Knox: hero or villain?

05/01/2010

Scotland's fiery debate on the Reformation is still raging after 450 years, says Harry Reid

For more than four centuries debate has raged in Scotland over whether the firebrand preacher John Knox should be painted as one of history’s heroes or villains: charismatic social reformer, or religious extremist and demented dour puritan? Edinburgh’s Hogmanay opened the 450^th anniversary of the Reformation with a New Year’s Day debate on Knox’s legacy, which left indelible marks on Scotland’s political, social and religious landscape. Here, Harry Reid, author of Reformation: The Dangerous Birth of the Modern World, explains why Knox was a trailblazer who set the agenda for modern Scotland.

The Scottish Reformation of 450 years ago  was one of the least bloody and most complete of the various European reformations. It was more than a reformation; it was a revolution. This was partly because the charismatic figure leading it, John Knox, was a social and political as well as a religious visionary.

In 1560 Knox and five colleagues drew up a masterplan for the new Scotland. This utopian document was never fully implemented, because it was far too radical. But Scotland did, thanks to Knox, embark on a great social and educational experiment,  and in its new emphasis on welfare, democracy, universal education and the creation of genuine communities, it almost overnight changed from being a somewhat backward country to a genuinely modern one.

Religion was at the centre of everything in Knox’s life and work but he had a vision for a benign new society that went well beyond religion. One small example: he wanted the Scottish universities to add medicine to their curriculum. A more famous one: he wanted a school in every parish, and in that school the son of the laird’s servant was to receive exactly the same education as the son of the laird.

Knox was aggressively democratic, even egalitarian; he was no respecter of wealth, or office, or royalty, or inherited power, or indeed the authority of anyone other than God. Well before Robert Burns, he worked out that a man’s a man for a’ that.

Yet those who admire Knox, as I do, are dishonest if they ignore the price of his revolution. The new kirk sessions in each parish practised communal care; people were encouraged, indeed required, to keep an eye on each other. The bad aspect of this was a tendency to snooping and officiousness and a loss of privacy and individual freedom that would be alien to most contemporary folk.

Knox believed in communities; he wanted Scots to live together in collectives rather than as individuals. The downside was the loss of much that was good in the old religion; cherished rituals, such as praying for the dead, were swept away; much that appealed to the senses, including many beautiful artefacts and buildings, were obliterated in an orgy of destruction; and most reprehensively of all, there was a craze for witchhunts. (Most of the witches who were killed were innocent old women. Knox was complicit in at least one witchhunt). This was inexcusable.

Knox’s detractors over the centuries have been good at creating myths. Two of the most persistent are that he was anti-French and anti-English. When the French captured him at St Andrews in 1547 they put him to work on their war galleys – hideously dangerous, back-breaking toil – and it would be have been extraordinary if he had not resented that. But his great mentor John Calvin was of course French, and Knox had an ambivalent relationship with Mary of Guise, the beautiful Frenchwoman (and mother of Mary Queen of Scots) who ruled Scotland with considerable sensitivity for most of the 1550s.

As for the English, he was a persistent anglophile. Knox was offered an English bishopric long before he returned to Scotland to lead the Scottish Reformation. Some Scottish nationalists are uneasy with Knox’s legacy because they reckon, with some point, that he anglicised the Scottish language and anticipated the eventual union of the two countries.

And was he a killjoy, a demented and dour puritan, as the most pervasive caricature suggests? Not a bit of it. He was always something of a ladies’ man; he relished many of the good things in life. When he was dying he asked for a hogshead of wine in his cellar to be opened so that his many friends could enjoy themselves. As anyone who reads his History of the Scottish Reformation will quickly realise, he had a strong, if self-serving, sense of humour.

Like all great men he was complex. For me, the good far outweighs the bad.

Reformation: The Dangerous Birth of the Modern World, by Harry Reid, is out now (St Andrew Press)