Des raisons de détruire une image

Abstract

Historians have customarily explained the destruction of images in medieval manuscripts and statuary by the idea that the images had become inacceptable to the mores of succeeding ages. This diachronic approach assumes a form of moral condemnation, ignoring the fact that the destruction of imagery was not always an act of censorship. Nor does it take into account the fact that in very same age images could be created of the same type as those destroyed. Acts of devotion or of evil depicted in medieval imagery are rather motifs that do not depend on changing sensibilities. Often we can understand the destruction of images as a process of montage. Indivuals or certain epochs during the Middle Ages reacted to images in context not according to explicitly moral but according to practical concerns. With the passage of time some imagery, of wich the original intent was often didactic, no longer served its purpose. Thus the destruction of imagery formed a process of revisionary criticism thoughout the medieval period.

Keywords

• attack to pictures
• iconoclasm
• nudity
• power of images