Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

I. THE INDOMITABLE SCOTS

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THE warm and genial south generates civilization; the cold and hardy

north repeatedly conquers the lax and lazy south, and absorbs and

transforms civilization. The extreme north- Scotland, Norway,

Sweden, Finland- fights the almost Arctic elements to provide some

welcome to civilization, and to contribute to it in the face of a

thousand obstacles.

In Scotland the sterile, roadless Highlands encouraged feudalism and

discouraged culture, while the green and fertile Lowlands invited

invasion after invasion by Englishmen who could not understand why

Scotland should not receive their overflow and their kings. The Scots,

anciently Celtic, medievally mingled with Irish, Norse, Angles,

Saxons, and Normans, had by 1500 merged into a people narrow as

their peninsula in feelings and ideas, deep as their mists in

superstition and mythology, proud as their promontories, rough as

their terrain, impetuous as their torrents; at once ferocious and

tender, cruel and brave, and always invincible. Poverty seemed

rooted in geography, and manners in poverty; so parsimony grew out

of the grudging soil. The peasants were too burdened with toil to have

time for letters, and the nobles who kept them in bondage prided

themselves on illiteracy, finding no use for the alphabet in their

feuds or wars. The mountains and clans divided the sparse population

into passionate jealousies that gave no quarter in war, no security in

peace. The nobles, having nearly all the military power in their

private bands, dominated the Parliament and the kings; the Douglases

alone had 5,000 retainers, and revenues rivaling the Crown's.

Before 1500 industry was primitive and domestic, commerce was

precarious, cities were few and small. All Scotland had then some

600,000 inhabitants- half of Glasgow's number today. Glasgow was a

minor fishing town; Perth was, till 1452, the capital; Edinburgh had

16,000 souls. The individual, local, and national spirit of

independence expressed itself in village and township institutions

of self-government within the framework of feudalism and monarchy. The

burghers- the enfranchised citizens of the towns- were allowed

representatives in the Parliament or Assembly of Estates, but they had

to sit, not in their own Commons as in England, but amid the feudal

landowners, and their voice and vote were lost in the noble

majority. Unable to buttress their power against the nobles by an

alliance, as in France, with rich merchants and populous cities, the

kings sought support in the affluence and influence of the Church. The

nobles, always at odds with the kings, learned to hate the Church

and love her property, and joined in the universal cry that national

wealth was being siphoned to Rome. In Scotland it was the nobles- not,

as in England, the kings and merchants- who made the Reformation,

i.e., freed secular from ecclesiastical power. `06271

Through its hold on the piety of the people the Scottish Church

achieved opulence amid dulling poverty and transmundane hopes. A papal

envoy, toward the end of the fifteenth century, reported to the pope

that ecclesiastical income in Scotland equaled all other income

combined. `06272 The preachers and the burghers almost monopolized

literacy. The Scottish clergy were already in the sixteenth century

noted for scholarship, and it was the Church, of course, that

founded and maintained the universities of St. Andrews and Aberdeen.

After 1487 the bishops and abbots were "nominated"- in effect

appointed- by the kings, who used these offices as rewards for

political services or as sinecures for their illegitimate sons.

James V endowed three of his bastards with the ecclesiastical revenues

of Kelso, Melrose, Holyrood, and St. Andrews. The worldly tastes of

these royal appointees were in a measure responsible for the

deterioration of the clergy in the sixteenth century.

But the general laxity of morals and discipline that marked the

Church in the later Middle Ages was evident in Scotland long before

the royal nomination of the prelacy. "The corruption of the Church,

bad everywhere throughout Europe in the fifteenth century," writes the

strongly Catholic Hilaire Belloc, "had in Scotland reached a degree

hardly known elsewhere"; `06273 hence, in part, the indifference

with which the common people, though orthodox in creed, would look

upon the replacement of Catholic with Protestant clergymen. In 1425

King James I complained of monastic dissoluteness and sloth; in 1455 a

chaplain at Linlithgow, before receiving his appointment, had to

give bond that he would not pawn the property of his church, and would

not keep a "continual concubine." `06274 Cardinal Beaton had eight

bastards, and slept with Marion Ogilvy on the night before he went

to meet his Maker; `06275 John, Archbishop Hamilton, obtained from

divers sessions of the Scottish Parliament letters of legitimation for

his increasing brood. The pre-Reformation poets of Scotland spared

no words in satirizing the clergy; and the clergy themselves, in the

Catholic provincial synod of 1549, ascribed the degradation of the

Church in Scotland to "corruption in morals and profane lewdness of

life in churchmen of almost all ranks." `06276 We should add, however,

that the morals of the clergy merely reflected those of the laity-

above all, of the nobles and the kings.

II. ROYAL CHRONICLE: 1314-1554

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The basic fact in the history of the Scottish state is fear of

England. English kings, for England's safety from rear attack, time

and again tried to annex Scotland to the English crown. Scotland, to

protect itself, accepted alliance with England's perennial enemy,

France. Thereby hangs this chronicle.

With bows and arrows and battle-axes the Scots won freedom from

England at Bannockburn (1314). Robert Bruce, having there led them

to victory, ruled them till his death by leprosy (1329). His son David

II, like Scottish kings from time beyond memory, was crowned on the

sacred "Stone of Destiny" in the abbey of Scone. When Edward III of

England began the Hundred Years' War with France he thought it wise

first to secure his northern front; he defeated the Scots at Halidon

Hill, and set up Edward Balliol as his puppet on the Scottish throne

(1333). David II regained the crown only by paying the English a

ransom of 100,000 marks ($6,667,000?). As he left no direct heir at

his death (1371), the kingdom passed to his nephew Robert Stuart, with

whom the fateful Stuart dynasty began.

The war of Britain's two halves against the whole was soon

resumed. The French sent an army to Scotland; Scots and French ravaged

the border counties of England, took Durham, and put to death all

its inhabitants- men, women, children, nuns, monks, priests. Playing

the next move in this royal chess, the English invaded Scotland,

burned Perth and Dundee, and destroyed Melrose Abbey (1385). Robert

III carried on; but when the English captured his son James (1406)

he died of grief. England kept the boy king in genteel imprisonment

until the Scots signed the "Perpetual Peace" (1423), renouncing all

further co-operation with France.

James I had picked up, in captivity, considerable education, and

an English bride. In honor of this "milk-white dove" he composed, in

the Scots tongue, The King's Quair (i.e., book), an allegorical poem

of surprising merit for a king. Indeed James was remarkable in a dozen

ways. He was one of the best wrestlers, runners, riders, archers,

spearmen, craftsmen, and musicians in Scotland, and he was a competent

and beneficent ruler. He imposed penalties upon dishonest commerce and

negligent husbandry, built hospitals, required taverns to close at

nine, turned the energies of youth from football to martial exercises,

and demanded a reform of ecclesiastical discipline and monastic

life. When his active reign began (1424) he pledged himself to put

down chaos and crime in Scotland, and to end the private wars of the

nobles and their feudal despotism; "if God gives me but a dog's life I

will make the key keep the castle and the bracken keep the cow"- i.e.,

end robbery of homes and cattle- "through all Scotland." `06277 A

Highland thief robbed a woman of two cows; she vowed that she would

ne'er wear shoon till she had walked to the King to denounce the

weakness of the law. "You lie," said the thief; "I will have you

shod"; and he nailed horseshoes to her naked feet. She found her way

to the King nevertheless. He had the robber hunted down, had him led

about Perth with a canvas picture of the crime, and saw to it that the

brute was safely hanged. Meanwhile he quarreled opportunely with

obstructive barons, brought a few to the scaffold, confiscated

excess holdings, taxed the lords as well as the burgesses, and gave

the government the funds it needed to replace many tyrannies with one.

He called to the Parliament the lairds- proprietors of the lesser

estates- and made them and the middle class an offset to the nobles

and the clergy. In 1437 a band of nobles killed him.

The sons of the nobles whom he had cut down in life or property

continued against James II their struggle against the centralizing

monarchy. While the new king was still a lad of seven his ministers

invited the young Earl of Douglas, and a younger brother, to be the

King's guests; they came, were given a mock trial, and were beheaded

(1440). Twelve years later James II himself invited William, Earl of

Douglas, to his court at Stirling, gave him a safe-conduct,

entertained him royally, and slew him on the charge that he had had

treasonable correspondence with England. The King captured all English

strongholds in Scotland but one, and was blown to bits by the

accidental explosion of his own cannon. James III paid the penalty

of his father's lawlessness; after many ferocious encounters he was

captured by nobles and summarily killed (1488). James IV married

Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII; through that marriage Mary Queen

of Scots would later claim the English throne. Nevertheless, when

Henry joined Spain, Austria, Venice, and the papacy in attacking

France (1511), James felt bound to help Scotland's old ally, now so

imperiled, by invading England. On Flodden Field he fought with mad

courage while many of his men turned and fled; and in that disaster he

died (1513).

James V was then but a year old. An involved struggle ensued for the

regency. David Beaton- an ecclesiastic distinguished by ability,

courage, and appreciation of women- secured the prize, was made

Archbishop of St. Andrews, then Cardinal, and trained the young King

in fervent allegiance to the Church. In 1538 James married Mary of

Lorraine, sister of Francis, Duke of Guise, the leader of the Catholic

party in dogma-divided France. The Scottish nobility, increasingly

anticlerical, looked with interest at the current divorce of England

from the papacy, envied English lords appropriating or receiving

church property, and took "wages" from Henry VIII to oppose their

King's alliance with France. When James V waged war on England the

nobles refused to support him. Defeated at Solway Moss (1542), he fled

in shame to Falkland, and died there on December 14. On December 8 his

wife had given birth to Mary, who, six days old, became Queen of

Scots.

Beaton produced a will in which the late King had named him regent

for the infant Queen. The nobles questioned the authenticity of the

document, imprisoned the Cardinal, and chose as regent James, Earl

of Arran; but Arran released Beaton and made him chancellor. When

Beaton renewed the alliance with France, Henry VIII resolved on

merciless war. To his army in the north he sent orders to burn and

destroy everything in its path, "putting man, woman, and child to fire

and sword without exception where any resistance shall be made," and

particularly "sparing no creature alive" in Beaton's St.

Andrews. `06278 The army did its best; "abbey and grange, castle and

hamlet, were buried in a common ruin"; `06279 for two days Edinburgh

was sacked and burned; farm villages for seven miles around were

pillaged and razed; 10,000 horned cattle, 12,000 sheep, 1,300

horses, were led away to England (1544). Sir James Kirkcaldy, Norman

Leslie, and other Scottish gentlemen offered to help the English "burn

places belonging to the extreme party in the Church, to arrest and

imprison the principal opponents of the English alliance, and to

'apprehend and slay' the Cardinal himself." `062710 Henry welcomed the

offer, and promised a thousand pounds toward expenses. The plan fell

through for a time, but was carried out on May 29, 1546. Two

Kirkcaldies, two Leslies, and a numerous band of nobles and cutthroats

forced entry into the Cardinal's palace, and slew him almost in

fragrante delicto, "for," said Knox, "he had been busy at his

accounts with Mistress Ogilvy that night." `062711 "Now, because the

weather was hot," Knox added, "it was thought best, to keep him from

stinking, to give him great salt enough, a cope of lead... to await

what exequies his brethren the bishops could prepare for him. These

things we write merrily." `062712 The assassins retired to the

castle of St. Andrews on the coast, and awaited aid from England by

sea.

Arran resumed charge of the government. To assure French help he

promised the infant Queen Mary Stuart to the French dauphin; and to

prevent her seizure by the English she was clandestinely sent to

France (August 13, 1548). The accession of Mary Tudor in England ended

for a time the danger of further English invasions; Catholicism now

ruled on both sides of the border. French influences prevailed upon

Arran to resign the regency (1554) to Mary of Lorraine, mother of

the absent Queen. She was a woman of intelligence, patience, and

courage, who yielded only to the overwhelming spirit of the age.

Dowered with the culture of the French Renaissance, she smiled

tolerantly at the rival religious dogmas that raged around her. She

ordered the release of several imprisoned Protestants, and allowed

such freedom of preaching and worship to "heretics" that many

English Protestants, fleeing from Mary Tudor, found refuge, and were

allowed to form congregations, under Mary of Lorraine. She was the

most humane and civilized ruler that Scotland had known for centuries.

III. JOHN KNOX: 1505-59

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The propaganda of reform was already a hundred years old in

Scotland. In 1433 Paul Crawar was accused of importing the doctrines

of Wyclif and Huss; he was convicted by the Church and burned by the

state. In 1494 thirty "Lollards of Kyle" were summoned before the

Bishop of Glasgow on charges of repudiating religious relics and

images, auricular confession, priestly ordination and powers,

transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, Masses for the dead,

clerical celibacy, and papal authority; `062713 here was almost a

summary of the Reformation twenty-three years before Luther's

Theses. Apparently the accused men recanted.

Soon after 1523 the writings of Luther entered Scotland. A Scots

translation of Wyclif's New Testament circulated in manuscript, and

a cry arose for a Christianity based exclusively on the Bible. Patrick

Hamilton went to Paris and Louvain, studied Erasmus and Greek

philosophy, went on to Wittenberg, returned to Scotland swelling

with the new dogmas, preached justification by faith, was invited by

James (uncle of David) Beaton, then Archbishop of St. Andrews, to come

and explain himself, came, stood his ground, and was burned (1528).

Two other "professors," as the early Scottish reformers called

themselves, were burned in 1534. Four men were hanged, and one woman

was drowned, in 1544; according to the not always reliable Knox, she

went to her death with a sucking babe at her breast. `062714

These murders had been too scattered in time and place to arouse any

powerful public reaction; but the hanging of George Wishart touched

the souls of many, and was the first effective event of the Scottish

Reformation. About 1543 Wishart translated the First Helvetic

Confession; unfortunately this Protestant declaration ordered

secular powers to punish heretics. `062715 From that time the Swiss

forms of Protestantism- at first humanely Zwinglian, then rigorously

Calvinist- more and more displaced Lutheranism in the Scottish

movement. Wishart preached in Montrose and Dundee, bravely tended

the sick in a plague, and expounded the new faith in Edinburgh at a

time when David Beaton was holding a convocation of Scottish clergy

there. The Cardinal had him arrested and tried for heresy; he was

convicted, strangled, and burned (1546).

Among his converts was one of the most powerful and influential

figures in history. John Knox was born between 1505 and 1515 near

Haddington. His peasant parents destined him for the priesthood; he

studied at Glasgow, was ordained (c. 1532), and became known for his

learning in both civil and canon law. His autobiographical History of

the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland says nothing

of his youth, but suddenly introduces him (1546) as the ardent

disciple and fearless bodyguard of George Wishart, bearing a heavy

two-handed sword. After Wishart's arrest Knox wandered from one hiding

place to another; then, at Easter of 1547, in the castle of St.

Andrews, he joined the band that had killed Cardinal Beaton.

Feeling a need for religion, the hunted men asked Knox to be their

preacher. He protested his unfitness, and consented, and they soon

agreed that they had never heard such fiery preaching before. He

called the Roman Church "the Synagogue of Satan," and identified her

with the awful beast described in the Apocalypse. He adopted the

Lutheran doctrine that man is saved "only by faith that the blood of

Jesus Christ purges us from all sins." `062716 In July a French

fleet sailed up and bombarded the castle. For four weeks the

besieged held out; finally they were overpowered, and for nineteen

months Knox and the others labored as galley slaves. We have few

details of their treatment, except that they were importuned to hear

Mass, and (Knox tells us) stoutly refused. Perhaps those bitter

days, and the cut of the overseer's lash, shared in sharpening

Knox's spirit to hatred and his tongue and pen to violence.

When the captives were freed (February 1549), Knox took service as a

Protestant clergyman in England, on a salary from the Somerset

government. He preached every day in the week, "if the wicked

carcass would permit." We of today, who do not often enjoy sermons,

can but faintly imagine the hunger that the sixteenth century felt for

them. The parish priests had left preaching to the bishops, who had

left it to the friars, who were occasional. In Protestantism the

preachers became journals of news and opinion; they told their

congregation the events of the week or day; and religion was then so

interwoven with life that nearly every occurrence touched the faith or

its ministers. They denounced the vices and errors of their

parishioners, and instructed the government as to its duties and

faults. In 1551 Knox, preaching before Edward VI and Northumberland,

asked how it was that the most pious princes had so often the most

ungodly councilors. The Duke tried to silence him with a bishopric,

but failed.

Mary Tudor was more dangerous, and after some cautious dallying Knox

fled to Dieppe and Geneva (1554). Calvin recommended him to an

English-speaking congregation at Frankfurt, but his code and

countenance proved too severe for his hearers, and he was asked to

leave. He returned to Geneva (1555), and we may judge the force of

Calvin's character from the influence that he now exerted upon a

personality as positive and powerful as his own. Knox described Geneva

under Calvin as "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on

earth since the days of the Apostles." `062717 Calvinism suited his

temper because that faith was sure of itself, sure of being inspired

by God, sure of its divine obligation to compel the individual in

conduct and creed, sure of its right to direct the state. All this

sank into Knox's spirit, and through him into Scottish history.

Anticipating with horror the rule of Catholic Mary Stuart in Scotland,

he asked Calvin and Bullinger whether a people might righteously

refuse to obey "a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true

religion." They would not commit themselves, but John Knox knew his

own mind.

In the fall of 1555, now presumably fifty years old, he showed the

tender side of a rough character by returning to Mary Tudor's England,

going to Berwick, and marrying Margaret Bowes because he loved her

mother. Mrs. Elizabeth Bowes had five sons, ten daughters, and a

Catholic husband. She was won to Protestantism by Knox's preaching;

she confided her domestic troubles to him; he found pleasure in

advising her, and comfort in her friendship, and apparently the

relationship remained spiritual to the end. When Margaret married

Knox, Mrs. Bowes left her husband and went to live with her daughter

and her confessor. The wife died after five years of marriage. Knox

married again, but Mrs. Bowes remained with him. Rarely in history has

a mother-in-law been so loving and so loved.

The strange trio went on to Scotland, where Mary of Lorraine still

found tolerance useful in winning the support of the Protestant

faction in the nobility. He praised the Regent as "a princess

honorable, endowed with wisdom and graces singularly." `062718 He

organized Protestant congregations in Edinburgh and elsewhere, and

made such influential converts as William Maitland, Laird of

Lethington, and Mary Stuart's illegitimate brother, James Stuart,

destined to be regent as Earl of Murray or Moray. An ecclesiastical

court, disliking this development, summoned Knox to give an account of

his doings. He chose discretion, and slipped out of Scotland with

his wife and her mother (July 1556). In his absence the ecclesiastical

court burned him in effigy. This painless martyrdom ennobled him in

the eyes of the Scottish Protestants, and from that moment, wherever

he was, he was accepted as the leader of the Scottish Reform.

In Geneva, as pastor of an English congregation, he developed the

full Calvinist program of ministerial supervision over the morals

and manners of his parishioners. At the same time he invited Mrs. Anne

Locke, whom he had converted in London, to leave her husband and

come with her daughter to live near him in Geneva. He wrote her

irresistible letters:

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Dearest sister, if I could express the thirst and languor which I

have for your presence, I shall appear to pass measure. Yea, I weep

and rejoice in remembrance of you; but that would evanish by the

comfort of your presence, which I assure you is so dear to me that

if the charge of this little flock here, gathered in Christ's name,

did not impede me, my presence should anticipate my letter.... Were it

not that partly ye be impeded by your head [husband]... in my heart

I would have wished, yea, and cannot cease to wish, that it would

Please God to guide you to this place. `062719

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Over the opposition of her "head" Mrs. Locke left London and arrived

in Geneva (1557) with a son, a daughter, and a maid. The daughter died

a few days later, but Mrs. Locke remained near Knox, and helped the

aging and now less comforting Mrs. Bowes to minister to the preacher's

needs. We have no evidence of sexual relations, and we hear of no

complaint from Mrs. Knox; we hardly hear of her at all. The old

home-breaker would be mothered, and had his way in Christ's name.

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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