Du rapport aux images religieuses à l’époque moderne : images, médiateurs et médiations

In this article, the problematic of the relationship to images is discussed in the context of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, through the iconophobia of one and the iconophilia of the other. What is at stake in this opposition is the status of the mediations that the Protestants and their Roman Catholic adversaries tolerated, refuted or hoped for within their own relationship to worldly and otherworldly realities. Henceforth the problem of the relationship to images necessarily doubled with that of the cult of saints and their supposed powers of intercession. Here this argument is tested through a rigorous examination of the Virgin Mary’s theological, pictorial and cult status, as it has developed over the centuries, and redeployed in these times of heated controversy. Such an examination eventually allows the re-examination of the inherent power of images