ABSTRACT
DURING the 17 th and 18th centuries, the old universal narrative of heritage gradually fragmented
into a constellation of competing narratives. There was a new diversity in interpretations of
classical antiquity; but there were also emergent national heritages, each a microcosm of the universal
tradition. This was not the same as the aggressive, disciplined nationalisms whose competition in
the 19th and 20th centuries would profoundly affect the world of monuments. The conflicts of this
earlier age were focused not on nationality but on religion: the Reformation broke up the old unity
of western Christendom, provoking a crescendo of conflicts culminating in the Thirty Years War of
1618-48. Throughout northern and western Europe, these inflicted a repeated and massive
devastation on the urban and rural landscape. In reaction, the built fabric underwent a sharp
collective ‘valorisation’, as its set pieces became charged with cultural significance and valued as
subjects both of loss and of potential restoration – sentiments previously commanded only by the
ruins of antiquity. This valorisation was focused on the great medieval religious buildings, numbers
of which suffered severe damage, sometimes amounting to virtual destruction, as the locus of conflict
moved around Europe. Nor was it just wars that caused damage: peacetime convulsions such as the
1536-41 Dissolution of the Monasteries in England could render an entire building-class redundant
at a stroke.
