Iconoclasts of the Imagination?

Abstract

Abstract The evidence of sixteenth-century catechetical texts complicates the prevailing narrative that iconoclasm and Ramism led to a reconfiguring of the art of memory in England. For one, the tradition of the memory arts itself contains contested positions for the role of images in the formation of memory, which is surveyed in the first portion of this paper. In the second section, it is shown where catechesis reveals continuity with classical conceptions of memory. Sixteenth-century catechists continued to view memory as a “storehouse” or “text” of the soul, the foundation upon which to build understanding and wisdom. Where conceptions of memory show signs of departure—the topic of the third section—the evidence suggests less a shift from an imagistic to an image-less memory, but instead, a condemnation of certain kinds of images combined with a renewed emphasis on the oral, audial, and dialogical aspects of memory.