Christianity and the Arts

 The medieval Catholic church was encountered by ordinary people primarily through its practices and images. While few read works of theology, the liturgy of the church offered them both spectacle and instruction, drama and dogma, in a highly accessible form which reaffirmed the medieval worldview (2.3.8), and the proper place of the institutional church as the only means of salvation. The drama of the liturgy was supplemented by images – often images of gospel scenes, painted on church walls, illustrating these scenes for the benefit of those who could not read.

The importance of the arts in mediating Christian ideas and values to the people was widely recognized in the Middle Ages, and would continue to be affirmed by the Catholic church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The architecture of churches was seen as an important way of embodying and affirming religious values and ideas. The Council of Trent (3.4.4–5) criticized artists who used elaborate techniques which lessened the religious impact of their works. But there was no doubt of the importance the council attributed to art in encouraging personal devotion and helping theological reflection. The Catholic Reformation witnessed a renaissance of religious art and music.

Protestantism, however, moved in a very different direction, tending to limit art and music to secular contexts. The Protestant critique of Catholic art reflected both hostility towards the theology that it embodied, and the means used for expressing it. While Luther and his circle remained persuaded of the importance of religious art in propagating the ideas and values of the Reformation, both Zwingli and Calvin regarded it as tantamount to idolatry. Images of any kind would be rigorously excluded from Reformed churches, which often had undecorated, whitewashed walls.