ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the consequence of recognizing Herbert's emphasis on material monuments for his putative Calvinism. The Temple presents Herbert as a poet strikingly concerned with the materials of religious memory. It argues that The Temple not only foregrounds the monumental materials of religion as they were found in seventeenth-century churches, but that it also presents a conflict over whether the place of such material in religion should be metaphorical, real, or both these things simultaneously. The chapter examines both these examples stone and corporeality collide, being fused by Herbert to produce just the unease over whether Herbert's church is inner' or outer'. Images associated with Christ's Passion were the most offensive of all for contemporary Protestants. Indeed, Herbert's argument for images is the traditional one that was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in response to Protestant iconoclasm: images in churches are justified as means of instruction.