Book contents
3 - Viewing the pictures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
The prevalence of illustration in texts such as the Book of Martyrs demonstrates ambivalence concerning the validity of visual images. It is apparent that Protestant reformers never fully eradicated religious images. Indeed, variation and distortion of older visual themes supplied models for “purified” alternatives. Even though early iconoclasts burnt prohibited books, they often preserved volumes that contain intact woodcuts. At the same time, they effaced offensive wording that accompanied illustrations. The Golden Legend came under heavy attack from Foxe and other iconoclasts, for example, but its woodcuts often remained immune from attack by individuals who tore out pages of text or employed pen strokes to strike out impermissible wording. These zealots attacked the “misuse” of images in religious devotion. English Protestants not only preserved books that contained old-fashioned devotional images, but they engaged in the illustration of books on the model of German Lutheran and other Northern European publications. Notable examples include richly illustrated editions of the Coverdale Bible and the Great Bible, a revision supervised by Miles Coverdale, whose first edition contains sheets printed in both Paris and London. In the latter case, wooden blocks crafted on the continent were brought to England for the inclusion of woodcuts in the ongoing publication of these translations. The Bishops' Bible (1568) continued in the same Anglo-continental tradition of “narrative” illustration (i.e., of dynamic events such as Cain's slaughter of Abel or Jacob's wrestling with an angel).
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- Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' and Early Modern Print Culture , pp. 162 - 242Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006