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Published: New Study Highlights History of Attacks and Thefts From Grave Monuments
University of Leicester Historian highlights religious fundamentalist-fuelled destruction of 'blasphemous' monuments
Research by a University of Leicester historian reveals that vandalism and thefts from graveyards is not a depressing new fact of modern life - it has been happening for centuries.
In fact, attacks on grave monuments were positively encouraged by some sections of society in the sixteen and seventeenth century, according to Phillip Lindley who is Reader in the Department of History of Art and Film.
He said: "Just before Christmas 2007, thieves stole nearly 600 brass plaques from a Swansea churchyard. We tend to think of such attacks on graves and of the stealing of their materials as depressing new phenomena. In fact, as my research shows, huge waves of destruction of tomb monuments and the sale or theft of their materials took place in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.
"Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Reformation under his son, Edward VI, endorsed the official destruction or defacing of Christian tomb monuments and the pillaging of their materials on a scale which is unprecedented in British history.
"In the seventeenth century, some Puritans encouraged the destruction of monuments whose religious imagery or texts they believed to be blasphemous. Parliamentarian commanders ordered attacks on tomb monuments in the 1640s, especially those situated in churches which had been the centre of reform and refurbishment under Archbishop Laud and the bishops who shared his views."
In his major new study, Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England, Phillip Lindley shows that the loss of thousands of medieval monuments and the attacks on traditional imagery and epitaphs permanently affected attitudes to the commemoration of the dead.
He said: "Many contemporaries were appalled by the destruction of tomb-monuments, viewing it as the most deplorable of crimes. One positive result was the jump-starting of Tudor historical scholarship in shocked reaction to these fundamentalist assaults. Cultural tourism to churches also rapidly developed in Elizabethan and Caroline England, revealing a growing interest in monuments and in the commemoration of the dead."
Remarkable attempts to study, document and preserve tomb monuments took place in the sixteenth century and gathered pace in the face of the renewed hostility to monuments in the first half of the next century. John Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments of 1631 was intended as the first part of a national study of monumental inscriptions. A small group of Weever's contemporaries, most notably Sir William Dugdale, also realized the need for visual - as well as written - records in the face of the threats posed by the imminent Civil War. Phillip Lindley charts the fascinating development of preservationist attitudes and of the first stirrings of antiquarianism from the late middle ages up to the end of the seventeenth century.
One consequence of the attacks on the monasteries and of early modern assaults on monuments was the total or partial destruction of once famous medieval tomb monuments. Lindley closely analyses the effects of attacks on two in particular. First, he employs Tudor eye-witness accounts of King Arthur's monument, once in Glastonbury Abbey, to reconstruct its appearance. Secondly, by using antiquarian records, he is able to recover the original functions and appearance of the famous 'Percy Tomb' in Beverley Minster, one of the most celebrated, but also one of the most enigmatic, monuments of the late middle ages.
The study also focuses on a group of important medieval monuments in Abergavenny Priory church in South Wales, establishing when they were attacked but also why, and when, they were reconstructed from the damaged remains. The themes of the research are drawn together as Lindley shows that the monuments were smashed right at the end of the Civil War, and argues that they were reconstructed shortly after the Restoration of the Monarchy. Throughout this book, which crosses the dividing lines between the medieval and modern periods, and between art history, archaeology and political and religious history, attitudes to the monuments of the dead are related to contemporary theological, political and social changes.
Phillip Lindley FSA is Reader in the History of Art Department of the University of Leicester and author of Gothic to Renaissance, Stamford 1995. He was the academic curator of the exhibition Image and Idol: Medieval Sculpture in Tate Britain 2001-2, with the Turner Prize-winning sculptor, Richard Deacon.
Phillip Lindley, Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England, Shaun Tyas publishing, Donington 2007, (257 & x pp, 80 b&w plates). ISBN 978-1900289-870. £35 (hardback)
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