The Scottish Reformation was the process whereby Scotland broke away from the Catholic Church, and established the Protestant Church of Scotland. It forms part of the wider European 16th-century Protestant Reformation.
From the first half of the 16th century, Scottish scholars and religious leaders were influenced by the teachings of the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. In 1560, a group of Scottish nobles known as the Lords of the Congregation gained control of government. Under their guidance, the Scottish Reformation Parliament passed legislation that established a Protestant creed, and rejected Papal supremacy, although these were only formally ratified by James VI in 1567. The kirk itself became the subject of national pride, and many Scots saw their country as a new Israel.
Directed by John Knox, the new Church of Scotland adopted a Presbyterian structure and largely Calvinist doctrine. The Reformation resulted in major changes in Scottish education, art and religious practice.
Structure
Christianity spread in Scotland from the 6th century, with evangelisation by Irish-Scots missionaries and, to a lesser extent, those from Rome and England. The church in Scotland attained clear independence from England after the Papal Bull of Celestine III (Cum universi, 1192), by which all Scottish bishoprics except Galloway became formally independent of York and Canterbury. The whole Ecclesia Scoticana, with individual Scottish bishoprics (except Whithorn/Galloway), became the "special daughter of the see of Rome". It was run by special councils made up of all the Scottish bishops, with the bishop of St Andrews emerging as the most important figure. The administration of parishes was often given to local monastic institutions in a process known as appropriation. By the time of the Reformation in the mid-16th century 80% of Scottish parishes were appropriated, leaving few resources for the parish clergy.
In 1472 St Andrews became the first archbishopric in the Scottish church, to be followed by Glasgow in 1492. The collapse of papal authority in the Papal Schism (1378–1418) allowed the Scottish Crown to gain effective control of major ecclesiastical appointments within the kingdom. This de facto authority over appointments was formally recognised by the Papacy in 1487. The Crown placed clients and relatives of the king in key positions, including James IV's (r. 1488–1513) illegitimate son Alexander Stewart, who was nominated as Archbishop of St. Andrews at the age of 11. This practice strengthened royal influence but it also made the Church vulnerable to criticisms of venality and nepotism. Relationships between the Scottish Crown and the Papacy were generally good, with James IV receiving tokens of papal favour.
Medieval popular religion
Traditional Protestant historiography tended to stress the corruption and unpopularity of the late Medieval Scottish church. Since the late 20th century, research has indicated the ways in which it met the spiritual needs of different social groups. Historians have discerned a decline of monastic life in this period, with many religious houses maintaining smaller numbers of monks. Those remaining often abandoned communal living for a more individual and secular lifestyle. The rate of new monastic endowments from the nobility also declined in the 15th century. In contrast, the burghs saw the flourishing of mendicant orders of friars in the later 15th century, who, unlike the older monastic orders, placed an emphasis on preaching and ministering to the population. The order of Observant Friars were organised as a Scottish province from 1467, and the older Franciscans and the Dominicans were recognised as separate provinces in the 1480s.
In most Scottish burghs there was usually only one parish church, in contrast to English towns where churches and parishes tended to proliferate. As the doctrine of Purgatory gained importance in the late Middle Ages, the number of chapelries, priests, and masses for the dead prayed within them, designed to speed the passage of souls to Heaven, grew rapidly. The number of altars dedicated to saints, who could intercede in this process, also increased dramatically. St. Mary's in Dundee had perhaps 48 such altars and St Giles' in Edinburgh more than 50. The number of saints celebrated in Scotland also proliferated, with about 90 being added to the missal used in St Nicholas church in Aberdeen. New cults of devotion related to Jesus and the Virgin Mary began to reach Scotland in the 15th century, including the Five Wounds, the Holy Blood, and the Holy Name of Jesus. New religious feasts arose, including celebrations of the Presentation, the Visitation, and Mary of the Snows.
In the early 14th century, the Papacy managed to minimise the problem of clerical pluralism, by which clerics held two or more livings, which elsewhere resulted in parish churches being without priests, or served by poorly trained and paid vicars and clerks. The number of poor clerical livings and a general shortage of clergy in Scotland, particularly after the Black Death, meant that in the 15th century the problem intensified. As a result, parish clergy were largely drawn from the lower ranks of the profession, leading to frequent complaints about their standards of education or abilities. Although there is little clear evidence that standards were declining, this was expressed as one of the major grievances of the Reformation. Heresy, in the form of Lollardry, began to reach Scotland from England and Bohemia in the early 15th century. Lollards were followers of John Wycliffe (c. 1330 –84) and later Jan Hus (c. 1369 –1415), who called for reform of the Church and rejected its doctrine on the Eucharist. Despite evidence of the burning of heretics and some popular support for its anti-sacramental elements, it probably remained a small movement.
Humanism
From the 15th century, Renaissance humanism encouraged critical theological reflection and calls for ecclesiastical renewal in Scotland. As early as 1495 some Scots were in contact with Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), the Netherlands-born leading figure in the northern humanist movement. They were also in contact with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455 – 1536), a French humanist and scholar who like Erasmus argued strongly for reform of the Catholic Church by the elimination of corruption and abuses. Scottish scholars often studied on the Continent and at English universities. Humanist scholars trained on the Continent were recruited to the new Scottish universities founded at St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and were one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism entered Scottish intellectual life. By 1497 the humanist and historian Hector Boece, who was born in Dundee and studied at Paris, returned to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen.
The continued movement of scholars to other universities resulted in a school of Scottish nominalists at Paris by the early 16th century, the most important of whom was John Mair, generally described as a scholastic. His Latin History of Greater Britain (1521) was sympathetic to the humanist social agenda. In 1518 he returned to become Principal of the University of Glasgow. Another major figure was Archibald Whitelaw, who taught at St. Andrews and Cologne, becoming a tutor to the young James III and royal secretary in 1462–1493. Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and later Bishop of Orkney, was responsible in the 1520s and 1530s for bringing the Italian humanist Giovanni Ferrario to teach at Kinloss Abbey. Ferrario established an impressive library and wrote works of Scottish history and biography. Reid was to leave sufficient endowment in his will, for the foundation of Edinburgh University. James McGoldrick suggests that there was a circle of "Erasmian-type scholar-reformers" at the royal court in the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Lutheranism
From the 1520s the ideas of Martin Luther began to have influence in Scotland, with Lutheran literature circulating in the east-coast burghs. In 1525 Parliament banned their importation. In 1527, the English ambassador at Antwerp noted that Scottish merchants were taking William Tyndale's New Testament to Edinburgh and St. Andrews. In 1528 the nobleman Patrick Hamilton, who had been influenced by Lutheran theology while at the universities of Wittenberg and Marburg, became the first Protestant martyr in Scotland. He was burned at the stake for heresy outside St Salvator's College at Saint Andrews. Hamilton's execution inspired more interest in the new ideas. The Archbishop of St Andrews was warned against any further such public executions as "the reek [smoke] of Maister Patrik Hammyltoun has infected as many as it blew upon".
Political background (1528–1559)
James V
After entering his personal reign in 1528, James V avoided pursuing the major structural and theological changes to the church undertaken by his contemporary Henry VIII in England. In exchange for his loyalty to Rome, he was able to appoint some of his illegitimate children and favourites to office in the Church, particularly his son James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray who became a Prior in 1538 at the age of seven. James increased crown revenues by heavily taxing the church, taking £72,000 in four years. The results of such appointments and taxation undermined both the status and finances of the Church. The Church was also divided by jurisdictional disputes between Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow and James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews until his death in 1539. As a result, in 1536 the first provincial church council called since 1470 failed to achieve major reforms or a united front against heresy. After the execution of Patrick Hamilton, the Crown prosecuted some men and a small number of executions followed in the 1530s and 1540s, but there was no systematic persecution, as the king was not interested in wide-scale bloodletting. An increasing number of lairds and nobles began to favour reform, particularly in Angus, the Mearns, Fife and within the University of St Andrews. Leading figures included Alexander Cunningham, 5th Earl of Glencairn and John Erskine of Dun. In 1541 Parliament passed legislation to protect the honour of the Mass, prayer to the Virgin Mary, images of the saints, and the authority of the pope.
Rough Wooing
James V died in 1542, leaving the infant Mary, Queen of Scots as his heir, with the prospect of a long minority. At the beginning of Mary's reign, the Scottish political nation was divided between a pro-French faction, led by Cardinal Beaton and by the Queen's mother, Mary of Guise, and a pro-English faction, headed by Mary's prospective heir James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. Initially Arran became Regent, backed by the small "evangelical party" at court, who favoured religious reform. The act of Parliament of 1543 removed the prohibition against reading the Bible in the vernacular. A planned marriage between Mary and Edward, the son of Henry VIII of England, which had been agreed under the Treaty of Greenwich (1543), led to a backlash in Scotland and a coup led by Cardinal Beaton. He repudiated the reforming policies, and all consideration of an English marriage for the Queen, angering the English. They invaded to enforce the match, an action later known as the "rough wooing", which devastated south-east Scotland.
In 1546, George Wishart, a preacher who had come under the influence of Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli, was arrested and burnt at the stake in St. Andrews on the orders of Cardinal Beaton. Wishart's supporters, who included a number of Fife lairds, assassinated Beaton soon after and seized St. Andrews Castle, which they held for a year while under siege, before they were defeated with the help of French forces. The survivors, including chaplain John Knox, were condemned to be galley slaves, helping to create resentment of the French and martyrs for the Protestant cause.