作者：陆鸿基 Luk, Hung Kay, Bernard 年份：1982
THE WANING OF A MEDIEVAL SOCIETY:
INTERPLAY OF MOTIVES IN THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION
In the past, writers on the Protestant Reformation often tended to emphasize the religious causes of this major upheaval in European history, and, depending on their own sectarian or political positions, sided with one party or another in the momentous events. A number of Protestant authors, for instance, were unsparing in pouring invective on what were regarded as the abuses of the Catholic Church. More recently, historians have come to recognize that the Reformation, like any other period of profound and rapid change, was not a simple set of events, nor did it have just one kind of cause. More ecumenically, and more fair-mindedly, modern historians note that not only were there national and doctrinal variations in the Protestant Reformation; there were also dynastic, diplomatic, and economic motives no less important than the religious ones. A fuller understanding of the Reformation demands an appreciation of the inter-play of motives. Furthermore, the Reformation resulted not only in the disunity of Latin Christendom; it also helped launch many a country on the fringes of Europe from the middle ages into the early modern era. As religious persons went one way or another in the struggles, it was the secular power that gained the most from the Reformation. In the case of the Scottish Reformation, problems of Church lands, aristocratic versus royal power, national independence and international alliances, were mingled with questions of political rebellion and religious reforms. And for a while, the little backward country off the northwest coast of Europe can be said to have held the key to the fortunes of Calvinist Protestantism.
CHURCH AND STATE
To understand the Scottish Reformation, one must appreciate the political structure of sixteenth-century Scotland. One historian has put it succinctly:－
The most obvious fact about sixteenth-century Scotland is that Scotland, unlike her southern neighbour, was still a medieval country, both politically and economically. The power of the nobility, collectively (and even, on occasion, individually, though this was rare), was far greater than that of the King. To this situation chronic wars with England and the dynastic misfortunes of the successors of the Bruce were the major contributors……The Privy Council, the Parliament, and the Convention of Estate had no legal authority independent of the Crown. But the Crown was never independent of one faction, at least, of the great nobles……(1)
There was no powerful burgher class to counterbalance the aristocracy, and hence national politics meant the competition, or manipulation by the Crown, of factions of noble families. Some of these families were the Hamiltons, the Douglasses, and branches of the royal clan of the Stewarts. Several of them were ancient enemies and constant rivals. While the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the gradual rise of a Scottish national identity (provoked by wars with the English), consideration of clan interests usually continued to be of primary importance.
But while politically powerful, the nobility, whose wealth was based on not very productive land, was chronically impecunious. The Church, on the other hand, was wealthy and powerful although the wealth was being sucked away by the Crown and the nobility in the early sixteenth century. The Scottish Church was also very corrupt. In the view of the same historian, perhaps 'no branch of the Church in Europe was more riddled with vice. '(2) Sexual immorality was rampant, although apparently more so among the upper than the lower ranks of the clergy.(3) The lower clergy was too poorly paid to be anything but dull, ignorant, and guilty of unspectaculars.(4) Many priests were illiterate, and totally unable to perform any kind of clerical function except the frequent and indiscriminate use of excommunication or 'cursing'. Benefices were gifted to relatives or sold to third parties in irregular ways, and offices were often passed down from generation to generation to legitimized sons born in concubinage.(5)
But in simony and plurality, as well as in nepotism, the offences of the lower clergy were trivial compared to the carryings-on among the prelates and the nobility. Benefices were regarded almost as family possessions or as honourable outlets for illegitimate offspring, and little children were often appointed to high offices. The most notorious of such cases was when, in 1533, King James V was able to use the example of the looming English reformation of Henry VIII to blackmail Pople Clement VII to legitimize his three bastards and grant them benefices. (6)
At the same time, the Church was coming more and more under royal influence and control. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, conciliarist ideas had gained a dominant position in the University of St. Andrews. In the late fifteenth century, after long struggles with the Pope, King James III won an indult to nominate bishops; and in 1526, the Estates asserted that
quhatsumever persone……takis ony bischeppes placis……but our soverane lordis command letteris or chargis or desyre……, thai sail incur the cryme of tresone and leise majestic.(7)
In 1543, Parliament legislated that
the frutis of the abbacyis and prioryis pertening to the kingis gracis sonnis……be convertit and deliverit to the quenis grace comptrollar for the honorable sustenation of hir grace......(8)
The queen referred to was the baby Mary Stewart. Such legislation was only the culmination of a whole generation of squeezing the wealth of the church by means of the feu-farm.
Feuing was a heritable land-tenure in return for an annual fixed money rent, the feu-duty. While this arrangement brought in hard cash for the person or institution granting the tenure, it also in effect meant the alienation of the land to the grantee. Hence, canon law forbade the feuing of Church lands. In 1531, King James V used the excuse of establishing a College of Justice (and the threat of siding with the Protestant military Schmalkald League of Lutherans and Swiss reformers) to persuade Pope Clement VII to grant an annual tax of ￡10,000 Scots to be paid by the Scottish prelates. The only way the prelates could meet such payment was by large-scale feuing. Clement thus opened the floodgates for the alienation of Church lands to the Scottish nobility.(9) After holding out for a few more years, the Pope even granted the Archbishop of St. Andrews the right to confirm the institution of feufarms without reference to Rome.(10) In these transactions, it was the nobility, not the yeomanry, that benefitted.(11)
Thus, unlike in England where King and gentry benefitted financially from the Reformation and the Dissolution of monasteries, in Scotland, the King and the aristocracy were able to milk the clergy quite satisfactorily without changing religion, just by waving the Protestant threat. Although Lutheran ideas were introduced into Scotland soon after the outbreak in Germany, in 1525 there was an act of Parliament prohibiting the importation of Lutheran literature, and the Reformation at first evoked little response from Scotland. Some efforts were made by the Scottish Church at internal reform, but without much success.(12)
1)Maurice Lee, James Stewart, Earl of Moray (New York, 1953), 6-8.
2)Ibid., 12. Cf. L. Macfarlane, 'Scotland', The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), xii xii, 1231.
3)William Croft Dickinson, et al., eds., A Sourcebook of Scottish History (London, 1953), ii, 142. Cf. Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: Church and Nation through Sixteen Centuries (London, 1960), 48.
4)Donaldson, ibid., 41-42.
5)Dickinson, op. cit., 99-102. Cf. Sir James Balfour Paul, 'Clerical life in Scotland in the sixteenth century', Scottish Historical Review, xvii (1920), 177-189.
6)Dickinson, 89-90. New Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., 1231.
7)Dickinson, ibid., 81-89.
8)Ibid., 91.
9)R.K. Hanny, 'On the foundation of the College of Justice', Scottish Historical Review, xv (1918), 30-46. Dickinson, 47, 220-221.
10)R.K. Hanny, 'A study in Reformation history', Scottish Historical Review, xxiii (1926), 18-33.
11)Ibid., 33.
12)Lee, op. cit., 13.
SCOTLAND'S INTERNATIONAL POSITION
Another reason for the initial non-receptiveness of the Scots to the ideas of the Reformation was due to the international position of their country. For centuries, England had been Scotland's 'Auld Enemy', while France was the 'Auld Ally'. Since England was breaking away from the Roman Church, and France was remaining Catholic, it followed that Scotland should choose to remain Catholic too. This tendency was further bolstered by the recent memory of the defeat of all the available forces of Scotland by the English in the battle of Flodden in 1513. To stay with France seemed the only way to avoid conquest and assimilation by the English under the Tudors.(l3) But many historians who hold this view also believe that the battle at Flodden, paradoxically, also marked the turning point in Anglo-Scottish relations, because Scotland was defeated in foolhardy support of their French allies, and gradually more and more Scots came to accept that the destiny of their country lay with England, not with France; and such attitudes helped eventually to precipitate the Scottish Reformation. Upon the death of James V in 1542, Henry VIII proposed a match between his son Edward and the infant Queen Mary Stewart; but the deal would have implied the absorption of Scotland by England, and was therefore rejected by the Scottish court. Marie of Guise, the French queen dowager and regent of Scotland, was thus enabled to pursue a pro-French policy and a match between her daughter and the Dauphin. This in turn meant absorption by France; and those patriots who had previously feared England now feared the even closer danger of France, as personified in the queen dowager. By this time, England under Mary Tudor was Catholic and persecuted Protestants; Scottish leaders, in reaction against both France and England, became much more receptive to Protestant ideas.(14) In this connection, it may be noted that unsuccessful internal reforms undertaken by the Scottish hierarchy in the 1540's and 50’s were actually quite close to Lutheranism in certain parts of theology (such as justification by faith), suggesting that the active elements among the clergy might not have been averse to a Henrician-type reformation, and that it was for reasons other than religion that such a reformation did not take place.(15)
The above analysis is not intended to suggest that diplomacy was the determining factor in the outbreak of the Scottish Reformation. Rather, international relations was one of several important factors. One of the points which a strictly diplomatic interpretation of the Scottish Reformation would not explain was the possibility of a Protest ant Scotland allied with a Catholic France against a Protestant England, or a Catholic Scotland allied with a Protestant England against a Catholic France. Sixteenth-century international relations were often not dictated by religious affiliation, to say the least; and it is further inappropriate to assume that the religious policies of the Scots were simply reacting to the fluctuating situation south of the border. Other important causes of the Scottish Reformation are to be found in the domestic politics of the country.
13)See, for example, P. Hume Brown, John Knox, a biography (London, 1895), 39-41; Lee, op. cit., 14; and the New Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., 1231-1232.
14)Lee, ibid. Also, Donaldson, op. cit., 52.
15)Dickinson, 140-141, 121. Donaldson, 50.
ARISTOCRATIC FACTIONS
The first Scottish martyr to the Protestant cause was one George Wishart, who was burnt at the stake in 1546 as a heretic.(16) He had made few but dedicated converts, and some of these proceeded to murder Cardinal Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews and leader of the pro-French party. But religion and diplomacy were not the only causes for the assassination. Beaton had made many enemies in local disputes, and had threatened the interests of some noble families by his land and succession policies.(17) After his death, the affairs of state were in the hands of the queen dowager and the new archbishop, John Hamilton, half-brother to the heir apparent to the throne, the earl of Arran. While the French alliance was uppermost in the mind of the queen dowager, Hamilton's main interests were those of his family. As it was more to the advantage of the Hamilton family for the French influence to be restricted (since Arran would inherit the throne if Mary Stewart died childless, and also because Arran ' s son was a contender for Mary Stewart's hand), archbishop and queen dowager did not always see eye to eye, and the domestic as well as foreign policy of this period by no means had the unanimous support of all the factions in the country. In religion, reforms by the hierarchy took place side by side with the wooing, by different political factions, of the growing Protestant elements.(18) Some of the converts to Protestantism were no doubt sincere, while others had less honest motives; but despite their growing numbers, they did not form a coherent group until after John Knox, an unknown preacher implicated in the murder of Beaton, returned from exile to the Continent and training under Calvin in 1555. The struggles between the queen dowager, the Hamiltons, and the supporters of Lord James Stewart of Moray, bastard half-brother of Mary Stewart, were reaching a crisis because of domestic disputes and the marriage of Mary to King Francois II of France. Knox was able to unite the Protestant nobles, in a 'Common Band' of the Lords of the (Protestant) Congregation in 1557. Religious reform thus merged with political rebellion against the regent queen dowager. When factions of Protestant as well as Catholic nobles, such as Huntly, succeeded in toppling the regent, the Reformation in Scotland officially began. The decisive campaign was fought in 1560 between the French troops of the government and English troops sent by Queen Elizabeth to support the rebels of the Congregation and to prevent French hegemony in her northern neighbour. The Protestant army entered Edinburgh in the spring of that year. In June, the queen dowager died. And in August, the Scottish Parliament abrogated Papal authority, prohibited the Mass, and adopted a reformed Confession of Faith drafted by Knox and his comrades. That same year, Knox et alii also produced the First Book of Discipline. outlining their Calvinistic ideas of religious, social, and educational reforms. Meanwhile, the organisation of local congregations in place of the old parishes continued apace. Although it was some years before the Church of Scotland was firmly set up, the old Scottish Church had come to an end.
SUMMING UP
Such, in brief, were the events leading up to the establishment of Protestant power in Scotland. The multiplicity of causes and motives is evident. Although abuses in the old Scottish Church were common, and although the sincerity of religious motives in some of the reformers is not to be doubted, the Protestant Reformation in Scotland was probably not religiously inevitable. If the situation had been different in the aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and diplomatic arenas, a Catholic Reformation might have been successful. As it was, the fact that the Scottish Reformation was Calvinis t rather than Lutheran was ironical in that the Auld Alliance, which had initially kept Scotland Catholic, also led the Scottish Reformers to seek inspiration in the French-speaking, rather than the German-speaking lands of the Continent. And Calvinism, thus translated into English, soon became the Puritanism of old and New England.
16)Dickinson, 128-130. Brown, op. cit., 60-70, J. Durkan, 'Scotland, Church of', in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., 1235-1236.
17)Dickinson, 119-121. Brown, 68-69.
18)Lee, 20. Brown, 272. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1232, 1236.
19)Brown, 300, et seq. Lee, 22-23. D. Mc Roberts, 'Knox, John', in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., viii, 242-243.
20)New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1232-1233, 1236. Lee, 53, 57.