Abominable Idols: Images and Image-breaking under Henry VIII

Abstract

Although the Reformation under Henry viii has received relatively extensive examination from recent historians, one of its most crucial elements has continued to evade adequate investigation. Yet its impact upon the average man or woman may have been as revolutionary as the legitimisation of the English bible or the dissolution of the monasteries, and was arguably far more disruptive than governmental propaganda, ecclesiastical reformulations of dogma, or even the transfer of the supremacy from pope to king. This remarkably neglected phenomenon is the Henrician assault upon images.