09 November 2021
The Catholic Church answered Reformation-era contestations of the cult of images in a famous decree of the Council of Trent (1563). This publication revisits this response by focusing on its antecedents rather than its consequences.
The mid-sixteenth century saw, besides new scholarship on Byzantine doctrines, heated debates about neo-scholastic interpretations. Disagreement, suppressed at Trent but re-emerging soon afterwards, centered on the question whether religious images were solely signs referring to holy subjects or also sacred objects in their own right. It was a debate with major implications for art theory and devotional practice.
Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History 59
Author: Wietse de BoerÂ
With an edition and translation of key documents
