Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
JOHN KNOX
Protestant reformer
John Knox
has been credited with, or blamed for, the distinctive national
characteristic of rather gloomy reserve that emerged from the Calvinist Reformation and which
has cast its shadow right up to the present. Little is known about Knox's early years: he was born
between 1505 and 1514 in East Lothian, and trained for the priesthood at St Andrews University.
Ordained in 1540, Knox then served as a private tutor, in league with Scotland's first significant
Protestant leader,
George Wishart
. After Wishart was burnt at the stake for heresy in 1546,
Knox became involved with the group who had carried out the revenge murder of the Scottish
primate, Cardinal David Beaton, subsequently taking over his castle in St Andrews. The following
year this was captured by the French, and Knox was carted off to work as a galley slave.
He was freed in 1548, as a result of the intervention of the English, who invited him to play
an evangelizing role in the spread of their own Reformation. Following successful ministries in
Berwick-upon-Tweed and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Knox turned down the bishopric of
Rochester, less from an intrinsic opposition to episcopacy than from a wish to avoid becoming
embroiled in the turmoil he guessed would ensue if the Catholic Mary Tudor acceded to the
English throne. When this duly happened in 1553, Knox fled to the Continent, ending up as
minister to the English-speaking community in Geneva, which was then in the grip of the
theocratic government of the Frenchman
Jean Calvin
.
In exile, Knox was preoccupied with the influence wielded by political rulers, believing that
the future of the
Reformation
in Europe was at risk because of the opposition of a few
powerful sovereigns. This prompted him to write his infamous treatise,
The First Blast of the
Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
, a specific attack on the three Catholic
women then ruling Scotland, England and France, which has made his name synonymous
with misogyny ever since.
When Knox was allowed to return to Scotland in 1555, he took over as spiritual leader of the
Reformation, becoming minister of St Giles in Edinburgh, where he gained a reputation as a
charismatic preacher. The establishment of Protestantism as the o
cial religion of Scotland in
1560 was dependent on the forging of an alliance with
Elizabeth I
, which Knox himself
rigorously championed: the swift deployment of English troops against the French garrison in
Edinburgh dealt a fatal blow to Franco-Spanish hopes of re-establishing Catholicism in both
Scotland and England. Although the return of
Mary, Queen of Scots
the following year
placed a Catholic monarch on the Scottish throne, Knox was reputedly always able to retain
the upper hand in his famous disputes with her.
Before his death in 1572, Knox began mapping out the organization of the
Scots Kirk
,
sweeping away all vestiges of episcopal control and giving lay people a role of unprecedented
importance. He also proposed a nationwide education system, to be compulsory for the very
young and free for the poor, though lack of funds meant this could not be implemented in full.
His final legacy was the posthumously published
History of the Reformation of Religion in the
Realm of Scotland
, a justification of his life's work.
For all his considerable influence, Knox was not responsible for many of the features that have
created the popular image of
Scottish Presbyterianism
- and of Knox himself - as austere and
joyless. A man of refined cultural tastes, he did not encourage the iconoclasm that destroyed so
many of Scotland's churches and works of art: indeed, much of this was carried out by English
hands. Nor did he promote unbending Sabbatarianism, an obsessive work ethic, or even the
inflexible view of the doctrine of predestination favoured by his far more fanatical successors.
Ironically, though, by fostering an irrevocable rift in the “Auld Alliance” with France, he did more
than anyone else to ensure that Scotland's future was to be linked with that of England.
contemporary development containing an excellent café, the Netherbow heatre
and an airy
Storytelling Court
with a small permanent exhibition about Scottish
stories from ancient folk tales to
Harry Potter
. By contrast,
John Knox House
next
door - but part of the same complex - is a fifteenth-century stone-and-timber
building which, with its distinctive external staircase, overhanging upper storeys and
busy pantile roof, is a classic example of the Royal Mile in its medieval heyday.
Inside, the house is all low doorways, uneven floors and ornate wooden panelling; it
