 32: ‘Church Singing’. 128 Garside discusses in depth the problem of the tension between the form and substance of faith which Zwingli discovered through his study of Erasmus and Erasmian spiritualism and which he was compelled to resolve. See Zwingli and the Arts, pp. 35–39. Cf. Eire, ‘Simplicity’, p. 345.Also discussed in Chapter VI this book. For Calvin the issues were essentially the same. See Ganoczy, pp. 188–209; Bowsma, p. 9 (Erasmus’s sprituality and ‘evangelical humanism’), pp. 12–14 (Erasmus’s reform program and influence on Calvin). 129 References to the ‘primitive’ Church appear thirty-seven times in the Institutes, Calvin’s Letters, and his collected writings inTracts and Treatises. References to the ‘apostolic’ occur 108 times in the same body of writing. 126 127

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thousand years of custom. There was, it should also be mentioned, never agreement about the apostolic period: when it began and ended, or what its concrete attributes were. Calvin believed that there were no images at all in churches for the first five hundred years of Christendom, when ‘a purer doctrine flourished, [and] Christian churches were completely free from visible representations.’130 He shared in the belief that the first appearance of images and other forms of material culture followed a period during which the ministry had already begun to become degraded. Karlstadt pegged the decline to Pope Gregory I (r. 590–604), and his introduction of music into the liturgy.131 Gregory is also traditionally credited with the legitimization of images in his classical instruction on their ‘right use’: ‘aliud est enem picturam adorare, aliud picturae historia, quid sit adorandum, addiscere.’ / ‘To adore images is one thing, to teach with their help what is to be adored is another.’’132 This view to which Zwingli also subscribed was common to all theologians in the Reformed tradition. Several important biblical passages which formed the basis of Calvin’s position on this point have already been mentioned in order to establish an outline of Calvin’s thinking about liturgical form. In his complete works the citations on the subject of true piety and pure faith, the use of images and the role of figuration (metaphor, the arts, colour) that he uses to convey these things are too numerous to account for individually. Let it suffice to note for the moment, that the Zürich reformer Ludwig Hätzer adduced thirtythree Old Testament and fifteen New Testament citations in support of his position against images and idols in the polemical pamphlet he produced in

‘But setting aside this distinction, let us in passing examine if it is expedient to have in Christian churches any images at all, whether they represent past events or the bodies of men. First, if the authority of the ancient church moves us in any way, we will recall that for about five hundred years, during which religion was still flourishing, and a purer doctrine thriving, Christian churches were commonly empty of images.’ Institutes I.XI.13 (See also Bk. IV.IX.9). 131 In theses 11 and 12 of his ‘Disputation on Gregorian Chant’ Karlstadt contrasts the early church with the contemporary church; in nos. 37, 38 he contrasts music: ‘the church of which Gregory was head instituted these mumblings but not the church of which Christ is head.’ The full text of Karlstadt’s Disputation appears in Herman Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Leipzig, 1915. Cf. Excerpts of relevant Karlstadt text in translation appear in Garside, p. 28 et seq. 132 Quoted in Hans Freiherr van Campenhausen, Tradition and Life in the Church, London, 1968, pp. 181–183. The full text of Gregory’s letter appears in translation in Caecilia Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300–1150, Toronto, 2003, pp. 47–49. Translation is Weyer’s. 130

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the autumn of 1523, ‘The Judgment of God our Spouse as to how one Should Hold Oneself toward all Idols and Images.’133 Published one year before Hätzer’s, Karlstadt’s treatise on the abolition of images (Von Abtung der Bylder und das keyn Bedtler unther den Christen seyn sollen, Wittenberg, 1522), the form of which Hätzer copied, adduces no fewer than eighty-seven scriptural citations.134 Zwingli refers his reader to Hätzer, in essence incorporating his colleague’s work by reference into his own writings on the subject, the Short Christian Instruction (November 1523).135 Books I.X–XV and Book IV of the Institutes include Calvin’s exposition on the role of external forms of worship where he directs the reader to many of these same biblical passages. Literally interpreted, Calvin’s theology, like Zwingli’s, would unequivocally preclude the presence of images, leading the Reformed Christian toward an aesthetic of uncompromised simplicity in worship equal to Zwingli’s. In practical terms he was not as extreme as Zwingli in his implementation of the banishment of images but, then, it is an open question what he would have done had Guillaume Farel not ‘cleansed’ Geneva’s churches before his arrival there.

Forms and Signs of True Piety We see in 2 Corinthians IV.16–18 that Paul’s censure of the outward man does not reach as far as the Protestant Reformers would reach in their articulation of the futility of those ‘graces, crafts and arts’ to which Auksi referred.136 However, Paul points directly to a sharp distinction between the spiritual world and the external illusory world, giving the Reformers the means to denounce all ‘goodly’, ‘corruptible’ things such as silver and gold, ‘goodly stones and gifts’,137 painted wooden images and sculptures, or

See Chapter IV for further discussion of this pamphlet and its reach. Karlstadt’s text has been edited by Hans Lietzman and published in a series entitled Kleine Texte für theologische und philologische Vorlesusngen und Uebungen, Bonne, 1911, No. 74. 135 See, HCW II, p. 68: ‘Concerning Images’, in a ‘Short Christian Instruction’ and An Answer to Valentin Compar (1525) which also references ideas found in Hätzer. 136 Peter Auksi, ‘Simplicity and Silence’, Journal of Religious History, vol. 10, No. 4, 1979, pp. 343–364. 137 See the Institutes, ‘Prefatory Address to King Francis I’, Book I.XI.4, §§2,4,7. 133 134

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anything at all that provides ‘eye-service’ or acts as ‘men-pleasers’138 — and which could have no inner spiritual value.139 The discovery of frescoes in the catacombs of Rome depicting among other subjects, portraits of Jesus, Christ as the Good Shepherd, Daniel, Lazarus, Jacob, various saints, and so on, had not yet been made. This was not to happen until 1578, fourteen years after Calvin’s death.140 What effect this would have had on the Reformed concept of the aspostolic church depicted through the New Testament is anyone’s guess.141 Nonetheless, the 138 From Col. 3:22: “Servants, obey in all things your master according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but, with singleness of heart, fearing God, [23] And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not until men.” 139 In a discussion of Zwingli’s Forty-fifth Conclusion concerning hypocrisy that pretends to be piety, Garside, describes a scene of ideal piety as formulated by Zwingli (quoted earlier, Chapter V) that could be, for all intents and purposes, a Cistercian monk in his cell: ‘What he seeks is nothing less than an irreducible purity of worship — in other words, an absolutely private prayer: the individual withdrawn from the world and from his fellow men, absolutely alone in communion with his heavenly Father.’ (Garside, p. 42). David Freedberg likewise cites several contemporary defenders of images who, in response to their comprehension of the implications of Zwinglian and Calvinist reasoning about images, rhetorically ask: ‘Why not take this tragedy to its absurd conclusion?’ Among these are: A Porta, Molanus, and Donk. A Porta exclaims: ‘...why did the iconoclasts condemn [only] the Holy Church, and not themselves and their rulers as well, for having their own portraits and those of their wives, and for putting them up for sale in the market place?’ In a similar vein, Donk asks: ‘Why then do we not first purify our own houses of such idols, before we purge and violate the churches? ...But the Devil prefers an image of Pompey or of Caesar to one of our Saviour crucified. Therefore first destroy your own windows, burn the paintings of your parents and of your wife...’ Freedberg notes that there were, of course, evangelical Protestants (for example, Zwingli, Karlstadt, Jud, Hätzer & c.) who would respond to A Porta and Donk to the effect that something along the lines described would, indeed, be desirable. For A Porta and Donk to have acknowledged this would have taken the point out of their jibes. See A Porta, f. 87v. and Donk, quoted in Freedberg, p. 82. 140 See Robin Margaret Jensen, Face to Face, Minneapolis, 2005; — Understanding Early Christian Art, New York, 2000, both superior texts on the subject of early Christian art, divine portraits and theories of idolatry of the period. 141 Richard Rex’s opinion that the catacombs would have made no difference whatsoever to Calvin rings true. He opines that the incentive to reform for Calvin was a return to ‘sola scriptura’ and nothing else and that, therefore, ‘Calvin would have simply concluded that the Church had fallen earlier than previously thought.’ (Personal communication, August 2010). This is plausible. I leave my comment in place for the reason that I continue to think it worth

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model of worship developed by Calvin and Zwingli relied on a conception of a pure, imageless (pure because imageless), pre-Papal church for its premise of the radically reformed liturgy and church interior, and it is from the platform of this vision that Auksi develops his argument that silence is also an overlooked essential criterion of the Reformed aesthetic.

True Piety and Symbolism Calvin was not hostile to the arts in all respects. In his view, it was permissible for an artist to create images of that which was already apparent to the senses, or to depict narrative histories from scripture or of Christ in his humanity. But this did not include church decorations or pieces of art traditionally placed inside churches. Such things attracted the attention of the worshipper and caused him to forget the significance of worship where one was supposed to approach God through devotion. As with Zwingli, architectural detail, if innocuous, did not present a problem but organ music, choral singing, altarpieces, crucifixes, candles, and incense which threatened, as Mickelm says, ‘the still, inward, and rational intensity of right worship’, did. These things could draw ‘the imagination into unchartable digressions.’ 142 Thus, Calvin drew the line at secular images, in contrast to Zwingli, whose purification programme in religious terms, ultimately extended even to the images held in one’s mind.143 Yet while Calvin’s theology parallels Zwingli’s to a degree, by comparison Calvin was not as extreme in his position with respect to the visual world. He followed the Judaic laws against the representation considering the effect on Calvin’s argument of this knowledge: that the early Christian world was different than he thought; that images existed during the period of the primitive church (by 250 C.E.) in a form we would today call ‘popular piety’ and that these images were, perhaps, not abused. If it were true that the apostolic church (body) tolerated or embraced the inclusion of images in the religious lives of its people, and these images were not taken to be intermediaries, Calvin and other reformers might have felt compelled to re-conceive the ‘primitive’ church and the role of images in it and to construct a model of visuality that acknowledged the existence of images as a natural expression of popular piety. This would contrast greatly with the concept of visuality as a perpetration upon an uneducated lay people of a form of faith alien to true faith. Or, Calvin might have done as Rex has suggested! Zwingli attempted to circumscribe such an intermediate zone. 142 J. S. Whale, ‘Calvin’, in Micklem, ed., Christian Worship, pp. 154–71 esp. pp. 161–63. 143 Cf. Zwingli, ‘inneren götzen der anfechtungen’ (Z II, 710, 7–8; 710, 31–32; 705, 32–33; Valentin Compar (Z IV, 85–115, esp. 3rd Art., ‘Bildnussen’, p. 97).

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of the divine (see Institutes, I.XI.2–9), but he also admitted music into worship, although simplified in form and structure (no melody). He refused to collapse the two areas of representation into a complete abolition of all artistic expression in life. Images which consisted in narratives or histories of the church remained legitimate within the home. Yet we do not here condemn speaking and singing but rather strongly commend them, provided they are associated with the heart’s affection. For thus do they exercise the mind in thinking of God and keep it attentive — …Moreover, since the Glory of God ought, in a measure, to shine in the several parts of our bodies, it is especially fitting that the tongue has been assigned and destined for this task, both through singing and speaking. For it was peculiarly created to tell and proclaim the praise of God. (Institutes, III.XX.31). One’s epistemic access to God was, of course, changed by Calvin’s ideas about ‘true piety’ and the role of symbolism in worship. Calvin rejected the adequacy of images to yield knowledge of or to provide access to God, but he did not reject symbolism altogether. He was, in fact, sensitive to man’s need for signs, seals, and symbols of attestation and so while he was disparaging of the traditional sacraments and the role of the arts, images, or any material objects in the practice of faith, he also treated the subject of symbolism with respect. Thus, a delicate balance was struck between these two things which Calvin articulates throughout the Institutes. For Calvin the connection between the idea of an object and its ‘sign’ was not a mechanical or technical question but a spiritual one that, as much as anything else, addresses man’s psychological-emotional relationship to the event or thing represented. An example of Calvin’s concern with this issue may be seen in the quotation cited below. This passage appears in the Short Treatise on the Supper of Our Lord under the sub-heading: ‘From the nature of a sacrament the substance of the visible sign must remain.’ Calvin discusses the symbolism involved in the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist and the relationship between the work of the sacrament and its visual sign. He wrote, It is a general rule in all sacraments that the signs which we see must have some correspondence with the spiritual thing which is figured. Thus, as in baptism, we are assured of the internal washing of our souls when water is given us as an attestation, its property being to cleanse corporal pollution; so in the Supper, there must be material bread to testify to us that the body of Christ is our food.

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For otherwise how could the mere colour of white give us such a figure? We thus clearly see how the whole representation, which the Lord was pleased to give us in condescension to our weakness, would be lost if the bread did not truly remain. Out of this fantasy several other follies have sprung. Would to God they were only follies, and not gross abominations. They have imagined I know not what local presence and thought, that Jesus Christ in his divinity and humanity has attached to this whiteness, without paying regard to all the absurdities which follow from it.144 (My emphasis). In this passage the white figure is obviously the host. Calvin presents several points here: (1) that, because we are physical beings, constituted as much of our bodies as our spirit, we require a material sign to represent spiritual things to us, in order to comprehend them at all. (In this way, the visual acts as a conduit that a person can see and touch; a kind of ‘placeholder’ for the grace one receives spiritually and without which we would not be able to fully access or experience the meaning of the thing to which it refers; this is Calvin’s explication of the sacraments in general which he states directly in his Catechism (313–314). This first point is not specific to whiteness, but is an important statement clearly made about the role of the visual and tactile in the human psyche; (2) the nominalist influence which dates to his Paris days; that is, an abiding concern about the nature of the relationship between the mental conception of an object and the object itself; and (3) The whiteness of the figure in question metaphorically and symbolically charges the meaning of the act in question; Calvin mentions it twice. Calvin raises issues such as these frequently in his discussions of images. In this context the question is: What is the relationship between the signified and signifier? Between the symbol and its effect? How can the signifier (the small piece of white bread) perform the Eucharistic task? And the answer he gives to this question in relation to the Lord’s Supper is that the substance of the bread remains after consecration, otherwise there would be nothing there to act, as a sign for the different substance of Christ’s body. Moreover, he suggests, the mere figure of the host, comprised of whiteness (white flour) in this case and disparagingly referred to elsewhere as those ‘little white gods’ can do nothing at all magical; they do not confer special status or grace upon ‘On the Supper of Our Lord’, in Relating to the Reformation of the Church, Tracts and Treatises, vol. II:40–41, p. 186. 144

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an individual because they are signifiers.145 The whiteness of the host in this context, is, in a critical sense, meaningless. It is an accident and therefore, incidental. The fact remains, however, that while the whiteness of this bread is an accident in Aristotelian terms, it forms an integral, deeply embedded, visual part of the ancient Christian symbol of the Eucharist itself, and the language that Calvin uses here recognizes this.146 For why else would there be an argument (subsequently) over the use of brown bread for the Eucharist? For Calvin and his audience the host and its visual attributes are visual triggers.147 And, although he strongly denies the efficacy of a material thing to act (in this sense to actually convey something), he is forced to accept form and colour as an integral part of the emotional economy of symbolism. Calvin’s colour language is testimony to this fact.

Colour Language Much work has been done on Calvin’s use of figural imagery and metaphor. In the last twenty years new histories and analyses concerning Calvin and the arts, Calvin and architecture, Calvin and language, and his ideas about the body and clothing have been written. These are important contributions to an understanding of Calvin and his relationship to the visual and material world in which his concept of the Church existed, and yet colour considerations Calvin: Institutes, IV.XVII.4–5: The Sacred Supper of Christ, and what it brings to us. /4. The meaning of the promise of the Lord’s Supper / 5.The promise sealed in the Supper: ‘4). It is not, therefore, the chief function of the Sacrament simply and without higher consideration to extend to us the body of Christ. Rather, it is to seal and confirm that promise by which he testifies that his flesh is food indeed and his blood is drink [John 6:56], which feed us unto eternal life [John 6:55]. By this he declares himself to be the bread of life, of which he who eats will live forever [John 6:48, 50]. ... By these words he doubtless means that his body will to us be as bread for the spiritual life of the soul... 5) [As] it is not the seeing but the eating of bread that suffices to feed the body, so the soul must truly and deeply become partaker of Christ that it may be quickened to spiritual life by his power... this is no other eating than that of faith, as no other can be imagined.’ 146 ‘But we pass over such subtleties, since it seems to me that I have proved with arguments plain enough that, in using the word “sacraments,” the ancients had no other intention than to signify that they are signs of holy and spiritual things.’ Institutes, IV. XIV.13. 147 See Calvin, tract: ‘Article V: Of the Transubstantiation of the Bread into Body. / Agreed upon by the Faculty of Sacred Theology of Paris in reference to matters of faith at present controverted…/ Antidote to Article V’: 145

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are seldom mentioned, if at all, in these studies.148 This point is worth noting because colour language is a critical element of imaging, metaphor, and figuration. Given the reservations I have expressed earlier in this chapter about Calvin’s personal influence on the whitewashing of Genevan churches we nonetheless must admit that Calvin was not colour-blind, and that what he wrote and said about colour — even if delivered indirectly — would not be without influence on his readership or with his following. Observations about the way colour was used by the traditional Church, his own views and ideas about colour, and opinions on the importance of the external appearance of things, cloaked as they are in colour and form, are frequently mentioned in his writings on the purification of the Church and the reformation he sought. Perhaps unsurprisingly in the passages we have analysed we can see that Calvin’s orientation to colour was complex and, superficially at least, tended to the negative. Such a conception is hardly surprising since his reputation for repression precedes him. Did colour factor into his sense of outrage toward the traditional Church in the same way that it did for Zwingli? Did he think about the meaning of colour in the context of returning the church to a purified form? Did the Reformation at Zürich have any influence on his ideas about how to deal with the physical realities of the worship space? Because of the formative influence of the Bible on Calvin as a student and scholar, there ‘The nature of a Sacrament is to exhibit an invisible truth under a visible sign. But should the sign be fallacious, what are we to think of the thing signified by it? The correspondence of the thing with its sign is indicated by Paul, in the following words. ...(1 Cor. x. 17.) Therefore, that we may learn from the Supper that the flesh of Christ is the food of our soul, it is necessary that the bread be there set forth as an image of the reality…’ (in Tracts and Treatises, vol. I, p. 83). And: Institutes, IV.XVII.1–3: ‘The Sacred Supper of Christ, and what it brings to us. / Transubstantiation’: ‘But the signification would have no fitness if the truth there represented had no living image in the outward sign. Christ’s purpose was to witness by the outward symbol that his flesh is food; if he had put forward only the empty appearance of bread and not true bread, where would be the analogy or comparison needed to lead us from the visible thing to the invisible?’ 148 John D. Witvliet, ‘Images and Themes in Calvin’s Theology of Liturgy: One Dimension of Calvin’s Liturgical Legacy’ in The Legacy of John Calvin, Grand Rapids, 2000; George W. Stroup, ‘Narrative in Calvin’s Hermeneutic’ in John Calvin and the Church, a Prism of Reform, Louisville, 1990, pp. 158–72; Roland M. Frye, in Ibid., pp. 172–195; Catharine Randall, Building Codes, Philadephia, 1999; Graeme Murdock, ‘Calvin, Clothing and the Body’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, XXVIII (4), 2006, pp. 481–494.

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is every chance that whether he consciously thought about colour in its own right, he absorbed as a matter of social conditioning prevailing cultural ideas about specific colours. The references we have studied in this chapter thus far attest to this. Moreover, it cannot be doubted that traditional biblical usage would have been reinforced by subsequent study of both the Bible, contemporary polemic, and by the first generation of whitewashings that which took place between 1518 and 1530 and, lastly, by the development of his own views on the nature and goals of reform. That the colour white represents a condition of enlightenment, in the sense of having been graced by God or with knowledge of God, is axiomatic. Calvin’s assimilation of this standard is revealed in a a number of passages in the Institutes and other writings in which he references light, purity, purification and the apostolic church.149 In a discussion of the knowledge of God in Book I.I.2 of the Institutes, Calvin invokes a kind of proto-opponent process theory of colour to elucidate the distinction between a person who has, or does not have knowledge of God.150 In this passage a person who is accustomed only to consideration of the material world and its contents, is like a person to whom only the colour black has been shown. In more than a nod to Plato and his Allegory of the Cave, Calvin deploys not only a similar allegory, but similar colour symbolism to that used by Plato in the Republic (Book VII, 507a–532c2–3). Calvin’s is the same in all its essentials, shifting from a metaphor of whiteness and blackness to indicate relative states of knowledge and ignorance, to a description of the dazzling brilliance of the sun in order to exemplify enlightenment. In Calvin’s case, enlightenment is analogous to the experience of grace through God: ...What is a little less vile pleases us as a thing most pure — so long as we confine our minds within the limits of human corruption. Just so, an eye to which nothing is shown but black objects judges something There are eighty-five references in Calvin’s complete works to the term, ‘colour[s]’, ‘coloured’, colourable. 150 For example, see Institutes, I.I.2: ‘And because nothing appears within or around us that has not been contaminated by great immorality, what is a little less vile pleases us as a thing most pure — so long as we confine our minds within the limits of human corruption. Just so, an eye to which nothing is shown but black objects judges something dirty white or even rather darkly mottled to be whiteness itself.’ The opponent process theory was developed during 1955–56. See Evan Thompson, Colour Vision, London and New York, 1995, pp. 56–65; C. L. Hardin, Colour for Philosophers, Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1986, pp. 30–33. (Discussed in Chapter II, this book.) 149

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dirty white or even rather darkly mottled to be whiteness. Indeed, we can discern still more clearly from the bodily senses how much we are deluded in estimating the powers of the soul. For if in broad daylight we either look down upon the ground or survey whatever meets our view round about, we seem to ourselves endowed with the strongest and keenest sight; yet when we look up to the sun and gaze straight at it, that power of sight which was particularly strong on earth is at once blunted and confused by a great brilliance, and thus we are compelled to admit that our keenness in looking upon things earthly is sheer dullness when it comes to the sun. (Institutes I.I.2).151 These two colour examples have in common that both the colour white and the sun emit bright light and possess the quality of dazzle. Both are used to suggest the face of God that one may metaphorically see only by turning away from the material world, the carnal world of colour, (equivalent to shadow/darkness) to face the light of beyond; inward, upward, toward the light of God (knowledge or enlightenment/shadowless). The dazzling brilliance of the presence of divine light, traditionally represented as the sun (or light itself ), is to the dullness of the world of the senses as white is to black. The human spirit here characterized as without the benefit of the grace of God is no brighter, no lighter than blackness or, at best, a ‘mottled grey’ compared to the dazzling brightness of the pure white-light of God’s presence. Thus, in this passage Calvin uses the metaphor of white not only to indicate the Godhead himself, but also to indicate the soul who has lifted his spiritual consciousness to receive the grace of God.152 Peter Auksi reminds us in his work on the aesthetic thought of the reformers153 that John the Baptist had scorned courtiers for their colourful and luxurious clothing (Matthew 11:8).154 He correctly draws an analogy Institutes,I.I.2: ‘Without the knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.’ A number of Hebrew words in the Bible have been translated into the word, ‘white’. For example, it is used to describe milk (Gen.49:12), manna (Ex. 16:31), snow (Isa.1:18), horses (Zech.1:8), raiment (Eccl. 9:8). Another Hebrew word so rendered is applied to marble (Esther 1:6); and a cognate word to the lilly (Cant. 2:16). A different term, meaning ‘dazzling’ is used to describe the countenance (Cant. 5:10). Webster’s Bible, CR–Rom., publ: Cosmi, Inc., 1996. 153 P. Auksi, “Simplicity and Silence: the Influence of Scripture on the Aesthetic Thought of the Major Reformers”, Journal of Religious History, vol. 10, Dec. 1979, Discussed in Chapter I. 154 “But what went ye to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that wear soft [clothing] are in king’s houses.” 151 152

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between this and Calvin’s scorn for ‘corruptible things as silver and gold’ (1 Peter 1:18, KJ), which Calvin perceived to be destructive of meditation on spiritual and eternal truths.155 The only correct way to worship was ‘spiritual worship,156 which meant for Calvin two things: (1) worship independent of trust in ‘material props’ or ‘humanly devised ceremonies’157 and (2) worship that has been commanded by God according to Scripture.158 Calvin was unfailingly consistent in his doctrine of Scripture which distinguished between true and false worship which he applied, as Carlos Eire observed, ‘univocally and universally.’159 But there is another sense of simplicity present in these texts which is different than simplicity as ‘absence of adornment’ (embellishment), and which is relevant to the emergence of the whitened wall in Calvinist churches. This is the sense in which simplicity signifies the absence of ‘as-thoughness’, call it mimesis, if you will. Any representation of anything whatsoever must employ the media of colour and form, be it painting, sculpture or textiles, because an object can only be visible to the eye in virtue of its colour in differentiation to something else. In this critical sense all visible things exist for us only in virtue of their colour. Thus, colour is an expression as well as instantiation, of the material world. With respect to the created image this is, of course, represented being, built up of colour and presented to the viewer as a likeness, as though it were something it is not. If we are going to turn away from the material world, then we must find a way either to eliminate or to transcend that by virtue of which the corporeal world of the senses exists; that is, colour. The reduction of images to a state in which they have no colour strips away this quality of mimesis leaving them purified of simulation and falsehood. As a covering layer, a cloak of whiteness is a very different phenomenon than a cloak of colour, as colour conceals from view that which it envelops. In the context of religious faith and the worship of God, the whitewashed wall represents two things anagogically relating to this point: Institutes, III.XIX.14. CR7.607. Also called, “True worship”. 157 Garside correctly points out that for Zwingli this line of thinking leads to no liturgy at all. Thus, an inconsistency in reasoning is necessary in order to retain the institution of the church. Elsewhere and later this logic was taken to extremes, most notably in England. See Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, p. 9. 158 Eire, Idols, p. 201, citing Calvin, CR7, 607. 159 Ibid., p. 202. 155 156

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first, the immaterial state of God’s being in virtue of its being ‘not-colour’ and, therefore, not of the corporeal world. Simultaneously, in virtue of its imagelessness, it represents the transcendence of God’s being because, as William Prynne describes the Godhead, ‘He has no similitude.’160 The irreducible condition of whiteness and the absence of artifice represents by contrast a way of being closer to the absolutely non-mimetic while reflecting a state of virtue. Thus, in addition to its obvious meaning of ‘purity’, the whitened wall may also signal the condition of ‘truth’, honesty and simplicity more fully than any material thing has achieved thus far. Michel Pastoureau expressed a similar conclusion. He wrote: ‘Pour eux, [the Reformists] la couleur n’est pas de la lumière mais de la matière. C’est une enveloppe qui habille les corps et les objets, une substance trompeuse, un artifice inutile et immoral qui gêne le contact entre l’homme et Dieu. Il faut la combattre, l’exclure du culte, la chasser du temple.’161 The notion of colour as a cloak of deception is correct; as a trope it is one frequently occupied by colour. It is just this, the taking off of this cloak and the putting on of another, colourless one that I would like to impress upon the reader as one of several important symbolic roles for whiteness in the Reformed Protestant mind. We have seen the likelihood that Zwingli’s example exercised influence on other, subsequent reformers, perhaps a considerable sway; and the whitened interior is certainly an element of this. But it is also not hard to see an intuitive connection between the concepts of immateriality, transcendence and spirituality, and the colour white in the context of representation, for if one thinks about it, how else does one represent the invisibility and incorporeality of the Godhead in a non160 John Phillips, The Reformation of Images, p. 184, quoting William Prynne, HistrioMastix London, 1633, pp. 894–904. This remark was made in the context of Prynne’s criticisms of Archbishop Laud in 1633. Phillips writes, “Particularly galling for Prynne was Laud’s misreading of Calvin. Prynne correctly pointed out that Calvin only says it is lawful to make images of men or beasts for civil use. The archbishop had inferred from Calvin’s contentions that it was also lawful to make pictures of religious subjects so long as they were clothed in human or natural forms. Through such reasoning, which Prynne suggested is false, Christ’s nativity, the Last Supper, God the father as an old man or the Holy Ghost as a dove, would be acceptable representations.” 161 M. Pastoureau, ‘La Couleur’, Regards croisés sur la couleur du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Colloque à l’Université de Lausanne, 1992, pp. 27–45.

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figurative way and at the same time not invoke the brazenness described by Paul in his letters.162 In the passage on the ‘Form of administering the Sacraments’, referring to man-made devices in general, Calvin wrote, ‘that we have felt no hesitation in abolishing them.’ If this reference includes images, which it almost certainly does, then at the time of its writing paintings and sculptures will have been removed from churches under his jurisdiction.163

The Whitened Wall But in terms of the abolition of images and idols, an aesthetic defined as one of simplicity (or, of simplicity and silence), primitive, or patristic, predicated primarily on the New Testament injunctions of Paul and John, but also on a vision of the patristic world constructed in the minds of reformers,164 in a sense only takes us only as far as the bare wall, devoid of images (sculptures, paintings, accessories, or decorative objects). It might, as with Zwinglian Zürich, take us, but not necessarily, to the whitened wall that we see in the paintings of Reformed churches by seventeenth century artists Pieter Saenredam, Emmanuel de Witte, the Berheydes, and Pieter Neeffs, or that we read about in the histories of reform elsewhere in Switzerland, the

References to the Pauline letters in Calvin’s works are legion. A relevant example of brazenness would include: I Cor. 10–16, 2 Cor: 5:12–13, 2 Cor: 10:12–13, or the following general statement quoted from: ‘On the Reformation of the Church, Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal.’ (In Tracts and Treatises, vol II, p. 464): ‘and yet nothing would have been more appropriate than to have added the comforting consideration of his invisible presence, were it real. As their language speaks of Christ simply, how presumptuous is it to imagine that he is at the same time visible and invisible?’ (‘How do they prove us to be blasphemers? Because Paul teaches that the bodies of the pious are temples of God, and that Christ dwells in their hearts by faith; as if in these cases where God the Father and Christ have chosen us as mansions for themselves, the mode of inhabitation were not spiritual. If there is any doubt as to this let Paul be the interpreter of his own expression.’ (Ibid., p. 486.). In re:invisibility and incorporeality: 2 Cor. 5. 163 Calvin, Form of Administering The Sacraments, Form of Administering Baptism, in Tracts and Treatises, Ford Lewis Battles, trans., 1958, vol. 2, p. 117. 164 The comprehensive list of biblical citations enumerated by Hätzer and quoted by Zwingli are listed in full in Zwingli’s Writings, vol. 2, ‘Short Christian Instruction’, p. 68. 162

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Netherlands, and England.165 For one can remove all furnishings and manner of object and arrive at a pure, simplified space in terms of an absence of papal overlay, indeed, achieve a simple, stark, visually reduced environment without engaging the condition of whiteness. If Calvinist churches were not actually whitewashed as were Zürich’s, then the question which must be asked is why the persistent association of whitened walls with reformed churches in Calvin’s Geneva or Dutch Reformed churches that were part of the Calvinist movement? It seems that a reasonable conclusion would be that the connection between Calvin’s ideas and the white, Reformed interiors of Calvinist churches has to do not only with the primary concepts driving Calvin’s reforms or with his concept of reformed praxis, but with the way in which the very attributes of whiteness speak to and contribute to the overall Reformation project: namely, the establishment of a (re)newed, visibly purified relationship of the individual and community to the practice of piety and to piety itself; completely purged of any traditional Catholic details; demonstrably purified; and that bareness often subsumes whiteness. That the churches were whitewashed is likely, if for no other reason than to make good soiled or damaged walls or to eliminate evidence of destruction and establish a tabula rasa from which to proceed. The intimate relationship philologically and in applied terms between whiteness and bareness has been demonstrated. (Chapter II).166 As we have seen, Calvin wanted to return Christians to the pure Gospel167 to which end his liturgy would be ‘plain’,

For example, writing for the general reader about the physical changes that took place in churches as a result of reformation policies the historian Owen Chadwick writes in The Reformation (London, 1990, p. 438): ‘Some glass fell or was broken, for Renaissance glass was more fragile than Decorated glass, and the quest for pictorial art led to a dangerous attempt to leave windows with as little leading as possible. ...But the church must be light, the walls must be white, and stained glass was believed by most Protestants to be unfitting and distracting in worship.’ (My emphasis.) 166 Recall the discussion of Wittgenstein in Chapter II. Wittgenstein also observed, as many before him have done, that: ‘White as the colour of substances ‘(in the sense that we say snow is white) is lighter than any other substance-colour; black darker.’ Here Wittgenstein writes, ‘colour is a darkening [as Leonardo said], and if all such is removed from the substance, white remains, and for this reason we can call it colourless…’ [my emphasis]. The connexion between an empty colour or colour-stripped-of-colour that looks as a bare as the bare wall that shares a conceptual basis in the word blanc, cannot be dismissed, although it may seem too distant a connexion to have bearing. My view is that this relationship between ‘blank’ and blanc matters very much. 167 CR V.319. 165

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‘unadorned’, and ‘spiritual’ (simplex, pura, and spiritualis).168 It also stands to reason then, that the physical environment in which one worshipped would be consistent with this ethos in order to achieve a unity of ‘right worship.’ The whitewashing of churches forms part of this unity from a number of standpoints. One of these is that, intuitively, we tend to make with the colour white the associations of simplicity, purity and spirituality, the same qualities of ‘simplex, pura, and spiritualis’ sought by Calvin for his liturgy. In addition, a persuasive argument may be made for the ways in which whiteness, as both material and perception, conveys associations of transcendence, incorporeality, and eternality (the absence of contingence).169 These are attributes o which may be said to mirror those of God’s himself.

The Ecclesiastical Ordinances In exchange for his return from exile in Strasbourg and his re-commitment to Geneva in 1541, Calvin demanded agreement to the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques which he drafted at this time. They date therefore in their essentials to 20 November 1541 when they were ratified by the General Council of Geneva and put into effect.170 The Ordonnances laid down a new structural organisation for the Genevan church and for the conduct of society including institutional, governmental, and pastoral structure and responsibilities. They were, as Gordon says, ‘a decidedly mixed form of government.’171 Ministers, pastors, elders, and lay officials had mutual responsibility for the appropriate conduct of the citizenry and (quoting Gordon once more) for ‘building a godly society’. Church and city government were technically separate but clearly linked; the role of the former bishop was carried out by two new agencies: the Company of Pastors and the Consistory. The senior officer of the Company of Pastors was a moderator; CR XLVII.90. See Chapter II in which I discuss the characteristics of the colour white as a perception and as material substance. 170 Ordonnances ecclésiastiques de l’Église de Genève, Genève, (Freres Détournes), 1735. These were not approved in their final form until 3 June 1577(!). Robert M. Kingdon, gives the date 1542 for the commencement of operations of the Consistory. See Robert Kingdon, et al., eds., M. Wallace MacDonald, trans., The Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in the Time of Calvin, Grand Rapids, 2000, p. xii. 171 Bruce Gordon, Calvin, New Haven and London, 2009, p. 126. 168 169

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this would be Calvin until his death. The Consistory was established to ensure the moral discipline of Genevans in the promotion of a Christian manner of living and was the primary agency responsible for overseeing the behavior of Geneva’s citizens. As a governing body its senior officer was one of four ‘Syndics’. The Consistory itself included twelve lay Elders (les Anciens) and all of the ‘Venerable Company of Pastors’ of which there were nine in 1542 and nineteen in 1564.172 Its reach into the personal lives of individuals is legendary, and not without cause, as it affected every aspect of civic life.173 Communities outside of Geneva often feared being governed by a Calvinist consistory if they submitted to reform for the elimination of autonomy that it entailed. The Consistory kept minutes of all business conducted there, beginning in 1542: issues presented to it for consideration, its proceedings, decisions, and internal politics. Relations between people (enforcement of sexual morality, the regulation of taverns, dancing, gambling, and swearing), the enforcement of ‘God’s law’; behavior contravening that of a committed, reformed, and true Christian, and participation in and knowledge of the Reformed Church, were the kinds of issues with which it dealt; that is, ecclesiastical discipline. It was the Consistory that was tasked with the abolition of superstition, which meant that, in addition to dealing with scandals, blasphemous behaviour, and so on, the Elders were charged with ensuring no idolatries or superstition took place. As fascinating as they are, for our purposes it is important to note only that responsibility for this latter concern was required by the Ordinances. The Régistres of the Consistory, do not therefore, as one might otherwise expect, contain much information about decisions at a higher or chapter level. They do not record changes to arrangements inside churches or to their fabric which one might rightly associate with the eradication of idolatry. This is also true of the Fragments Biographiques et Historiques which include extracts from the registers of the General Council (Conseil de Genève), the governmental arm that approved the Ordinances. The minutes of the General Council do not contain any references to the white-liming of Geneva’s churches either, although they do contain a small number of indirect references to alterations of church fabric and to changes in liturgical procedures. 172 173

McGrath, p. 111. Catherine Santschi, et al., eds., Encyclopédie de Genève, Geneva, 1982, vol. 4, p. 138.

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The few facts recorded in the Fragments Biographiques et Historiques along these lines include a sufficient level of detail to suggest that the removal of pictures and other images, as well as white-liming, might have been noted there, yet no mention is explicitly made of these events. For example, the banishment of Farel and Calvin; the invitation to return; the request to Berne for advice on model ordinances following Calvin’s departure; the request to Calvin and Farel to write the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques; the decision to carve the word Jésus (JHS) over the new gates to the city — all of these things are recorded in the Fragments Biographiques et Historiques. We have noted already that, unless I am mistaken, in none of these official records is there the requirement to whiten interiors in churches the way Archbishop Grindal’s injunctions would do thirty years later in England;174 nor do they require the painting out of images in any modified or partial way. Indeed, the only passages in the Ordonnances between 1542–44 which discuss the treatment of interiors are section XLIV and Chapter X.LXIII. The first of these requires that tables be set near the chairs in the Temple so that the preacher may more conveniently administer the Eucharist. Chapter X.LXIII concerns the burying of the dead and requires assurances that no papistical religion, covert, oblique, ‘or in other any way [be] manifest in the city or its environs.’175 The draft of this ordonnance, written by Calvin (and before input by the ministers) dated 1541 also required ‘that tables should be near the pulpit in order that the mystery be more conveniently set forth beside the tables’ and that the wine should be delivered by a select, limited number of individuals so that ‘there should not be a large number of vessels;176 a nuanced enforcement of the principle of simplicity. 174 Beginning in 1571 some injunctions promulgated by Bishops and Visitors in England began to include the directive not only to plaster over seams in walls where altars had been — to ‘make [them] good’ — but to whiten the walls as well. Archbishop Grindal’s injunctions for the province of York orders: All altars be utterly taken down and utterly removed even unto the foundation, and the place where they stood paved, and the wall whereunto they joined whited over and made uniform with the rest,… VAI, iii, 284–5, no. 30, Grindal, York, 1571. 175 Ibid., and Ordonnances ecclésiastiques de l’Église de Genève, Geneva, (Frères Detournes), 1735, (Microfilm N4387). Item XLIV, ibid., p. 17. All references to the Ordonnances are to this edition unless otherwise stated. Provisions regarding the burying of the dead: Chapter X,.LXIII. Les Anciens were charged with ensuring no idolatries take place in Title II, Chapter I, LXXV. 176 John Calvin: Selections from his Writings, John Calvin and John Dillenberger, ed., Atlanta, 1971, p. 238.

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One history of Saint Gervais church, the principle church of Geneva and Calvin’s own church, does manifest some concern relative to interior walls. The church records quoted in this history state somewhat ambiguously that changes to interior arrangements were implemented through the intervention of Calvin on his return to Geneva (presumably in 1541). This history of Saint Gervais, reads as follows: Dès le retour de Jean Calvin … l’action profonde du réformateur français définit les principes spirituels de l’église réformée et organisa ses institutions. Mais elle toucha également à des questions essentielles, pourtant méconnues, comme l’aménagement des futures temples…les images étaient supprimées.177 (My emphasis.) Following the return of John Calvin the profound action of the French reformer defined the spiritual principles of the reformed church and organized its institutions. But this action touched equally on essential questions, otherwise not well known, such as the arrangements [appointments] of future temples...images were suppressed. In addition to indirect references to the Ordinances and the Consistory, this passage says that Calvin’s clarification of spiritual principles for the Reformed Church had implications for its interior appointments. Perhaps only the suppression of images is intended, but since images had by and large been eliminated by 1542, this oblique reference to the interiors of future church [temple] interiors is tantalizing. Yet in the final analysis this description remains obscure. Its writers do not clarify whether it is to image destruction, obliteration, or whitewashing to which they refer; nor do we do learn who was involved or when, exactly, these actions (or their consequences) took place. Was this a process newly undertaken in 1541 or 1542? So far in this particular history of Saint Gervais the possibility remains that the eradication of wall painting was undertaken for the very first time only in 1546. The authors add (in translation): At Saint Gervais [construction] works were seriously undertaken after 1546, pursuant to the intervention of Calvin. While the large works, overseen by the carpenter Rolet Carrier and the stonemasons Charles Bonnet and Beatrice Privati, Le temple Saint Gervais (Guidebook), Geneva, 1991, p. 46. 177

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Monet du Cetour and Jean Burnet were clearly completed in 1547, certain works continued past mid-century; in 1565, the carpenter Thivent Genod completed carpentry on the clock...the first measures focused on the elimination of the last traces of idolatry. Wall paintings were scraped off the walls and covered over with whitewash, which has been repeated regularly ever since.178 (My emphasis.) In the first of these two passages concerning the cleansing of churches the authors could have been referring to whitewashing when they wrote ‘images were suppressed.’179 If so, in this subsequent passage which refers to 1546, it was remaining wall-paintings that were scraped off the walls or paintings which bled through the top coat of paint (…Les premières mesures prises visaient à éliminer les dernieres marques ‘d’idolotrie’), which were scraped away and covered over with white-lime (gratées et recouvertes de badigeons). Should we understand that only readily-removable or free-standing images were suppressed in 1534 and 1535 and wall-paintings eliminated in 1546? It is possible that not everything or only portable images and items were removed in 1535, additional items suppressed in 1541, and the balance, such as frescoes and wall paintings, in 1546/47 and 1565. Whichever the case, this history, one of the very few that mentions whitewashing at all, suggests that Calvin played a central role in the program to make-over Saint Gervais. This history does not account for all of the churches in Geneva, nor explicitly the original interior whitening of Saint Gervais, The historian of the Swiss Reformation, Gabriel Mutzenberg, after a lifetime of studying the Swiss Reformation was yet uncertain when Geneva’s churches were whitewashed when I spoke with him, and thinks it must have been either in 1535 or À Saint-Gervais, les travaux furent véritablement entrepris dès 1546, à la suite d’une intervention de Calvin. Si le gros oeuvre, dirigé par le charpentier Rolet Carrier et les maçons Monet du Cetour et Jean Burnet, fut vraisemblablement achevé en 1547, certains travaux se poursuivrent cependant au-dela du milieu de siècle; en 1565, le charpentier Thivent Genod realisa la charpente du clocher … Les premières mesures prises visaient à éliminer les dernieres marques ‘d’idolotrie.’ Les images peintes sur les murs furent gratées et recouvertes de badigeons, qui fut répèté, depuis, régulièrement. 179 Ibid., pp. 46, 47. That interior changes were made in 1546 is reiterated in a chronology following the text which states for this date: ‘Aménagement de l’église de Saint-Gervais en temple et création de trois galleries sur le flanc nord en lieu et place des chapelles.’ (p. 59). No source for this information is indicated. The chapels that were closed off during the reformation have in part been restored. The galleries installed have been removed and other renovations made to return the church to its state as of c. 1541. 178

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1541.180 As noted above, Spicer adduces the date of 1543.181 The only record I have located which discusses colour selection for painting the walls of the Temple Saint Pierre is dated 1643. These minutes record the decision by the Seigneurie to whitewash the walls and to apply a stone-colour to the trim. (Fig. 7.5). There are a number of reasons why Calvin may have been accredited with the whitewashed ‘Calvinist’ interior even though it was not necessarily he who initiated it. One of the more obvious of these is the success of International Calvinism, particularly in the Netherlands, its Puritan heritage in England, Presbytarian heritage in Scotland and colonial heritage in the American colonies. Added to this is the relative obscurity of Guillaume Farel, at least in the popular mind, not to mention the fact that the whitened interior conforms well aesthetically with Calvin’s theological aesthetics; here are similarities between the way in which the attributes of the colour white correspond to essential goals of the Calvinist program. This is also true of Zwingli’s aesthetics. Notwithstanding that there are differences between their respective positions on visual imagery — both essentially mandate the use of this colour. Calvin’s and Zwingli’s views about the inadmissibility of the visual and material in a pure and true faith were not negotiable. Figurative and metaphorical language such as that found in the example quoted at the beginning of this chapter and in those that follow, used by Calvin in The Institutes and in his Sermons and Tracts, demonstrate an identifiable set of views about the colour white. Although possessing different literary styles, the mindset demonstrated in the way Calvin uses whiteness figuratively in his writings and sermons suggests a predisposition toward the colour white as the colour metaphor of choice, just as it was for Zwingli where concepts of purity, simplicity and spirituality are invoked. Likewise Calvin’s christology insists on the impossibility of depicting or in any way rendering spiritual content using material means because of the immateriality of God. And, yet, the church as worship space, which is, after all, a physical construction of some kind, is inescapably a material expression of, and a symbol for, the True Faith. At the same time, pursuant to the regenerate Christianity, it must remain empty of distracting material content. Beyond this, and even Personal conversation in Geneva, June, 2000. As frustrating as the absence of hard information is, the absence of investigation of the whitewashing question suggests the normative nature of the whitewashed church interior. 181 Spicer, ‘Architecture’, p. 513. 180

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more dramatic is one of the philosophical dilemmas that is the outcome of the radical position on the inadmissibility of the material into the ‘spiritual’ world: taken to its logical conclusion, the argument also demolishes any basis for a visible church; for all intents and purposes this would be the church building; even group worship would become redundant. Zwingli argued relying on Matthew 6:6 that nothing — absolutely nothing — was needed to practice one’s faith, or to be a Christian — but one’s faith.

Calvin’s Influence In the Netherlands the Protestant movement had been active since 1518 due, initially, to Luther’s influence which had entered the Low Countries from Germany and France. Since Luther’s rebellion against the Emperor had made religion topical, many writings from the moderate Erasmus to reformers like Calvin had been imprinted and reprinted numerous times in the Low Lands to meet the demands of popular interest. Lutheran material had been in circulation as forbidden literature in the early 1520s.182 Lutheran churches had been established at Antwerp, Tournai, Lille, and Valenciennes. By 1544 Anabaptists were holding clandestine conventicles; Calvinist preachers were leading meetings to discuss relevant issues such as the nature of the sacraments and the duties of a Christian; while common funds were established to support the poor and to finance propaganda.183 Nonetheless, among the Reformed and reforming, the tenor of the populace at this time was, as in England, more Erasmian than Zwinglian or Calvinist.184 Indeed, Calvin’s initial efforts to penetrate the Netherlands were not welcomed. Even as late as 1543 when Calvin sent to the Netherlands over two hundred copies of a pamphlet called, ‘A Short Treatise Showing what the Faithful Man, Knowing the Truth of the Gospel, Must Do when he is among the Papists’, it was met by complaints.185 One year later, however, a group of Reformed individuals from Tournai came to Geneva to request that a Calvinist minister be sent to the Netherlands Crew, Calvinist Preaching, pp. 6, 51–52. Ibid., p. 52. 184 Crew uses the term ‘Reformed’ interchangeably with ‘Calvinist’ as, she says, contemporaries did, and only Protestant in distinction to individuals specifically associated with Calvin after 1544. Crew, p. 1. 185 Ibid., p. 51. 182 183

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out of fear that their new religion was under fatal threat through the opposing influences of traditional Catholicism and its ‘spellbinding sorceries’ and the millenarianism of Libertine preachers.186 It seems the delegates from Tournai believed only men with the particular tenacity of the Calvinists would be equipped to defend the faith. In the final analysis, Phyllis Mack Crew concludes that Calvinism was taken on board in the Netherlands not because its doctrine or its liturgy was more pure, but because its ministers ‘had the requisite intransigence to achieve coherence in the movement’.187 Between 1544 and 1563 hedge-preaching developed on a massive scale. These were not initiated by Calvinist ministers or consistories, although they were without question reformed in spirit and intention.188 On occasion, in addition to clandestine Bible readings which took place in private homes, literally thousands of people would attend these outdoor sermons. 189 Calvinist ministers continued to organise consistories, synods, and public religious services, however, until the Catholic government forced them underground or to immigrate in 1563. In 1564 only one year after the repression, Margaret of Parma, in a bid for tolerance, invited the Protestants to return.190 The number of worshippers and preachers grew as did the hedge-preachings and services until the movement had spread across the entire country.191 Margaret of Parma, as regent of the Netherlands, issued an edict which has been described as draconian, outlawing the hedge-preachings. The effort to stem the swell was to no avail, and the edict was rescinded in the spring of 1566.192 In August, 1566 the iconoclastic riots known as ‘The Troubles’ broke out in the Netherlands and within a period of two weeks nearly all of the seventeen provinces had each experienced major acts of iconoclasm.193 The reformers had established a right to hold public services and demanded churches of their own. The question remained to what extent tolerance would be Ibid., p. 57–58. Ibid. 188 Ibid., p. 7. 189 According to Crew, estimates range from seven to 14,000 in attendance. Crew, p. 8. 190 Margaret of Parma, b. 1522, was the illegitimate daughter of of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; in 1538 married Ottavio Farnese, duke of Parma, became Duchess of Parma, and Regent of the Netherlands. 191 Davis, pp. 1, 6–8. 192 Crew, p. 6. 193 Crew, pp. 10–11. 186 187

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permitted by the Catholic government. In a bid to appease discontent with Spanish rule Margaret formally allowed Protestant ‘preaching’ to continue where it had already been taking place, but, as Crew shows, the Calvinists interpreted this to include all aspects of their cult. The Regent resisted what were to her further concessions, for political as well as religious reasons, and when Protestant dominated cities such as Tournai and Valenciennes rebelled she did not hesitate to use available armies to quash them.194 The details of the progress of the Protestantization of the Netherlands, and of the advances, successes, and failures of Calvinism in particular are many and complex and expertly detailed in Crew and elsewhere. Crew’s description of the iconoclasm that swept through the country will suffice to give an indication of the extent of image-stripping and of its velocity. She wrote: A group of men and boys...succeeded in destroying the interiors of thirty churches in two days... By Friday, when the High Bailiff orders them to leave the city, seven parish churches, one collegial church, twenty-five cloisters, ten almshouses, and seven chapels had been sacked. The image-breakers then divided into three groups and dispersed into villages in the countryside, where they continued to ‘purify’ the churches.195 Most historians of the Reformation in the Netherlands tell similar stories where, as in this account, the churches do not appear to have been whitewashed during the first wave of iconoclasm — at least not immediately.196 Again in the 1580s197 another storm of iconoclasm would sweep the Netherlands just as a subsequent, very intentional, episode would take place in England during 1663–64, as we have already seen. But there were a small number of Netherlandish writers, Veluanus among them, fundamentally indebted to Erasmus and Zwingli, whose Ibid., pp. 13–15. Ibid, p. 12, citing Dierickx, ‘Beeldenstorm’, p. 1045. 196 About iconoclastic activities in Ghent Freedberg says:‘...by the third week [it] had spread to the whole country...[By this time] seven parish churches, one collegiate church, twenty-five monasteries, ten hospitals, and seven chapels had been damaged.’ David A. Freedberg, Ph.D. Dissertation, Oxford, 1972, subsequently published in facsimile form (pagination is the same) as: Iconoclasm and Painting in the Netherlands, 1566–1609, New York, 1988. 197 For example, Antwerp experienced another wave of iconoclasm in 1581. Freedberg, Dissertation, p. 18. 194 195

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writings were widely popular, deeply threatening to the Catholic Church and the Crown, and which promoted not only the whitened interior, but the very act of whitewashing as necessary for a Reformed service to take place. As one can see from the excerpts of Veluanus’s writings quoted earlier (Chapter III), they not only contained criticisms of the traditional church, but thinly veiled inducements to re-decorate-it-away. Veluanus’s influence cannot be overlooked for the reasons historians have already observed; that is, for his ‘wide-ranging condemnation of images,’ but also for his views on reformed church interiors. Freedberg observes that neither Karlstadt, Zwingli, nor their numerous followers who shared the views of Veluanus, ever expressed their sentiments with a vigour like those of this Dutch reform advocate, which suggests a particularly determined evangelism. Equally important, however, and not emphasized by Freedberg or others, was the particular way in which he advocated their conclusive removal. That this re-decoration turned out to be whitewash is supported by Freedberg’s comments later in his study in a discussion of the radicalness of Veluanus’s ideas.198 Surprisingly Freedburg places Veluanus ‘broadly in the Erasmian stream of thought.’ His analysis of the influence of the magisterial reformers on Veluanus is that: ‘Zwingli’s influence on Veluanus was strong; Calvin’s less strong;’ but because of Luther’s position on images ‘no Lutheran inflection whatsoever can be identified in his writings.’ The connexion Freedberg establishes in the passage above points to another important link between the aesthetics of Zwingli and their impact on Calvin and Calvinism. The 198 Ibid., p. 39. In view of the extreme nature of Veluanus’s stance vis-à-vis images, placing him anywhere near the orbit of Erasmus seems puzzling in the extreme, since Erasmus was neither inclined to Protestantism nor iconoclasm. However, in Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569, (Cambridge, London, and New York, 1978), Phyllis Mack Crew likewise emphasizes that until the ‘Troubles of 1566’, and even thereafter, the dominant influence on reform-minded Low Landers was Erasmus of Rotterdam. The Netherlanders had a tradition of Erasmianism; their motivation to reform, as Crew puts it, ‘went totally counter to the intransigence of Calvin.’ They wished to reform clericalism and sacramentarianism, but did not perceive a need to take a hard line in favour of either Catholic or Protestant. Furthermore, (following Crew), by the time Calvin’s representatives (or his pamphlet) appeared on the local scene, the Netherlands had been ‘inundated by evangelical doctrine’ (Luther, Zwingli, but esp. the former) whose works had been widely circulated for twenty years already, since 1519. See Crew, pp. 51–53. In this view Freedberg, although counter-intuitive, is consistent. The most relevant text by Erasmus would likely be the Enchiridion, chapters 4, 6, 7, 12, 13 which address the Christian’s relationship to material forms. See Eire, ‘Simplicity’, p. 348 on this point.

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suggestion of Zwingli’s influence here is nuanced; not, even, very specific, of a sort generally passed over by scholars and others. This is perhaps because we are accustomed to thinking of the Netherlands in terms of Calvinism. Building on Freedberg’s analysis that Zwingli’s influence on Veluanus was strong, Calvin’s less so, it seems reasonable to conclude that the concept of whitewashed churches in Veluanus’s thought is Zwinglian, rather than his own or Calvin’s, and that the whitewashing of churches in the Netherlands at a fundamental level, no less so. That Veluanus’s ideas about the removal of images, promulgated in his book, Den leken wechwijser, are not only inseparable from the violent expression of events in August 1566, but sustained their influence over the twelve intervening years, is well demonstrated by Freedberg’s researches.199 The popularity of Veluanus’s thought and the dissemination of this text is particularly significant. This is borne out by the number of re-printings of Den leken, and by the fact that it was banned in the Netherlands once the authorities sensed its following. Clearly the concept of painting Protestant church interiors white appealed to his biblical colour-thinking as well as to his theological sensibilities, and that he promoted it zealously as an integral part of a larger polemical programme. Veluanus is almost certainly a key player in the promulgation of the idea, being actively disseminated in the print media as early as 1554, and possibly earlier in hedge-preachings and sermons as well. This is a good thirty years after Zürich reformed its churches in a Zwingli-led campaign, but during the intervening years the Zwinglian in Veluanus will have kept Zwingli’s influence alive.200 Meanwhile, Calvin’s deputies were actively developing their corporate structure, putting down roots, and preaching. Unfortunately, as each of the historians cited above have demonstrated, there is little record of what was actually said at the hedge-preachings or scripture readings. But Freedberg adduces references to whitewashing in letters from governing nobles or magistrates authorising the removal of images. These suggest, as Freedberg says, that the practice had already become normative: Outbreaks of iconoclasm were frequently preceded by the demands of Protestants for a church of their own.... [or by] the production 199 Freedberg, citing Veluanus, J. A., Den leken wechwyser, in Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlander, ed., S. Cramer and F. Pijper, iv, The Hague, 1906, pp. 387–376. 200 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

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of spurious letters from higher officials authorising the removal of images and the whitewashing of churches in preparation for Protestant worship. 201 Thus, that the populace received the message that white was the appropriate colour for the interior of their churches is clear by the successful sales of Veluanus’s book; it is clear, furthermore, that the sustained practice of whitewashing had become a threshold act in the process of converting churches to Protestant use. As late as 1622, Den Leken was cited as one of the most influential works of the period. About this Freedberg wrote, ‘[O]ne can see why Grotius in 1622 mentioned the Leeken-Weg-Wiljer along with the writings of Erasmus, the Decades of Bullinger, and the Loci Communes of Melancthon in the group of four works he regarded of especial influence.’ Thus, the Calvinists were clearly associated with the purification programme undertaken by the iconoclasts. Within only weeks of the riots, the Calvinists had been granted permission to build two new churches of their own outside Antwerp. The priests and nuns from Tournai and Valenciennes had fled to the towns of Rijssel and Mons, ‘where the Calvinists had less influence.’202 Rudimentary Protestant congregations and Calvinist forms of government, such as ‘Councils of Eighteen’, were set up, dominated by Calvinist members who tolerated, or even encouraged, iconoclasm.203 By 1581, in Antwerp a Calvinist council replaced the Catholic membership, and that same year, the city of Antwerp sustained a second serious round of iconoclastic activity.204 There were similarities between all towns experiencing iconoclasm, but also some differences. In Mechelen and Turnhout there were outbreaks also, but these were generally less riotous than the towns which had sustained iconoclasm thus far. An example of resistance to image-breakers occurs in Leeuwaarden, where the magistrate did not lose control of his town. About this Freedberg wrote: ...a beginning was made by stripping only one of the parish churches, Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. 203 Freedberg writes: ‘many of the towns followed the example of Brussels in setting up a Council of Eighteen, usually dominated by Calvinists who tolerated or incited the sacxking of churches. Ibid., p. 18. Crew says that while they were not obviously responsible for the iconoclasm they were willing to take credit for inspiring reform. See Crew, p. 22–23. 204 Ibid, p. 18. 201 202

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which was then whitewashed in order to allow the two foreign preachers to hold their sermons.205 In the face of fast-approaching winter the Protestants asked whether they might not be given some churches in which to practice their faith, which could ‘be purified for the preaching of the gospel.’ 206 Freedberg identifies the difference as being attributable to whether the programme was ‘the purification of churches for Protestant worship, rather than an attack on Roman idolatry,’207 and this is very plausible. A parallel argument can be made about the use of whitewash: whether it signifies colour or non-colour, obliteration or purification, has everything to do with the stage of reform during which it is used. It seems clear that in the case of the Netherlandish churches the concept of purification became a necessary, non-negotiable procedure churches underwent before they were deemed fit for Protestant worship. We can infer that whitewashing was almost certainly part of this process, especially if, as in the case of Antwerp, the Catholic churches had already been ‘purified’ (in the sense of ‘stripped’) of their idolatrous objects. At Leeuwaarden, Freedberg writes, ‘the preachers refused to conduct services until the churches had been whitewashed, and the same thing happened in certain parts of Limbourg’.208 Acts of iconoclasm typically prefaced the creation of these ‘new’ (‘re-newed’, or recovered) worship spaces and in themselves came to be associated with ritual purging pleasing to God, as we have seen. Very quickly, in Holland, Zürich and the Vaud, they came to be done in order to please God just as image-worshiping had been done before. As the protest against idolatry gained momentum in Protestant territories, its conceptual reach quickly extended to include humanly devised ceremonies of any kind, in virtue of their quality of performative depiction, not to mention the apparent conjuring magic that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, for example, implied. Thus, the best-known justification for the removal of images had been its goal to eliminate the practice of idolworship and also to purge the Church of papalism and its rituals. J. J. Woltjer, ‘De beeldenstorm in Leeuwaarden’, Spiegel Historiaal, iv, 1969, 170–75, cited in Freedberg, Dissertation, p. 16. 206 Freedberg, p. 22. Cf. pp. 16, 18. 207 Ibid., p. 14. 208 Duke, A.C. and Kolff, D.H. A. ‘The time of Troubles in the County of Holland, 1566–7’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, lxxxii (1969), pp. 316–337. 205

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In some places, Zürich and England, for example, the prohibition against the making of religious images, on commission or otherwise, came to include even ostensibly innocent didactic narratives, and were also forbidden or discouraged. Thus, what was initially an outwardly directed overt gesture designed to secure one’s salvation (whose value was then appraised by self-appointed churchmen), on an intermediate basis was justified as a didactic form (even by Zwingli, as long as it was narrative), then came to be proscribed altogether as part of the goal to eliminate idolatry from Western Christendom. An explicit element of the goal to eliminate idolatry was the notion of cleansing filth, which papal culture and its cultic objects were in no uncertain terms considered to be. The elimination of ceremonies likewise would remove corruption, another form of pollution. Both were detritus. Deeply embedded in the idea of whitewashing is cleansing, particularly emotive is whitewashing to protect against the plague. It is not a big leap between whitewashing against plague and whitewashing out papal filth, also a form of disease. Cleansing images and ceremonies were earnestly believed to restore the Church to its pristine, primitive and apostolic state, understood at this time to have been imageless, and without papal overlay of any kind (including colourful vestments) until approximately 500 C.E. In the sixteenth century, not only were cleansed walls purged of papal pollution, but in a positive sense they had been made to conform to the ideal and idealized conception of appropriate worship space described by the church fathers (those enumerated above, including Clairvaux). Lastly, and importantly, the whitened interior created a form of chastening enclosure in which an opportunity to establish a new form of imaging God was established: a non-mimetic image of divine light that would serve equally as a reverberating sounding board for the Word of God in sermons. In this capacity the whitened walls may be said to be both a representation in its own right as well as a chastening device. It is likely as a by-product of these factors that the bare and whitened church became a mascot for the Reformed church. That the painting of one’s church with whitewash would have become a ritualistic act of cleansing, carrying with it all the nuances of any other ritual act, is nothing short of perfect symmetry. The ritual of whitewashing not only speaks to the power of the concept of whitewashing itself; to the importance of the act of whitewashing as a physical action that actually cleanses, a whitewashed interior importantly shows itself to be cleansed by

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its very being. No traces of idolatry could re-inhabit those walls without being seen. Luther had written on the danger of replacing catholic rituals with new ones. Each of the magisterial reformers had written about the necessity of filling an emotional and ceremonial void left by reformed liturgies, stripped interiors, and the proscription against religious images in general. It is possible that, in an important sense, ritual whitewashings filled this void because it brought the community together in the process of establishing a new form of worship while established a corporate sense of identity.

Conclusion The influence of Zürich and Geneva on England is no less than on the Netherlands although it took different forms and was conveyed through different means. During Zwingli’s lifetime Zürich had been the‘epi-center of religious change’ as Benedict described it, and this is true, notwithstanding that travel and communications were cumbersome, especially across the English Channel.209 Geneva would assume an ascendant role on the Continent in time, but in England Calvinism would take root really only after Zwingli’s colleague and successor, Heinrich Bullinger(1536/7-1550), had already exercised considerable influence there. Among the English exiles in the Swiss Confederation a number would return to England with the goal of replicating either Zürich or Geneva. Recently Diarmaid MacCullogh has demonstrated the influence of Zürich on England through the concerted and creative efforts of Bullinger and his network of co-evangelists, colleagues, allies, friends, and English exiles with whom he conscientiously nurtured relationships focused on the campaign to reform.210 In this chapter I have tried to show the line of thinking that would explain the religious relevance and appropriateness of the whitewashing of Genevan church interiors as a logical, almost necessary outcome of Calvin’s program for reform. Although never programmatically set out in the way that Calvin outlines the Christian religion itself in the Institutes, the material Benedict, p. 19. Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Heinrich Bullinger and the English-speaking World’, in Heinrich Bullinger. Life — Thought — Influence , Emilio Campi and Peter Opitz, eds., (Zürcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd 24, vol. 2, 2007, pp. 891–934. 209 210

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demands of reality would insist that decisions about the physical form of both the worship space and liturgy be made. Thus, Calvin’s thinking about colour and related concepts of purity, truth, and true religion, make sense out of the practice. Whether or not the whitened Calvinist church was a direct outcome of the reformer’s personal desideratum for ecclesiastical interiors or, as I have suggested, a result of Zwingli’s influence, is not really known. The paradigm, however, was transmitted in his name in the generation following Zwingli’s demise and emulated in far-reaching and, perhaps, unintended ways, some of which I have demonstrated in the course of this book. That whitewashings in their own time were not noted as a form of ritual is not altogether surprising. As an age-old practice, and being the colour white (and arguably a ‘not colour’), whitewashing may have seemed more like putting one’s house in order than anything else. For Zwingli the aesthetic and theological effect and significance of the whitewashed interior was immediately apparent. Elsewhere, it may have been the ritual act of cleansing that mattered the most although, as we have seen, for Veluanus in the Netherlands the religious relevance of the colour was not overlooked nor was it incidental. For Calvinist Geneva between 1541–1564, the picture is much less clear, although some of those who visited there were inspired to imitate Genevan form and brought whitewashing back with them to England. For them, the whitened church interior became a physical and symbolic representation of purification and of the victory of the spiritualized worship of a transcendent and invisibile God; the blankness of that wall, a reminder to turn the self inward to ready oneself to receive the Word.

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ost historians writing about the sixteenth century Reformation, on the Continent or in England, mention the practice of whitewashing churches, and so they should. In addition to the removal of images, altars, sculptures, ornate vessels, the extinguishing of lights, and the disuse of vestments, the whitening of church interiors was one of the most dramatic and long-lasting changes that took place within the physical fabric of the church. Still, few have delved deeply into the subject to discover what, if any, meaning or symbolism might have become attached to, or been the source of the practice. The purpose of this study has been to consider whether there was any meaning to the whitewashings beyond a cheap coat of paint; what, if any, theological rationale might have justified the use of lime white as opposed to any other colours or finishes, and whether there was a discernable pattern or theology which linked Zwingli and Zurich, John Calvin and Geneva, the English reformers, and the Lowlands together with respect to this practice. Following the whitewashing of the churches in Zürich in June, 1524, a pattern of whitewashing emerged, spreading across Europe to those places where more radical forms of Reformation took place. Indeed, it might be said that whitewashing was an expression of the radicalization of reform and for this reason it is no surprise that it manifested itself in the Zwinglian, Calvinist, Puritan, and Scottish Presbytarian churches. However, it was not a practice limited to the more radical sectors of the Reformation. Churches were whitewashed in England beginning with the reign of Edward VI, long before the Puritan movement could be said to have reached a critical mass. This fact is likely due to the influence of those exiles such as John Hooper, Edmund Grindal, Edwin Sandys and Richard Cox, who lived in Zürich and

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brought back with them to England the fervour to re-create the Anglican church in the Zwinglian image; and subsequently to those who lived in Geneva, returning to England with a desire to makeover the English church in the Genevan tradition. Were the whitewashings in Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands an indication of religious and social change, or a measure of its depth? Was the practice due as much to Calvin as to Zwingli, or not to Calvin or Zwingli at all? As we have seen, both men are associated with whitened church interiors, austerity, and with nascent Puritanism. Both were influential in the Netherlands and in England, although this was more or less evident in different decades. Was the coat of whitewash purely a practical matter, or was it a political act? An act of violent, purposeful destruction directed at the Papacy, or an opportunistic form of graffiti committed by an enthusiastic sector of the public? Was it incidental to the elimination of representation within the church along with other ‘externals’, or did it signify theological meaning according to a generalized sense of impetus to reform? Or was it specific to Zwinglianism or Calvinism in particular? The suppression of colour symbolism and of figurative images within the Reformed church is associated with the Calvinist whitewashed interior. Whitened interiors may have been incidental in some cases but in certain parts of Europe it had unequivocally become a purification ritual in its own right. Was this negotiable? From a practical standpoint, it has only been possible to address a limited number of these many questions on the occasion of this book, and to consider a few key examples of the practice as the Reformation took hold, or was carried out, in the cantons of Zürich and Geneva in the Swiss Confederation, in England, and in the Netherlands. However, the questions enumerated above are all questions which I have attempted to consider in some way to a greater or lesser degree. The history of whitewashing in a religious context is further complicated by the consideration of colourthinking, a topic in itself, in most cases complicated by the absence of known records describing any deliberation on the subject. There is very little written evidence of which we are aware that assigns ready and explicit meaning to the practice and, as a result, much of what has been written in this investigation has been predicated on a study of those centers where whitewashing occurred on a large scale, and of the theology and colour-thinking of those reformers and leaders associated with this transformation. I have investigated the use of colour and colour symbolisms found in the Bible to highlight the kind of references which I believe would have shaped

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the thinking of almost every individual alive in the Western hemisphere in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We can trust that the meaning of the colour white in both the Old and New Testaments never strays very far from its signification of purity and righteousness, but that the nature of the whiteness changes between the two texts. In the Old Testament the use of the purity of whiteness is ritualistic and symbolic. White garments are worn by priests at rituals, at weddings, and at other important events. In the New Testament the symbolisms of whiteness allude in addition to the transcendental and supernatural, indicative of a divine force and of a special status conferred by God on the righteous and morally pure. Still, if one were to ask Zwingli or Calvin what symbolism was foremost in their minds at the point decisions to whitewash church interiors were being deliberated, it is likely they would not have said they were thinking consciously of their worship spaces wearing a coat of whitewash as though it were the white garment of faith or of righteousness. Many of Zwingli’s writings argue fervently against symbolism of any kind, and so it is unlikely that he would consciously deploy a metaphor in this obvious way. Yet these two magisterial reformers thought about being washed clean, symbolized by whiteness, and being washed in whiteness as an appropriate gesture or solution to the emptied space left by the stripping of interiors. Zwingli had clearly assimilated the symbol of the white garment of righteousness, and referred to it a number of times in his writings, including in his Form of Baptism, written in May, 1525.1 There, it is not at all clear that the traditional white baptismal garment was not retained as part of the Zürich ritual.2 Several times Zwingli refers to the white garment or white shirt in a negative sense by way of comment on hypocritical individuals who wore it in pretence of being honourable when they were not. In this way the white garment parallels the whitewashed tomb of Matthew 23:27, as we have also seen; yet its value as a signifier of righteousness, and purity of heart and soul remains intact. There is a tension between the way Zwingli invokes the symbol of the white garment (or shirt) of the garment of righteousness in particular, while disparaging the use of symbols in general; but that he understood the white garment to represent moral rectitude, righteousness and purity, there can be no mistake. The Shepherd, Pipkin/Furcha, II, p. 91; Exposition of the sixty-seven Articles, 16th and 18th Arts.; Archeteles, Latin works, I, p. 163. 2 See especially Article 18, Pipkin/Furcha, p. 100; The Form of Baptism, Henry Gee and William John Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, London 1896. 1

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Zwingli’s argument for the Eucharist as a ‘remembrance’ (Wiedergedächtnis) 3 also shows us that he saw the value of certain symbolisms and, indeed, that he was willing to use them. Admittedly the arguments for and against the Eucharist were based on specific references in the New Testament, and there is no such argument for a whitewashed church interior. Would Zwingli have consciously used a colour symbolism he also associated with hypocrisy? Possibly, because it provided a link to the apostolic church, to concepts of simplicity, honesty, and humility, and to the Divine attributes of God. The model of apostolic simplicity which pre-dates Gregory I, and the introduction of images into the church, was the example the Magisterial Reformers sought to recover. There one can find arguments for simplicity, humility and honesty and against vanity, pride, and hypocrisy that may be linked to the use of colour and rich materials. By inversion, the same is closely associated with the ‘not coloured’, and with the use of plain, unadorned fabrics; likewise, in the rejection of the Jewish temple described by Moses. Whether each of these considerations played an active role in the practice of whitewashing churches one cannot be certain. But it is more than likely that the emphasis on purity and righteousness which may be found in the writings of both Zwingli and Calvin would have mandated such a choice. The pursuit of a pure faith, or of a purified faith, of purified liturgy and sacred spaces led Zwingli to seek to find forms of expression that at once could be claimed legitimately to be consistent with the Word of God on idols and images while instantiating the spiritualised values of the renewed church. Inevitably, the physical church — the visible church — demanded that new forms be found which would symbolize its re-spiritualisation. No other colour but white could do this in the context of a pursuit of apostolic purity; in this sense the Reformed programme demanded the use of limewhite in addition to the suppression of other visual detail. What is more, as there is little or no chromatic content in the colour white, there is little of which it may be divested, giving the reformer a ready-made analogue for the honesty, simplicity and humility sought by the true Christian. It is its unadorned self and purports to be nothing further. The image of the Divine light of God in its many manifestations led late medieval and post-medieval generations to seek to fill their churches 3 First written about in Art 18, Exposition of the Sixty-seven Conclusions, Pipkin/Furcha, I.; Later in Z III, 341, 342: ‘Edere est credere’; conclusively in Z III, 351 ‘Symbolum eorum esse, qui firmiter Christi morte exhaustum et deletum esse peccatum credunt et gratias agunt.

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with clear light. Patristic and classical texts too, may not have been without influence in this aspect of colour-thinking as in these latter examples the humanist student would have found an astounding consistency with respect to ideas about the colour white, the Divine light of God, and white light. The concept of whiteness as something pure, as an analogue for light, indeed, as signifying the transcendental light of the divine spirit, would not have been foreign to any of the divines discussed in this study. This in itself would have provided a sufficient rational for the whitewashing of churches. The ideas of St Bernard of Clairvaux are not without importance in a study of this subject because he offered a substantial example of ecclesiastical architecture committed to purity of form, function, content, simplicity and humility. However, his was directed to the clergy only; Zwingli’s to the world and every citizen in it, and it is the metabolisation of these values we see in the twentieth century, beginning with the early Modern Movement. The white walls became a necessary part of the ‘modern interior’ of the 1960s and 70s. Its appearance in the Catholic church itself as a symbol of a universalist stance makes Protestant aesthetics particularly important. In the Jubliee Church of the Year 2000 one can see the whitened church make one of its most remarkable appearances yet. Within the context of an evangelising programme the Vatican is creating an all-white church to symbolise its universalist stance and its receptivity to the modern world. In its role as a piece of modern architectural grammar it has successfully penetrated to the core of a bastion of Catholic conservatism. The Vatican is not making the same statement here as white churches did for Father Couturier. Two separate processes or activities are clarified by this study which are normally associated with iconoclasm. The first is iconoclasm itself — the removal of pictures, images and idols within the church; the second concerns what happened afterward, whether the stripped surfaces and interiors were ‘made good’, whitewashed, or re-finished in some other way. It is around the former that most work has been done by scholars, and with which whitewashing is most readily associated as the great obliterator of images, second only to burning and smashing. But, just as special meanings have been attributed to the rituals of burning and smashing statues and images, significance above and beyond its practical aspects may be attributed to the practice of whitewashing which distinguishes it from other forms of iconoclasm. Like burning, whitewashing was intended to achieve a kind of ‘purification’, specifically of church interior walls; that is, the removal of images which presented a temptation to the

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Christian worshipper and distracted him from his purpose. From the start whiteliming ‘purified’ by obliterating all it touched, and with this it took away all traces of the past, unlike damaged sculptures and re-cycled liturgical objects. In this important way whitelime left its own traces which offered the Protestants a ready-made visual vehicle for the symbolization of Reformed status and of the institutionalization of the new church. The ramifications of this would extend beyond local congregations to the greater community of Reformed Christians. The obvious colour question, whether white was understood to be a colour or the absence of colour has real ramifications for a study of this kind and, depending on how a particular society or community answered this question, would affect any interpretation about its use. I suggested in Chapter II that if white paint (whitewash, Ripolin, etc.) were being used actively, to create change or eliminate something, then it functioned as a colour. If it was being used passively, without particular awareness, for example, because the previous coat of paint was white, then it cannot be said to be functioning in the fullest sense as a colour, but as a non-colour, or zero condition. But even the concept of zero-condition can be deployed in either an active or passive sense, depending on whether it is being sought or has been achieved; is declared or undeclared. The whitewashing in Zürich was a dramatic, revolutionary event which created an unequivocal break with centuries of tradition and all that those centuries cumulatively represented. In this sense it involved a conscious act establishing a clean slate on which a new script could be written and, which, furthermore, offered no opportunities for a return to the past. Zwingli’s delight in his newly painted interiors would not have been focused on their whiteness had the loci of his satisfaction been predicated on the eradication of images alone. The case of Geneva is less clear cut than Zürich, but Calvin’s emphasis on purity alone, no less than Zwingli’s, would justify the whitewashing of churches there. It follows too that the metaphoric merits of whiteness, as opposed to blankness, would have dynamic value to Calvin for whom such things did not go unnoticed. Calvin was resident in Basel in 1536 and 1538 and would have seen the city’s whitewashed cathedral, which Erasmus had so lamented. And he must have known about Zürich’s reformed church interiors; Guillaume Farel certainly did. As suggested earlier, it is not out of the question that it was Farel, in fact, who initiated the whitewashing of churches in Geneva just before Calvin’s arrival, or played a central role in

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their transformation just after, in 1535 or 1536. With respect to Farel, then, the same questions about the motivation to invoke the symbolism of the white garment would need to be posed. The explanation for the suppression of colour lies not only in the eradication of images which ‘cleaned the slate’, or in the cheapness of lime, but in ‘the ‘colour-thinking’ of the Protestant reformers and in their relationship to colour itself, interpreted through Scripture and filtered through a perception of God as light, as Truth, as Perfection, as the Good, the Pure, and the Beautiful. In this context, the white wall might justifiably be characterised as a representation in its own right, of all that the Protestant church stood for: an emblem, a symbol, of the true Word revitalised in the Reformed community; of a God who cannot be represented in human or visual terms; of the light one bathes in as a participant in this faith. In this critical way, the whitewashing represents not the painting out of all images, although it was that too, but the painting in of a new symbol signifying one’s membership among the renewed spiritual congregation, consistent with the redeemed saints of Revelation. The subject is deceptively complex, and merits more work, not least because in the time frame available for this study, the church records and histories of countless smaller towns across three countries could not be reviewed. Yet a primary goal of this study was to discover whether a theological basis for whitewashing existed, and whether a particular way of thinking about the colour white might be discerned which could be said to have motivated certain precedent-setting reformers to arrive at this particular solution or even to have demanded it of them.

Abbreviations CHOB

S. L. Greenslade, ed., Cambridge History of the Bible, The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, Cambridge, 1963. Chronik Edlibach, Gerold, Chronik, J. M. Usteri, ed., Mittheilungen der antiquarischen Geselleschaft in Zürich, Bd. 4, Zürich, 1846. Cooper’s Annals Cooper, Charles Henry, Annals of Cambridge iii, Cambridge, 1845. CWA Churchwardens’ Accounts, church records, etc. Dowsing’s Journal Cooper, Trevor, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing Iconoclasm in East Anglia During the Civil War, Woodbridge, (UK.), 2001. Egli Egli, Emil Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Zurcher reformation in den Jahren 1519–1533, 2 vols., Zürich, 1879. References are to the number of the document. EEA Elizabethan Episcopal Administration, W. P. M. Kennedy, ed., (Alcuin Club), London and Milwaukee, 1924. Farner I Farner Oskar, vol. I, (Huldrych Zwingli; Seine Jugend, schulzeit und studentenjahre, 1484–1506), Zürich, 1943. Farner II Farner, Oskar, vol. II, (Huldrych Zwingli, seine Entwicklung zum Reformator 1506–1520), Zürich, 1946. Farner III Farner, Oskar, vol. III, (Huldreich Zwingli, seine Verkündigung und ihre ersten Frücht 1520–1525), Zürich, 1954. Farner IV Farner, Oskar, vol. IV, (Huldrych Zwingli; Reformatorische Erneurerung von Kirche und Volk in Zürich und in der Eidgenossenschaft, 1525–1531), Zürich, 1960. Firth and Raitt Firth, C. H., and R. S. Raitt. eds., Acts and Ordinances

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of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, London, 1911. Frere and Kennedy Frere W. H and W.P. M. Kennedy, eds., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, 3 vols., London, New York, Bombay & Calcutta, 1910. Fincham Fincham, Kenneth, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, Woodbridge (UK), 1994–98. HZW I Huldrych Zwingli Writings, Volume I: In Defense of the Reformed Faith, E. J. Furcha (trans.), Dikran Y. Hadidian, ed., Allison Park, PA, 1984. HZW II Huldrych Zwingli Writings,Volume II: In Search of True Religion, H. Wayne Pipkin (trans.), Dikran Y. Hadidian, ed., Allison Park, PA, 1984. JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. KJB The Holy Bible, King James version, Cambridge. LWC Jackson, Samuel MacCauley, ed., The Latin Works and the Correspondence of Huldrych Zwingli, together with selections from his German works), 3 vols., (New York, 1912; Philadelphia, 1922, 1929). MQR Mennonite Quarterly Review. NEB New English Bible, Oxford Study Edition, Samuel Sandmel, et al., eds., New York and Oxford, 1976. NRSV New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Oxford and New York, 1962 and 1994. OED Oxford English Dictionary, Murray, J.A.H. and H. Bradley, W..A. Craigie, C.T. Onians, eds., Oxford, 1933. Park. Soc Parker Society. TRP Hughes, P.L. and J. F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, vols. I–III, New Haven and London, 1964–9. VAI Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, , 3 vols., W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, eds., London, New York, Bombay & Calcutta, 1908– 1910. Wyss Finsler, Georg ed., Die Chronik des Bernard Wyss, Basel, 1901. ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Stuttgart. ZWA Zwingliana (Journal)

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Index

A Achtemeier, Elizabeth 121n., 122, 153, 256n. Act of Uniformity (England) 189 Acts (New Testament) 151 Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele 145, 145n. aesthetics 333 Calvinist 361–2, 364, 376, 409, 412, 416, 422 beauty (the beautiful): 3n., 205, 215, 333, 357; Albertian theory on 101; attributes of 4n., 95, 97; of colour and light 97; divine beauty 153, 275 (Pseudo Dionysius), 320 (Zwingli); of hueless splendor 92, 94; independent of colour 92n.; new paradigm, establishment of 12, 30, 31, 32, 32n., 36, 43, 47, 50, 51, 59, 62, 63, 125n.,213–4, 233–4, 236, 290, 335, 336, 337, 362, 392, 419; outward beauty 144, 278–9, 305; painting vs. blank walls 8; of purple 116; Plotinus on 97, the pure, just, righteous 315, 317; of souls 92n.; pleasure in beautiful pictures 297; red

and 303; seen by the eye 317; spiritual 333; of white walls (Zwingli) 3, 3n., 30, 205; Zwingli’s concept of 317– 320, 332, 333, 334, 357 Puritan 32, 33, 35 purity and beauty 315, 317–19, 335, 337 and silence 13, 233–234, 312n. of simplicity 12, 13, 35, 36, 49, 69, 101–2, 233–234, 294, 314, 322, 323, 330, 333, 337, 342, 363, 403, 405, 409 Reformed Protestant 47, 51, 197, 197n., 198, 200, 332–3, 335, 361–2, 415 traditional Church, Catholic 4, 48–49, 51, 51n.; 202, 203, 406; whitened sepulchre 278–79; condemned by Zwingli 292 Zwinglian 294–95, 315, 317–19, 333, 361–2, 412, 416 à Lasco, John 211 Alberti, Leon Battista 32–33, 33n., 73, 73n., 90n., 92–93, 96, 99–103, 113–114, 118, 130 On the Art of Building in Ten Books (De re aedificatoria)

458 33n., 99–103, 113–114, 344n. On Painting (De Pictura) 73, 90n., 99 De officiis 103 albus, see ‘colour, white’ Alcmaeon of Croton 47 Alcuin 330 Altendorf, Hans Dietrich 43, 288, 288n., 289n., 302n. Ambrose, Saint 95 Anastasis, St Saviour in Chora, Istanbul (Fig. 2.15) Aquinas, St Thomas 77n., 78n., 81–84, 85, 317n., 321–322, 322n. architecture church buildings, necessity for 312, 413 church interior treatments, see ‘church interiors’ colour guidelines for temples, see ‘colour’ specific churches, see ‘churches’ portrait paintings of 24 Aristotle 47, 59, 74, 75n., 76–81, 85, 91, 100n., 116, 317n. Animals 115n Categories 80 Meteorology 78 Nicomachean Ethics 81n. Topics 77n., 78 Sense and Sensibilia 76, 78 Physics 78, 79 Art Sacré movement 201n., 202, 202n. Ascension, The (Figs. 1.6, 1.7) 18, 19 Asper, Hans, painter 218 (Fig. 4.1), 288n. Aston, Margaret 5n., 12, 13, 13n., 14, 14n., 30, 33, 34, 34n., 43, 50, 50n., 135n., 146n., 159n.,

161n., 166n., 181n., 182n., 189n., 206n., 212n. Augsburg Cathedral, Bavaria 141, 147–48 (Figs. 3.2, 3.4) Augustine, St, of Hippo 12, 213n., 317n. Auksi, Peter 12, 12n., 234, 285n., 311n., 326n., 333n., 361n., 402 B Baldwin., William 1; see Treatises Banham, Reyner 98 Ball, Philip 50n., 115n., 116n. baptism: and light symbolism 120, designated liturgical colour for 132, white garment and132, 153, 281, 335n., Zwinglian rite of 281, 335n., Calvinist rite of 349, iconoclastic position in re baptismal names 349, 349n. Basel, city of 6, 32n., 157, 190, 213 Basel cathedral 158, (Figs. 3.8–3.13) 162–165 Basler Chroniken 1518–1533 144n. Bateman, Stephen 210 Baxandall, Michael 3, 4n., Beardsley, Monroe C. 333n. Beatus of Liebanus 104 (Fig. 2.14) Benedict, Rule of 340n., 342n., 363 Benjamin., Asher 36 Berckheyde, Gerrit 29n., 194 (Fig. 3.23) Bergenroth, G.A. 166n. Bernard of Clairvaux: 233, 233n., 288n., 337–39, visual programme 31; colour in sacred contexts 113, 113n., 233n.; position on images 288n., 338, 338n., 339, 340, 340n., 341, 341n., 342; colour-thinking 340; vanity in architecture 340; on simplicity 341; Bernardine aesthetics

INDEX

134, 342, 342n.; light imagery 342, 342n.; influence on Zwingli 341n., 343, 344n., influence on Calvin 362n Bible, the: role of in sixteenth century study 239; colour terms in 244, colour language and symbolism in 235–282 binary oppositions, see ‘colour thinking’ blanche parure 43, 202, 202n. Black Friars Priory, Oxford (Fig 2.26) 111 blank, blankness 24, 29n., 30, 34, 59, 59n., 145–46, 151, 215, 406n. and ‘the page’ 62; see also ‘bare, bareness’ wall 63, 65n., 212, 323, 333n., 347n., 362, 376, 405, 406n. bleach 257 Bobrick, Benson 237n., 239n., 240n. body, the as obstacle 22 Bonnet, Jules and Beatrice Privati 375n., 410n. Bouwsma, William 363, 366n. Brackenhoffer, Elie, journal of 358n. Brenner, Athalya 124n., 244, 249n., 250, 251, 252n., 253, 253n. Bridgen, Susan 166n., 167n., 171n., 181n. Bromiley, G. W., The Silence of God 312n. Bruce, F. F. 237n. Bruening,Michael W. 350n.,353n, 354n., 355n., 360n., 361n. Brunelleschi, Filippo (Pazzi Chapel (Fig. 2.16) 102, 105 Bucer, Martin, 14, 151n., 182n. letter, Zwingli to 283n., 345n. influence in England 13, 14 Bucklow, Spike 50n., 115n., 116n.

459 Bulfinch, Charles 36 Bullinger, Heinrich 2, 3, 201n., 206, 210n., 212, 418 Corpus Reformatorum and erasing memory 182n. in Oscar Farner 3 Reformationsgeschichte 2, 9, 182n., 230n–231n., 233n. and John Calvin 378 Bushell, W. D. 169 Byrtferth of Ramsey 52 (Fig.2.2) byssus (linen; ‘fine linen’) 117, 119, 129, 130n., 131, 243n., 244n. C Calendar of State Papers, Spanish 166n., 167n. Cambridge History of the Bible 234n., 235n., 237n. candid 251 candidus-a-um, adj., (candido, v.) and variants of 3n.–4n., 94–95, 250– 51, 255, 255n. Calvin, John 7, 16, 29n., 81, 118, 208, 346–422 passim Institutes, 7, 379–384 passim, 388–94 passim; 397, 400–3 passim, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church 379, 386, 405n. and Zwingli,379,380, see also ‘Zwingli’ Commentary on the Last Four Books of Moses 345, 380 A Short Treatise Showing what the Faithful Man, Knowing the Truth of the Gospel, Must Do when he is among the Papists’ (Calvin) 413 Form of Administering the Sacraments 404 Form of Administering Baptism

460 404 letters of, 375n. and whitewashing, 7, 364, 376, 403, 406, 410–11; see also ‘whitewashing, Geneva’, 346–422 passim Psychopannychia 15, 386 visual programme of 350 colour language of 399–407, 412 colour thinking and symbolism in 16, 120, 233n.; 412, 422 influence on form and colour 412, 413, 421–422 references to Zwingli in oeuvre 376–7 influence of Paul on 361n. 362, 366, 404, 405 formative years 363–368, influences on 363 portrait of (Fig. 7.5) 372 spiritual programme of 379–396 Ecclesiastical Ordinances, see ‘Geneva’ and Plato 401 Calvinism 7 and the whitewashed interior, received view 7, 32 Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr von 296n., 343n. Campi, Emilio and Peter Opitz 207n. candles 58, 119, 120, 123, 126, 159, 159n., 160, 171, 171n., 182, 199n. Capito, Wolfgang 190n. Casey, Michael 288n. Cassian, John 340 Casson, Ronald 4n., 144n. Catacombs (Rome) 395 cathedrals: Augsburg, Bavaria 141 (Figs. 3.2, 3.4), 147–48 Basel 158, (Figs. 3.8–3.13) 162–

165 Norwich 109 (Fig. 2.22), 180 (Fig. 3.22) Peterborough Cathedral 8 Catholic traditions in liturgy 32n., 37, 49, 50n., 58, 63–4, 132 (vestments); and the visual 31, 33, 34, 49, 58, 63–4, 65, 98n., 119, 120, 125, 141n., 142, 152–3, 166 (Henry VIII), 167 188–9, 203, 213, 233n.; 329, condemnation of 292 Chadwick, Owen 211n., 340, 376n., 406n. Chartreuse, Monastery of 339 Chaucer 115n. Cherubim 243 Christ in Majesty 259 (Fig. 5.2) Christensen, Carl, Art and Reformation in Germany 199 churches: Achiltibuie Free Church, Scotland 223 (Fig. 4.9) All Hallowes, Honey Lane, London 172 All Hallowes, Staining 172 All Saints, church of Skeyton 111 (Fig. 2.25), 175 (Fig. 3.15) Calvin Auditorium (Église de Notre Dame la Neuve), Geneva 352, 370–371 (Figs. 7.1, 7.3) Chapel of the Maccabees, St Pierre, Geneva 370 (Fig. 7.2) Grande Chartreuse, Monastery of 339 Church of the Madeleine 371 (Fig. 7.4), Geneva Church of the Year 2000, Rome, see Meier, Richard Citeaux, Monastery of 339 Fontenay Abbey, Burgundy, FR

INDEX

69 (Fig. 2.9) Fronleichnamskirche, Aachen, (Germany), 195 (Fig. 3.30), 201 Great St Mary’s, Cambridge 169n. Grote Kerk (Great Church), Haarlem 194 (Fig. 3.28) Jacobskerke, Utrecht 223 (Fig. 4.8) Ludham Church, Norfolk 24, 26 Nieuwe Kerk Delft 24 Oude Kerk (Old Church), Delft 24, 109 (Fig. 2.23) Our Lady of Novy Dvur, Bohemia 112 (Figs. 2.27, 2.28) Pazzi Chapel, see ‘Santa Croce’ St Andrew’s Church, Chesterton (Fig. 3.18, 3.19) 178 Saint Botolphes’ church, Aldersgate, London 172 St Bride’s, London 181 Saint Catherine, church of, Ludham 24, 26, 182, (Figs. 3.24–6) 192–93 Sainte Chapelle, Paris (Fig. 2.18) Saint Denis, Abbey of, Paris 51, 51n., 332 Saint Dunstan’s church, Canterbury 8 S. Edmund and S. Thomas, Sarum 169n. Saint Elizabeth and Mary (St Elisabeth und Marien), Fulda, (Germany) 201 Saint Gervais, Geneva 374, 410–11 Saint Issui, Powys, Wales (Fig. 3.14) 175 St John the Baptist, St. Mary & St. Laurence, church of, see Thaxted

461 St Mary, church of, Chalgrove (Oxfordshire) 55 (Fig. 2.4), 58 Saint Mary, church of, Burghnext-Aylsham (Norfolk) (Fig. 2.24) 110, (Fig. 3.16) 176 Saint Mary, church of, Silchester (Fig. 3.1) 147 Saint Mary at Hill (London) 181 St Mary the Great, Cambridge (Great St Mary’s) 169n Saint Mary Magdelen., Milk St (London) St Mary Magdelene (Suffolk) St Margaret, Church of, Tivetshall (Norfolk) 182, (Fig. 3.27) 193 Saint Mary’s, church of, Troston (Suffolk) 58 St Martin Pomeroy, London 172n St Matthew, church of, Friday Street (London) 181 Saint Michael, church of, Bath (Somerset) 8 Saint Paul’s parish church, Edenton, NC 37 Saint Peter’s church, Coton (Cambs) 23, 23n., 24, 25 (Fig. 1.10), 139 St Peter, church of, Ipswich 191 (Fig. 3.23) St. Peterskirche, Zürich (Fig.4.5) St Pieterskerk, Leiden (Fig.2.7) 56 Saint Reinhold, Dussledorf-Gerresheim (Germany) 201 St Saviour in Chora, Istanbul (Fig. 2.15) St Vivien, Rouen, FR (Fig. 5.6) Santa Croce (Pazzi Chapel), Flor-

462 ence 102 Silchester church, Berkshire 141 Temple Saint Pierre 369, 373 (Fig. 7.6), 412 Thaxted parish church (Figs. 3.20, 3.21) 179 Water Church, the (Wasserkirche), Zürich 208n. Salzman, Louis (Buildings in England Down to 1540), 7, 73n., 138n., 139n., 140, 141n. church interiors new paradigm, establishment of 12, 30, 31, 32, 32n., 36, 43, 47, 50, 51, 59, 62, 63, 125n., 213–4, 233–4, 236, 290, 335, 336, 337, 362, 392, 419; Zwingli and 197, 197n., 202, 205–6, 206n., 214–217, 229–232, 229 Reformed Protestant interiors, treatment of 145, 198, 200, 232, 227, 232 churchwardens’ accounts 7, 50; English, fourteenth century–1800 8n., 68n.,143n., 151, 153n., 169, 169nn., 159, 171, 172, 173n., 183, 186 Bishop’s Stortford, East Herts 169n. Cicero, Marcus Tullius 32, 33, 100– 101, 103, 103n., 113–114, 118, 344n. Opera 103 De Legibus 113, 130 Cistercian. 288, 337–39 glass (Fig. 2.19) 107, 133–134 ideal 64 Citeaux, Monastery of 339 Clairvaux, Bernard of, see ‘Bernard’ Cleansing: as synonym for iconoclasm

4, 5n., 8, 13, 42, 49, 50, 49, 181, 182, 321, 347, 353, 411, 420; ritual 14, 42, 154, 198, 420, 422; and whitewashing 44, 49, 63, 64, 142, 168, 183, 183n., 190, 197–8, 214–7, 230–2, 233, 250; 285, 411, 420; cleansing, washing, purging 14, 59, 60, 63, 63n., 64, 197–8, 200, 230, 231, 415; metaphorical 64, 200, 234, 249, 254, 420; representations of 60, 200; colour symbolism for 249, 351; whiteness as cleansing agent 63, 94, 146, 168, 181, 420; as symbol of renewal 125, 142; cleansing the mind 183; Zürich churches 229, 300 (Figs. 6.6, 6.7); 321; spiritual 234, 248, 249, 254, 351n.; moral 253, 248, 316; in Leviticus 130, 250n., 254; following plague, leprosy 49n., 233, 250; and purity 254 Clement, Saint 114n. Cluniac monastic community 338 Collinson, Patrick 38, 41, 138n., 188n. colonial (American) architecture 36, 38nn., 207, 235, 412 coloratus 126 colour(s) (ed) 118, 126–127, 132, 153, 275–77, 303–4, 315, 323, 339, and seduction 340 ancient use of liturgical 117, 129 ater, see ‘white’ black 116 117, 118n., 129, 132, 244, 245, 246, 327–8, 330; niger 4n. blanche parure 43, 202, 202n. blue 115, 117, 153, 243, 245 as covering layer 295, 319, 334, 403, 404 guidelines for temples 33, 101–3

INDEX

as ‘rubric’ 334 green 117, 117n., 132, 244 lampron, see ‘white’ New Testament, use of, see 235– 282 Old Testament, use of , see235– 282 purple (tyrian p., purpura) 115– 16, 115n., 116, 117, 118n., 153, 243, 245 and ashes 246, 282, 331 red (or, vermilion) 115, 115n., 116, 117, 118, 118n., 128, 132, 153, 244, 247, 248, 248n., 251, 249n., 266, 323, 330, 334, 334n. rose 132 scarlet 116n., 117, 132, 188, 243, 245, 248, 248n., 249; and charity 330 suppression of 334, 335, 342, 345 and vanity or sin 118, 245, 247, 248, 248n., 295, 325, 313; 324, 333, 335, 340 violet 132 white (whiteness) 10, 113, 113n., 116, 117, 128, 129, 130, 131–32, 136, 152, 153, 197, 203, 236–281 passim, 320, 323, 324, 325, 344, 402 achromaticity of 324 albus 3n., 4n., 94, 113n., 117,n., 251, 255, 266 dealbentur (‘shining white’), 252, 254, 255 lampron 116, 255 leukos 76, 128, 129, 130, 130n., 255n. biblical references to (other than ‘white garment’) 236–281

463 passim. See also ‘white garment’ in art and architectural theory 24, 28, 59, 103, 113, 203, 233. See also Saenredam. in colonial interiors 38n., 39 (Figs.1.18, 1.19) Indo-European root of 4n. in neo-classicial interiors 38n., 201 paradoxes of 84–94 purity of 47, 48, 94–96, 114, 127 symbolisms of 91–96, 98, 114, 120, 145, 152, 153, 203, 235–281 passim, 321, 334, 401; transparency and 91–94, 98, 98n., 153, 276 in twentieth, twenty-first century architecture 200–203 modes of being white: as removal of colour249; as suppression of colour 332; to whiten (v.), as process 253, as zero-condition 47, 94 yellow ( and saffron) 132, 244 colourless, colourlessness 2, 74, 77, 93, 114, 115, 119, 133, 134, 143, 153–54, 249n., 250, 277, 315, 328, 329, 404, 406n.; hueless splendor 92, 94; see also ‘undyed’, ‘unmingled’ colour space 71 (Fig. 2.12) colour-thinking 7, 23, 29, 33, 41, 44, 46, 50, 58–9, 60, 138, 124–133, 135–136, 141, 234, 303–4, 417 Reformed 135, 153=54, 235–7, 242, 322, 323, 325, 417 white and black in 46, 47, 242, 245, 251, 303, 402 biblical influence on 235, 236– 241, 242–243, 417

464 binary oppositions in 245–246, 248n., 251, 280, 322, 325, 330; see also ‘darkness and light’ Comprehensive Act for Abolishing and Putting Away…books and images 172 Constantinople 12, 154–5 Conversion of Saul (Fig. 5.8) 263 Cooper, Trevor 6n., 24n., 182n. Corfe Castle 140 Corrigan, Kathlen Ann 154n., 155, 155n., 156 Couturier, Fr. Alain 201, 201n. Cox, John Charles 7, 8, 8n., 12, 321 Cranmer, Thomas Book of Homilies 169–70 Cranach, Lucas 64n. Crew, Phyllis Mack 347n., 352n., 413n., 414, 416n. Curtis, William 98n., 201n. D Dalmatic of Charlemagne (Figs.5.1, 5.2) 259 Damascus, John of 305, 305n. Daniell, David 238n. Darkness and light 46, 47, 76, 85, 119–23, 134, 153, 245, 246, 256, 315, 323n., 325, 326, 328, 330, 332, 367, 402 Davidson, Clifford 12, 13n., 138n. da Vinci 46, 86 Davis, Natalie 414n. dazzle 97, 129, 151–152, 245, 255, 256, 257, 258, 276, 281, 335, 402 de Blieck, Daniel 24, 26 (Fig.1.13) decoration committee 229–31 defilement 4, 320; see also ‘pollution’ Deibler, Edwin 210, 211n. Democritus 75n., 76

Denis, Maurice 43, 44n., 201, 202 Den Leken Wechwyser, see Veluanus Desvallières, Georges 201 d’Étaples, Lefevre 361n., 363, 366 de-sacralisation of church interiors, see ‘sacred space’ de Toscane, Jean, see Gigues 1er, Prior of Chartreuse Dierickx, 415n. Dillenberger, John 409n. Dionysius, Pseudo-Areopagite 274– 276 Dixon, Andrew Graham 34, 34n. disputations Geneva, see ‘Geneva’ Zürich, see ‘Zürich’ Lausanne (1536) 348, 350, 353, 355n., 360, 369, 374, 375n. Berne and Bernese edicts 347, 348, 350, 355, 355n., 357, 357n., 360, 369, 409; edicts 353, 354n. Divine Light, see ‘light’ Douay-Rheims Bible 258 Dowsing, William 6, 6n., 24, 35, 182n., 183–187, 236n. dualism(s), see ‘binary opposition’ Duffy, Eamon 5, 41, 42, 43, 50n., 59, 60n., 119, 159n., 166n., 171n., 172n., 183n Dufrenne, Suzy 154 Duke, Alastair 419 Dunnett, James 312n. E Eco, Umberto, 338n., 343n. Edlibach, Gerold 3 Edward VI, King of England 5n., 15, 132, 146, 151, 160–61, 174, 182, 188 Edwin, David 262 (Fig.5.7) Egli, Emil 3, 226n., 230n., 233n.

465

INDEX

Eire, Carlos 43, 63, 63n., 200n., 217, 285n., 287n., 288, 290, 290n., 318n., 345n., 367n., 377, 403, 416n. Elizabeth I, Queen of England 65, 151, 183–184, 183n., see also ‘injunctions, royal’ Emblemes and Hieroglyphes (Quarles) (Fig. 5.9) 263 Empedocles 75n., 76 Engelhard, Heinrich, Leutpriester 2, 225, 229 England-Zurich correspondence 1531–1558 211–2 Enneads, The, see Plotinus Erasmus, Desiderius 197n., 213n., Collectanea Adagiorum Verterum 2 Enchiridion 311n., 346, 416n. Lucubrationes 311 Opera Omnia 2, 317n. Paraphrases 169 In Praise of Folly 345n. whitewashing in Basel 8, 8n., 157, 158, 207n. influence in Netherlands 416, 416n. erasure: of images 60, 157, 350; depictions of 50, 157; and obliteration: of images5, 13, 14, 32, 59, 146, 154, 156, 181, 233, 290, 313, 336n., 410; as ritual 14, process of 58, earliest known example of 156; 1550 Act for Abolishing…images 172; 1547 injunctions 183;Elizabeth I’ I, 1559 injunctions 183; of traditions 213, 313; as sign of the new 290 escutcheons (and heraldic shields) 24 Eytzinger, Michael, printmaker 215n., 220 (Fig. 4.3)

Eusebius 113, 117, 314n., 343n. F Farbenlehre, die, see Goethe, J. W. von Farel, Guillaume 190, 206, 208, 217, 346–422 passim Farner, Oscar, 3, 138n., 204n., 226n., 230n., 231n., 233n. Ficino, Marsilio 317n. Finley, Victoria 50n. Finney, Paul Corby 35, 38n. Finsler, Georg 2, 3 First Iconoclastic Controversy 12, 60, 154–6, 305; Zwingli’s knowledge of 138n. Fleming, Juliet 181 Flora, Joachim of 52 (Fig. 2.1) Fontenay Abbey (Fig. 2.9) 69 Four Books of Architecture, The (I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura) Foxgrover, David and Wade Provo 351n., 364n. France, reformed communities in 35 Fraumünster, Zürich 221 extant frescoes (Fig. 4.6) 221 Freedberg, David 14, 14n., 42, 42n., 197, 197n., 200n., 395n., 415n., 416–418, 419 French plaster 138–39 Frere, Walter Howard 65 Fromment, Antoine 356, 358, 369 Froschauer, Christopher 217n., 226n., 285n., 287n., 299 (Figs. 6.1–6.5) Froude, J. A. 158n. fuller’s earth 119n., 257, 257n. Fuller, Thomas, historian 142 Furcha, E. J. 217, 226n., 236n. G Gäbler, Ulrich 206n., 208, 209n.,

466 217n., 226n., 227n., 284n., 287 Gage, John 47, 47n., 58, 90n., 91n., 96n., 102, 115, 115n., 116, 116n., 123n., 129, 133, 134, 249n., 250 Gairdner, James C. B. 172 Gandra, Council of 114 Ganoczy, Alexander 350–366n. passim Gardiner, Stephen, bishop of Winchester 181n. garment(s) (vestments) 114, 115, 117, 117n., 118, 131–132 of faith 15, 16, 18 (Fig.), 19 (Fig.), 20 (Fig.), 21 (Fig.), 151, 152 baptismal 132, 153 Vestments Controversy (England) 132–33, 188, 207 Garrett, Christina Hallowell 211n Garside, Jr., Charles 2, 3, 12, 13, 31, 32n., 138n., 197n., 204n., 206n., 207n., 225n., 226n., 228n., 230n., 231n., 285n., 286, 286n., 287, 287n., 290n., 295, 295n. 296, 297, 308, 311, 311n., 312n., 325n., 333, 334n.,337, 343n. Geneva 6, 7, 208, 319n., Ecclesiastical Ordinances, (1536) 353, 354, 360; Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541) 407–13; Edward’s injunctions in comparison with 355 Consistory 407–8; registers of 408 Company of Pastors 407–8 General Council of 347, 407, 408 disputations on reform affecting: 347, at Convent of Rive (1535), 347, 348, 353n.,

355n., 356, 368; at Lausanne (1536) see ‘disputations, Lausanne’ reform in after 1536 368–375 Germann, Martin 103, 314n., 317n., 344n. Gibbs, Sir James 36, 37, 201 Gichardneau, Hélène 35n Gigues 1er, Prior of Chartreuse 339 Giotto di Bondone 41 Glarean, Heinrich209 glass 133–135, grisaille 107 (Fig. 2.19), 133; white, ‘colourless’ 134, 135 Godley Mill, The 61 (Fig. 2.8) God’s attributes 97, 120, 153, 256, 315, 317, 322 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 97 gold 97, 113, 114, 153, 243, 249, 275, 276, 323, 342, 394, 403 good works, religious 14, 199, 200, 290, 293, 324n., 331, 357 Gordon, Bruce 353n., 364, 365n., 367n., 376n., 377, 407 Göttler, Christine 61, 302n., 304, 312n. Gough, John 14n. Goulemot, Jean M. et al. 355 Grafton, Anthony 102n. Grafton, Richard, London publisher 170nn. Graham-Dixon, Andrew 188 Greenslade, S. L. 235n., 240n. Gregory the Great 330, 332n. Grey Friars, Chronicles of 168, 168n. Grindal, Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury 65n., 210, 212, 352, 409, 409n. Grunewald, Matthias (Fig. 2.13) 72, 90, 106 (Fig. 2.17) Grossmünster (Zurich Cathedral, Great Minster) 1, 38, 107 (Fig. 2.20),

INDEX

220 extant fresco (Fig. 4.4), 222 extant fresco, Virgin and Child fresco(Fig. 4.7), Grossmünster interior 224 (Fig. 4.10), 335–6, 336n., cleansing and whitewashing of 214–217, 230–232, status of 16th century interior (Figs. 6.6–6.7) 300 Grote Kerk, Haarlem 194 (Fig. 3.28) Guest, Edmund, bishop of Rochester and Salisbury 65n., Gufe, Hans (burgher) 189 Guildford Castle 141 Guise, Constantin 158, (Fig. 3.12) 164 Gutscher, Daniel 4, 5, 38, 135n., 214–15, 214n., 336n., 337n. H Habakkuk 151 Haigh, Christopher 5, 159n. Hall, James 36, 41 Hampton Court 140 Hardin, C.L. 4, 73, 93, 93n., 136n., 144n., 401n. Harvey, A. E. 265n., 266–67 Hätzer, Ludwig 206, 207n., 217n., pamphlet against images 225n., 286n., 287, 289, 289n., 290 hedge-preaching 199, 414, 417 Hegesippus, 130, 131 Heinze, R.W. 170 Henry III, King of England, 139 40, 141 Henry VIII, King of England and reform 5, 5n., 158–60, 166n., 172 Hermann, A. (in Theodor Klauser, et al.) 256n Hesse Castle chapel 25 Heimpel, Herman 29, 29n., 43 Herminjard, A. L. 365n.

467 Hochrutiner, Lorenz, at the Fraumünster228n. Holbein the Younger, Hans 310n. Homer (Illiad) 129 Homilies, First Book of, see Cranmer, Thomas; Second Book of, see Jewell, bishop John Hooper, John, bishop of Worcester and Gloucester 132, 161n., 171n., 210–3, 210n.; on images and idolatry 61n., 172n.; ‘England’s Zwingli’ 171n., 210–213 Horne, Robert, bishop of Winchester 65n. Hottinger, at Stadelhofen 228n. Hugelshofer, Walter 343n. Hus, Jan 217, 238 Hutton, Ronald 159n., 166n., 167n., 171n. Huygens, Christiaan 87n. hygiene 49, 49n., 63, 64, 127, 136, 420, see also cleansing, purification I iconoclasm 5, 13, 14, 49, 58, 60, 151, 154, 207n., 282, 306, 417–9 Act of Uniformity and 189 in Basel 159 documentary evidence for 2, 50; 347, 358 (Geneva); 357(Berne, Neuchâtel); in England 5, 13, 158, 160–61, 166–74, 181–88, 406 in Geneva 29, 349–50, 355–7, 377 as ‘good works’, see ‘good works’ in Istanbul 5 in the Netherlands 6, 14, 24n., 30n., 42, 184, 190, 197, 198, 207n., 208, 215, 232, 290, 336, 347, 352, 406,

468 412, 413–5417–9; in Antwerp 418, 419; Leeuwaarden 418, 419; Limbourg 419 as ritual 14, 14n., 42, 418 spirituality of, 42, 43, 60 in Switzerland: Neuchâtel 357, Vaud 358, other: 358–60, 377 William Dowsing’s (England) role in 6, 6n., 24, 35, 135, 182, 184–7, 352 in Zurich 1–4, 13, 29, 134, 282, 288, 333, 343, 377–8 iconophobia 29 idols: Zwinglian definition of 295, 295n., 305, 308, 316, 320, 324– 25n. of the mind 295, 306, 340, 324– 25, 325n. idolatry 306, 307, 375, 419, 420, 421 images: Zwinglian definition of 320 permissibility of 38, 58, 284–89, 295, 306–309, 412 obliteration of 5, 5n., 14, 58, 60, 282 of God 280 prohibition against making 420 Innocent III 117, 131, 132, 153, 330 Ininger, Wolfgang, at the Fraumünster 228n. injunctions, royal (England) , 187 (Elizabeth’s), 208 (generally), 355 1536: 158–9, 160, 160n., 166, 176, 183; 1538: 159, 160, 166, 176 1547: 160–1, 160n., 166–7, 169–74, 182–3, 210, 355 1552; 173, 210, 211 (King’s (Edward’s) Commission for Ecclesiastical Polity) 1559: 183, 187

international Calvinism 412 I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, see Four Books Isidore of Seville 95, 134; The Etymologies 134n. J Jackson, Samuel MacCauley 286n., 296n. Jay, Martin 127n. Jeanne de Jussie, chronicles of 356n. Jensen, Robin Margaret 395n. Jerome, Saint (Vulgate) 117, 131, 253, 254, 258n. Jewell, bishop John, Second book of 170n. Jezler, Peter 43, 288, 288n., 289n., 302n. John, evangelist 12, 15, 122, 265–267 passim, 276 John the Grammarian 154n., 155, 155n., 156 Jordan, W. K. 172 Jud, Leo, Leutpriester 2, 206, 225, 225n., 229, 289n., 290n. Judd, Deane B. 76, 77, 77n. K Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von 29, 158, 197n., 199–200, 206, 212, 213, 225n., 233n. Treatise on Images, 290n. Keller, Gottfried 13, 13n., 125n., 336n. Kemp, Martin 85n. Kempton., Poland 139, 189 kermes vermilio, see ‘vermilion’ Kessler, Johannes 144n. Kidd, B. J. 281 Kinder, Terryl Nancy Kittel, G. 128, 129 Kludov Psalter 8, 10–12, 138n.,

INDEX

154–57 Knebworth House 41, 140n., 141– 42, (Fig. 3.5, 3.6) 149 Koerner, Joseph Leo 50n., 51, 63n Köhler, Walter 103, 103n., 113n., 209n., 226n., 305n., 314n., 317n., 318n., 344n. Kolff, D. H. 419 Kruft, Hanno-Walter 99, 100n. L Latimer, Hugh 15, 15n., 146, 146n. Latour, Bruno and Peter Weibel, eds. 51n. Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury, and Calvin on images 404 Leadbeater, Charles (Fig. 5.11) 264, 276 Le Corbusier (Figs. 1.20, 1.21) 40 Leeuwarden 198 Leo V, emperor 155n. Leonardo da Vinci 85, 85n., 97; The Art of Painting 85, 85n. Leroux-Dhuys, Jean-François 338n. Leutpriester (‘People’s Priests’) 2 light 77, 86–91, 97, 119–124 Calvinist light 29n. Divine Light 51n., 97, 120, 153, 255, 256, 274, 275–276, 281, 315, 325, 342, 343, 402 dazzle, see ‘dazzle’ as dignitas 100, 101 lights, religious use of, see ‘candles’ Lindberg, David C. 80, 80n. linen, see ‘white linen’, ‘byssus’, ‘white garment’ Limberg 198 liturgy 12, 120; see also ‘traditional Church’, ‘baptism’, ‘vigil’, ‘tenebrae’ Locher, Gottfried 5, 207n., 211n.,

469 217n. Lombard, Peter 81 Loos, Adolf 136n. Loundesbury, Carl 38 Louthenbourg, Phillip de (Fig. 5.10) 264 Luke, evangelist 122, 151 Luther, Martin 5, 33, 81, 303 Aktensammlung zur Geschichte der Zurcher reformation…1519–1533 2: Church Postils 199 and images 33–34, 158, 199– 200, 297n., 329n., 361–2, 421 and propaganda 302, 303 and whitewashing 199 church interiors 199, 206, 212 translation of bible 239, 240, 240n. influence in the Netherlands 413 Lyly, John The Complete Works of 1 Anatomy of Wyt 1 M MacCulloch, Diarmaid 201n., 207n., 210, 210n. MacGregor, A. J. 120–21, 123n., 124, 124n. ‘making-good’ the walls 23, 151, 166, 355, 409n. Manutius, Aldus 209 Maria-Schnee Altar, Colmar, FR (Fig. 2.17) Mark, evangelist 122, 151 Marshall, William 13, 13n Mary Tudor, Queen of England 168, 181–183; visitations to London churches 181, 188–9. 210, 212, 409n. Mass of St Giles 54 (Fig.2.3)

470 Matthew, evangelist 122, 145, 151 Matthew of Paris 139, 140n. McClendon, M. 5 McGrath, Alister 152, 206n., 235n., 283n., 362n., 365, 376, 408 Melancthon, Philip, 206, 233n. Loci Communes 197n., 418 Melczer, Eileen and Elizabeth Soldwedel 342 Menander 116 Meier, Richard, Church of the Year 2000 17 (Figs. 1.4, 1.5), 44, 202, 203 memory, and erasure of 50, 58, 60, 157, 161, 171, 182, 182n., 203, 213–14, 215, 350, and Mentzer, Raymond A. 35n. Meyer, Lorenz, at St Peter’s (Zürich), 228n. Michalski, Sergiusz 29, 29n., 34, 34n., 43, 139n., 189n., 207n., 290n., 297n. Mochizuki, Mia 29n., 43n., 125n. Montaigne, Michel, on Switzerland 358–60 More, Thomas 237n. Morgan, David 64n., 188n. Mortet, V. and P. Deschamps (Receuil de texts relatives de l’histoire de l’architecture…au moyen age: XIIe–XIIIe siècles) 134n. Moxey, Keith 197 Murdock, Graeme 400 music 13,312, 319 Mutzenberg, Gabriel 411 Myconius, Oswald 205n., 225, 225n., 226n., 283n., 284n.,302 N Naphy, William G. 347n. Neckham, Alexander 343n. Netherlands, iconoclasm in, see ‘icon-

oclasm’ Nieuwe Kerk, Delft 24 Oude Kerk, Delft 24 Nichols, William, architect 37 Calvinism in 413–4; Calvinist councils on reform in 418, 418n. Neustuck, Johann Jakob (Fig. 3.11) 164 new aesthetic, establishment of, see ‘aesthetics’ Newton, Sir Isaac (Figs. 2.10–11) 70, 86–91, 97, 274 Nicolas of Cusa 100n Nichols, Aidan 201n. Nichols, Anne Eljenholm 12, 13n., 138n. Nicholson, Adam 152n., 235n. Nicephorus, Patriarch 154n., 156 Niger (black) 3n–4n. Non-colour colour terms 4n., 245, 245n., 247, 251, 252, 258, 275, 276, 324 Norwich Cathedral 109 (Fig. 2.22), 180 (Fig. 3.22) Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp 40 (Figs. 1.20, 1.21), 44, 55 (Fig. 2.5), 196 (Figs. 3.31–32), 201–2, O obliteration, see ‘erasure’ Oecolampadius 190, 213 Old North Church, Boston 37, 38n. Ong, Walter J. 62n. On the Art of Building in Ten Books (De re aedificatoria), see Alberti, Leon Battista On Painting (De Pictura), see Alberti, Leon Battista Otto, Christian F., see Pommer, R. and Christian F. Otto Our Lady of, Bohemia, Novy Dvur

INDEX

112 (Figs. 2.27, 2.28) Origen 95, 255n. P Panzanelli, Roberta 303 Palladio, Andrea 103, 130, 344n. pallium, see vestments Panofsky, Erwin 51n. pargetting 23 Pastoureau, Michel 102, 233, 233n., 295n., 319n., 332n., 334n., 404 Paul, Saint, letters of 12 Pazzi Chapel, see Brunelleschi, Filippo Pedretti, Carlo 46 perfection, God’s attribute of 317 Pharisees’ tomb, see ‘whitewash’ Phillips, John 404 Philo of Alexandria 130 Philostratus 116 Pipkin, Wayne 205n., 217, 254n., 283n., 318n. Pirckheimer, Willibald 8n., 157–8, 158n. Plague, the 49, 64, 136 plaster of Paris 138–40, 141 Plato 32, 33, 46n., 47, 59, 73–76, 100, 100n., 101, 103, 113, 317n., 344n. Timeus 75–6 Opera Omnia 103 Laws (Leges) 113, 129 Platt, Colin 159, 169n., 172n Platter, Thomas, 228n. Pliny, the Elder 90n., 101, 115n., 116, 119n. Plotinus, The Enneads 92n., 97, 97n., 317n. Pommer, R. and Christian F. Otto 98 Poland, see Kempton pollution 4, 248, 317–20, 349, 420 polychromy in church interiors 332, 347n.

471 Potter, G. R. (George Richard) 12, 12n., 38, 61n., 81, 205n., 206n., 209n., 217n., 226n., 230, 281n., 283n. 296n., 317n. Proclamations of Tudor Kings, see Heinze, R.W. Prichard, Joseph 201, 201n. Primus, John Henry 132n., 207n. Print media, printing presses, 61, 304, 309–10, and ‘the page’ 62, 304 Psalm(s) (no. 25) 154, (no. 68) 154, (no. 59) 154n. Psalter(s) Barberini 154 Khludov 10 (Fig. 1.2), 12, 60 Theodore 150 (Fig. 3.7), 156, 156n., 157 Purity: 319; as an priori concept 23, 95, 135; in platonic theory 37, 74, 97, 101, 127; in temple interiors 33, 103, 315; of form 97, 101; as sign of renewed church 32; as attribute of God 84; of heaven 51; and white light 65; apostolic 48, 401; and cleansing, purification and righteousness 45; Aristotle: white as analogue for 78, 79, 80; and corruption 79; of worship 311–12, 321, 362; cognates of: 92, 95, 87, 98, 99, 102, 114, 119, 131, 136, 234, 315, 319; as sign of: 46, 151, 245 purification, 127, of the church 135,197; symbol of renewal, reform 23, 127, 306; whiteness as medium of 98; ‘washing clean’ the soul 142, 253; and whitening of the soul 253; of the mind 396; as ‘cleansing’, synonym for iconoclasm 30, 135, 142, 189,

472 197,199, 200, 400; and whitewashing 142, 189, 199, 200; of chuches in Netherlands 197; ritual 142, 198; purity, cleansing, righteousness and 45, 247, 253, 401. See also ‘cleansing and washing’ Puritan(ism), Leon Battista Alberti and 100, 102, iconoclasm and 182, early pietistic Puritanism 211n. Q quarellari 141 Quarles, Francis, Emblemes and Hieroglyphes (Fig. 5.9) 263 Quaker assembly 13 R Radke, G. 129n Ramsey, W. M. 265n. Randall, Catharine 355n., 400n. reformation of the traditional church of Catholic Church 5–6, 5n., 41, 49, 50, 64, 98, 400 in the Netherlands 413–5 Régamey, Pie-Ramond 201n Rembrandt 36 reorienting the mind 58, 127, 151, 170–71, 181, 321 resurrection, the 258, 265–67; Resurrected Woman 262 (Fig. 5.6) Revelation 282 Four Horses of 265, 276 Rex, Richard 349n., 368n., 395n. Rhenanus, Beatus 286n. Ringle, Johann Sixt 158, (Fig. 3.9, 3.10) 163 Rievaulx, Aelred of Roberts, David 301 (Fig. 6.8), 336n.– 337n. Rolfe, Clapton Crab 117, 153n.

Roney, John B. and Martin I. Klauber 368n. Rüegg, Walter 296, 306n., 339n. Rule of Benedict, see ‘Benedict, rule of ’ Rupert of Deutz 122 Ryff, Fridolin 158n., 190 Rykwert, Joseph 100, 100n., 113n. S SAAB 28 (Fig. 1.16) sacred space, creating 295n., 313; desacralisation of 36, 63, 198; resacralising space 64 Santschi, Catherine 408n. Saenredam, Pieter 23, 24, 24n., 27 (Fig. 1.15), 29n., 194 (Fig. 3.29) Saint Giles, Master of (Fig.2.3) 54 scarlet fabric 188 Schindler, Alfred 314n., 317n., 318n., 319n., 322n. Schmid, Konrad 206, 206n., 233n. Schwarz, Rudolph, architect 195 (Fig. 3.30) Scotus, Duns 81, 317n., 321, 322n. Scotland and reform 5n. Scribner, Robert W. 139n., 302n. Senn, Matthias 288, 335n. Shenk, David 55 (Fig. 2.6) Shoeck, Richard J. 311n. silence of God, the 13, 233–234, 312n. simplicity, see ‘aesthetics’ Smalley, Beryl 235n. Soldwedel, Elizabeth, see Melczer, Eileen Solomon’s Temple 244, 307 Spanish Calendar of State Papers 166n. specious(ness) and colour 126, see also ‘coloratus’ Spicer, Andrew 349n., 368, 412

INDEX

473

spotlessness 316 Staehelin, Rudolph 318n. stained glass 108 (Fig. 2.21), 332 Cistercian King’s College Chapel 108 (Fig. 2.21) Norwich Cathedral 109 (Fig. 2.22) Old Church, Delft 109 (Fig. 2.23) removal of 166, 182 in Zürich 182 Stephens, W. Peter 38, 38n., 226n., 230n., 287, 317, 318n. Stockar, Hans 3, 8, 138n., 204n., 336n., 344 Stoltz, Johann and Basel 158n Strasbourg, reform of church interiors 139, 213 Stratton, G. M. Stroup, George W. 400 Struycken, Peter 75, 75n., 76n. Strype, John 166n Suger, Abbot 51, 51n., 133–134; Zwingli’s view in contrast to 316; On Consecration 134 Supper at Emmaus (Fig.5.10) 264

Thompson, Evan 401n. Tower of London, see ‘White Tower’ Transfiguration, the 151, 255, 259 (Fig.5.1) Treatises, misc.: M. Baldwin, A Treatise of Morall Philosophie (1547)1 Stephen Bateman,‘The Doome Warning all men to the Judgements’ (1581) Troubles, the (iconoclasm in the Netherlands) 414; Margaret of Parma’s role in 414–5 Tschudi, Peter 209n. Tudor Royal Proclamations (TRP) 65, 159–161 Tyack, George 114, 115n., 117, 131, 131n. Tyndale,William 242, 252 New Testament in English 238, 240n., 254n.

T Tabula rasa 50, 350, see also ‘blank’ tenebrae, office of 119–124 Temple architecture (Renaissance) 100–102, 197 Temple de Paradis, Lyons 27 (Fig. 1.17) Tertullian 95 Theodore Psalter, see psalters Theophilus 134 Theophrastus 115n., 116, 116n., 119n. Tilley, Morris Palmer 1 tint(ed), taint(ed) 118, 119

V Vadian 209n. vanity wealth, luxury and 118, 127, 145, 245, 333; wealth, sin and 245n., 334; Paul on 245n.; and colour 118, 245, 295, 313; colour, defilement, sin, pride and 324; and self-idolatry 234; polyphonic music as 234; the human-made as 333; cardinals’ red robes and 334 van Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr 286n.

U undyed, 59, 93, 114, 115, 115n., 118, 119, 125, 136, 153, 249n., see also ‘colourless (ness)’ unmingled 316, 317, 321

474 van Vliet, Hendrick 24 Vatican II 124n. veiling, walls 23; and purity 319; colour as 333 Veluanus 197–98, 197n., 236, 415–7 Verstege, Jan Gerritz, see Veluanus visitations, royal, see ’injunctions, royal’ vermilion., see ‘colour, red’ Villemin, Louis, Chronicles 357– 8,361 Virgin Mary with Christ Child (Fig. 4.6) 330 Vitruvius 33, 90n., 99, 100, 100n., 103, 103n., 113, 344n. Vögelin, Salomon (Grossmunster interior) 335–6, 336n. von Haarlem, Cornelis Cornelisz (Fig. 5.8) 263 von Hohenlandenberg, Hugo, bishop of Constance 327 von Simpson, Otto 332n. W Wackernagel, Rudolph 190n. Waldman., Hans, burgomeister 208,208n Walters, Henry Beauchamp, 159n., 160n., 166n., 167n., 169n., 173, 173n. Wandel, Lee Palmer 30–32, 190n., 207n., 208n., 212nn, 312n. washing (purifying) see ‘cleansing, purification’ Washington, George, Apotheosis of (Fig. 5.7) 262 Watt, Tessa 302n., 304 Weissenhof Seidlung housing development, Germany 136n. Wells-Cole, Anthony 141n. West, W. Morris S. 211, 211n. Westminster Abbey 140, 141

Westphal, Jonathan 73–74, 91, 91n., 92n., 93, 93n., 96n. White, James F. 35–36, 35n., 38 white garment 15, 23, 115, 117, 130, 131, 203, 244, 250–251, 253n., 256, 258, 267, 265, 266, 267–274, 280, 281, 282, 331, 335n.,351n.; as veil 23 white light 96–99, 120, 253n., 255, 256, 274–77, 342 white linen243n., 244, 267; see also ‘white garment’ or ‘byssus’ white walls, normative in churches 6 42, 43, 187; 323, 335, 412n., 417 White Tower, the, 140, 141 (Tower of London) whitened ecclesiastical interior, general statements about 200, 201, 217, 232, 233–34, 352 whitewash (ed) (ing), 4n., 23, 30, 32, 35, 38, 38n., 43, 47, 64, 113, 136, 139–203 passim, 242, 280– 82, 324, 409n., 420 ; symbolism of: 290, 321, 351n., 420–422 in Basel 157–58, 207n Calvin and 7, 376, 346–422 passim, 403, 406, 410–11, cost of 23, 138 and cleansing 44, ,49n., 142, 168, 190, 198, 285, 411, 420; following plague, leprosy 233, 250 as de-sacralisisation 36, 63, 64, 197, 198; re-sacralising space 64 as discipline 7, 64, 280 in England 158–161, 166–188, 197, 352, 406n., 422 etiology of term, ‘whitewash’ 143–146

INDEX

in Geneva 7, 190, 197, 348, 348n., 357, 375n., 376, 410–11; French terms for 144 direct evidence for 347–352, 364 as ‘image’ 30, 44, 50, 60, 217, 280–82, 321, 351n. in Ireland 64 in Istanbul 5 as metaphor or symbol 15, 60, 64, 65, 91–94, 98, 120, 321, 403, 422 in the Netherlands 197–99, 197– 198, 208, 217, 415, 417–9 pre-Reformation 138n., 139, 141 recipe for 65–68, 139–40 as religio-political statement 5, 7, 14, 43,64, 280–82, 290 as rhetoric 50, 145 as ritual 14, 142, 198, 199, 415, 417–8, 419, 421 spiritual meaning of 14, 43, 153, 253, 278–282, 403–4 and Pharisees’ tombs 277–80, 330, 331 traditional view of 8, 12, 59, 138 Tudor royal injunctions and 159– 160 at Wittenberg 199–200 in Zürich, see Zürich Wigley, Mark 91, 91n. Williams, G. H. (George Hunston) 286n., 287, 287n., 289 Williams, Peter W. 36, 36n. Williamsburg, colonial 38 Winchester Castle, white plaster at 140 Wittenberg, city of 158, 199 Wittgenstein., Ludwig 46, 86, 91n., 92–93, 406n. Witvliet, John D. 400 Witz, Konrad 158, (Fig. 3.8) 162

475 Wittkower, Rudolph 32, 32n., 33, 101, 102n. Woltjer, J.J. 419 Worship, form of (‘right worship’) 311–12, 321, 422; purity of 98 Wren, Sir Christopher 36, 36n., 37, 37n., 201 Wriothesley, Charles 161n., 167–168, 181 Wycliffe, John 237, 242 New Testament in English 238– 239, 249n. Wyss, Bernard 213 Chronicles of (Die Chronik des) 2, 3, 144n., 182n., 204, 215n., 230n., 233, 336n. Wyttenbach, Thomas 318, 318n. Z Zakin, Helen 134n. zero-condition of whiteness, the 47, 94 Zurcher, Richard 207n. Zürich (city) 157, 182, 205–234 passim, 208–210, 219 (Fig. 4.2) Great Minster, the (Grossmünster) 1–4, 4n., 134–35, 214– 17, 228–232, 337 City Council, deliberations on reform 205, 225–232, 283n., 284n., 288, 289n. disputations on reform at 225– 29, 324; first 285, 341; second, 285n., 287, 287n., 291n., 328; third 324, 324n.; fourth 324n. influence of on Reformed interiors 206n., 206–213, 217, 232–33, 234, 377–8, 421 Zwinglian revolution 5, 205–234 passim, 416 Zwingli, Huldrych 2, 3,4, 7, 13,29,

476 30, 34, 43, 81, 92, 92n., 102, 103, 113, 118, 138n., 166, 182, 204–5, 213–217, 225–234 passim, 362, and Bernard of Clairvaux 337– 343 and John Cassian 340–41 Church buildings, necessity for, see ‘Architecture’ colour-thinking and symbolism 120, 132, 204, 233n., 234, 250, 254n., 281–82, 327–9, 333, 335 education 241, 283, 318n., study of classics 318n. interior treatment of Grossmünster 197n., 204–206n., 214– 217, 229–232, 229, 344 views on form of worship 311– 13; form of temple 315, 316 influence on England, Netherlands, Continent 201n., 206–8, 365–7, 417 influence on John Calvin 366, 376 illustrations to publications 298– 299 (Figs. 6.1–6.5), 302–3, 309–311 position on images, 132, 134, 197n., 199, 200, 229, 284– 294, 296–7, 302–313, 320, 324–5, 326, 334–5, 344, 416 and propaganda 57 (Fig. 2.8), 62, 302–4 and iconoclasm 306–7, 324, 333, 337 Letter to Bernese official 360 writings: Advice Concerning the Mass and Images, 285, 286n.

Archeteles 286n., 295, 312n., 313, 314, 321n., 323n., 326, 327n., 330n. Commentary on True and False Religion 285, 285n., 291n., 294, 295n., 296, 296n., 297, 306, 308, 320n., 327n., 366 The Canon of the Mass 286n. Divine and Human Righteousness 315, 318, 319, 320n., 322, 325n., 365 An Exposition of the Articles/An Exposition and Basis of the Article, see Sixty-seven Articles A Friendly Request 286n. On the Providence of God 282, 318, 326n., 330 The Shepherd 92, 92n., 182n., 250n., 254n., 282, 293, 306, 310n., 312n., 313, 314n., 325n., 328, 330, 335n., 338n. A Short Christian Instruction 225n., 230n., 254n., 285, 286n., 289, 290,291, 291n., 292, 307–8, 312n., 313, 314, 320, 327n. Sixty-seven Articles 226, 226n., 284n., 285, 286n., 288, 289, 291, 292n., 312n., 316, 320n., 328 Those Who Give Cause for Tumult (The Troublemakers) 310 Valentin Compar, A Letter/An Answer to 285, 285n., 286n., 287, 287n., 288, 289, 295, 297n. 305, 305n., 306, 308n., 312n., 320n.