The Ghosts of Conciliarisms Past

There are certain books that are easily forgotten, and there are others that are impossible to forget. In this latter category is Francis Oakley's 2003 book The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870. Given that the problems of papal and conciliar or synodal authority are very alive and well in both Orthodoxy and Catholicism at the present moment, this is a book that will not go away--nor should it.

For those of us who work, as I do, in the areas of the papacy, ecclesiology, and ecumenism, it is a book whose treatment of conciliarism systematically dismantles all the easy retroactive rubbishing of the Council of Constance and the self-serving claims of centralized papal authority which began at Constance, were dogmatized at Vatican I, and since then have shot through the stratosphere since Vatican II, to the detriment of us all. As I noted here, Oakley has made it impossible for Catholics to do anything other than rest very uneasily when Constance is raised.

And it is raised again in Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England: Collective Authority in the Age of the General Councils by Alexander Russell and published this summer by Cambridge University Press, as Oakley's book was.

About this new study we are told:

The general councils of the fifteenth century constituted a remarkable political experiment, which used collective decision-making to tackle important problems facing the church. Such problems had hitherto received rigid top-down management from Rome. However, at Constance and Basle, they were debated by delegates of different ranks from across Europe and resolved through majority voting. Fusing the history of political thought with the study of institutional practices, this innovative study relates the procedural innovations of the general councils and their anti-heretical activities to wider trends in corporate politics, intellectual culture and pastoral reform. Alexander Russell argues that the acceptance of collective decision-making at the councils was predicated upon the prevalence of group participation and deliberation in small-scale corporate culture. Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England offers a fundamental reassessment of England's relationship with the general councils, revealing how political thought, heresy, and collective politics were connected.

Classifying Christians and Heretics

The University of California Press continues to publish impressive and important studies in early Christian history, not least, as I noted earlier, the Syriac Christian tradition.

From California I recently received in the mail a new study: Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity by Todd S. Berzon (2016), 320pp.

About this book we are told:

Classifying Christians investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and theological terms. Oscillating between ancient ethnographic evidence and contemporary ethnographic writing, Todd S. Berzon argues that late antique heresiology shares an underlying logic with classical ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world. By providing an account of heresiological writing from the second to fifth century, Classifying Christians embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.

That Heretic Marcion

A graduate student of mine is working on Irenaeus of Lyons, and along the way has been telling me about her various encounters with Marcion, who tangled with Irenaeus and others and about whom a new study has just been released: Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge UP, 2015), 520pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

A comprehensive and authoritative account of the 'heretic' Marcion, this volume traces the development of the concept and language of heresy in the setting of an exploration of second-century Christian intellectual debate. Judith M. Lieu analyses accounts of Marcion by the major early Christian polemicists who shaped the idea of heresy, including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius of Salamis, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Ephraem Syrus. She examines Marcion's 'Gospel', 'Apostolikon', and 'Antitheses' in detail and compares his principles with those of contemporary Christian and non-Christian thinkers, covering a wide range of controversial issues: the nature of God, the relation of the divine to creation, the person of Jesus, the interpretation of Scripture, the nature of salvation, and the appropriate lifestyle of adherents. In this innovative study, Marcion emerges as a distinctive, creative figure who addressed widespread concerns within second-century Christian diversity.

Medieval Heresies

I inhabit two worlds, both of which have more in common than either would ever admit: the modern academy, and the modern Church. In the former, it is customary on the part of some modern scholars to disdain the whole concept of "heresy" (always in scare-quotes) as nothing more than a nakedly political power-grab in which the "victors" impose certain views ("orthodoxy") on the vanquished. In the latter, one encounters, as I sometimes do, certain self-selecting "traditionalist" Christians--both Catholic and  Orthodox--who profligately toss around the word "heretic" and its cognates for every idea, person, or practice they do not understand or do not find compatible with their own straitened and highly modern concept of orthodoxy. The former assume that heresy does not really exist; the latter raise continual doubts as to whether orthodoxy really exists any more except in small, and ever shrinking, groups--whether "old Mass" groups, "old calendarist" groups, or similar bodies. Neither group, in other words, is disciplined enough when it comes to dealing with heresy and both groups paint with too wide a brush.

Still, for all that, I'd rather have people too concerned with heresy than indifferent to the whole question of truth, which seems to be our lot today if my students are a representative sample. Not a few of them regularly express not just amazement but even a certain degree of disdain for the debates of the ecumenical councils--especially the first four, and the seventh. High-level debates over doctrinal orthodoxy make about as much sense to them as fisticuffs in the grocery store over which brand of margarine is superior: who cares. None of this stuff matters, right? Just go along to get along.

How different an approach that modern indifference is to most of Christian history--but also, as a new book makes clear, to Jewish and Islamic history as well: Christine Caldwell Ames, Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (Cambridge UP, 2015), 368pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us:

Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages were divided in many ways. But one thing they shared in common was the fear that God was offended by wrong belief. Medieval Heresies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is the first comparative survey of heresy and its response throughout the medieval world. Spanning England to Persia, it examines heresy, error, and religious dissent - and efforts to end them through correction, persuasion, or punishment - among Latin Christians, Greek Christians, Jews, and Muslims. With a lively narrative that begins in the late fourth century and ends in the early sixteenth century, Medieval Heresies is an unprecedented history of how the three great monotheistic religions of the Middle Ages resembled, differed from, and even interrelated with each other in defining heresy and orthodoxy.

The publisher also gives us a the table of contents here: PDF; and a list of the books virtues thus: 

• The only comparative survey of medieval heresy to consider Islam, Judaism, and Greek Christianity, in addition to Latin-European Christianity
• Features images and maps from all of the traditions and periods covered in the book, as well as suggestions for further reading, timelines and a full bibliography
• Outlines and incorporates the major historiographical trends and contested issues
• Vivid examples and quotations from primary sources break up the text and enliven the narrative

Trashing Heretics on Twitter and Facebook

Perhaps it is from a painfully personal awareness of the power of Twitter or Facebook to destroy reputations in a gratuitous and unjust fashion based as often as not on one's "friends" or those to whom one links or fails to link, but my students seem especially fascinated and engaged when I talk about how many early Christians--Origen of Alexandria or Evagrius of Pontus, to name perhaps the most prominent--could have been invoked, or alternately celebrated or trashed, often posthumously, on the basis of hearsay, the types of friends they kept or failed to keep, or the posthumous antics of their so-called friends and disciples invoking the master's name to promote various ideas and causes. To my mind, one of the clearest examples of this is Evagrius of Pontus, who has been under such a "glare of unwelcome light" (Anthony Blanche) and has been treated in lurid and hostile terms with what seems to me very thinly sourced and very ambiguous "evidence." Fortunately, Evagrius has come in for a wholly welcome re-examination by Augustine Casiday, as noted here in my interview with him. Now a new book looks at the whole phenomenon of how people were trashed with the label of "heretic": Geoffrey S. Smith, Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity (Oxford UP, 2014), 216pp.

About this book we are told:

Few literary innovations have exercised as much influence upon Christian attitudes toward internal diversity as has the practice of organizing the names and alleged misdeeds of rival teachers into heresy catalogues. For two millennia, followers of Jesus have employed the heresy catalogue as a powerful weapon in internal struggles for legitimacy, authority, and supremacy. Despite its enduring popularity and influence within the Christian tradition, the heresy catalogue remains an underappreciated polemical genre among historians of early Christianity.Guilt by Association explores the creation, publication, and circulation of heresy catalogues by second- and early third-century Christians. Polemicists made use of these religious blacklists, which include the names of heretical teachers along with summaries of their unsavory doctrines and nefarious misdeeds, in order to discredit opponents and advocate their expulsion from the "authentic" Christianity community. The heresy catalogue proved to be especially effective because it not only recast rival teachers as menacing adversaries, but also reinforced such characterizations by organizing otherwise unaffiliated teachers into coherent intellectual, social, and scholastic communities that are established and sustained by demonic powers. Geoffrey Smith focuses especially on the earliest Christian heresy catalogues, including those found within the works of Justin, Irenaeus, and Hegesippus, to shed new light upon the complex process through which early Christianity took shape.

Arianism

Though it is not clear to me how well it has held up given nearly two hundred years of subsequent historical scholarship, nonetheless it was an important book at the time of its publication, and the importance and influence of its author have only grown and grown in that time, too. I refer to the unparalleled man of English letters in the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman, and his early book, which has just been reprinted: The Arians of the Fourth Century (Assumption Press, 2014), 328pp.

About this book the new publisher tells us:

Newman’s first, and most deeply researched book, The Arians of the Fourth Century is a major achievement in both social and theological history. As social history, it gives a detailed account of the moral and ideological temperament of the Arians in the Nicene era and the historical circumstances that caused their heresy to become unusually oppressive and politically powerful. As a major contribution to theological history, it was in the course of composing The Arians that Newman first conceived his theory of the development of Christian Doctrine, which stimulated his conversion to Catholicism. This emerges from the book’s in-depth study of Trinitarian doctrine in the Early Church and in the councils of the fourth century.

Most important, however, is Newman’s deeply influential, concluding essay On Consulting the Faithful, which takes up the apparent problem that the Church proper seems to have fallen into heresy during the Arian ascendancy. In answer, Newman provides historical evidence that the faithful of Christ maintained orthodox doctrine even in the Church’s darkest hour. He argues for the indefectibility of the Church and a nuanced theology of the sensus fidelium that impacted the Second Vatican Council’s ecclesiology.

Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and he remains a singular figure, not least for his great study and love of the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers, as I've noted elsewhere on here. I always say to people that even if you cannot necessarily follow the logic of his arguments (that is, follow him to Rome), at the very least read him for the staggering beauty of his prose, perhaps most wonderfully displayed in his Apologia pro Vita Sua.

The Culture of "Heresy"

It has been fashionable in academic circles for decades to sneer at the concept of heresy and to always put that term and its cognates in scare quotes, seeing heresy merely as some crude will-to-power over political enemies. When confronted with this, I always think of a 1932 essay by the great English writer Evelyn Waugh denouncing the fashion for refusing to condemn anything: "there are still things worth fighting against."

Equally fashionable, however, particularly in so-called traditionalist circles, is the condemnation of anyone and everyone as "heretical" who does not hew to your own sanctimonious ideology masquerading as theology, Church history, "holy Tradition," etc. These people are constantly cherry-picking what they like, ignoring what they don't, and turning everything into "confessional propaganda" (Taft) and "soteriological exclusivism" (Hryniewicz) with which to bludgeon everyone else.

And then there is the third group which I often find among my students, who know nothing about Dogmengeschichte and who therefore assume that doctrine and creeds are not terribly important, and certainly not worth fighting over (they are utterly baffled, and not a little disdainful, when reading about conflict at and after ecumenical councils, especially Chalcedon). Creeds, they assume, must merely have "fallen from heaven one year during Good Friday luncheon" (to use another Waugh line from his uproarious historical novel Helena).

All three groups err--the first by neglect, the second by excess, the third by ignorance. The first group ignores the very real danger, as Richard Weaver famously put it, that Ideas Have Consequences. To have erred in defining the nature of Christ or some other matter could potentially have been fatal to the whole Christian enterprise. But fatal for human relations, and certainly for Christian unity, is the impulse to damn people whose positions you scarcely understand, whom you tendentiously and self-righteously caricature and anathematize in hysterical-polemical modes that may prove, upon sober reconsideration, to have been grossly misleading. That, surely, is what many Eastern Christians have done with Chalcedon. We have spent hundreds of years condemning each other in our hymnody and hagiography when careful examination by competent scholars today has revealed that much of the split was based on linguistic misapprehension and misunderstanding, as Kenneth Yossa's indispensable book Common Heritage, Divided Communion: The Declines and Advances of Inter-Orthodox Relations from Chalcedon to Chambésy makes clear (as I noted here).

These thoughts were brought to mind in two ways: first in reading the newly translated  Icons and the Name of God by Sergius Bulgakov (whom some, of course, infamously rushed to condemn as heretic early in the 20th century). I'm giving a lecture next year with a colleague (a specialist in Western Renaissance religious art, especially in Italy) on iconoclasms East and West and thus was led to read Bulgakov, who carefully lays out the arguments of the iconoclasts and rightly notes that they were a lot more intellectually sophisticated and theologically compelling than we often give them credit for. The same can and has been said about the so-called Arians in the Nicene period, whose arguments, as Khaled Anatolios's splendid book makes clear, were far from the hoary stereotypes Byzantine hymnody conjures up--even if they were, indeed, still wrong. (To be clear: I do believe, in fact, that heresy exists, and needs to be condemned, but the nature of the condemnation must proceed very carefully and usually only after a long period of very careful and painstaking consideration once passions have cooled so that we do not end up boxing ourselves in with condemnations that we later realize were based not on what someone actually said but on what their enemies (or, worse, their so-called friends!) tendentiously and maliciously claimed they said. As Evagrius, Origen, Augustine, and Bulgakov, inter alia, can tell you, that's a sure-fire way to slander someone and in so doing, no glory is brought to the Truth Himself. Such "condemnations," moreover, are not the province of individual apologists or bloggers, but of the Church herself only through her conciliar organs. Such condemnations, finally, must always be presented graciously in merciful and medicinal terms with a view to bringing the wayward back, not to shunning them forever. Why people who gleefully engage in such shunning and shrill condemnations think theirs a productive strategy is a great mystery to me. Such antics only serve to poison relations, drive people in the opposite direction, and ensure that no reconciliation takes place. Surely 1600 years after Chalcedon, the breech still not completely healed, we realize that?)

I was, in the second instance, put in mind of these thoughts upon receipt of a new book published at the end of September: Andrew P. Roach and James R. Simpson, eds., Heresy and the Making of European Culture: Medieval and Modern Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013), 440pp.

About this book we are told:

Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics and law - examine the intellectual and social investments characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules, creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still recognisable and productive in the world today. 

We are given the table of contents and note that the first article is by one of Orthodoxy's leading theologians in the anglophone world and the rest of the volume does not ignore Orthodoxy either:

Introduction, Andrew P. Roach and James R. Simpson; Part I The Wheat and The Tares: The rebaptism of heretics in the Orthodox canonical tradition, Kallistos Ware; Heresy and political legitimacy in Al-Andalus, Maribel Fierro; The burning of heretical books, Alexander Murray; Lombard religiosities reconsidered: ‘Arianism’, syncretism and the transition to Catholic Christianity, Marilyn Dunn. Part II Inventing Heresies: Perceptions of heresy in historiographical and hagiographical sources of Aquitaine and the Loire Valley during the high Middle Ages, Julien Bellabre; The Bogomils’ folk heritage: false friend or neglected source?, Maja Angelovska-Panova and Andrew P. Roach. Part III Approaching Literary and Narrative Sources: Why God keeps sending his angels: domestic disturbance and Joseph’s doubts about Mary in Chester and York, Judith R. Anderson; Vernacular poetry and the spiritual Franciscans of the Languedoc: the poems of Ramon de Cornet, Catherine Léglu; Heretic Hussites: Oswald von Wolkenstein’s ‘Song of Hell’ (‘Durch Toren Weis’), Sieglinde Hartmann; Dogging Cornwall’s ‘secret freaks’: Béroul on the limits of European orthodoxy, James R. Simpson. Part IV Law and the Inquisition: ‘Heresy’ in Quercy in the 1240s: authorities and audiences, Claire Taylor; Heresy, orthodoxy and the interaction between canon and civil law in Theodore Balsamon’s commentaries, Peter Petkoff; Fighting clergy, church councils and the contexts of law: the cutting edge of orthodoxy or the ambiguous limits of legitimacy?, Daniel Gerrard; ‘Famosus est et satis publicum’: factionalism and the limits of doctrine in the case against Meister Eckhart, Alessandra Beccarisi; The Inquisition in medieval Bohemia: national and international contexts, Eva Doležalová; Clerical illegitimacy in the diocese of Sodor: exception or rule in the late medieval Church?, Sarah Thomas. Part V Heresy, Place and Community: Learning by doing: coping with Inquisitors in medieval Languedoc, James Given; Travels and studies of Stephen of Siwnik (c. 685-735): re-defining Armenian orthodoxy under Islamic rule, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev; Catharism and heresy in Milan, Faye Taylor; Church reform and witch-hunting in the diocese of Lausanne: the example of Bishop George of Saluzzo, Georg Modestin. Part VI Distant Mirrors: Heresies, Orthodoxies and Modernities: Between medieval and modern beholding: Heidegger, Deleuze and the Duns Scotus affair, Philip Tonner; Heresy and its afterlives in Communist-era Poland, John M. Bates; Not just price: scholastic economic theology and fair trade, Robert I. Mochrie; Index.

History and Heresy

Those who subscribe to the fanciful notion that Christians are or are supposed to be "nice" have a hard time reconciling themselves to doctrinal conflicts in the Church, which have continued from apostolic times down to the present. Making things more complicated is the not uncommon hermeneutical problem of disentangling historical and contingent developments from eternal truths, and not mistaking the latter for the former and so having a basis to condemn someone. A new book helps to look at both history and heresy: Joseph F. Kelly, History and Heresy:How Historical Circumstances Can Create Doctrinal Conflict (Liturgical Press, 2012), 240. 

About this book the publisher tells us: 

Heresies, like doctrinal formulations, are products of history. They must be understood historically as well as theologically. When doctrinal issues become intertwined with historical ones, advocates of a new understanding have often run afoul of religious authorities. In History and Heresy, Joseph F. Kelly first describes how the concept of orthodoxy developed. Then he examines five heresies - Montanism, Monophysitism, Catharism, Catholic Modernism, and Protestant Modernism and Fundamentalism - in their historical contexts and the significant role that historical forces played in their designation as heretical. Finally, he suggests ways that religious authorities today can evaluate historical factors when making judgments about whether a particular idea is truly a heresy. Real heresy, Kelly contends, represents a clear and present danger to Christian teaching and demands a response from the church. But determining heresy is an exercise that must be undertaken with great wisdom and study.

Heretics and Colonizers

It has been fashionable for quite some time to condemn the proponents and the very idea of both "colonialism" and of "heterodoxy," sophomorically and simplistically insisting that both are nothing more or other than a disguised version of libido dominandi. One can accept without anxiety some recognition that some battles against heresy may have been motivated more by "political" concerns than doctrinal ones per se (if, indeed, one can even make such distinctions without anachronism: I am skeptical that one can); but such a recognition should in no way trouble any Christian who recognizes that the Church, like Christ, has both a human and a divine nature. Similarly, one can accept that not all colonial ventures ended happily--though many did, on balance, if the still-flourishing democracies in countries of the former British Empire are reliable examples, and I think they are.


Along comes a new book--new in paperback form, that is, having been published in 2005 in hardback--by Nicholas Breyfogle, which examines the linked phenomenon of Heretics And Colonizers: Forging Russia's Empire In The South Caucasus (Cornell University Press, 2011, 347pp.). 


About this book the publisher tells us:

In Heretics and Colonizers, Nicholas B. Breyfogle explores the dynamic intersection of Russian borderland colonization and popular religious culture. He reconstructs the story of the religious sectarians (Dukhobors, Molokans, and Subbotniks) who settled, either voluntarily or by force, in the newly conquered lands of Transcaucasia in the nineteenth century. By ordering this migration in 1830, Nicholas I attempted at once to cleanse Russian Orthodoxy of heresies and to populate the newly annexed lands with ethnic Slavs who would shoulder the burden of imperial construction. 

Breyfogle focuses throughout on the lives of the peasant settlers, their interactions with the peoples and environment of the South Caucasus, and their evolving relations with Russian state power. He draws on a wide variety of archival sources, including a large collection of previously unexamined letters, memoirs, and other documents produced by the sectarians that allow him unprecedented insight into the experiences of colonization and religious life. Although the settlers suffered greatly in their early years in hostile surroundings, they in time proved to be not only model Russian colonists but also among the most prosperous of the Empire’s peasants. Banished to the empire’s periphery, the sectarians ironically came to play indispensable roles in the tsarist imperial agenda.

The book culminates with the dramatic events of the Dukhobor pacifist rebellion, a movement that shocked the tsarist government and received international attention. In the early twentieth century, as the Russian state sought to replace the sectarians with Orthodox settlers, thousands of Molokans and Dukhobors immigrated to North America, where their descendants remain to this day. 

On Heretics and Heresies

Some people bandy about the label of "heretic" too easily and casually, and sometimes that process of condemning people ends up creating enormous problems down the road when we realize that the label, if it ever applied, no longer does. What then does one do with, e.g., centuries of hymnody demonizing people as heretics, deviants, destroyers of orthodox doctrine?
That is one of the problems currently bedeviling the search for unity between the Oriental Orthodox and the Byzantine Orthodox, as Kenneth Yossa's fine study, Common Heritage, Divided Communion: The Declines and Advances of Inter-Orthodox Relations from Chalcedon to Chambésy  (which I discussed earlier) makes painfully clear. 

Nevertheless, if we need to be very cautious in our use of these labels, we need also to avoid the pitfall of abandoning the category of "heresy" as such. It has become fashionable on the part of some academics to bewail the very creation of "heresy" and its cognates. How unjust, they moan, to condemn some people and their ideas; how repressive, they drearily claim, "orthodox" Christianity is. To that there is, of course, no greater nor more spirited rejoinder than that of G.K. Chesterton:

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad......

The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians.... It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic....It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

This year we will be seeing several books treating of heresies and heretics, and will take note of them on here. One, to be released at the end of April, is

Jonathan Wright, Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 352pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

In Heretics Jonathan Wright charts the history of dissent in the Christian Church through the stories of some of its most emblematic heretics—from Arius, a fourth-century Libyan cleric who doubted the very divinity of Christ, to more successful heretics like Martin Luther and John Calvin. As he traces the Church’s attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Church’s lingering conflicts, Wright argues that heresy, by forcing the Church to continually refine and impose its beliefs, actually helped Christianity to blossom into one of the world’s most formidable and successful religions.

Today, all believers owe it to themselves to grapple with the questions raised by heresy. Can you be a Christian without denouncing heretics? Is it possible that new ideas challenging Church doctrine are destined to become as popular as have Luther’s once outrageous suggestions of clerical marriage and a priesthood of all believers? A delightfully readable and deeply learned new history, Heretics overturns our assumptions about the role of heresy in a faith that still shapes the world.

In perusing the table of contents, one sees that much of the focus is on the West, but there are Eastern heresies treated, not least iconoclasm, on which we've seen several recent and important studies.