A growing shelf of recent studies on early modern Scottish religion has offered welcome new light on the reception of the Reformation, especially by urban elites, as drivers of the new civic Protestantism. However, there have been surprisingly few studies devoted to the Protestant clergy as agents of religious change. Edited by Chris Langley, Catherine McMillan, and Russell Newton, and featuring essays by both well-established and new researchers, The Clergy in Early Modern Scotland represents a long-overdue effort to address this lack and, it is hoped, may chart a course for further studies that will fill the lacuna.
The first section contains five broad thematic studies. Michelle Brock's opening essay mines a wealth of sermon manuscripts, auditors’ notebooks, printed sermons, and a homiletical textbook to recreate the minister's self-portrait as an ideal preacher. While there are admittedly limitations on how conclusively such sources may recreate the homiletical world of the early modern kirk, Brock nevertheless offers a remarkably full discussion of clerical self-fashioning, uncovering the aspirational ideals of both preachers and hearers in the preaching moment.
In his chapter, “Ministers and the Bible in Early Modern Scotland,” Newton predictably underlines the strong logocentrism of the Scottish pulpit—including an excellent examination of developments in homiletical style from Ramism to “skimming the text,” Christocentric exegetical assumptions, the collaborative hermeneutical opportunities afforded to clergy by informal “exercise” meetings, and their personal use of scripture outside their professional duties (32–51).
The ministrations of Scottish clergy were not, however, restricted to their Bibles. John McCallum and Helen Gair make a strong case that the kirk session was also the most significant provider of local poor relief in early modern Scotland. Whether by pulpit exhortations, personal donations, organizing fund-raising, or supervising the charitable work of deacons, local clergy regularly leveraged their social influence to implement parish relief strategies.
As heads of “holy households,” clergy also set the example of the “godly family” for the parish, as Janay Nugent and L. Rae Stauffer argue in their fascinating contribution on the “domestification” (77) of the Scottish Reformation—which is a noteworthy contribution not only to the literature on the early modern family, but also to the history of emotions in early modern Scotland. They convincingly portray the minister's family as a “little seminary”—an important grass-roots constructor of social change affording a significant role for women as agents of reformation (71).
In a truly ground-breaking study of anticlericalism in early modern Scotland, Langley explores the minutes of parish visitations by the courts of presbytery, which provided a unique venue for social elites to evaluate their ministers’ doctrinal, ethical, and clerical performance. A remarkable culture of clerical accountability emerges, correcting the common assumption that the Scottish pulpit and its incumbent were six feet above contradiction. Despite his accounts of episodic flashpoints within local parishes, Langley concludes there was a remarkable degree of lay acceptance of the social discipline imposed by kirk sessions.
The second half of the volume is devoted to six case studies that illustrate well the foregoing themes. Elizabeth Tapscott charts the expanding circles of pre-Reformation Protestant propaganda employed by reforming clergy—from the university to the crown to the nobility—in their effort to establish a strong political and cultural bridgehead for their congregation. Michael F. Graham shows how a power struggle between clergy and the urban elites of St. Andrews in the early 1590s contributed to a national conflagration in the Edinburgh coup of 1596, as privileged pulpit speech protected bold clerical diatribes against local and royal political opposition to the Melvillian reforming agenda.
Peter Marshall demonstrates how the geographic and cultural liminality of the understudied Orcadian parishes brought unique logistical and social challenges that fostered exceptional clerical confraternity and autonomy in decision-making. The distinctive “island logic” (152) of Orkney contrasts with the culture of the urban parish of South Leith, which is the subject of Claire McNulty's fine study of moral reformation for the period 1639–1646. McNulty's careful examination of session minutes opens a fascinating window into the complexities of ministerial appointments, and their efforts at implementing social discipline to a wide variety of common cases, such as sabbath-breaking, blasphemy, and fornication.
Felicity Lyn Maxwell's essay explores the correspondence of the remarkable Reformed ecumenist John Dury to evaluate his under-studied roles as pastor and royal chaplain and his personal affaires de coeur. Dury's inclusion in a volume on Scottish clergy may strike some readers as peculiar: though Scottish-born, he never held a pastorate in the Kirk. Though perhaps not the most representative case study, he nevertheless reveals “the emotional depth and romance of which early modern Scottish clergy were capable” (206) and respect for women as powerful intellectual equals and romantic partners. Maxwell also reminds the reader of the value of pastoral letters as a source for a more holistic, socially grounded religious history.
The final contribution by Nathan Hood joins an increasing literature reassessing the place of emotions in early modern Reformed religion, through an examination of the sermons of High Binning (1627–1653). Hood challenges the traditional stereotypes of a cheerless Scottish Presbyterianism, showing how Binning's pulpit rhetoric repurposed the Aristotelean philosophy of virtue into a Christian system of theology marked by the irenic imperatives of love and charity as moderating factors in a society troubled by decades of conflict.
If recent works by historical anthropologists like Margo Todd have enriched understanding of religious change in early modern Scotland with a view from the pew, these essays complement this perspective with a timely view from the pulpit and manse. They offer a welcome reappraisal and, in most cases, reappreciation of the role played by Protestant clergy as agents of social change in early modern Scotland. What emerges is a remarkably human and less caricatured picture of the Scottish man of the cloth—neither the pious paragon of whig hagiography, nor the dour Calvinist killjoy of post-enlightenment satire.
