ICONOCLASM: Visual & Performing Arts Essay

Up until now we have encountered three moments in which the use of images has been debated within the monotheistic religions. Judaism was profoundly aniconic, without images of its God, and banned images entirely, as did Islam. Christianity ultimately embraced images of its God (and other holy figures, the Virgin and Saints above all), but not without extensive debate, with a strong opposition party supporting a ban on images in the 8th century. In the 16th century, the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation reopened that debate. Calvinists removed all images from their churches, while Lutherans settled on a lesser role of images. The Roman church, henceforth Catholicism, however completely embraced the use of images. This assignment asks you to look at one side of the debates (the position taken AGAINST images), primarily in Christianity.
Iconoclasm is the destruction of images. Therefore, iconoclasm was the enactment of a policy against images, many, many of which populated the altars and walls of Christian churches since the time the Western Church officially embraced images. Iconoclasm, or the destruction of images, is an action that often followed the debates over the question: should there be images of the Christian God and Saints, or should there be no images?
The primary sources that you are reading for this assignment discuss their aniconic policies, not the iconoclasm that arose from them.

To Do List:
Read:
The Torah (Old Testament): selected passages of God’s Commandments to the IsraelitesPreview the document (this was assigned reading in Week 4)
Iconoclasm debates of the 8th-9th centuries CE in the Christian Church: excerpt from the Caroline BooksPreview the document
Debates of the 16th century that divided the Roman Church into Reformed and Catholic confessions: excerpt from Andreas Karlstadt, “On the Removal of Images” (1521) (pp. 21-25)Preview the document. Karlstadt was a Reform theologian of the early 16th century who advocated the extreme position of disallowing images in the churches.
Write: 500 words
In your essay analyze the different reasons the writers of the three texts give to reject images of the Jewish God (in the case of the Torah, or Old Testament) and the Christian God( in the case of the Caroline Books and in the treatise of Karlstadt); further, discuss the overlap and distinctions between the concepts of damnatio memoriae and iconoclasm.
Proofread, read out loud
Format: 12 point type, Times Roman Font, Double-spaced. Chicago Style citations.
Virtual Textbook: Icons and Iconoclasm in Byzantium https://www(dot)metmuseum(dot)org/toah/hd/icon/hd_icon.htm