page_title: Beeldenstorm
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Beeldenstorm / Background
context_page_description: Beeldenstorm in Dutch, and Bildersturm in German are terms used for outbreaks of destruction of religious images that occurred in Europe in the 16th century, known in English as the Great Iconoclasm or Iconoclastic Fury. During these spates of iconoclasm, Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed in unofficial or mob actions by Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation. Most of the destruction was of art in churches and public places.
  The Dutch term usually specifically refers to the wave of disorderly attacks in the summer of 1566 that spread rapidly through the Low Countries from south to north. Similar outbreaks of iconoclasm took place in other parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire in the period between 1522 and 1566, notably Zürich, Copenhagen, Münster, Geneva, and Augsburg.
  In England there was both government-sponsored removal of images and also spontaneous attacks from 1535 onwards, and in Scotland from 1559. In France there were several outbreaks as part of the French Wars of Religion from 1560 onwards.
context_section_description: In France unofficial episodes of large scale destruction of art in churches by Huguenot Calvinists had begun in 1560; unlike in the Low Countries they were often physically resisted and repulsed by Roman Catholic crowds, but were to continue throughout the French Wars of Religion. In Anglican England much destruction had already taken place in an organized fashion under orders from the government, while in Northern Europe, groups of Calvinists marched through churches and removed images, a move which "provoked reactive riots by Lutheran mobs" in Germany and "antagonized the neighbouring Eastern Orthodox" in the Baltic region.
  In Germany, Switzerland and England, conversion to Protestantism had been enforced on the whole population at the level of a city, principality or kingdom, with varying degrees of discrimination, persecution or expulsion applied to those who insisted on remaining Roman Catholic. The Low Countries, Flanders, Brabant and Holland, were part of the inheritance of Philip II of Spain, who was a devout Catholic and self-proclaimed protector of the Counter-Reformation, and suppressed Protestantism through his Governor-general or Regent, Margaret of Parma the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V, who was herself more willing to compromise. Although Protestants so far represented only a relatively small proportion of the Netherlandish population, but including disproportionate numbers from the nobility and upper bourgeoisie, the Catholic Church had evidently lost the loyalty of the population, and traditional Catholic anti-clericalism was now dominant.
  The region affected was perhaps the richest in Europe, but still seethed with economic discontent among parts of the population, and had suffered a poor harvest and hard winter. However, recent historians are generally less inclined to see the movement as prompted by these factors than was the case a few decades ago.
  The Beeldenstorm grew out of a turn in the behaviour of Low Country Protestants starting around 1560, who became increasingly open in their religion, despite penal sanctions. Catholic preachers were interrupted in sermons, and raids were organized to rescue Protestant prisoners from jail, who then often fled into exile in France or England. Protestant views were spread by a large movement of "field sermons" or open-air sermons (Dutch: hagepreken) held outside towns, and therefore out of the jurisdiction of the town authorities. The first took place on the Cloostervelt near Hondschoote, in what is now the arrondissement of Dunkirk in French Flanders, very close to where the attacks later began, and the first one to be armed against disruption was held near Boeschepe on July 12, 1562, two months after religious war had broken out again over the (then) French border just nearby.
  These open-air sermons, mostly by Anabaptist or Mennonite preachers, spread through the country, attracting huge crowds, though not necessarily of those leaning to Protestantism, and in many places immediately preceded the iconoclastic attacks of August 1566. Prosecutions for heresy continued, especially in the south, although they were erratic, and in some places clergy of clearly heretical views were appointed to churches. By 1565 the authorities seem to have realized that persecution was not the answer, and the level of prosecutions slackened, and the Protestants became increasingly confident in the open. A letter of July 22, 1566, from local officials to the Regent, warned that "the scandalous pillage of churches, monasteries and abbeys" was imminent.
caption: An outdoor sermon (The Preaching of St. John the Baptist) depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, apparently in 1565, the year before the Beeldenstorm movement began.
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