page_title: Scottish Reformation
section_title: Humanism
hierarchical_section_title: Scottish Reformation / Pressure to reform / Humanism
caption_attribution_description: Hector Boece (1465-1536)
context_page_description: The Scottish Reformation was the process by which Scotland broke with the Papacy and developed a predominantly Calvinist national Kirk, which was strongly Presbyterian in its outlook. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation that took place from the sixteenth century.
  From the late fifteenth century the ideas of Renaissance humanism, critical of aspects of the established Catholic Church, began to reach Scotland, particularly through contacts between Scottish and continental scholars. In the earlier part of the sixteenth century, the teachings of Martin Luther began to influence Scotland. Particularly important was the work of the Lutheran Scot Patrick Hamilton, who was executed in 1528. Unlike his uncle Henry VIII in England, James V avoided major structural and theological changes to the church and used it as a source of income and for appointments for his illegitimate children and favourites. His death in 1542 left the infant Mary, Queen of Scots as his heir, allowing a series of English invasions later known as the Rough Wooing. The English supplied books and distributed Bibles and Protestant literature in the Lowlands when they invaded in 1547.
context_section_description: From the fifteenth century, Renaissance humanism encouraged critical theological reflection and calls for ecclesiastical renewal in Scotland. As early as 1495 some Scots were in contact with Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), the Netherlands-born leading figure in the northern humanist movement. They were also in contact with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455 – 1536), a French humanist and scholar who like Erasmus argued strongly for reform of the Catholic Church by the elimination of corruption and abuses. Scottish scholars often studied on the Continent and at English universities. Humanist scholars trained on the Continent were recruited to the new Scottish universities founded at St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. These international contacts helped integrate Scotland into a wider European scholarly world and were one of the most important ways in which the new ideas of humanism entered Scottish intellectual life. By 1497 the humanist and historian Hector Boece, who was born in Dundee and studied at Paris, returned to become the first principal at the new university of Aberdeen.
  The continued movement of scholars to other universities resulted in a school of Scottish nominalists at Paris by the early sixteenth century, the most important of whom was John Mair, generally described as a scholastic. His Latin History of Greater Britain (1521) was sympathetic to the humanist social agenda. In 1518 he returned to become Principal of the University of Glasgow. Another major figure was Archibald Whitelaw, who taught at St. Andrews and Cologne, becoming a tutor to the young James III and royal secretary in 1462–93. Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and later Bishop of Orkney, was responsible in the 1520s and 1530s for bringing the Italian humanist Giovanni Ferrario to teach at Kinloss Abbey. Ferrario established an impressive library and wrote works of Scottish history and biography. Reid was to leave sufficient endowment in his will, for the foundation of Edinburgh University. James McGoldrick suggests that there was a circle of "Erasmian-type scholar-reformers" at the royal court in the first decade of the sixteenth century.
caption: Portrait of Hector Boece (1465–1536), a major figure in European humanism, who returned to be the first principal of the University of Aberdeen
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