John Knox
John Knox- A Famous Scottish Protestant Reformer
John Knox (c. 1505 - 1572) John Knox was a Scottish reformer and the leading spirit of the Reformation in Scotland. The details of Knox's early life and education are obscure. He may have attended the universities of Glasgow and St Andrews and he probably took minor orders in the Church. He met the reformer George Wishart in 1546, and shortly afterwards began his own public career. He began preaching at St Andrews in 1547 and engaged in a number of disputes with Catholic theologians. Knox was silencd by a French raid on the university and in 1548-1549 was held prisoner by them.
On his release Knox went to England. There he was favourably received by reformers, and patronised by the Duke of Northumberland. Something of Knox's intolerance and radicalism now began to show itself. Northumberland considered whether to make Knox a bishop but he seems to have become alarmed by the reformer's extremism, for Knox found the modified episcopal organisation of the Edwardian Church unacceptable. On Mary's accession to the English throne in 1553, Knox (like so many leading Protestants) went into exile. He became for a short time pastor tot the English congregation in Frankfurt. There Knox's determination to establish a Calvinistic discipline divided the congregation and he was driven out by a moderate party, led by Richard Cox, which was prepared to stand by the 1522 Prayer Book. For most of the remaining years of his exile Knox was in Geneva where he became a warm friend of John Calvin.
During his exile Knox was disturbed both by the apparent resurgence of Catholicism and also by its apparent dependence on three women, Mary Tudor, Catherine de Medicis, and Mary of Guise. His contribution to a proper restoration of male superiority was a famous pamphlet in 1558, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. The effect of the Blast was not quite what Knox had intended. It deeply offended Queen Elizabeth. In 1559 she allowed Knox to pass through England on his way to Scotland, and she gave support to the Lords of the Congregation in their drive to expel the French in 1560, but any hope of co-operation in religion was quickly dispelled.
For the next 10 years Knox was a major figure in Scottish politics. The construction of a Calvanist Church of Scotland was largely the work of Knox. He was, indeed, too radical for the majority, but he was commissioned to prepare the policy steps towards the creation of a Presbyterian Kirk, the First Book of Discipline, and the Book of Common Order. Most renowned of Knox's activities were his regular confrontations with the still Catholic queen, Mary Stuart. Neither Mary's flippancy nor her religion could endear her to Knox. Nevertheless it was Mary's political errors that caused he abdication: Scotland was never to become quite the Geneva of Knox's dreams, though it was near enough to horrify Elizabeth.
Knox's direct influence upon politics remained great. But perhaps the most important of his interests during later life was his History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland. This book was a major landmark in the development in Scotland of a vernacular prose, as indeed were Knox's writings a s a whole. Publication of the History did not take place until 1587, the year of Queen Mary's execution in England; not surprisingly, the book was seized and destroyed. Knox died in Edinburgh in 1572 and was buried in St Giles Kirkyard.
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