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ART 513
few pieces of our ecclesiastical metalwork that have survived.
The crozier of William of Wykeham, piously preserved at
New College, is a rare reminder of this gap in our artistic
heritage.
The history of English iconoclasm has never yet been fully
written. Medieval builders were none too nice about their treat/
ment ofthe art of previous generations. When they rebuilt the
choir ofSt. Mary's abbey, York, the great column figures, only
some seventy years old, were buried in the new foundations.
But in the sixteenth and seventeenth century religious fanati/
cism was added to the mere utilities of changing taste. As
Thomas Cromwell's engineers blew up Reading abbey or
Lewes priory, whole chapters ofEnglish carving were lost, and
the scattered stones, less valuable than the squared ashlar, were
roughly hacked to serve what building use they could. Torn
leaves from illuminated missals blew about college quad/
rangles, and vestments, the prized opus anglicanum, were ripped
in pieces or set to vile purposes. But even as destruction took its
course, with a thorough violence almost unparalleled on the
Continent, palliatives appeared. John Leland in 1533 was
made 'king's antiquary*. He noted many things now lost to us
and some he was able to
preserve. The age ofcollecting began,
and something was saved, little though could be done for the
great statuary schemes of the abbeys and eventually of the
cathedrals also. The weather has joined with man in the de/
struction ofour medieval achievement; but enough remains to
show its accomplishment, its varying history, its moments of
originality, its times ofdecline, its adoption of foreign fashions,
and its recurrent assertion of peculiarly English qualities.
WORKS FOR REFERENCE
BOASE, T. S. R. English Art 1100-1216 (O.H.E~A. iii, Oxford, 1953).
BOND, F. Fonts and Font Covers (London, 1908); Screens and Galleries in English
Cbttrcbes (London, 1908), Wood Carvings in English Cbvrcbes: L Misericords;
iL Stalls and Tabernacle Work (London, 1910).
BORENIUS, T. and TRISTRAM, E. W. English Medieval Painting (Florence and
Paris, 1927)-