3 - Artful construction of the political realm: Buchanan and the legitimacy of resistance

Summary

The imaginative breakthrough made by David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre leads to a gradual privileging not just of counsel but of the importance of civic consent in the legitimation of the sovereign's power. This idea finds its first vehement theoretical articulation in the works of George Buchanan. The following chapter will juxtapose the political and dramatic works of Buchanan to reveal the belief in a human etiology of politics that underlies his philosophy. Buchanan's emphasis on the need for the consent of the people in matters of governance is a consequence of his ability to conceive of the state as a product of human rather than divine making. This very conception also enables him to take the argument in favour of resisting the tyrant to a decisive conclusion. Examining Buchanan's neo-Latin tyrant drama Baptistes and his political treatise De Iure Regni Apud Scotos in tandem, this chapter seeks to demonstrate the way in which the importance of poiesis in both politics and theology marks a decisive break with contemporary discursive practices and creates newer models of political thinking.

The political thought of Scottish scholar, poet, and pedagogue George Buchanan (c.1506–82) found expression in a number of genres, ranging from theoretical treatises to poetry and drama. Buchanan's career, though much more varied and cosmopolitan, has certain basic features in common with Sir David Lyndsay’s. Born a decade and a half after Lyndsay, Buchanan too was a part of the Scottish court, and was appointed tutor first to James V's eldest illegitimate son and later to James VI himself. Indeed, during his brief stint at the Scottish court in 1539 Buchanan might have been personally acquainted with Lyndsay. He was committed to the cause of clerical reform, but, unlike his more moderate predecessor, Buchanan was an outright Calvinist. His radicalism earned him the wrath of Cardinal Beaton, and he was forced to leave Scotland for France, where he stayed until the Reformation Parliament was convened in Scotland in 1560 and Calvinism was instituted as the state religion.