Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 10 on 5/9/2003.

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Opportunity Knox

JAMES IRVINE-ROBERTSON LOOKS AT HOW THE REFORMATION TOOK SHAPE IN SCOTLAND

In Scotland, the Reformation came late and, when it came, Roman Catholicism was replaced by the Protestant faith in a velvet revolution. Throughout much of northern Europe it had been a brutal, bloody affair.

In the decades after Martin Luther hammered his 95 theses against the abuse of indulgences to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg in 1517, religion, nationalism and power politics led to persecution, wars and the death of thousands.

In England, Henry VIII declared himself head of the church so that he could take a new wife and grab the wealth of the monasteries. His daughter Queen Mary was a Catholic and turned things upside down by burning the Protestant heretics at the stake. Her sister Queen Elizabeth reversed this policy once again.

But in Scotland, religion seemed hardly to be an issue. Most people seemed content with the rickety buildings, rackety priests and their concubines, the monasteries with their lay abbots, usually sons of the king or the nobility, who creamed off the profits and rents of the vast church lands. But politics and one charismatic figure changed the nation.

Of course, there was a growing number of enthusiastic Protestants, but their leader George Wishart was arrested in 1546 by Cardinal David Beaton of St Andrews, and was burnt at stake for heresy.

Beaton was assassinated and his supporters rounded up, including a priest, John Knox, who was sentenced to a term as a galley slave. From our perspective, Knox can make uncomfortable vie.....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish History

Page number : 20