Writing the visual into history: changing cultural perceptions of late medieval and Reformation Germany

Writing the visual into history: changing cultural perceptions of late medieval and Reformation Germany* In a Past and Present review article of 1988, Roy Porter bemoaned the lack of schools of visual history which would help us understand the nature of visual signs and perception as vital components in processes of communication.1 Porter contrasted this lack to the rise of oral history as a discipline and the manner in which it was helping scholars integrate oral discourse with both written communication and the media of print. Porter concentrated on the historiography of early modern England, and puzzled over the neglect by its historians of what he called 'deliberately wrought works of art'. And, more generally, he complained of the way in which historians tended to prolong the primacy of the printed record, frightened to display and integrate images into their history writing lest they be considered lacking in seriousness. The purpose of this paper is, first, to encourage fellow historians to overcome the fear which Porter has identified,2 and to begin to make more insistent and creative use of the visual image. W e need to explore the lexicons of the pictorial, as Porter has argued, and situate images in relationship to the other social and cultural languages in use in a particular society. But the historiographical canvas is not quite so dark as some of Porter's general comments might suggest, at least not for the historiography of such areas as late medieval and early modern Germany. So the second aim of this paper is to communicate the considerable historiographical advances of recent years which have attempted to incorporate the visual image into the representation of that past society. Thirdly, the paper's aim is to point to the significance of this new awareness of the visual in history. It is an awareness which has grown out of a more theoretical reappraisal of the role of cultural artifacts and communication in society, and also out of empirical studies which have attempted to integrate the cultural production of specific images into the historical narrative of this society. Consideration of the visual in late medieval and Reformation Germany has been especially related to two seemingly opposed historical phenomena, which are commonly perceived as playing a critical role in the events and changes which characterise this period: the destruction of images, in the large-scale iconoclasticriotsor in small-group acts of destruction and desecration; and the * Thanks to Sarah Ferber and Stasia Zika for assistance with this paper. 1 I. R. Porter, 'Seeing the Past', Past and Present 118 (1988), 186-205. 2 Porter, 'Seeing the Past', p. 188: 'And when we do resort to pictures, publishers help by keeping the illustrations at a safe, non-contaminating distance from the chaste body of the text. Insert too much visual evidence, and we commit the solecism of producing a "coffee-table" book'. P A R E R G O N ns 11.2, December 1993 108 C. Zika production of new kinds and greater numbers of images, through the new technology of print. Iconoclasm has been traditionally understood by historians as a more radical, or sometimes extreme, manifestation of the cleansing operation instigated by Luther and other mainstream reformers. According to this view, it was a radical attack against a debased and superstitious form of Christianity which confused the image with the reality and concentrated on outwardritualrather than inner devotion, on external ceremonies and works rather than internal piety and faith.^ There are many limitations with such an understanding, most especially the failure to recognise the extent to which the general culture of the late middle ages, and in particular the religious culture, was framed and shaped by visible artifacts and the experience of seeing. The visual was deeply implicated in the experience of the divine. The rituals through which individuals sought to disempower and desacralise their statues of Christ, the Virgin or the saints, provide us with insight into the power which those images held over them.4 And any displacement of the visual must have involved a fundamental restructuring of the meaning of religious experience.5 Moreover, such an understanding of iconoclasm also ignores the critical functions which images...