Iconoclasm

Sin dalla fine del secolo IV, la parte orientale dell’impero romano, in seguito divenuto impero bizantino, era stato afflitto da molteplici eresie, che rischiavano seriamente di minare e di compromettere la sua stessa unità. Le più importanti tra queste eresie, erano il nestorianesimo , il monofisismo  e il paulicianesimo . Quest’ultima eresia, era sorta in Armenia e in Siria nel secolo VII.
Secondo le fonti, il basileus Leone III, incominciò ad appoggiare gli iconoclasti per una serie di motivi: prima di tutto subì le pressioni dei vescovi iconoclasti dell’Asia Minore a favore dell’iconoclasmo; inoltre sembrerebbe che tutta una serie di disastri naturali, ultimo dei quali un devastante maremoto nel mar Egeo, convincesse l’imperatore bizantino, che tali disastri naturali, fossero dovuti all’ira divina contro la venerazione delle icone. Difficile ad ogni modo stabilire quanto di vero ci sia in questi resoconti, e sui reali motivi per cui fu introdotta l’iconoclastia. 
La riforma religiosa del basileus Leone III, andrebbe verosimilmente iscritta in una più ampia opera volta a rafforzare la stabilità e la solidità dell’Impero, ai fini della quale i pauliciani rappresentavano un pericolo. Fu anche per togliere loro il pretesto di una ribellione che probabilmente Leone III, decise di assecondare le loro richieste.

PROLOGUE of this paper is an extreme detail analysis of Chartres Cathedral's the symbolism embedded into the three Rose Windows. The whole purpose of this paper is to illustrate how Ezekiel's Merkabah is symbolized by the North and South Rose Windows. This analysis will demonstrate the pivotal esoteric teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The history of Chartres will be discussed along with some of its sculpture. This is the second paper in a three part series on the analysis of Ezekiel's Merkabah. Part-One of the series will be on Ezekiel's Merkabah in the first chapter of Genesis and Part Three will be on Ezekiel's Merkabah laid out symbolically in the Sistine Chapel. Part-Two of the series is published first; because, I was well into writing it and; because, I had already written a paper on Ezekiel's Merkabah in the first chapter of Genesis; however, that second version has to be revised to incorporate other interpretations of the texts of the first chapter of Genesis in order for the initiate to envisage the symbolism laid out in Chartres Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel.

Resumo: A fonte Ramos Pinto, instalada no Rio de Janeiro desde 1906, é caso ímpar para se pensar a relação entre vandalismo e iconoclastia. A peça é alvo de ataques cujo histórico se relaciona às políticas de remoção de favelas. O fato abre espaço para uma reflexão sobre exclusão social e a preservação do patrimônio histórico.

"Il saggio traccia una sintesi della civiltà bizantina, dalla fondazione di Costantinopoli alla Quarta Crociata. A tutti gli effetti continuazione dell'impero romano, Bisanzio riuscì ad assimilare positivamente le Völkerwanderungen che determinano il crollo della prima Roma, facendo della multietnicità e del dinamismo verticale delle élites un punto di forza e una costante. Se nell'effimero progetto giustinianeo di riunificazione dell'impero universale prevalevano ancora una gravitazione occidentale e un’ottica vetero-romana, il superamento, a partire da Eraclio, della prospettiva italocentrica segnò il vero inizio dell'età bizantina. A Eraclio vanno ascritti due traguardi fondamentali: la creazione del sistema dei temi e il definitivo soggiogamento dell’impero persiano, nella gran parte dei cui ex-territori subentrerà ben presto, tuttavia, il nuovo interlocutore arabo. Tra il VII e l’VIII secolo, con l'accentuazione dei tratti aneuropei in campo economico, sociale, artistico, culturale, si assiste alla vera e propria nascita della concezione bizantina del potere. L’età dell'iconomachia, a lungo giudicata “buia”, coincide in realtà con una fase di prosperità economica: il compiersi del processo di deurbanizzazione e la trasformazione territoriale favoriscono l’accentuarsi della vocazione statalista e predispongono il grande “risorgimento culturale” del IX-X secolo. La sconfitta dell'iconoclasmo vede anche la sconfitta del platonismo e l'affermarsi dell'aristotelismo come filosofia ufficiale del cristianesimo medievale. Il regno di Basilio I e della dinastia macedone segna la cosiddetta "età d'oro" dell'impero bizantino. Il X e XI secolo conoscono più tormentati rapporti tra stato e chiesa, che culminano nello scisma del 1054 tra chiesa d’oriente e chiesa d’occidente (in definitiva sfida del patriarca Cerulario al basileus) e un incremento politico ed economico della nobiltà militare provinciale, che si affermerà definitivamente con la dinastia dei Comneni. Proprio con il regno comneno, in particolare con la concessione dei privilegi commerciali a Venezia da parte di Alessio I, deve farsi coincidere l’inizio della fase calante dell'economia bizantina, ininterrotta fino al XV secolo, simmetrica e inversa all'ascesa del protocapitalismo occidentale dei traffici, cui l’antica egemonia di Bisanzio sarà progressivamente sottomessa e la sopravvivenza stessa della basileia infine sacrificata. Al riaccendersi della prospettiva di restaurazione dell'impero universale corrisponderà – nelle forme del ripiegamento sociale e dell'indebolimento statale – maggiore vulnerabilità nella politica pratica. Con queste premesse Bisanzio subirà, nel 1204, la forza distruttiva della “deviazione” della Quarta Crociata: una catastrofe inaspettata e forse per questo ancora più traumatica della definitiva caduta del 1453 sotto i turchi osmani.

This essay outlines the history of Byzantine civilisation from the founding of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade.  In every way a continuation of the Roman empire, Byzantium succeeded in assimilating to positive effect the Völkerwanderungen that determined the fall of the first Rome, creating a point of strength and allegiance out of the multi-ethnic, ascendant vertical dynamism of the élites.  If gravitation toward the West and an antiquated Roman perspective still prevailed in Justinian’s ephemeral project to reunify the universal empire, the shift beyond the Italo-centric perspective from Heraclius on marked the true beginning of the Byzantine era.  Two fundamental achievements are ascribed to Heraclius: the creation of the system of themes and the definitive subjugation of the Persian empire, to whose ex-territories, however, the new Arab interlocutor would soon succeed.  Between the 7th and 8th centuries, with the accentuation of non-European traits in economic, social, artistic, and cultural fields, we begin to see the emergence of the authentic Byzantine concept of power.  Long considered “dark,” the age of iconomachy coincided, in reality, with a phase of economic prosperity.  The culmination of the process of de-urbanisation and transformation of the territory favoured the accentuation of a state-centred vocation and set the stage for the great “cultural revival” of the 9th and 10th centuries.  The defeat of iconoclasm also saw the defeat of Platonism and the affirmation of Aristotelianism as the official philosophy of Medieval Christianity.  The reign of Basil I and the Macedonian dynasty marked the so-called “golden age” of the Byzantine empire.  The 10th and 11th centuries saw more tormented relations between church and state, culminating in the Schism of 1054 between the Eastern and Western churches (ultimately the patriarch Cerularius’ challenge to the basileus) and a political and economic increase in the provincial military nobility that would assert itself definitively with the Comnenian dynasty.  The beginning of the decline of the Byzantine economy - uninterrupted until the 15th century, symmetrical in nature and the inverse of the ascent of Western trade proto-capitalism to which the ancient hegemony of Byzantium would be gradually subjugated and the very survival of the basileia ultimately sacrificed - began precisely with the Comnenian dynasty, in particular, with the concession of commercial privileges to Venice by Alexius I.  To the reawakening of the prospect of a restoration of the universal empire would correspond – in the form of social withdrawal and weakening of the state – greater vulnerability in political practice. Under these conditions Byzantium would, in 1204, be subjected to the destructive force of the “detour” of the Fourth Crusade: an unforeseen catastrophe and perhaps for this reason even more traumatic than the definitive fall in 1453 at the hands of the Osmanli Turks. 
"

Goodbye Roosevelt. Vita e morte di una statua È ormai certo: il memoriale equestre del Presidente americano Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) verrà rimosso dallo scalone antistante lʼAmerican Museum of Natural History (AMNH) di New York, visitato da quasi cinque milioni di persone ogni anno. La notizia non giunge inattesa

7. bis 9. April 2017, Schwabenakademie Irsee, Klosterring 4, 87660 Irsee

Die Tagung kann auf der Grundlage der in den letzten Jahren, etwa im Zusammenhang mit diversen Tagungen und Ausstellungen der sogenannten Lutherdekade stehenden vorgelegten Forschungen zum Thema ‚katholische Bildverehrung’, ‚lutherische und protestantische‘ Bildverehrung und Bilderfrage und Bildkritik und ‚Bildersturm’ in vielen Bereichen einen jüngst akzentuierten und aktualisierten Forschungszweig erstmals diskutieren.
Dass Ikonoklasmus jedoch andererseits tagespolitisch besondere Aktualität hat, wird gerade durch Berichte etwa aus Syrien oder dem Irak deutlich, während auch an anderen Orten durch Vernachlässigung von Weltkulturerbe eine Zerstörung von Kunstwerken bewusst in Kauf genommen wird. Ebenso haben Klimaveränderungen, der Massentourismus und Naturkatastrophen bereits unzählige Werke vernichtet oder massiv verändert. Wie – so stellt sich eine Kernthese der Tagung dar – finden sich terminologische und methodische Apparaturen, um Bildzerstörungen der Gegenwart und der Vormoderne miteinander in Bezug zu setzen?
Der Fokus der Tagung soll daher nicht allein auf Bildverboten in Antike und Mittelalter, auf bildertheologischem Schrifttum oder dem reformatorischen Bildersturm in den südlichen Niederlanden, der Schweiz oder England liegen. Die angesprochene chronologisch als auch disziplinär vollzogene Breite des Forschungsfeldes bildet noch immer ein Desiderat. Welche Gründe lassen sich für die Zerstörung von Kunstwerken anführen? Wie unterscheidet sich die Wirkmächtigkeit des Bildes im Sinn von David Freedbergs „Power of Images“ in den unterschiedlichen Handlungsräumen und inwiefern wird das Kunstwerk als Bedrohung oder Waffe wahrgenommen?
Horst Bredekamps vor nunmehr vier Jahrzehnten ausgearbeitete Perspektive auf „Kunst als Medium sozialer Konflikte“ kam zu dem Ergebnis, dass Bilderstürme und die dahinter stehenden bilderstürmerischen Theorien auch essentielle Impulse setzten und Neuschöpfungen kreierten. Wie lässt sich dieser wegweisende Ansatz in aktuelle Forschungsdebatten eingliedern? Welche analytische Bedeutung haben in diesem Kontext Begriffe wie Zäsur, Umkodierung und Reinterpretation? Dabei muss der Blick auf die Frage gerichtet werden, wie die zeitgenössische Kunst mit dem Themenkomplex umgeht. Gerade diese Frage stellt ein spannendes Potential dar, das die Tagung anhand mehrerer Vorträge analysieren möchte: Inwiefern – so der Ansatz – ist das „Sich-Erneuern“ oder das bewusste Auslöschen ein Thema der Kunst? Inwiefern nehmen zeitgenössische Künstler ex- oder implizit Stellung zum vormodernen Bildersturm, inwiefern ist die Auflösung oder die Zerstörung positiv oder negativ konnotiert?
Mit der Analyse des Bildersturms ergreift das Kunsthistorische Forum Irsee 2017 einen Kernbereich Kunsthistorischer Forschung. Gerade im Zuge der Gründung des „Ulmer Vereins“ im Jahr 1968 wurde das Thema des Bildersturms in vielfältiger Form von der kunsthistorischen Forschung aufgegriffen (Warnke, Bredekamp). Bildersturm ist somit ein zentrales Moment der kunsthistorischen Fachgeschichte. Die Ergebnisse der in den vergangenen zehn Jahren, innerhalb der sogenannten Lutherdekade erfolgten maßgeblichen Forschungen zu Bildverehrung und Bildzerstörung in und nach der Reformation, sind im Fach noch nicht ausgewertet, was die Tagung unter anderem leisten soll. Sie sieht sich aber darüber hinaus explizit nicht als rein disziplinäre Veranstaltung.
Durch eine transdisziplinäre Betrachtung des Phänomens sollen erstmals die Prozesse langer Dauer des Themas grundlegend erfasst werden. Nur so kann das hochkomplexe Thema eine umfassende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung erfahren und einen wichtigen Beitrag zur aktuellen Reformations- und Konfessionalsierungsforschung leisten, sowie ebenso zentrale Impulse für bildwissenschaftliche Fragestellungen. Die Tagung wird in deutscher und englischer Sprache stattfinden, die Publikation der Tagungsergebnisse ist zeitnah (Frühjahr 2018) fest eingeplant.

Iconoclasm as an iconic event. Notes on the destruction of Muslim mosques in globalizing India

On the 6th of December 1992 Ayodhya, a Hindu-majority city located in the Northern Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, witnessed the destruction of the Babri Masjid Mosque by an estimated group of 150,000 volunteers (kar sevaks) linked to the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist and right-wing organization . In the subsequent months, communal violence spread in several Indian cities leading to an estimated number of 2,000 deaths, especially among Muslims. The broad media coverage of the destruction and of the subsequent celebratory/commemorative events, its transnational diffusion through Hindutva networks and the reactions of the international community all underscore how Ayodhya became implicated in processes transcending its location in time and place. Iconoclasm can be considered a performative event through which communal conflicts and the collective image of the nation are projected to a broader audience of spectators. In marking a watershed between the past, present and future – and in capturing the collective imagination - the enactment of that iconoclastic gesture becomes ‘iconic’ insofar as it provides future generations with a specific vocabulary to narrate and perform similar events. From the 2002 Gujarat violence to the 2020 urban conflicts in Delhi, anti-Muslim pogroms have used the destruction of mosques - and the related claim for the right to build temples – as a chief way of asserting a Hindu nationalist identity.

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) occupies a unique position in the history of Euro-pean thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in gen-res of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to everyday experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts ("epistemological rupture," "epistemological obstacle," "technoscience") are still widely used, his oeuvre tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard's extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard's oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard's work initially entails a pan-egyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images ("archetypes"), such as the Mother Earth archetype.

The anonymous author of the “Life of Michael Synkellos” in his account about the act of confession of the brothers Theodore and Theophanus Graptoi uses a genuine document, a letter of Theodore, where the confessor describes what he and his brother suffered in 836. A new French translation of this letter is included in the article because the previous translation by S. Vailhé (the only translation into an European language) is not complete and sometimes incorrect (in the appendix a Russian translation of the same letter is added). The present author compares two versions of the same event, that of the letter of Theodore and that of the “Life of Michael Synkellos.” The comparison shows that, in the hand of the anonymous hagiographer, the story becomes transformed into a panegyric or even a Passion épique. All the known versions of the iambic verses written about the faces of the confessors are compared. A hypothesis has been put forward that the cause of such an unusual punishment was the satyrical verses written by Theophanus Graptos about Emperor Leo the Armenian. Probably, Theophilus’ idea of giving the brothers to the Arabs was a mockery provoked by the fact that the brothers left Palestine because of a fear of the Arabs. The reasons for Theophilus’ irritation with the brothers were of rather political than religious nature. An episode in the Continuator of Theophanus with a discussion held between St Theophanus and Emperor Theophilus about the Book of Isaiah allegedly “corrupted” by the iconoclast is also reconsidered. It is very probable that it is fictitious (because Theodore Graptos in his letter did not mention it), but, in any case, it may correspond to some “Armenian” version of the Greek text of Isaiah: at least, such a corrupted quotation from Isaiah is to be read in a harsh iconoclastic document, the Testament of the Armenian Catholicos Sahak III, whose spiritual son Smbat Bagratuni was a close friend of the first iconoclast Emperor Leo III.

In Society for 17th-Century English Literature, ed., Ju-nana-seiki Bungaku wo Rekishiteki ni Yomu [XVII Century English Literature in Historical Contexts], Tokyo: Kinseido, 2015: 65-86. Translated into English by the author. This paper discusses the so far unrecognized influence of Martin Luther on Donne's Poem, "The Flea" in the context of the iconolastic controversy.

In diesem Beitrag wird das Heftthema >Kultur und Terror< aus Sicht der globalen Denkmalpflege beleuchtet. Im Vordergrund stehen dabei die Fragen nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Kulturerbe und Kulturterror sowie nach den Motivationen und neuen Inszenierungsformen, die diesbezüglich im Zeitalter des Internet sichtbar geworden sind. Als Beispiel dient die Sprengung der Buddha-Statuen im afghanischeu Bamiyan-Tal im Jahre 2001 durch das Taliban-Regime, das spätes-tens seit den Anschlägen aufNew York und Washington am 11. September des-selben Jahres als Brutstätte von al-Qaida gilt und zum Aushängeschild des internationalen Terrorismus zu werden droht.

This paper presents a recently finished project entitled 'Iconophilia' , which engaged with the echoes that the Byzantine debate on sacred images had in Rome and in central-southern Italy. This project was funded by the European Commission at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies, and based at the University of Birmingham (2015-2017). Maintaining a firm Chalcedonian Christology, which acknowledged the perfect dual nature of Christ, the popes supported sacred images because they visualised the Incarnate God and were useful in liturgy, instruction, and private prayer. The unremitting iconophile position of the papacy defined Christian religious mentality and art for centuries. In this article, I trace the methodology followed in this project, to unveil cross-disciplinary, overlooked or unexplored aspects of the papal and monastic response to Byzantine Iconoclasm, as a contribution to a cultural history of that period.

In the process of decommunisation, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. This book documents the inglorious fate of these Soviet statues, following their often violent removal. Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sébastien Gobert have scoured the country in search of the remains of these toppled figures. They are found in the most unlikely places: Lenin inhabits gardens, scrap yards and store rooms. He has fallen on hard times –  cut into pieces, daubed with paint, turned into a Cossack or Darth Vader. Yet despite every attempt to reduce their status, the monuments retain a sinister quality, resisting all efforts to separate them from their history.

Myroslava Hartmond's introductory essay puts Niels and Sébastien's journey across Ukraine into historical and global perspective, highlighting the uniqueness of the Leninfall phenomenon and the significance of their work in the context of post-Soviet studies.

160x200 mm hardback
176 pages
ISBN 978-0-9931911-7-6
Published in 2017

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Las imágenes decapitadas, los templos incendiados, los sacerdotes asesinados litúrgicamente... Los disturbios anticlericales significaron el despliegue de una energía extraordinaria que se ensañaba con los lugares, los símbolos y los oficiantes del culto católico, que se articulaba con los avatares de la lucha por el estado, pero que desacataba o dislocaba muchas veces su lógica. Agitándose por entre los puntos y espacios de la coherencia política, pero desbaratándolos con frecuencia, la violencia de las masas iconoclastas atraviesa la historia contemporánea de España y se adentra de pleno siglo 20.
Superando su aspecto irracional, se propone así aquí una explicación de la furia anticlerical que la ve como parte del proceso de modernización, que hace de ella una maquinaria destinada a desactivar de una vez por todas el viejo poder del ritual, que la reconoce impugnando la eficacia simbólica de las imágenes sagradas y que la coloca en el núcleo de las luchas por el control político sobre el espacio, todo ello insertando los ataques sacrílegos en el mismo sistema de representación que tan violentamente estaba siendo agredido.
Más allá, se formula en este libro una reflexión sobre lo que ocurre cuando la potencia de los acontecimientos se impone al poder de las estructuras, cuando se adivina el lugar de la angustia y la crueldad en el fundamento de cualquier forma de convivencia humana y cuando los hechos revelan la presencia secreta pero central de auténticas instituciones atroces.

Natasha Adamou, addresses the participation of Mexican contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco to the 1993 edition of the Venice Biennale with the works Empty Shoe Box (1993) and Yielding Stone (1992). In their status as everyday, almost unperceivable objects, these works were conceived to undermine this spectacular art event but ended up being rapidly consecrated and incorporated into the logic of the institution. Adamou’s chapter interrogates the tensions that arise when an artwork’s material conditions make it refractory to traditional modes of display. Her reading situates Orozco’s work in relation to Duchamp’s readymade and André Breton’s found object questioning, in light of these concepts, Orozco’s investigation of the tensions between object and sculpture, reality and representation.

I examine John of Damascus' defense of icons, upheld at the Council of Nicea II (AD 787). John argues that the making and honoring of images of Christ and the saints are in keeping with Scripture and Tradition. Contrary to the view that the second commandment prohibits images, John argues that a proper understanding of the commandment shows it is a prohibition on the worship of creatures. Because the context of the commandment is that God is unseen, so no image of Him is possible, the question emerges whether something has changed for those who confess that the Son of God has taken on flesh. John argues that the Incarnation not only makes images of the Son permissible but raises the question of whether resistance to such images indicates a faulty Christology. As for the honoring of images, John shows that Scripture, though prohibiting worship of creatures, approves the honoring of people, places, and things. But more profoundly, John highlights that the Eastern Church fathers understand the Incarnation to bring human nature, and through it the world, into communion with the divine nature. This communion makes it possible for a creature to serve as a conduit for divine energy and grace. John argues that such conduits are rightly honored, not as God, but as creatures in whom God's energy and grace reside. This view carried the day at Nicea II as a faithful representation of the teachings of the apostles and the fathers and remains the view and practice of the Eastern Church to this day.

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference—‘Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis’—which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

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En los últimos años, la cartografía social ha ingresado a los movimientos sociales y grupos académicos alternativos. En 2008 se llevó adelante la primera experiencia en este campo, dentro de una cátedra formal de la Facultad de Trabajo Social de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Este libro es resultado de esos diez años de investigación sobre el tema: talleres, intercambios de experiencias, derivas y cursos en diferentes lugares de América Latina y África, que proporcionaron el marco para dar forma inicial a una “metodología” que es abordada con diferentes matices y denominaciones -mapeo social, mapeo colectivo, cartografía subversiva–, según las regiones y variantes que presenta. Estas páginas son también una invitación a volver a hablar sobre el territorio e intercambiar experiencias singulares para crear un abordaje colectivo, con la certeza de que de este texto emergerán transformaciones y otros modos de ver el territorio, que sean bienvenidos a ese mundo donde el mapa es la excusa para producir colectivamente.

The talk, based on Brian Cummings’s latest book, Bibliophobia. The End and the Beginning of the Book (Oxford University Press, 2022), will consider the status of writing and of books throughout history. It will cover a global range of cases from all six continents and in relation to Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious texts. It will deal with complex issues of censorship, persecution, and toleration through the destruction of books. It will also reflect on the future of writing in a digital world in the context of printed and other media.

Static levitation is a form of marvel with metaphysical implications whose long history has not previously been charted. First, Pliny the Elder reports an architect's plan to suspend an iron statue using magnetism, and the later compiler Ampelius mentions a similar-sounding wonder in Syria. When the Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed, and for many centuries afterwards, chroniclers wrote that an iron Helios had hung magnetically inside. In the Middle Ages, reports of such false miracles multiplied, appearing in Muslim accounts of Christian and Hindu idolatry, as well as Christian descriptions of the tomb of Muhammad. A Christian levitation miracle involving saints' relics also emerged. Yet magnetic suspension could be represented as miraculous in itself, representing lost higher knowledge, as in the latest and easternmost tradition concerning Konark's ruined temple. The levitating monument, first found in classical antiquity, has undergone many cultural and epistemological changes in its long and varied history.

Interview with art historian and sociologist Peter Bengtsen for Inchiesta about the exhibition “Street Art – Banksy & Co. L’arte allo stato urbano” in Bologna and the resultant removal by the Italian artist Blu of all his remaining artworks in the city.

In this article I focus on the work and the practice of Blu, an Italian artist whose artistic process consists of the production of monumental mural paintings that are marked by humanist, environmentalist and anti-globalization subjects that are close to libertarian culture. Because of the public nature of all his work, which is thus highly polemical and satirical, the artist’s activity has been at the centre of three episodes of censorship that will be analyzed here: Modena in 2004, Los Angeles in 2010 and Rome 2014. Forces of public order had effectively erased representations that were held to be immoral, disturbing or outrageous. However, on two other occasions Blu himself decided to erase his own creations: in Berlin (2014), he wanted to avoid having his murals contribute to the ongoing gentrification of the Kreuzberg neighbourhood; in Bologna (2016), he wanted to protest the museification of eight mural paintings that had been detached and transposed on canvas. Faced with the “artification” of street art and its subsequent “de-artisation” – in other words, the loss of its original critical force – Blu appropriated censorship methods normally used by institutions in order to withdraw from what would otherwise have been an inevitable process of recuperation. Can we see, in this auto-iconoclasm, an evolution of satirical language?

The Nathan Bedford Forrest monument and tomb located in the recently re-named Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tennessee has been a controversial place since its inception. In 1905, Forrest’s body was exhumed from the historic Elmwood Cemetery and placed in the center of Memphis creating a pilgrimage site for Forrest as a civic icon of mythological stature. Constructed during the height of the Jim Crow era, the message of white supremacy was deeply embedded in the iconic man and monument in the park. The site has been consistently debated as icons of the Old South, such as the Confederate Flag, have been slowly removed.
In 2009, artist Richard Lou executed a guerrilla-style performance piece in front of the monument called ReCovering Memphis: Listening to Untold Stories. The performance was an act of conceptual iconoclasm. It did not destroy the icon, but incorporated photography, sculpture, storytelling, and dance to temporarily erase the statue and replace it with layers of narratives from diverse Memphis residents reclaiming the public space and questioning the dominant narrative.
In 2013, heated controversy arose when the issue of renaming city parks with Confederate titles was revisited. This provided the backdrop for a performance/photography piece by Richard Lou called ReCovering Memphis: Courageous Love and invited couples from all backgrounds to have their photos made in front of the monument, once again creating a layering of the narrative. Ultimately, the park names were changed, but the shadow of the Forrest sculpture is still cast on the park grounds.

Across Europe, the parish church has stood for centuries at the centre of local communities; it was the focal point of its religious life, the rituals performed there marked the stages of life from the cradle to the grave. Nonetheless the church itself artistically and architecturally stood apart from the parish community. It was often the largest and only stone-built building in a village; it was legally distinct being subject to canon law, as well as consecrated for the celebration of religious rites. The buildings associated with the ‘cure of souls’ were sacred sites or holy places, where humanity interacted with the divine.

In spite of the importance of the parish church, these buildings have generally not received the same attention from historians as non-parochial places of worship. This collection of essays redresses this balance and reflects on the parish church across a number of confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Anti-Trinitarian – during the early modern period. Rather than providing a series of case studies of individual buildings, each essay looks at the evolution of parish churches in response to religious reform as well as confessional change and upheaval. They examine aspects of their design and construction; furnishings and material culture; liturgy and the use of the parish church. While these essays range widely across Europe, the volume also considers how religious provision and the parish church were translated into a global context with colonial and commercial expansion in the Americas and Asia. This interdisciplinary volume seeks to identify what was distinctive about the parish church for the congregations that gathered in them for worship and for communities across the early modern world.

Contents:
The early modern parish church: an introduction
Andrew Spicer
Patrician and episcopal rivalry for the Milanese parish church: San Nazaro in Brolo during French and Spanish rule,
Philippa Woodcock
Exploring the features and challenges of the urban parish church in the southern Low Countries. The case of 16th-century Ghent
Anne-Laure Van Bruaene
The Counter Reformation and the parish church in western Brittany (France) 1500-1700
Elizabeth Tingle
The body of the faithful: Joseph Furttenbach’s 1649 Lutheran Church plans
Emily Fisher Gray
Staging the Eucharist, adiaphora, and shaping Lutheran identities in the Transylvanian parish church
Evelin Wetter
Parish temples of Geneva and the Swiss Romande
Andrew Spicer
'Which of them do belong to the parish or not’. The changing rural parish in the Dutch Republic after the Reformation
Arjan Nobel
Unitarian parish churches in early modern Transylvania
Maria Crăciun
Heaven on earth: churches in early modern Hispanic America
Andrew Redden
Franciscans and the parish in early modern Brazil
Ivan Cavalcanti Filho
Parish churches, colonisation and conversion in Portuguese Goa
Mallica Kumbera Landrus
Dutch churches in Asia
Andrew Spicer
'To build up the walls of Jerusalem’: Anglican churches in 17th-century Virginia
Carl Lounsbury
Parish churches in the early modern world - afterword
Beat Kümin

Before the protestant doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura’, hardly any Christian denomination could be found that it would not consider itself the genuine, if not the exclusive, successor of the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’. Nothing was to be proved in line with the genuine Christian faith, unless it was based as much on the Scripture as on the Church Fathers and Synods. This is the reason why in the Council of Hieria (AD 754) Iconoclasts showed exceptional interest in declaring anew their faith to every Definition, Creed and Αnathema of all Ecumenical Councils. According to Hieria’s Definition and Florilegium, iconoclastic dogma had to be proved on the basis of the Triadological and Christological dogma. Similarly, the iconoclast policy of Isaurian emperors would have been justified by the predominant theology. Here a crucial question arises whether nonorthodox beliefs through a series of textual sources like those of Apocrypha could be interpolated into authentic patristic testimonia. In reality, a number of those texts, especially of Hieria’s Florilegium, were examined thoroughly in the fifth and sixth sessions of the 7th Ecumenical Council in the same scientific way they are reexamined today. What matters is the appearance of official declarations such that of ‘indescribable [Christ] even after the Incarnation’ in the Definition of Hieria. Through this evidence, a dominant docetism, which presupposes the annihilation of Christ’s ‘flesh’ after Resurrection, reveals its identity. Either for Iconophiles or for Iconoclasts, Christ’s human nature could be describable compared to his indescribable divinity. But for Iconoclasts, his ‘flesh’ together with all material world is considered as something unreal, absorbed by divinity, and consequently co-indescribable. That’s why the Fathers of Nicaea II are used to call Iconoclasts ‘Manicheans’ on every occasion. In this case, they seem not to repeat a rhetorical manner of expression among others, but a term with its literal meaning.