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 eighth of a series of reflections on the journey.
It seemed like John Knox’s life was never to be one of peace and safety. It’s no wonder so many of his portraits and statues depict a fierce man, his beard nearly bristling with passion. His life was frequently in danger; his Reformation was tangled with the threads of political power; and after more than a year imprisoned on a French galley, his health often failed him.
At his graveside, the Earl of Morton called him “one who never feared any flesh.” I wonder if it could have been true.
He certainly had reasons to be afraid. In England, he was forced to flee when Mary Tudor took the throne. She was devoutly Catholic and hostile to Protestantism. The relentless persecution of Protestants during her reign would earn her the nickname “Bloody Mary.”
She was not the only queen to dislike him. While in exile in Geneva, Knox penned a controversial work which became a source of trouble for him. It was charmingly entitled, The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, and it serves as a warning to be careful what you write. Although the little book was aimed at Queen Mary, it condemned female rulers in general. Thus, not unreasonably, it earned the ire of Elizabeth I who became queen after Mary died in 1558. She barred Knox from England.
Instead he headed directly for his native Scotland, where his passionate preaching turned his listeners into mobs that stripped local churches of their Catholic trappings. This made him unpopular with yet another queen, Mary, Queen of Scots, and her French mother and regent, Mary of Guise.
Knox eventually became a leader of the Church of Scotland and preached his sermons from the pulpit of St. Giles High Kirk in Edinburgh.
He met with the Scottish queen a number of times, fighting over theology. And later, when she was implicated in the murder of her second husband, his voice was one of many that called for her to abdicate in favour of her son, James VI.
He sounds like an imposing man, willing to stand his ground. Yet I wonder if he was the bristling, bellowing man I imagine him to be. Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize himself in his glowering statues and strident stained – glass likenesses. We admire fearlessness and faithfulness and perhaps he had both in equal measure. But perhaps he was afraid, as so many men in his position would be afraid, and he simply held to his course. Tenacity is often the stuff of saints.
