Civilisations - S1.E4 ∙ Picturing Paradise
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00:00Every year, thousands of people from across the world come together at a single spot in rural Cambodia.
00:21It's the spring equinox, and they're here to witness an extraordinary sight.
00:29The moment when the sun rises over the central spire at the temple of Angkor Wat.
00:47I don't usually think of myself as a pilgrim,
00:50but this morning I got up well before dawn with thousands of others to come to see the sun at Angkor Wat.
01:00Certainly, when the sun seemed to balance for a second or two
01:05on top of the central tower of the temple, there were gasps of amazement and wonderment.
01:12It's religious art at its most spectacular.
01:16It's show-stopping.
01:23But the spectacle of Angkor Wat doesn't stop there.
01:27Built by the kings of the Khmer Empire in the 12th century,
01:31Angkor is intended to give concrete form to the claims of Hindu religion.
01:39Five high towers are said to represent the mythical Mount Meru, centre of the cosmos.
01:47Religious patterns and symbols adorn the walls.
01:53And a seemingly endless narrative frieze is wrapped around the centre of the temple.
02:08Angkor Wat is one of the most beautiful places in Cambodia.
02:14Angkor Wat is one of the biggest and best-known religious monuments in the world.
02:19When you look at the sculpture and the decorative patterns on the walls,
02:24the extravagant, in-your-face superfluity of it all, the sheer excess.
02:32The basic point is clear, that this is a building designed to unify
02:38the natural, the human and the divine worlds.
02:48For millennia, art has been used to bring the human and divine together.
02:55And it's given us some of the most majestic and affecting visual images ever made.
03:02I want to explore what really lies behind these extraordinary creations
03:08and reveal the kind of religious work that art does all around the world.
03:16But for me, the story of religious art is about more than this.
03:21It's about controversy and conflict, danger and risk.
03:27Whether it's Muslim or Christian, Hindu or Jewish,
03:31I want to expose the dilemmas that all religions face
03:36when they try to make gods visible in the human world.
03:42When does the worship of an image turn into dangerous idolatry?
03:48Where does divine glorification end and worldly vanity?
03:54And what actually counts as an image of God or of God's word?
04:03Treading these fault lines, I'll even show how the defacement of religious art
04:09is fraught with its own problems and paradoxes.
04:13And I want to end in what we often think of as the cradle of Western civilisation itself.
04:19To ask what it is we now worship and how far we still look with the eye of faith.
04:50MUSIC FADES
05:09There are gods, gods everywhere.
05:13And nowhere left to put my feet.
05:17Those are the words of a 12th-century Indian poet
05:21as he cast his eyes on the mass of religious images that surrounded him.
05:29And several centuries on, you can still see what he meant.
05:33MUSIC FADES
05:43Coming to a place I'm not so familiar with, like India,
05:47helps open my eyes to the fact that religious art gets everywhere.
05:52You don't only find it in churches, temples and galleries.
05:56Religion has always brought out the artfulness in people.
06:01In society, in the home and on the street.
06:07And it can seem quite simple, whether it's a matter of religious awe
06:12or a way of satisfying our curiosity by peeking into the hidden world of the divine.
06:23But if we go a bit deeper and try to explore how these religious images actually work...
06:32..it turns out to be a little harder than you might think.
06:44It was 1906 when the artist-explorer Christiana Herringham
06:49was trekking through this remote part of central India.
06:54She had been intrigued by stories of an ancient religious site
06:59hidden in the hills.
07:02And after weeks of very rough travel, she was astounded by what she saw.
07:13Spanning an entire rock face were the Ajanta Caves.
07:20This network of Buddhist prayer halls and monasteries
07:24were built in 200 BC and added to over the centuries.
07:34Gradually, hundreds of sculptures and reliefs of the Buddha
07:38were carved out of the rock.
07:44But what Herringham really wanted to find lay inside the caves themselves.
07:54These are some of the earliest Buddhist paintings in the world.
07:59By then, in a perilous state,
08:01Herringham set about recording them before they finally faded away.
08:12This amazing book is how she preserved the paintings.
08:17You've got a preliminary set of essays
08:21talking about how the work was done and what the paintings meant.
08:26But then, the most gorgeous colour plates.
08:33But Herringham not only preserved these scenes
08:36from the life of the Buddha, in her mind's eye and on her page,
08:40she radically and problematically reinterpreted them.
08:47When she looks at the colour, the perspective,
08:53the careful lines and the composition,
08:56what she sees is the Indian equivalent of Italian Renaissance art.
09:03And she actually talks about them as frescoes
09:06and she talks about the caves as a picture gallery.
09:10And in a way, this book is part of that vision
09:15by giving you small snapshots
09:19and giving you them like this so that you could,
09:22if you wanted to, just put them up on your wall as pictures.
09:27What this book is doing is it's translating
09:31an Indian Buddhist site
09:35into the heritage of world art.
09:40Of course, we now see plenty of religious art
09:44in the safe space of a gallery.
09:47But to understand how these paintings really work,
09:51we need to look at them in the caves for which they were made.
10:03Almost every surface is painted.
10:07Some still showing traces of vivid colour.
10:11Others have become muted over time.
10:17Over and over again, we see the Buddha
10:20as he rejects the vanities of the world in search of enlightenment.
10:26But this is not an easy read.
10:30The scenes are often in a puzzling order
10:34and many details get lost in the darkness.
10:39But it's partly their fragmentary layout
10:43and their shadowy setting that gives these pictures their meaning.
10:49These paintings made the viewers do religious work.
10:54They demanded that you identify,
10:58find and re-find for yourself
11:02the stories that you probably knew in Outline already.
11:07You couldn't come here and be a passionate believer
11:11in a particular religion.
11:15You couldn't come here and be a passive consumer of religious images.
11:21You had to be an active interpreter of them.
11:25I think there's also a point
11:28about the fragmentariness of religious narration.
11:32These paintings echo, in a way,
11:35the many different versions we have of religious stories,
11:39their fragmentariness, their contradictions and their inconsistencies.
11:44And even the lack of light has its part too.
11:50When you came in here with your flickering candle
11:54trying to make out what was on the walls,
11:57well, in a way, that was a perfect metaphor
12:00for one kind of religious experience,
12:03the idea that you were searching for the truth,
12:06that you were searching for the faith amidst the darkness.
12:12The images at Ajanta invite their viewers
12:15to seek out the Buddhist message for themselves
12:19and forge their own path to enlightenment.
12:28But just when the last of these scenes were being painted,
12:32on the other side of the world,
12:34the world was being deployed much more aggressively
12:38in religious controversy.
12:44In the 6th century AD, the marshlands of Italy's Adriatic coast,
12:49which had previously been host to little more than remote fishing villages,
12:54became the front line in an ideological war.
12:58Early Christians, who at this stage were certainly not a unified faith,
13:04argued furiously over fundamental parts of their doctrine.
13:13And amid this controversy,
13:15they harnessed the power of art in a most forceful way.
13:21Here in Ravenna is the church of San Vitale,
13:25named after a local saint and martyr.
13:31Built in the 540s from the ruins of ancient Roman buildings,
13:36its very fabric is a reminder of the Christian conquest of pagan Rome.
13:44And throughout the church,
13:46every technique has been used to assert the Christian message
13:51and demonstrate its awesome power.
13:55This is the church of San Vitale.
14:03Stories from the Bible tell how the one true God
14:07first revealed himself to humankind.
14:12The image of the Christian emperor, flanked by bishops and soldiers,
14:17expresses the unity of the church, state and military.
14:24And the golden mosaics,
14:26the great innovation of early Christian artists,
14:30reflect divine light into the darkness.
14:35But there's one image that dominates the church.
14:40It's the figure of Jesus himself.
14:45And it was he who lay at the heart
14:48of early Christianity's theological battles.
14:56The image of Jesus himself,
14:59laid at the heart of early Christianity's theological battles.
15:08The early centuries of Christianity
15:10were not a period of peace and goodwill, and far from it.
15:13They were torn apart by religious controversy
15:16about the nature and divine essence of Jesus.
15:20There were crucial religious issues at stake.
15:23What was the exact relationship between Jesus and God?
15:29And where had Jesus been before he was born to Mary?
15:35How could a perfect and indivisible God
15:39give up part of himself to create a son?
15:43And so, and this was the killer question for many,
15:47were Jesus and God made of the same substance,
15:52or were they just very like each other?
15:59The two figures here make a very strong case
16:02for the divine status of Jesus,
16:05as if to erode any misunderstanding,
16:08because he appears as part of a calculated scheme of images
16:13designed to end the controversy,
16:16telling the viewer exactly what to believe.
16:23In perfect alignment are three different aspects of Jesus.
16:29In the apse, there's the beardless Jesus, young, the son of God.
16:36The centre of the ceiling, there's Jesus as the symbolic lamb of God,
16:43the Jesus who's to be sacrificed on behalf of humanity.
16:48And at the top of the entrance arch,
16:51there's the older, bearded, all-powerful Jesus,
16:56about as indistinguishable as you could get from God the Father.
17:03So there's a lesson here in seeing Jesus,
17:08and also, particularly in that last image, a clear steer.
17:15These images are telling us never to doubt the divinity of Jesus Christ.
17:27But elsewhere in the Christian world, and at other times,
17:31images can have some unexpected and just as controversial consequences.
17:40Behind the facades of its Palatian churches,
17:44the city of Venice contains a treasure trove of religious paintings
17:50that remain exactly where they were intended to be seen.
17:55And beyond these walls is one of the most spectacular.
18:03This is the meeting house of a religious brotherhood,
18:07known as the Scuola di San Rocco.
18:13A bit like a Renaissance version of a rotary club,
18:17moneyed Venetians would meet here
18:20to share in their selfless concern for the poor.
18:25And the paintings that surrounded them
18:27offered reminders of their charitable obligations.
18:34If you look at the scene of the birth of Jesus,
18:37there's no doubt that's happening in poverty.
18:44And if you look at the Last Supper,
18:46the most prominent figures in the canvas,
18:50in front of Jesus and the disciples,
18:53are two beggars and a dog...
18:57..who's presumably looking for some scraps from the table.
19:02Most of the artwork we now see was produced in the 16th century,
19:07and the man responsible was Jacopo Tintoretto,
19:11a homegrown Venetian favourite.
19:13He spent years decorating the meeting house with over 50 paintings.
19:18And his most famous image is this.
19:24The Crucifixion of Jesus.
19:44People who come here now
19:46have all kinds of different reactions to this painting.
19:49Some are overwhelmed by the size.
19:52Others are puzzled by the busy bits of detail.
19:58Critics and art historians have had different reactions too.
20:02Some of them have honed in on the technique,
20:05picking out Tintoretto's bold brushstrokes,
20:09or the contrast between light and shade.
20:13Some have concentrated instead on the emotion of the scene.
20:18That's the line that John Ruskin took in the 19th century,
20:23when he was so dumbfounded by it
20:26that he said the painting was absolutely impossible to analyse.
20:31I think he might have tried a bit harder.
20:41What Tintoretto has done is blur the lines
20:44between the viewer and the painting.
20:49Some of the characters there are wearing modern,
20:53that is, 16th-century dress, not biblical outfits.
20:58And there are some ordinary 16th-century people
21:01doing the digging, tugging on the ropes and putting up the ladders.
21:07More than that, if you stand in front of it,
21:11it's almost as if you become part
21:14of the encircling crowd around that central scene.
21:19What's being hammered home here
21:22is the fact that the crucifixion is both
21:26a historical event in past time
21:30and a religious event,
21:33which breaks down the barriers of time and space.
21:38But there's another, more controversial reading of this painting,
21:44which often gets lost on the connoisseurs who stand before it.
21:51This painting was produced at a really critical moment
21:55in the story of the Brotherhood,
21:57when they were being attacked for spending far too much on bling
22:02and on doing up their premises
22:04and not half enough on helping the poor.
22:07In some of his pictures,
22:09Tintoretto seems to be responding to that charge.
22:13When he included beggars in the scene of the Last Supper,
22:17all the kind of ordinary people the Brotherhood was supposed to support
22:21in the scene of the crucifixion,
22:23that really looks like a calculated defence
22:26of their charitable aims in the face of opposition.
22:31But the whole controversy
22:33points to a crucial problem in religious art.
22:37The more you plough your resources
22:40into the visual glorification of God,
22:44the more you lay yourself open to the accusation
22:48that you're more interested in the material than in the spiritual,
22:53that you're more interested in worldly vanities than in piety.
23:01We're now treading the fault lines between art and religion
23:06and the problems of picturing the divine.
23:09And here the perils of vanity are just the beginning.
23:19Seville has been a centre of Catholic image-making for centuries,
23:24home to some of Spain's greatest religious painters.
23:28Velazquez, Zurbarán and Murillo.
23:35And images still play a big part in the religious life of the city.
23:41But here in Seville, there's one image that has a peculiar power.
23:48HE SPEAKS SPANISH
23:54But here in Seville, there's one image that has a peculiar power.
24:00HE SPEAKS SPANISH
24:05HE SPEAKS SPANISH
24:13Housed in the church of the Macarena is a statue of the Virgin Mary.
24:25She's been here for over 300 years,
24:28crying in sorrow at the death of her son Jesus.
24:35She's tremendously impressive.
24:38She was started in the 17th century.
24:42One story is that she's the work originally of a female sculptor,
24:47because only a woman could quite capture the Virgin like this.
24:51But she's been added to ever since,
24:54when she got that splendid gold crown,
24:58when she started wearing these very big capes.
25:02And she's got a large wardrobe and she often changes her dress.
25:10The everyday care and attention paid to this statue
25:14might at first seem a little odd.
25:17But she was intended to have an aura of humanity about her.
25:23Her tears may be made of glass, but her hair is real human hair.
25:29Her exposed flesh, that's her head and her hands, are made of wood,
25:35because they thought wood was much warmer than marble.
25:38It was more organic.
25:40And in other ways, she's treated as if she's a human being.
25:46So no-one, apart from nuns, is allowed to touch her.
25:51No-one, apart from nuns, are allowed to take her clothes off.
25:56In many ways, she's not finished, but a work in progress,
26:01which only becomes complete for a single night
26:04at the most sacred time of year...
26:08..at Easter.
26:13The Holy Cross is presented to the crowd
26:17and hooded penitents begin to march.
26:22EXPLOSION
26:24For many, this is highly charged and emotional.
26:37And now they wait, longing for the extraordinary moment
26:42when the Virgin appears at the threshold.
26:45And a moment of transformation is at hand.
26:51EXPLOSION
27:09Carried on a throne, she begins her journey into the night.
27:14And as she moves, the statue seems to come to life.
27:21It's as if the likeness of the Virgin has become her presence.
27:30And you can see that in the astonishing reaction of the faithful.
27:42But this adoration breeds suspicion.
27:46Because here in Seville, there are some in the church
27:51where the image of the Virgin has stolen the limelight
27:56from the Virgin herself.
28:02The big question is, what are the worshippers worshipping?
28:08Is it the idea of the Virgin Mary,
28:12who somehow is out there beyond the image?
28:16Or are they worshipping the statue itself?
28:20That's to say, this is the idolatry question,
28:24which almost all religions have faced.
28:33The hierarchy of the church has always been anxious
28:37about reactions to such statues and the expense lavished on them.
28:43It has seemed uncomfortably close to the worship of images
28:48prohibited by the Ten Commandments.
28:56Catholic Church has to be very careful
29:00about those people whose faith is not very deep.
29:07Because the problem is that people in front of a statue
29:11think that that's all.
29:16The danger is that they believe that everything is that, the statue.
29:21And we have to be careful. That's not the way.
29:25It has been blessed and things like that.
29:28But there's a statue.
29:30That's a representation of something higher.
29:34You have to believe that through that statue,
29:37you go up to the divinity.
29:42It's a basic and perennial problem of religious art,
29:47which all religions must face.
29:50But they take different views of how to handle it
29:54and of religious imagery more generally.
29:59Out on the rural fringes of Istanbul
30:03is one of the most striking religious creations of modern times.
30:13It appeared on the landscape less than a decade ago
30:17and has drawn people in ever since.
30:21It's the Sancaklar Mosque,
30:24the work of one of Turkey's most visionary architects.
30:51This is one of the most startling mosques in the world.
30:56What the architects wanted to do
30:59is to harness the power of modernism,
31:02which is often thought of as a very secular movement,
31:06to express the very essence of religious space,
31:10strict of all the non-essentials.
31:14And it's a very, very difficult task.
31:17But it has its own potentials.
31:21And it's certainly untraditional in all kinds of ways.
31:25But in other ways,
31:27it's exploiting the traditions of Islam very heavily.
31:31This inside space is meant to be reminiscent of the Cave of Hira,
31:37where the Prophet Muhammad first received the revelation
31:41of the word of God that became the Quran.
31:45It also evokes one of the classic stereotypes
31:49that many people now have of Islam,
31:52that it's a religion that is in some way artless,
31:57that it prohibits not just the image of God and the Prophet,
32:01but the images of living creatures,
32:04which only the creator God is supposed to be able to create.
32:10In fact, the only man-made image is a wonderful piece of calligraphy,
32:16which is a quote from the Quran.
32:19It's as if what we're expected to do when we come in here
32:24is to see and go away with the word of God.
32:33Islam, as a faith of the word, is enshrined in the Quran itself.
32:40There are many famous sayings and stories that condemn idolatry
32:45and give warning about the dangers of images.
32:55But in the ancient city of Istanbul itself,
32:58a very different picture of Islam fills our field of vision.
33:10MUSIC CONTINUES
33:19Islam is absolutely not an artless religion.
33:29In the whole history of the faith,
33:32you cannot trace a single uncontested line
33:35about the images of living creatures or about the image of God.
33:40In the Middle Ages,
33:42the Islamic world held some of the most intricate debates
33:46on aesthetics, the nature of beauty,
33:49the optics of the human eye
33:52and our sensory experience of the natural world.
33:58And there's a kaleidoscope of stories and parables
34:02that cover Islam's conversation with itself
34:06about the role of the artist and the purpose of the image.
34:11And one of the most revealing takes us into the domestic life
34:16of the Prophet Muhammad himself.
34:22One day, Muhammad came home to discover
34:26that his wife, Aisha, had acquired a tapestry
34:30with images of living creatures woven into the design
34:35and she'd hung it up.
34:37Muhammad is furious.
34:39He won't even go into the house
34:41because it's the creator, God, who is supposed to create living creatures,
34:46not some tapestry artist.
34:49So Aisha takes it down.
34:52She doesn't let it go to waste.
34:54She cuts it up and turns it into cushion covers
34:58so that it creates no problem.
35:01The story of Aisha's cushion is a wonderful illustration
35:06of how Islamic attitudes can shift
35:09according to the role and the setting of the image.
35:13But there's one kind of Islamic art
35:16whose role and function is much more significant than any other.
35:22As soon as Muhammad received the word of God in the 7th century,
35:28calligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing,
35:33was taken to the very heart of Islamic identity.
35:40There is an obligation on the calligrapher
35:44to serve the community in which he or she is writing for.
35:51But calligraphers were highly esteemed.
35:55The pen is the potent symbol of knowledge.
36:05The art of calligraphy became the means by which the sacred word
36:10could be set down, spread and remain uncorrupted for all time.
36:17From the very birth of Islam,
36:19the first verses revealed to the Prophet Muhammad were by the pen.
36:24Therefore, it sanctified the use of the pen at the outset of Islam.
36:29And ever since that point,
36:31artisans have been trying to beautify the divine word through that pen.
36:39Of course, the text of the calligraphy is very impressive,
36:43but for me, what is more important is the visual of the calligraphy,
36:48the graphic, the balance and the rhythm of the calligraphy.
36:52To be a good calligrapher, you had to have years of working,
36:56even on one single letter.
37:00It takes a complete life to come to that maturity to do a good calligraphy.
37:05So you see all his life in a single stroke.
37:14With exquisite penmanship,
37:16Islam had an art form to set it apart from many other religions.
37:22And it was said that while the Quran was received in Mecca
37:27and spoken in Cairo,
37:29it was Istanbul that produced the finest calligraphers able to write it down.
37:38This is the Blue Mosque.
37:43It was commissioned in the 17th century by Sultan Ahmed.
37:49And in its almost excessive size and splendour,
37:53it was designed to surpass all other mosques in the city.
38:00There are no idols or images of living creatures.
38:04Instead, the walls are alive with the most ornate patterns.
38:11Plants and flowers intertwine
38:15in the most vivid glaze of ceramic tiles.
38:21And laced into the scheme are some of the most extraordinary examples
38:26of monumental calligraphy in the Islamic world.
38:34It's as if the Blue Mosque itself
38:37was conceived as a great library of Islamic script.
38:42And it's here that we see calligraphy at its most powerful.
38:50When you enter the building, above the door,
38:53there's a message telling you to expect something special,
38:58that you're going through the gates of paradise.
39:02And that's just one of a whole series of notices
39:06throughout the mosque,
39:08often beautifully written snippets of the Quran,
39:12which guide the thoughts of the faithful
39:15and interpret what you see.
39:18If you look up into the dome,
39:20you're reminded that it's Allah who supports the heavens and the world.
39:25And there's a message which basically says
39:28that you should take back there, into the outside world,
39:31the state of purity that you've reached through prayer.
39:36It's as if there's a written programme here
39:40telling you how to experience the building and how to look at it.
39:50But for those who worshipped and still worship here,
39:54there's another way of reading this writing.
40:01Placed high above the prayer hall,
40:04it becomes almost illegible.
40:07When it was first painted,
40:09many of the faithful would have been illiterate.
40:12And even for those who could read,
40:15the clarity of the message is obscured
40:18in the rhythm and patterns of the text.
40:23This very magnificent, elaborate script is quite complex.
40:30It's not always easy to read
40:32and it's not always meant to be read
40:35because sometimes it's there also as a form of blessing
40:39and just by looking at it,
40:42you can absorb some of that blessing.
40:50What we have to remember is that writing can work in other ways.
40:57Here, we're seeing God represented in visual form,
41:03but not as human.
41:05Here, God is displayed as his word in the Koran.
41:11It's God in the art of writing.
41:17Now, Islam is by no means the only religion
41:22where you can choose writing as a way to negotiate
41:26the problem of how you represent the divine.
41:30The Christian Gospels, for example, can claim that God is the word.
41:36But in Islam, more than anywhere else,
41:39we see the image becoming the word
41:42and the word becoming the image.
41:47In the face of all the debates and prohibitions on images,
41:51religions and philosophy evolved to redefine
41:55what an image of God could be.
41:58No single religion has ever managed completely
42:02to resolve the tension between word and image.
42:06But there are some moments when it might just seem possible.
42:22These wonderfully appealing images were made over 500 years ago
42:28and they're from the pages of a Jewish Bible.
42:35What's so remarkable is that they dance around a text
42:40that is dense with warnings about idols and images,
42:44and yet they flaunt them in the most charming and beautiful way.
42:52I've got this extraordinary book open on the page of the Second Commandment,
42:57the one that prohibits idols.
43:00Now, there have been centuries of debate and disagreement
43:04about what that prohibition actually meant.
43:08But in this case, unless there's an appallingly flagrant
43:12contradiction going on, it is not taken to forbid
43:17a quite extravagant set of images.
43:21And even on the same opening as the Second Commandment,
43:25you get these two little chaps, little big bombs there.
43:29And throughout the book, you find really lavish pictures.
43:37And here is a full page of the menorah.
43:43And there are other lovely narrative scenes,
43:46like Jonah and his encounter with the whale.
43:52But what makes the Bible so precious is that it's a testament
43:56to a brief but extraordinary moment in Spanish history
44:01when Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions came together
44:05in a really productive and imaginative way.
44:10If you look at this book, you can see in some ways the Jewish artist
44:15really celebrating the mixed traditions of medieval Spain.
44:21Some of it really clearly has roots in Islamic traditions.
44:28And this is a wonderful image, rather like a carpet,
44:32and at first sight it looks very, very Islamic.
44:36But you discover when you look carefully that it's got this
44:40incy-wincy writing all around it, micrography it's called,
44:44which is really distinctively Jewish.
44:47So it's a wonderful bit of cultural blending in itself.
44:51And there are bits of Christian tradition,
44:54a wonderful picture of King David,
44:58actually based on a European playing card.
45:03The man who did these extraordinary images
45:07very proudly signs his name over a whole page
45:13at the very end of the book.
45:19He says that I, Joseph Ibn Hayyim,
45:23decorated and finished this.
45:26Now, these Jewish Bibles are not very often signed.
45:30I mean, not signed in a way that takes a whole page.
45:33I mean, this is a wonderful chutzpah.
45:36It's a kind of artist who, even at the very end of his work,
45:39you know, can't keep that artistry in.
45:42But this is much more than a name.
45:46Here, Joseph Ibn Hayyim is addressing the fundamental issue
45:51of word and image that divides so many religions.
45:57In his own way, he settles the debate.
46:01In his hands, they're one and the same thing.
46:10The point, in fact, is that under 20 years
46:13after this page was completed,
46:15the Catholics expelled the Jews from Spain.
46:20This Bible survives not only as a witness to integration
46:25but also to religious war.
46:37So, too, in England.
46:39Through the 16th and 17th centuries,
46:42Protestants and Catholics fought over this land
46:45in a conflict whose visual scars
46:48can be found in churches across the country.
46:52But there is no more powerful evidence of that
46:55than Ely Cathedral.
46:59Though later much restored,
47:01Ely remains an exquisite jewel of Gothic architecture.
47:10Its cavernous nave,
47:12its ornate carvings that still reflect their medieval colours...
47:18..and high above, this extraordinary octagonal lantern,
47:23almost a gateway to heaven itself.
47:28But during the great religious schism,
47:30the splendour of Ely would fall victim
47:33to one of England's most infamous Protestant reformers.
47:40On the 9th of January, 1644,
47:43Oliver Cromwell, who was then governor of Ely,
47:46went into this cathedral
47:48in what is one of the most mythologised
47:51and probably highly embellished incidents
47:54in the English religious civil wars.
47:57It's hard to imagine it now
47:59because it all feels so tranquil here.
48:02But the story goes that Cromwell went up to the priest
48:06who was conducting evening service,
48:08told him to put away his version of the prayer book,
48:11to stop the choir singing
48:13and to kind of turn off the music moment,
48:16and then he either actively encouraged,
48:19or at least did nothing to stop,
48:22his troops turning on the fabric
48:25and the images and the glass in the place.
48:29As they went through the vestry and the cloisters,
48:33what they did was basically smash the place up.
48:37Cromwell's attack was just one assault
48:41in a long campaign against the images at Ely.
48:44For these reformers,
48:46the worship of holy images was a Catholic superstition,
48:50a distraction from the pure word of God.
48:54The images at Ely had to go.
48:57And here in the Lady Chapel,
48:59there remains evidence of widespread destruction
49:02on another occasion.
49:05Lots of different kinds of iconoclasm have gone on here.
49:09The original stained-glass windows are one obvious casualty,
49:14but they've also gone for the figures of saints, of kings
49:18and the scenes from the life of the Virgin.
49:25Sometimes the whole sculpture has just been removed,
49:28but quite often what they've done
49:31is taken away the head and the hands,
49:35leaving the body in place.
49:38It's as if they were aiming to destroy those bits of the sculpture
49:44that gave it its most living power,
49:47the bits that you interacted with.
49:51The point is, I think, that this isn't just random vandalism.
49:56This is quite focused, even thoughtful destruction.
50:02Iconoclasm is something we often deplore,
50:06but there is another way of looking at it.
50:10Those figures, minus heads, minus hands,
50:14have not been made invisible.
50:17It's almost as if they've been turned into a different sort of image,
50:21in their own right.
50:23An artful narrative of religious conflict.
50:28But there are more, and perhaps unintended consequences,
50:32to such artful destruction.
50:36Liberated, you might almost say,
50:38from the figures of saints and prophets that once crowded the walls,
50:42and with its clear stainless windows,
50:45the Lady Chapel has been transformed,
50:49giving us another version of beauty.
50:54This is a tremendously aesthetically pleasing space.
50:59It's light and airy,
51:02and a marvellous mixture of austerity and decoration.
51:08And we owe that to the iconoclasts.
51:17This fine balance between destruction and creation is often overlooked,
51:22but it's what makes iconoclasm so interesting, so paradoxical.
51:27And it gets yet more intriguing
51:30when we look at other theatres of religious war.
51:36When Muslim armies from Afghanistan invaded India in the 12th century,
51:41they were horrified by what they found.
51:47This was the original home of the Hindu faith,
51:50where people worshipped not one god, but millions.
51:56Worse still, artists across India were kept busy
52:01creating a never-ending array of idols
52:04that were central to Hindu religion.
52:12Muslim writers often presented India as a place of image worship gone mad,
52:17as the very origin of idols themselves.
52:20One story had it that idols only spread more widely in the world
52:24because they'd been washed away from India by the waters of Noah's flood.
52:31Along with these stories,
52:33legendary tales were sent back to the Muslim world
52:36of mass idol-breaking and the total destruction of Hindu temples.
52:42And in their place, the Muslim crusaders built this.
52:48MUSIC PLAYS
52:56This is the first mosque in Delhi.
53:06Constructed in the 1190s,
53:09it was once known as the most imposing mosque in the world.
53:14Huge arches form a grand gateway.
53:18A towering minaret proclaims Islam as the one true faith.
53:25And in the centre, surrounding the prayer hall,
53:28is this extraordinary, ornate colonnade.
53:36It's easy to imagine this as a sanctuary for the Muslims who made it.
53:41An island of Islam in an idolatrous Hindu world.
53:47But in this building,
53:49the Hindu world isn't quite so distant as it may seem.
53:54Various elements of earlier Hindu structures and images
53:58have actually been reused and incorporated into its very fabric.
54:12MUSIC CONTINUES
54:23One point must be to assert conquest by Islam
54:27and to show how the Hindu idols have at least been neutralised.
54:32But even when they have been defaced,
54:35some aspects of the humanity of these human figures
54:40are still there.
54:42Simple fact, for example,
54:44that they've chosen to place most of them the right way up
54:48suggests a respect for the human form and its image.
54:55This remarkable mosque betrays a certain appreciation
54:59of the very pictures Islam condemned.
55:04And just like Ely Cathedral,
55:06but even in the most severe cases of iconoclasm,
55:10art lives on, inextricably bound to faith.
55:17But destruction can raise even bigger questions too.
55:30I want to end at one of the world's most famous
55:34and densest religious spaces.
55:37A place once the home of the ancient gods,
55:41later converted into a Christian church
55:44and later still turned into a mosque.
55:54Built around 450 BC,
55:56the Parthenon was originally dedicated to the goddess Athena.
56:01And for centuries, it teemed with images of the divine.
56:09It used to be one of the richest, most colourful,
56:13most intense religious places anywhere.
56:17A real phantasmagoria of religious images.
56:22And everywhere you looked, there were religious offerings,
56:26altars for sacrifice and temples.
56:31The bare bones of ancient Greek or any other religion stand here today,
56:36but it's become the focus of a worship of another kind.
56:42It's easy to come to a place like the Acropolis
56:45and to assume that whatever religion there once was here
56:49has gone for good.
56:51But I think we should be a bit more careful.
56:54However secular they might be,
56:57when people here look at this monument,
57:00admire its art and engage with its mythology,
57:04many are reflecting on questions that religions have often helped us face.
57:10Where do I come from?
57:13Where do I belong?
57:15What's my place in human history?
57:19I think people are engaged in a modern faith here,
57:24the one we call civilisation.
57:28It's an idea that behaves very much like a religion.
57:33It offers grand narratives about our origins and our destiny,
57:38bringing people together in shared belief.
57:43And the Parthenon has become its icon.
57:49So if you ask me, what is civilisation?
57:54I say it's little more than an act of faith.
58:25BBC Radio 3 considers our different notions of world history.
58:29Listen to Rethinking Civilisations, that's on air now,
58:32and explore some of our most important exhibits from UK museums from home.
58:37Search your app store for BBC Civilisations.