COVENANTERS. - This name comes from covenant (pact), and refers to the pact by which the Presbyterians of Scotland united, with the patriotic-religious aim of maintaining the Calvinist religion in Scotland. Drafted in 1580, confirmed in 1581 and 1596, it acquired special significance in 1638. The efforts of the Stuarts, James I and above all Charles I, to introduce or rather to impose episcopacy and Anglican doctrine in Scotland inflamed the national and religious spirit of those tenacious partisans of Knox and of Calvin, implacable enemies of every hierarchy and especially of the Anglican episcopate. Amid tumults and scenes of violence, the Anglican bishops were driven out in 1638, and the new "National Covenant" was signed by nobles and commoners at Glasgow.

In 1643 some representatives of this covenant were summoned by the English Parliament, then at war with the king, and the "Solemn League and Covenant for the reformation and defence of religion etc." was unanimously approved, with the aim of extirpating papacy, hierarchy, superstition, heresy, schism, etc. When King Charles I was defeated by Cromwell and beheaded in 1649, his son Charles II was recognized as king by the Scots, but had to sign the covenant. However, having ascended the throne in 1660, he forgot all about it and sought to re-establish episcopacy in Scotland. The persecution lasted 28 years until the revolution of 1688; the Church of Scotland yielded on certain points and the resistance concentrated in the Cameronians (v.), whose leader lost his life. These C., tenacious in their resolves, broke away from the Church of Scotland, which they said had deviated from the original covenant, and their descendants in Scotland and in the United States continued under the name of Reformed Presbyterian Church, which only in 1876 united with the Free Church of Scotland. This in 1929 finally reunited with the original Church of Scotland.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: W. M. Hetherington, History of the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh 1843; Th. McCrie, The Story of the Scottish Church, London 1875; Th. Raleigh, Annals of the Church of Scotland, ibid. 1921; T. Ratcliffe Barnett, The Story of the Covenant, Fifty years of Fighting Faith, Edinburgh 1928.

Camillo Crivelli

@incollection{ec4_covenanters, author = {Crivelli, Camillo}, title = {Covenanters}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {794}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/covenanters} }

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