The World as His Monument

The Reformation broke like a pent-up whirlwind over Scotland: its ferocity was not merely ecclesiastical, but political. It was, quite literally, physical as far as the material vestments of the Catholic church were concerned (in Scotland today there is but one stained glass window in the entire country predating the Reformation!). While the Scottish Reformation has tended to be dismissed by most people as the machinations of religious fanatics and zealots – obviously not people in the lead to be considered champions of democracy – its impacts upon political thought were nothing short of revolutionary.

Scotland had long been a conservative nation. While we may think of William Wallace as a sort of “guerrilla chieftain,” to use a certain English historian’s phrase, he was hardly a wild-eyed revolutionary: rather, he and his followers considered themselves merely as stand-ins for the king’s authority, not harbringers of the rule of the masses. While the ranks of fighting men in the Scottish War for Independence were quite “common,” it could hardly be considered a war of modern democratic ideals. At the end of the day, essentially feudal thought would remain.

Then a particular fellow named John Knox showed up on the scene. The author of The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, he was certainly not conservative, and certainly not subdued. It was very much this forceful personality that made the Reformation in Scotland; and the changes that came were largely a result of his ideas and actions. Today, Mr. Knox has gotten a rough handling from popular memory and many historians: the insane, joyless zealot bent upon the destruction of Scotland, and perhaps the world if possible. While it must be said that Knox carried many measures to unreasonable and downright wrong extremes – the banning of pipe music being one of them – the common perception of him and his followers tends to be flawed against his favour.

Disregarding, for the purposes of this little essay, the direct spiritual and theological implications of the Scottish Reformation, let us examine what might be called the “practical” effects of Knox’s reforms and ideas. Of course, these practical effects are intrinsically linked to the spiritual: namely, his views on education and government.

Knox held to a firm belief in education for all classes of people – an idea practically unknown before him. This was of course a logical construction upon his strong belief that the Bible should be available to all people for their personal study, rather than being locked up in the parish church for a select few. Obviously, if the Bible were to be made available for spiritual enlightenment to all, the common folk would need to be able to read.

‘As the immediate result of the victory of protestantism, appeared the First Book of Discipline, of which Knox was not, indeed, the sole author, but which bears his imprint on every page, and is the brief summary of his ideals in religion and education… In every parish there was to be a school and in every important town a college, from which the aptest scholars were to be sent to the three universities—attendance in all three grades being exacted by state and church. The poverty of the country and protracted civil commotions prevented the scheme from being realised; but an ideal had been set forth which never passed out of sight, and, during successive centuries, the parish schools of Scotland were the nursing-homes of her most vigorous intellectual life.’
    The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
    Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.

And it was not only for instruction in the Bible and strictly spiritual matters that Knox and his supporters upheld the idea of education. Knox was also quite concerned with the field of studies known in his day as humanism – not the atheistic dogmatics we are familiar with today, but rather that field of study concerned with “the humanities,”or what we might call liberal arts. Knox, far from declaring scholars as heretics, welcomed them, and counted one of the leading Scottish humanists of the day, George Buchanan as a close friend.

So it was that Knox set in motion one of the first – if not the first – movements for common education. While his ambitious plans were not realized during his lifetime, the ideas remained, and the concept would eventually flourish in Scotland – though precisely when and to what extent are still debated. But not only Scotland – the impact would be much farther reaching. Scottish education set many precedents for the modern world, and the great minds that learned under a system conceptionalized by Knox changed the world, whether in science, philosophy, or government.

But even farther reaching and revolutionary than his ideas on education were Knox’s ideas on government. His struggles with Mary, Queen of Scots, are legendary, and reveal a distaste for monarchy that, while not restrained to Knox, was most vibrant in him when compared to his peers and predecessors. In England, complaints and uprisings against the king had been common enough. However, this was hardly true for Scotland, and the idea of common people – not earls or bishops or other nobility – speaking against the monarch (to his face no less!) was unheard of. And the idea of these common people overthrowing the monarchy was quite simply revolutionary.

But in John Knox’s mind, a tyrannical ruler – in this case a monarch – not only could be overthrown, but should be overthrown by the people if the monarch overstepped his bounds. Years before better-known European thinkers had developed the ideas of the “social contract,” Knox held the firm belief that the people – everyday, run of the mill folks – were invested with political power: by none other than God. He held that the people were essentially sovereign – though, it might be said, his belief was hardly what we would call a strictly democratic one. The people of the Kirk – called out by God – were just that: called out by God. Thus, it made sense to Knox that these common people should hold political power – for the “common people” were hardly common anymore. Rather, each and every member of the Kirk was considered to be of importance and equal to his brothers, whether he was a herder, a tiller, or a monarch. No longer was there a priesthood reserved for a select few: instead, all believers were priests.

Knox’s ideas on monarchy and the people’s rights are well summed up by way of a discourse he had with Mary Queen of Scots, over a marriage Knox found displeasing (and graciously let Mary know it!):

“What have ye to do with my marriage? Or what are ye within this Commonwealth?” asked Mary.

“A subject born within the same, Madam,” said Knox, “and albeit I neither be Earl, Lord nor Baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.”

At this one can imagine the shock and horror exhibited by Mary and her court – for one simply did not say such things to monarchs as Knox said! Herein, it has been said, modern democracy was born.

And when a monarch or any sort of ruler broke the “higher law” – and his covenant with the people as we might call it – the people had an obligation to remove him. Knox stated, quite succinctly, in reply to a question leveled by Mary on the right of the people to “resist their princes”: “If the princes exceed their bounds, Madam, and act against that for which they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but that they may be resisted, even by power.”

Obviously, such ideas have had far reaching implications. The Scottish Covenaters were the first and most direct offspring of such thought, and one of the first movements we might call democratic. Of particular note is the American War for Independence: for it was in America’s struggle that Knox’s ideas were given their great fruition, and indeed, many Scots had come to America before the war, carrying their radical ideas with them (incidentally learned in the schools which Knox fostered).

Now, it is well founded enough that “the old thunderer” set into motion a chain of thought and idea that has remarkably changed the world – when he set off the process to rid Scotland of a monarch, he began an earthquake whose shock has long since surpassed Scotland’s borders. It is said of Knox, whose tombstone is stoically simple, that in absence of a grand monument, he has all of Scotland for a monument. We might also rightly say that the world is his monument, so great was his impact upon its systems and thought. Rarely do we associate Presbyterianism with sheer-paced modernity, and rarer yet does one think of John Knox as a prophet of change and revolution, except the religious sort. And yet this Calvinist preacher and his followers raised the standard for democracy and quite radical change, which brings us to a question: Were the political ideas of John Knox right? Was it right of him to invest the people with democratic power? One may approach this from many directions – certainly, systems such as those propounded by Knox have succeeded, and others failed miserably and bloodily.

If Knox could view the world today, what would he think of it? I imagine he would remind us that the ideas of government he proposed are capable of working only in a people devoted to morality: only in a people – dare I say it in this pluralistic age – who are distinctly Christian in character. It has been said that democracy quickly degenerates into the rule of a hundred petty tyrants rather than one, and each as cruel and contriving as the next. Even in a republic such as this American one, those petty tyrants can choose to legislate their tyranny to others. A people who possess no solid morals will quite likely fall under a tyranny of their own making, whether it be a tyranny of a monarch or a tyranny of legislators. It is only through a society whose standards are none less than God’s righteousness that governance such as that proposed by Knox will work to its fullest.