St Andrews: From the centre of Catholicism to heart of the Reformation

I stated last week that I considered St Andrews to be the most famous town in Scotland and I have received no counter-claims at the time of writing. Quod erat demonstrandum, as they say in all the best maths and philosophy tracts.

Today’s column relies heavily on The History Of The Reformation Of Religion In Scotland by none other than John Knox. He was very biased, in that he wrote largely to promote his own role in the Reformation, but strip away his partiality and there is a comprehensive and mainly factual account of the period.

I have been concentrating on the ancient history of towns because  self-evidently that is what makes them “ancient”, but today’s column deals with a period of Scottish history that seems almost recent  by comparison.

Between the Wars of Independence and the Union of 1707, no single event or series of events changed Scotland as much as the Reformation, save for the Black Death which arrived in the mid-14th century and was the greatest disaster in Scottish history.  

The plague changed Scottish society but the country recovered, while the Reformation transformed almost every aspect of Scotland, and its effects have lasted for centuries.

Virtually overnight this “special daughter” of the Roman Catholic Church became a Protestant country. Although the Act of Union altered – I would say fundamentally damaged – Scotland, that did not happen until 1707, more than 150 years after the Reformation of the 1560s.

READ MORE: How King David I transformed the landscape of Scotland

St Andrews, as home to the principal bishopric of the country, was the headquarters of the church in Scotland right up to the Reformation. Even during the Great Papal Schism from 1378-1417, the diocese survived as the leading bishopric of Scotland.

In the 15th century, the Scottish Crown took more control of the church, while the church authorities appropriated the incomes of many parishes to bolster the funds of monasteries, abbeys and priories – monastic institutions which were easier to control. Resentment against the Church’s control of land, for example, grew slowly among both the nobility and the peasantry.

Heresy, as the Catholic Church saw it, was confronted by the clerical and secular authorities. As early as 1431, a Bohemian called Pavel Kraver, or Paul Craw, arrived at St Andrews University and taught the version of reformed Christianity as preached by the English theologian John Wycliffe and his pupil Jan Huss (or Hus), and embraced by the so-called Lollards.

Craw particularly attacked the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrament of confession and was hauled before Bishop Henry Wardlaw and the theology professors of the university.  Craw was found guilty of heresy and was burned at the stake – with a brass ball in his mouth to stop him preaching to the crowd.

In my book that makes Craw the first martyr for the reformed religion in Scotland. There is a memorial plaque in English and Czech near the place in St Andrews where he was executed.

The town’s place as headquarters of the church was confirmed by  Pope Sixtus IV in August 1472,  when he issued a bull elevating  St Andrews to an Archbishopric.

A depiction of the assassination of Archbishop David Beaton in St Andrews Castle. Image: Getty

The new Archbishop of  St Andrews had previously been the town’s bishop. He was Patrick Graham, the grandson of King Robert III, his mother being Lady Mary Stewart. Graham was suspected of corruption and insanity and the Pope ordered an inquiry which ended with the first Archbishop of St Andrews being deposed in 1478 and ending his days, allegedly mad, while locked up in Lochleven Castle.

The story of one of his successors is emblematic of what was happening in the church in Scotland at the time. In 1504, Alexander Stewart became archbishop. He had been born the illegitimate son of King James IV by his mistress Marion Boyd. 

The king obtained a dispensation from the then Pope that allowed his son to take holy orders – and he duly became Archbishop of St Andrews at the age of 11. You read that right: he was only 11 when he assumed  the highest office of the church  in Scotland. 

The child cleric remained close to his father and died alongside him at the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513. He was just 20. There is a whole theory to be advanced as to the effect of the Flodden slaughter of the nobility of Scotland and how their demise on a single day helped the cause of the Reformation, but that’s for another day.

There had been calls for reform of the church in Scotland for decades but these came to nothing. When Martin Luther started his Reformation by pinning his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, word of his actions and thoughts spread like wildfire  across Europe.  Luther was declared a heretic but the revolt against Rome’s control of religion was under way.

Meanwhile, in England, the word “reformation” had actually been coined in 1512 and described the process of King Henry VIII becoming a bulwark against Protestantism, for which he was awarded the title of “defender of  the faith” by Pope Leo X. England’s switch to Protestantism under Henry – the articles of Catholic faith remained largely untouched, but the king became the head of the church in England – was largely driven by the king’s need for a male heir.

When Pope Clement VII refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527, Henry called the Reformation Parliament which effectively made England a Protestant country by 1536.

In Scotland, any reform of the Church had been fiercely opposed by the monarchy and the clergy throughout the 15th century. But the humanist ideas of the Dutch philosopher Erasmus spread to Scotland and began to be discussed in the early 1500s, with St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen universities all involved in what came to be seen as the humanist revolution.

By the 1520s, Lutheranism was being openly discussed. Despite the Scottish Parliament passing laws against the “heresy” of Protestantism – particularly the banning of the importation of Lutheran literature – one nobleman turned academic, Patrick Hamilton, openly preached Luther’s ideas at St Andrews University, where he had studied before moving to the Continent and meeting prominent reformers.

Archbishop James Beaton had been Archbishop of Glasgow and a member of the regency council which ruled Scotland during the minority of King James V after the death of James IV at Flodden.

Beaton (or Bethune) strongly opposed the Reformation and, incidentally, was also very much against English influence on Scotland. As Archbishop of  St Andrews from 1522, he would play a leading role in the attempts  to stave off Protestantism in Scotland and wanted to make an example of Hamilton.

In 1528, Hamilton was charged with 13 counts of heresy and found guilty on all of them.  He was handed over to the secular guards of the town and burned at the stake – his initials are preserved in cobblestones outside St Salvator’s Chapel, and university students believe it is bad luck to walk on them.

Due to a botched execution, he took six hours to die. Beaton did not care and promised to burn all heretics. The martyrdom of Hamilton had an extraordinary effect. Instead of deterring reformers, it hugely increased their number.

John Knox described one incident: “A merry gentleman named John Lindsay, familiar to Archbishop James Beaton, standing by when consultation was had, said, “My Lord, if ye burn any more, unless ye follow my counsel, ye will utterly destroy yourselves. If ye will burn them, let them be burnt in cellars;  for the reek of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many  as it blew upon.”

Beaton arranged for his nephew David to succeed him as archbishop. He duly did in 1539, by which time he was already a cardinal and had been Scotland’s ambassador to France.

David Beaton then fortified St Andrews Castle, which he made his principal home. Beaton’s own personal life is often given as an example of the church’s corruption: he amassed a small fortune and kept a mistress, Marion Ogilvy, by whom he had eight children. 

Anti-English and pro-French, Beaton was unpopular with the nobility, who were turning to Protestantism. After King James V’s death in 1542, Beaton was briefly deposed but returned to power under Regent Arran as Lord Chancellor of Scotland working closely with Mary, Queen of Scots’ mother, Marie de Guise, to oppose reform.

He oversaw the persecution of Protestants and, according to Knox, personally arranged the trial and execution of four men and a woman in Perth.

The most prominent Protestant preacher, George Wishart, whose assistant was John Knox, was arrested on Beaton’s orders. He  was tried for heresy and hanged in  St Andrews on March 1, 1546, and his body burned to ashes. 

It was a fatal move by Beaton, for a group of Protestant nobles, the  so-called Fife Lairds, were so enraged that they broke into St Andrews Castle and assassinated the cardinal on May 29, hanging his naked body in sheets from an upper window and taking control of the castle.

The siege of St Andrews Castle went on for months, during which Knox came to the town and preached his first sermon in the town’s parish church.

Marie de Guise and Regent Arran sent troops to regain the castle but, with the fiery assistance of Knox, the Protestant contingent resisted until naval forces from France blasted its walls apart. In July 1547, the French bombardment forced the surrender of the castle with the inhabitants, including Knox, deported to work  in the galleys of France.

READ MORE: St Andrews: The legends behind the most famous town in Scotland

Knox came back to Scotland via Geneva where he learned the Presbyterianism of John Calvin. Though the tide was firmly turning in favour of the reformers, Beaton’s successor, Archbishop John Hamilton continued to persecute Protestants, and in 1558 he arranged the trial and execution of a former Catholic priest, Walter Milne (or Mylne), who was burned at the stake outside Dean’s Court, opposite the Cathedral.

The last Protestant martyr in St Andrews was 82 at the time of his death, and the people of the town had so turned against their Catholic leaders they closed all businesses on execution day.

The following year Knox came to St Andrews and despite being banned from preaching by the archbishop, delivered a powerful sermon which inspired the congregation to smash “idolatrous” monuments and statuary.

Most historians consider that sermon in St Andrews to be the real start of the Reformation, which was accomplished the following year.

Anyone who wants to promote their ancient town for a column should email me at nationalhamish@gmail.com – the criteria are that they were established, usually a burgh, before the Reformation; they must have played a part in the history of Scotland; and their history needs to have been thoroughly researched.