784 research outputs found

    Education in post-Reformation Scotland : Andrew Melville and the University of St Andrews, 1560-1606

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    Andrew Melville (1545-1622) was the leader of the Presbyterian wing of the Scottish Kirk between 1574 and 1607, and he and his colleagues were a perpetual irritant to James VI and I in his attempts to establish a royal and Episcopal dominance over the Kirk. Yet much of Melville’s reputation has been based on the seventeenth-century Presbyterian historical narratives written by the likes of James Melville (Andrew’s nephew) and David Calderwood. These partisan accounts formed the basis of modern historiography in Thomas M’Crie’s monumentally influential Life of Andrew Melville. Modern historians broadly agree that Melville’s portrayal as a powerful and decisive church leader in these narratives is greatly exaggerated, and that he was at best an influential voice in the Kirk who was quickly marginalised by the adult James VI. However, only James Kirk has commented at any length on Melville’s other role in Jacobean Scotland—that of developing and reforming the Scottish universities. Melville revitalised the near-defunct Glasgow University between 1574 and 1580, and from 1580 to 1607 was principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, Scotland’s only divinity college. He was also rector of the University of St Andrews between 1590 and 1597. This thesis provides a detailed account of Melville’s personal role in the reform and expansion of the Scottish universities. This includes an analysis of his direct work at Glasgow, but focuses primarily on St Andrews, using the untapped archival sources held there and at the Scottish National Library and Archives to create a detailed picture of the development of the University after the Reformation. This thesis also evaluates the intellectual content of Melville’s reform programme, both as it developed during his time in Paris, Poitiers and Geneva, and as we see it in action in St Andrews

    The Reformation in the burgh of St Andrews : property, piety and power

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    This thesis examines the impact of the Reformation on the estates of ecclesiastical institutions and officials based in St Andrews. It argues that land and wealth were redistributed and power structures torn apart, as St Andrews changed from Scotland’s Catholic ecclesiastical capital to a conspicuously Protestant burgh. The rapid dispersal of the pre-Reformation church’s considerable ecclesiastical lands and revenues had long-term ramifications for the lives of local householders, for relations between religious and secular authorities, and for St Andrews’ viability as an urban community. Yet this major redistribution of wealth has had limited attention from scholars. The first part of this study considers the role played by the Catholic Church in St Andrews before the Reformation, and the means by which it was financed, examining the funding of the city’s pre-Reformation ecclesiastical foundations and officials, and arguing that (contrary to some traditional assumptions) the Catholic Church in St Andrews was on a reasonably sound financial footing until the Reformation. The second section considers the immediate disruption to St Andrews’ religious lands and revenues caused by the burgh’s public conversion to Protestantism, and then explores the more planned reorganisation of the 1560s. The disputes and difficulties triggered by the redistribution of ecclesiastical wealth are examined, as well as the longer term impact on St Andrews of the treatment of church revenues at the Reformation. Evidence for this study is chiefly drawn from the extensive body of manuscripts concerning St Andrews held by the National Library of Scotland, the National Records of Scotland, and the University of St Andrews Special Collections

    Transient observations : the textualizing of St Helena through five hundred years of colonial discourse

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    This thesis explores the textualizing of the South Atlantic island of St Helena (a British Overseas Territory) through an analysis of the relationship between colonizing practices and the changing representations of the island and its inhabitants in a range of colonial 'texts', including historiography, travel writing, government papers, creative writing, and the fine arts. Part I situates this thesis within a critical engagement with post-colonial theory and colonial discourse analysis primarily, as well as with the recent 'linguistic turn' in anthropology and history. In place of post-colonialism's rather monolithic approach to colonial experiences, I argue for a localised approach to colonisation, which takes greater account of colonial praxis and of the continuous re-negotiation and re-constitution of particular colonial situations. Part II focuses on a number of literary issues by reviewing St Helena's historiography and literature, and by investigating the range of narrative tropes employed (largely by travellers) in the textualizing of St Helena, in particular with respect to recurrent imaginings of the island in terms of an earthly Eden. Part III examines the nature of colonial 'possession' by tracing the island's gradual appropriation by the Portuguese, Dutch and English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century and the settlement policies pursued by the English East India Company in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Part IV provides an account of the changing perceptions, by visitors and colonial officials alike, of the character of the island's inhabitants (from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century) and assesses the influence that these perceptions have had on the administration of the island and the political status of its inhabitants (in the mid- to late twentieth century). Part V, the conclusion, reviews the principal arguments of my thesis by addressing the political implications of post-colonial theory and of my own research, while also indicating avenues for further research. A localised and detailed exploration of colonial discourse over a period of nearly five hundred years, and a close analysis of a consequently wide range of colonial 'texts', has confirmed that although colonising practices and representations are far from monolithic, in the case of St Helena their continuities are of as much significance as their discontinuities

    St Andrews University Library in the eighteenth century : Scottish education and print-culture

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    The context of this thesis is the growth in size and significance of the St Andrews University Library, made possible by the University's entitlement, under the Copyright Acts between 1709 and 1836, to free copies of new publications. Chapter I shows how the University used its improving Library to present to clients and visitors an image of the University's social and intellectual ideology. Both medium and message in this case told of a migration into the printed book of the University's functions, intellectual, spiritual, and moral, a migration which was going forward likewise in the other Scottish universities and in Scottish culture at large. Chapters II and III chart that migration respectively in religious discourse and in moral education. This growing importance of the book prompted some Scottish professors to devise agencies other than consumer demand to control what was read in their universities and beyond, and indeed what was printed. Chapter IV reviews those devices, one of which was the subject Rhetoric, now being reformed to bring modern literature into its discipline. Chapter V argues that the new Rhetoric tended in fact to confirm the hegemony of print by turning literary study from a general literary apprenticeship into the specialist reading of canonical printed texts. That tendency was not without opposition. Chapter VI analyses the challenge from traditional oral culture as it was expressed in the marginalia added to the Library books at St Andrews University by its students, and argues that this dissident culture helped to form the voice of the poet Robert Fergusson while he was one of those students. Chapter VII goes on to show how Fergusson used that voice to warn his countrymen of the threat which print represented to their culture, and to show how it might be resisted in the interests of both literature and conviviality

    His Majesty's advocate : Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (1635-1713) and Covenanter resistance theory under the Restoration monarchy

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    This thesis is the first to explore the life and political thought of Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees (1635-1713). The first part reviews the life of his father, Sir James Stewart of Kirk field (1608-1681) to 1661, and Goodtrees' own life from birth to his admission to the Scots bar in 1661. This provides the backdrop of history necessary to appreciate his contributions as both writer and radical activist. Particular attention focuses on the conflict between Charles I and Charles II, on the one hand, and the Church of Scotland, on the other; the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant of(1643); the British wars of religion; and the upheavals following the Restoration in the 1660s, culminating in the Pentland Rising of 1666. The next part develops Goodtrees' political philosophy from his two most important writings. Chapter 3 reviews and interprets Naphtali (1667), a defence of those who rose at Pentland. Chapter 4 reviews Andrew Honyman's Survey of Naphtali (1668, 1669), a rebuttal of Naphtali and standard Anglican case for royal absolutism. Chapter 5 reviews and interprets Goodtrees' Jus Populi Vindicatum, or The People's Right, to defend themselves and their Covenanted Religion, vindicated (1669), his rejoinder to Honyman. His Calvinist, covenantal constitutionalism is shown to be an important link between earlier resistance theorists like John Knox and Samuel Rutherford and the later Whigs, represented preeminently by John Locke. The third part (chapters 6-7) reviews Goodtrees' life and minor writings as radical critic of the Restoration monarchy; a participant in plots among British exiles in Holland to overthrow it; a member briefly of James's Scottish government before the Revolution; and lord advocate and churchman pursuing political, legal, and ecclesiastical reforms afterwards

    The generic originality of Iurii Tynianov's representation of Pushkin in the novels 'Pushkin' and 'The Gannibals'

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    This thesis is the first extensive study devoted to the generic originality of Iurii Tynianov’s representation of Pushkin in his two historical novels, Pushkin (1935-1943) and the abandoned The Gannibals (1932). Chapter 1 contextualises Tynianov’s contribution to the current debates on the novel’s demise, ‘large’ form and the worthy protagonist. The conditions giving rise to contemporary interest in the genres of biography and the historical novel are delineated and the critical issues surrounding these are examined; Tynianov’s concern to secularise the rigid monolith of an all but sanctified ‘state-sponsored Pushkin’ and the difficulties of the task are also reviewed. Chapter 2 shifts the examination of Pushkin as a historical novel to its study within the generic framework of the Bildungs, Erziehungs and Künstlerromane with their particular problematics which allowed Tynianov to grapple with a cluster of moral, philosophical and educational issues, and to explore the formative influences on the protagonist’s identity as a poet. Chapter 3 explores the concept of history underlying Tynianov’s interpretation of the characters and events and the historiographical practices he employed in his analyses of the factors that shaped Pushkin’s own historical thinking. Chapter 4 investigates Tynianov’s scepticism about Abram Gannibal’s and A. Pushkin’s mythopoeia which reveals itself in Tynianov’s subversively ironical and playful use of myth in both novels. The Conclusion assesses Tynianov’s contribution to the 20th century fictional Pushkiniana and reflects on his innovative transgeneric historical novel which broke the normative restrictions of the genre, elevated it to the level of ‘serious’ literature and made it conducive to stylistic experimentation

    The life and works of Osbert of Clare

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    Osbert of Clare was an English monastic writer, whose works extended from the mid-1120s to the mid-1150s. His Latin hagiography reflects a deep admiration for Anglo-Saxon saints and spirituality, while his letters provide a personal perspective on his turbulent career. As prior of Westminster Abbey, Osbert of Clare worked to strengthen the rights and prestige of his monastery. His production of forged or altered charters makes him one of England's most prolific medieval forgers. At times his passion for reform put him at odds with his abbots, and he was sent into exile under both Abbot Herbert (1121-c.1136) and Abbot Gervase (1138-c.1157). Also Osbert, as one of the first proponents of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, wrote about the feast, worked to legitimize its celebration, and provided us with the only significant narration of its introduction to England. This thesis is divided into two sections. The first section is principally historical and the second is principally literary. In the first section, I provide an overview of Osbert of Clare's career and examine in greater detail two of his most significant undertaking: his promotion of Westminster Abbey and his attempted canonization of Edward the Confessor. In the second section, I give a philological study of Osbert Latin style and examine themes that nm throughout his writings, such as virginity, exile and kingship. Osbert's promotion of the feast of the Immaculate Conception is included in the second section of the thesis because of its ties to the themes of virginity and femininity within his writings. There are also two appendices: the first is a survey of the extant manuscripts of Osbert's writings, and the second is an edition of Osbert's unpublished Life of St Ethelbert from Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek MS Memb. i. 8l

    Sewing the Body of Christ : Eucharist wafer souvenirs stitched into fifteenth-century manuscripts, primarily in the Netherlands

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    Books of hours in the fifteenth century occupied several social and devotional roles. People used them to store small objects, including metal badges. Although the cultural practice of sewing in badges was widespread in the late Middle Ages, nearly all of the badges were removed (by later collectors). This article examines the practice by considering needle holes and offsets in the soft parchment, which indicate the shape of the badges and where they were attached. Noting that vast majority of metal offsets in books of hours are round, the author posits that these were not impressed by pilgrims’ badges, as is often repeated in the scholarly literature, but rather by tokens that commemorate having taken the Eucharist. The round badges are the same size and shape and bear the same imagery as host wafers. Owners stitched such badges into their books’ margins at locations relevant to Eucharistic piety. When they were sewn into books, Eucharist badges reconfigured the book as a shrine that recorded a votary’s pursuit of Communion.Peer reviewe
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