Pilgrimage Shrines Destroyed
1538
Commissioners dispatched by Thomas Cromwell smashed the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, the greatest pilgrimage site in England. Gold, jewels, and the saint's bones were hauled away. Throughout England, images were defaced and relics burned. The medieval landscape of English piety was being methodically unmade. Becket's shrine, which had drawn pilgrims for three and a half centuries, symbolized the Reformation's assault on the medieval economy of sacred relics.
In context
Also in 1538 (3 other events on record)
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Before and after in Europe
Before and after in Religion
Era
Renaissance (1501–1650), one of 715 events from that era on Saeculum.