Although this diary is devoted to theism, atheism, and closely related subjects, don’t let that fool you into thinking that my entire life is devoted to these things. I actually have many other interests.

Of the many books I’ve read so far this year, about 75% have dealt with topics I rarely discuss on OD.

Alas, sometimes I start reading a book about one of these other topics only to have the horrors of theism and religion unexpectedly shoved in my face again.

That’s what happened yesterday when I opened Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen’s book about the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1525-1569).

Here is how the very first chapter (“A Brief Life in Dangerous Times”) starts off:

Pieter Bruegel was about forty years old when the Duke of Alba entered Brussels. The painter was married and had a son....

Bruegel was living in Brussels when Alba led his army into the city in August 1567. The Duke had been sent by Philip II, the Spanish king, to whose empire the Netherlands provinces belonged. The commander’s orders were to forcibly convert the Protestants; during the years that followed, he would have several thousand Netherlanders sentenced to death. This extreme harshness resulted first in an uprising, and then in a war that was to last eighty years, ending with the division of the land into Catholic Belgium (as it would later become known) in the south and Protestant Holland in the north.

King Philip of Spain was a staunch Catholic: “I would rather sacrifice the lives of 100,000 people than let up my persecution of the heretics.” He regarded Catholicism as the state religion; accordingly, heretics also constituted a political threat. In 1566, the Netherlands Protestants - in particular Calvinists - had destroyed the religious images in Catholic churches, using spears and axes to pull statues of saints from their pedestals and tear altar paintings to pieces. For them, worshipping material images was nothing less than idolatry. What the Calvinists regarded as a struggle for the true faith amounted to rebellion in Philip’s eyes, and he therefore despatched Alba as his commander, a man known - indeed, notorious - for his ruthlessness. 1567, the year in which he entered Brussels, would bring the great turning point in the history of the Netherlands provinces; and Bruegel was to witness the events from close to.

Although no written records apparently reveal which side Bruegel supported in this struggle, the book immediately goes on to examine a few of his paintings that provide several powerful hints.

Perhaps the most important painting is The Massacre of the Innocents.

The book offers this analysis:

The Bible tells us that King Herod ordered the killing of all newborn boys in Bethlehem. Bruegel has placed the scene in a Netherlands village. A group of armoured horsemen are supervising the slaughter. It was one of the characteristics of Spanish troops that they held their lances in an absolutely upright position [as the troops do in the painting]. The troop’s leader, clad in black and with a long white beard, is presumably intended as a reference to the Duke of Alba.... A rider with the Hapsburg double eagle on his chest is standing a little way away from the troop; the villagers have turned to him, pleading with him. Philip was of the House of Hapsburg; his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, formerly Regent of the Netherlands, had been stripped of power by Alba. It is conceivable that the observer is being asked to differentiate between the ruthless commander and the Hapsburg Regent.

Several other paintings are analyzed in much the same vein.

One of Bruegel’s last paintings (The Magpie on the Gallows), for example, may have been inspired by “Alba’s system of terror being based on secret denunciations” and the 1566 order that all Protestant preachers be hanged (hanging being considered a dishonorable form of execution compared to being burned to death or put to the sword)....

If this were a diary devoted to art history and interpretation, I might be inclined to discuss these matters further. Since it is not, I’ll end this entry with two relatively brief points:

----- It is sometimes said in defense of theism and religion that they have inspired great art. Bruegel’s paintings serve as a reminder that it’s often been the horrors of theism and religion that have inspired great art. Such art of course cannot begin to justify or excuse those horrors. Why do so many people think that similarly great art can somehow justify or excuse the absurdities of theism and religion? (And why do so many people seem to assume that if it hadn’t been for theism and religion, great artists would have wasted their lives just sitting around creating nothing at all?)

----- According to Wikipedia (and basically confirmed by the book I’m reading), “On his deathbed he [Bruegel] reportedly ordered his wife to burn the most subversive of his drawings to protect his family from political persecution.” As indicated in the passages I quoted above, the political in those days (among many others) was tightly bound up with the religious. So what we have here is essentially one more reminder of religion’s power to suppress and destroy art as well as to inspire it. Those who choose to focus only on the latter power are missing a huge part of the story.