From July 6 to 22, 2012, Connie Wardle participated in a pilgrimage through countries touched by the Protestant Reformation— France, Switzerland and Scotland. This is the seventh of a series of reflections on the journey.
John Knox’s life is the stuff of historical television dramas—full of murder, politics and ecclesiastical power struggles. I always imagined him as an older man, bristling and fierce, preaching from some high pulpit or fighting over doctrine with Mary, Queen of Scots.
I rarely pictured him as a young man. Yet as I wandered through the cobblestone streets of St. Andrews, past the ruins of the cathedral and the castle on the coast of the North Sea, I imagined a young academic, passionate about new theological ideas, full of loyalty and foolhardy courage, and, as events turned against him, deep grief.
Knox lived during a time of political turmoil. In the 1530s, King Henry VIII of England created a church independent of Rome and the Pope; in Scotland, where there was little love for England, the court pushed the opposite way and reaffirmed its support for the pontiff. Thus, those who spread the ideas of the Protestant Reformation were seen as supporters of England as well as religious heretics. French interests also came into play; the Scottish King James V married a French noblewoman, Mary of Guise, in 1536. The king died six years later and their infant daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, ascended the throne.
We know little about John Knox’s childhood. As a young man he was educated. We know he had great respect for George Wishart, a fellow Scot and a promoter of Reformation ideas. I imagine he was a mentor to young Knox. And Knox, armed with a two – handed sword, saw himself as Wishart’s bodyguard and companion.
But the powerful archbishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal David Beaton, was no friend to Wishart or others who called for an evangelical Reformation. Beaton ordered Wishart’s arrest in 1546.
John Knox was with Wishart on the night he was arrested. The young man was willing to follow his teacher to prison and, perhaps, to martyrdom. “Nay,” Wishart allegedly said to him. “One is sufficient for a sacrifice.”
Wishart was imprisoned in St. Andrews Castle, where Cardinal Beaton lived. He was convicted of heretical teaching and was burned at the stake outside its walls.
Two months later, the Cardinal was assassinated and his body hung from one of the windows. Supporters of Protestantism and English agents occupied the castle. And John Knox joined them.
It wasn’t for long. In July of 1547, a fleet of French ships appeared off the coast. They bombarded the castle and the band of rebels was forced to surrender.
Knox was taken prisoner, and thus began his life as a galley slave. He was chained to an oar on a French ship and, his biographer Thomas M’Crie tells us, he was “treated with all the indignities offered to heretics, in addition to the rigors of ordinary captivity.” I can imagine aching muscles and sunburned skin, youthful optimism turning into the ache of loss. I can imagine him whispering Psalm 130 beneath his breath.
Perhaps that was why Knox seemed fierce and stubborn. Perhaps he was left with only faith and conviction, and he wielded these like his old two – handed sword.
Knox spent 19 months as a prisoner. In 1549, he was set free. It would be a decade before he returned to Scotland.
Today St. Andrews is better known for its world famous golf course than its murders and martyrs. Yet the ruins of the castle continue to brood by the edge of the sea, telling their grim stories of faith, power and violence.
