KNOX, JOHN. — Principal architect and historian of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. The place and date of his birth are uncertain (Haddington, Gifford; 1505, 1513, 1515); he died in Edinburgh on 24 November 1572. A priest in 1543 and, three years later, a notary of the diocese of S. Andrew, he was already, by unknown means, professing an integral Protestantism and openly defending the Lutheran Giorgio Wishart, who was tried and put to death on 2 March 1546. Two months later, the primate of S. Andrew, Cardinal D. Beaton, fell victim to a conspiracy plotted by a group of aristocrats who seized S. Andrew. K., together with other adherents, joined them after Wishart’s condemnation and was entrusted with preaching. After 14 months, when the city fell into the hands of the regent of Scotland, the Earl of Arran, K. shared the fate reserved for Beaton’s assassins and spent 19 months in the French galleys; he was released following a Franco-English agreement. Having gone to England (April 1549), he was appointed chaplain to the court of Edward VI, with responsibility for preaching, first at Barwick and then at Newcastle.
K. drew attention through his attacks on the Mass, which he judged to be an abomination, and on the prescriptions of the Prayer Book. In 1551 he was proposed for the bishopric of Rochester, but refused II. After the death of Edward VI (1553), no longer feeling safe, K. went first to Dieppe, then to Geneva, and finally to Frankfurt, where he came into conflict with English exiles. The controversies that soon arose over the lawfulness of using the Book of common prayer brought him into conflict with the ritualist Anglican faction led by R. Cox, who, in order to rid himself of his opponent, aroused suspicion against him in the eyes of the local civil authorities. Shortly before, in fact, K. had published a violent pamphlet: Faithful Admonition to All Who Profess the Divine Truth in England (1554), in which he inveighed against Mary Tudor, the King of Spain, the Emperor, and other princes; he therefore had to withdraw to Geneva. Meanwhile, the regency of the Kingdom of Scotland passed into the hands of Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Stuart, who for political reasons initially tolerated the new doctrines. K. took advantage of this to return to his homeland and preach freely there in the territories of nobles who had converted to Protestantism. After several months, his open attacks on the regent’s government and on the Catholic religion provoked a reaction, and, to escape the possible consequences of criminal proceedings, he returned to the Continent, accompanied by his wife, Marjorie Bowes. From Geneva, where he remained until the outbreak of the civil war in Scotland (1556–59), he maintained close correspondence with his faithful in England, instructing them and urging them to persevere. From this period date the famous treatise First Blast of Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), directed principally against Mary Tudor, and the Brief Exhortation to England to embrace promptly the Gospel of Christ, suppressed and banished by Mary’s tyranny (1559). Above all, he remained the soul of the Scottish movement, which soon formed itself into a league called “The Community of the Lord” (December 1557), with the precise task of eradicating Catholicism. Scottish Protestantism had taken its first steps along the paths traced by Luther; K. gave it a decidedly Calvinist character, wholly pervaded by the tragic and desolate doctrine of predestination. His followers are the elect; the idolaters, that is, Catholics, are reprobate, and against them he believed he could find in Scripture a command of extermination. Even against legitimate authority, the community of the elect—and, in its name, the private individual—was permitted to take up the dagger. Neither original nor great in temperament, but harsh and inflexible, crude and rash, K. found fertile ground in Scotland, where the nobility, in the face of the snares laid by England against the nation’s independence, played a contemptible part. When the civil war broke out (1559) between the pro-English nobles on the one hand and, on the other, the regent favorable to France, K. returned to his homeland to secure the triumph of the Calvinist cause, and his words produced acts of vandalism and iconoclasm. Meanwhile, political events were taking a course favorable to Protestantism, since the threatened war among the three kingdoms did not break out, and the death of Mary of Guise (10 June 1560) opened the way to peace negotiations, concluded in the Treaty of Edinburgh (6 July 1560). Here the skill of the English minister Cecil succeeded in placing Scotland in the hands of England’s allies, namely, the Scottish Protestant faction. The effects were immediately apparent: the Parliament, convened in the following August, abolished Catholic worship and introduced Calvinism as the state religion, according to the confession of faith formulated principally by K. (Scotica confessio), to whom the Book of discipline, concerning the government of the Church and approved the following year (1561), is also attributable. This new situation could not be altered by the young Mary Stuart, who took the reins of the Kingdom in August 1561. Faced with the inexperienced Queen, deprived of capable and reliable advisers, K. had an easy time humiliating her in every way from the pulpit and in his writings. Even if he did not participate in it, he certainly approved the assassination of David Riccio, the Queen’s secretary (1566), entered into negotiations with England to Mary Stuart’s detriment, and when she fell into the power of the English, demanded her execution. In his final years, the animosity that had animated his actions against the Catholics, whom he treated as worshipers of Moloch, did not diminish. What he believed to be the discipline of the primitive Church, he sought to impose upon Scotland, just as Calvin had done at Geneva. He claimed for preachers elected by the local congregations the privileges of the Apostles, practicing the methods of the “sons of thunder,” which made him a follower of the religion of the ancient prophets rather than of the Founder of Christianity. At his death he left posterity a remembrance of those turbulent years in a work that secured his fame: The history of reformation of religion within the realm of Scotland (London 1586). Divided into four books, it recounts the premises of the Reformation (1422–1558) and then the events that followed up to 1566. It is an apology for the Reformation, not unlike other official apologies of the kind. From a historical standpoint it is no longer of great importance, since it was compiled in an openly partisan tone. Its theory is as simple as that of all fanatics: history is a struggle between light and darkness. Convinced as he was that he possessed the light, he neither investigated nor speculated; yet he narrated with great effectiveness and warmth.