Education , credited with major reforms in Scottish universities in the 16th century The humanist concern with widening education was shared by the Protestant reformers, with a desire for a godly people replacing the aim of having educated citizens. The
First Book of Discipline set out a plan for a school in every parish, but this proved financially impossible. In the burghs the old schools were maintained, with the song schools and a number of new foundations becoming reformed grammar schools or ordinary parish schools. Schools were supported by a combination of kirk funds, contributions from local
heritors or burgh councils and parents that could pay. They were inspected by kirk sessions, who checked for the quality of teaching and doctrinal purity. There were also large number of unregulated "adventure schools", which sometimes fulfilled a local need and sometimes took pupils away from the official schools. Outside of the established burgh schools, masters often combined their positions with other employment, particularly minor posts within the Kirk, such as clerk. At their best, the curriculum included
catechism,
Latin,
French,
Classical literature and sports. Scotland's universities underwent a series of reforms associated with Andrew Melville, who returned from Geneva to become principal of the
University of Glasgow in 1574. A distinguished linguist, philosopher and poet, he had trained in Paris and studied law at
Poitiers, before moving to Geneva and developing an interest in Protestant theology. Influenced by the anti-Aristotelian
Petrus Ramus, he placed an emphasis on simplified logic and elevated languages and sciences to the same status as philosophy, allowing accepted ideas in all areas to be challenged. He introduced new specialist teaching staff, replacing the system of "regenting", where one tutor took the students through the entire arts curriculum.
Metaphysics were abandoned and Greek became compulsory in the first year, followed by
Aramaic,
Syriac and
Hebrew, launching a new fashion for ancient and biblical languages. Glasgow had probably been declining as a university before his arrival, but students now began to arrive in large numbers. He assisted in the reconstruction of
Marischal College,
Aberdeen, and to do for St Andrews what he had done for Glasgow, he was appointed Principal of
St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1580. The
University of Edinburgh developed out of public lectures that were established in the town in the 1540s on law, Greek, Latin and philosophy, under the patronage of
Mary of Guise. The "Tounis College" become the
University of Edinburgh in 1582. The results of these changes were a revitalisation of all Scottish universities, which were now producing a quality of education the equal of that offered anywhere in Europe.
Literature , playwright, poet and political theorist, by
Arnold Bronckorst Medieval Scotland probably had its own
Mystery plays, often performed by craft
guilds, like one described as '''' and staged at Aberdeen in 1440 and 1445 and which was probably connected with the feast of
Corpus Christi, but no texts are extant. Legislation was enacted against folk plays in 1555, and against liturgical plays ("clerk-plays or comedies based on the canonical scriptures") in 1575 by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Attempts to ban folk plays were more leniently applied and less successful than once assumed. They continued into the 17th century, with parishioners in Aberdeen reproved for parading and dancing in the street with bells at weddings and Yule in 1605,
Robin Hood and May plays at Kelso in 1611 and Yuletide guising at Perth in 1634. The Kirk also allowed some plays, particularly in schools, when they served their own ends for education, as in the comedy about the
Prodigal Son permitted at St. Andrews in 1574. More formal plays included those of
James Wedderburn, who wrote anti-Catholic tragedies and comedies in Scots around 1540, before he was forced to flee into exile. These included the
Beheading of Johne the Baptist and the
Historie of Dyonisius the Tyraonne, which were performed at Dundee.
David Lyndsay (c. 1486 –1555), diplomat and the head of the
Lyon Court, was a prolific poet and dramatist. He produced an interlude at
Linlithgow Palace for the king and queen thought to be a version of his play
The Thrie Estaitis in 1540, which satirised the corruption of church and state, and which is the only complete play to survive from before the Reformation.
George Buchanan (1506–1582) was major influence on Continental theatre with plays such as
Jepheths and
Baptistes, which influenced
Pierre Corneille and
Jean Racine and through them the neo-classical tradition in French drama, but his impact in Scotland was limited by his choice of Latin as a medium. The anonymous
The Maner of the Cyring of ane Play (before 1568) and
Philotus (published in London in 1603), are isolated examples of surviving plays. The later is a vernacular Scots comedy of errors, probably designed for court performance for
Mary, Queen of Scots or James VI. The same system of professional companies of players and theatres that developed in England in this period was absent in Scotland, but James VI signalled his interest in drama by arranging for a company of English players to erect a playhouse and perform in 1599. The Kirk also discouraged poetry that was not devotional in nature. Nevertheless, poets from this period included
Richard Maitland of Lethington (1496–1586), who produced meditative and satirical verses;
John Rolland (fl. 1530–1575), who wrote allegorical satires and courtier and minister
Alexander Hume (c. 1556 –1609), whose corpus of work includes nature poetry and
epistolary verse.
Alexander Scott's (?1520–82/3) use of short verse designed to be sung to music, opened the way for the
Castalian poets of James VI's adult reign.
Art Scotland's ecclesiastical art paid a heavy toll as a result of Reformation
iconoclasm, with the almost total loss of medieval stained glass and religious sculpture and paintings. The only significant surviving pre-Reformation stained glass in Scotland is a window of four roundels in the
Magdalen Chapel of
Cowgate,
Edinburgh, completed in 1544. Wood carving can be seen at
King's College, Aberdeen and
Dunblane Cathedral. In the West Highlands, where there had been a hereditary caste of monumental sculptors, the uncertainty and loss of patronage caused by the rejection of monuments in the Reformation meant that they moved into other branches of the Gaelic learned orders or took up other occupations. The lack of transfer of carving skills is noticeable in the decline in quality when gravestones were next commissioned from the start of the 17th century. According to N. Prior, the nature of the Scottish Reformation may have had wider effects, limiting the creation of a culture of public display and meaning that art was channelled into more austere forms of expression with an emphasis on private and domestic restraint. The loss of ecclesiastical patronage that resulted from the Reformation, meant that native craftsmen and artists turned to secular patrons. One result of this was the flourishing of
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings and walls, with large numbers of private houses of burgesses, lairds and lords gaining often highly detailed and coloured patterns and scenes, of which over 100 examples survive. These were undertaken by unnamed Scottish artists using continental pattern books that often led to the incorporation of humanist moral and philosophical symbolism, with elements that call on heraldry, piety, classical myths and allegory. The earliest surviving example is at the Hamilton palace of
Kinneil, West Lothian, decorated in the 1550s for the then regent the
James Hamilton, Earl of Arran. Other examples include the ceiling at
Prestongrange House, undertaken in 1581 for Mark Kerr, Commendator of
Newbattle, and the long gallery at
Pinkie House, painted for
Alexander Seaton, Earl of Dunfermline in 1621.
Architecture Parish Kirk, its original wooden steeple now replaced by one of stone The Reformation revolutionised church architecture in Scotland. Calvinists rejected ornamentation in places of worship, seeing no need for elaborate buildings divided up for the purpose of ritual. This resulted in the widespread destruction of Medieval church furnishings, ornaments and decoration. New churches were built and existing churches adapted for reformed services, particularly by placing the pulpit centrally in the church, as preaching was at the centre of worship. Many of the earliest buildings were simple gabled rectangles, a style that continued into the 17th century, as at
Dunnottar Castle in the 1580s,
Greenock's
Old West Kirk (1591) and
Durness (1619). These churches often have windows on the south wall (and none on the north), which became a characteristic of Reformation kirks. There were continuities with pre-Reformation materials, with some churches using rubble for walls, as at
Kemback in Fife (1582). Others employed dressed stone and a few added wooden steeples, as at
Burntisland (1592). The church of
Greyfriars, Edinburgh, built between 1602 and 1620, used a rectangular layout with a largely Gothic form, but that at
Dirleton (1612), had a more sophisticated classical style. A variation of the rectangular church developed in post-Reformation Scotland, and often used when adapting existing churches, was the T-shaped plan, which allowed the maximum number of parishioners to be near the pulpit. Examples can be seen at Kemback and
Prestonpans after 1595. This plan continued to be used into the 17th century as at
Weem (1600),
Anstruther Easter, Fife (1634–1644) and
New Cumnock, Ayreshire (1657). In the 17th century a
Greek cross plan was used for churches such as
Cawdor (1619) and
Fenwick (1643). In most of these cases one arm of the cross would have been closed off as a laird's aisle, meaning that they were in effect T-plan churches.
Music The Reformation had a severe impact on church music. The song schools of the abbeys, cathedrals and collegiate churches were closed down, choirs disbanded, music books and manuscripts destroyed and organs removed from churches. The
Lutheranism that influenced the early Scottish Reformation attempted to accommodate Catholic musical traditions into worship, drawing on Latin hymns and vernacular songs. The most important product of this tradition in Scotland was
The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567), which were spiritual satires on popular ballads that have been commonly attributed to brothers
James,
John and
Robert Wedderburn. Never adopted by the Kirk, they nevertheless remained popular and were reprinted from the 1540s to the 1620s. Later the Calvinism that came to dominate the Scottish Reformation was much more hostile to Catholic musical tradition and popular music, placing an emphasis on what was biblical, which meant the
Psalms. The
Scottish Psalter of 1564 was commissioned by the
Assembly of the Church. It drew on the work of French musician
Clément Marot, Calvin's contributions to the Strasbourg
Psalter of 1539 and English writers, particularly the 1561 edition of the Psalter produced by
William Whittingham for the
English congregation in Geneva. The intention was to produce individual tunes for each psalm, but of 150 psalms, 105 had proper tunes and in the 17th century, common tunes, which could be used for psalms with the same metre, became more frequent. Because entire congregations would now sing these psalms, unlike the trained choirs who had sung the many parts of polyphonic hymns, there was a need for simplicity and most church compositions were confined to
homophonic settings. During his personal reign, James VI attempted to revive the song schools, with an act of parliament passed in 1579, demanding that councils of the largest burghs set up "ane sang scuill with ane maister sufficient and able for insturctioun of the yowth in the said science of musik". Five new schools were opened within four years of the act coming into force, and by 1633 there were at least 25. Most of those burghs without song schools made provision within their grammar schools. Polyphony was incorporated into editions of the Psalter from 1625, but in the few locations where these settings were used, the congregation sang the melody and trained singers the
contra-tenor,
treble and
bass parts. The triumph of the Presbyterians in the
National Covenant of 1638 led to an end of polyphony, and a new psalter in common metre, without tunes, was published in 1650. In 1666
The Twelve Tunes for the Church of Scotland, composed in Four Parts (which actually contained 14 tunes), designed for use with the 1650 Psalter, was first published in Aberdeen. It would go through five editions by 1720. By the late seventeenth century these two works had become the basic corpus of the psalmody sung in the Kirk.
Women (1574–1607), attributed to
Adrian Vanson Early modern Scotland was a
patriarchal society, in which men had total authority over women. From the 1560s the post-Reformation marriage service underlined this by stating that a wife "is in subjection and under governance of her husband, so long as they both continue alive". In politics the theory of patriarchy was complicated by regencies led by
Margaret Tudor and
Mary of Guise and by the advent of a regnant queen in
Mary, Queen of Scots from 1561. Concerns over this threat to male authority were exemplified by
John Knox's
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women (1558), which advocated the deposition of all reigning queens. Most of the political nation took a pragmatic view of the situation, accepting Mary as queen, but the strains that this paradox created may have played a part in the later difficulties of the reign. Before the Reformation, the extensive marriage bars for kinship meant that most noble marriages necessitated a
papal dispensation, which could later be used as grounds for annulment if the marriage proved politically or personally inconvenient, although there was no divorce as such. Separation from bed and board was allowed in exceptional circumstances, usually adultery. Under the reformed
Kirk, divorce was allowed on grounds of adultery or desertion. Scotland was one of the first countries to allow desertion as legal grounds for divorce and, unlike England, divorce cases were initiated relatively far down the social scale. After the Reformation the contest between the widespread belief in the limited intellectual and moral capacity of women and the desire for women to take personal moral responsibility, particularly as wives and mothers, intensified. In Protestantism this necessitated an ability to learn and understand the catechism and even to be able to independently read the Bible. Most commentators, even those that tended to encourage the education of girls, thought they should not receive the same academic education as boys. In the lower ranks of society, women benefited from the expansion of the parish schools system that took place after the Reformation, but were usually outnumbered by boys, often taught separately, for a shorter time and to a lower level. They were frequently taught reading, sewing and knitting but not writing. Female illiteracy rates based on signatures among female servants were around 90% from the late 17th to the early 18th centuries, and perhaps 85% for women of all ranks by 1750, compared with 35% for men. Among the nobility there were many educated and cultured women, of which Queen Mary is the most obvious example. Church attendance played an important part in the lives of many women. Women were largely excluded from the administration of the Kirk, but when heads of households voted on the appointment of a new minister, some parishes allowed women in that position to participate. In the post-Reformation period there was a criminalisation of women. Women were disciplined in kirk sessions and civil courts for stereotypical offences including
scolding and prostitution, which were seen as deviant, rather than criminal. These changing attitudes may partly explain the
witch hunts that occurred after the Reformation and in which women were the largest group of victims.
Popular religion meet the Devil in the local kirkyard, from a contemporary pamphlet,
Newes from Scotland Scottish Protestantism was focused on the Bible, which was seen as infallible and the major source of moral authority. Many Bibles were large, illustrated and highly valuable objects. The
Genevan translation was commonly used until in 1611 the Kirk adopted the
Authorised King James Version and the first Scots version was printed in Scotland in 1633, but the Geneva Bible continued to be employed into the 17th century. Bibles often became the subject of superstitions, being used in
divination. Kirk discipline was fundamental to Reformed Protestantism and it probably reached a high-water mark in the 17th century. Kirk sessions were able to apply religious sanctions, such as excommunication and denial of baptism, to enforce godly behaviour and obedience. In more difficult cases of immoral behaviour they could work with the local magistrate, in a system modelled on that employed in Geneva. Public occasions were treated with mistrust and from the later 17th century there were efforts by kirk sessions to stamp out activities such as
well-dressing,
bonfires,
guising,
penny weddings, and dancing. In the late Middle Ages there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the
Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major series of trials under the new act were the
North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1589, in which
James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the
Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions. An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the
Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were major series of trials in
1590–1591,
1597, 1628–1631, 1649–1650 and
1661–1662. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women and modern estimates indicate that over 1,500 people were executed.
National identity The Kirk that developed after 1560 came to represent all of Scotland. It became the subject of national pride, and was often compared with the less clearly reformed church in neighbouring England. Jane Dawson suggests that the loss of national standing in the contest for dominance of Britain between England and France suffered by the Scots, may have led them to stress their religious achievements. A theology developed that saw the kingdom as in a
covenant relationship with God. Many Scots saw their country as a new Israel and themselves as a holy people engaged in a struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist, the latter being identified with the resurgent papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. This view was reinforced by events elsewhere that demonstrated that Reformed religion was under threat, such as the 1572
Massacre of St Bartholomew in France and the
Spanish Armada in 1588. These views were popularised through the first Protestant histories, such as Knox's
History of the Reformation and
George Buchanan's
Rerum Scoticarum Historia. This period also saw a growth of a patriotic literature facilitated by the rise of popular printing. Published editions of medieval poetry by
John Barbour and
Robert Henryson and the plays of
David Lyndsay all gained a new audience. ==See also==