While most people don’t know a great deal about John Knox, they do have an opinion on him. Knox is a polarizing person, either loathed or loved. This makes him a very difficult subject for a biographer. Thankfully, Jane Dawson is more than up to this task. Her recent biography does a superb job of bringing Knox to life, as well as explaining the crucial role he played in both the Scottish and English reformations.
This biography has two advantages over previous attempts to chronicle the life of Scotland’s most famous reformer. The first is the result of the discovery of new archival material, including letters from Knox, and the Bible presented to Knox by English friends circa 1567. These discoveries have helped illuminate previously murky chapters in his life. Second, Dawson has been able to draw on the rich scholarship on the Scottish reformation over the last three decades, a field to which she has been a major contributor. It is now possible to more effectively place Knox within the Scottish context.
The biography begins in Geneva in May 1557 at the baptism of Knox’s son. Knox is a joyous, emotional father. At the same time, we discover the actual form of the liturgy used to baptize this child was a passionate concern for Knox. The service was to have none of the vestiges of older baptismal services but was to be (in Knox and his fellow reformers’
belief) precisely what God intended: what the Bible said should be there with nothing added which the Bible did not expressly command. In this one scene we get so many of the crucial themes of the biography: Knox as a person, Knox’s understanding of how scripture should be interpreted, Knox’s determination that worship be purified, and the experience of exile.
What emerges is a complex man. Knox made friends, including developing warm friendships with women, and had two happy marriages. He had a loyalty to the country where he was born, but also felt profound loyalty to England, his adopted country where he served as a priest and preacher during the reign of Edward VI.
Knox, though born in Scotland, was one of the English exiles during the reign of Queen Mary I who found themselves scattered across the European continent. His time in Frankfurt and the bitter divisions created by Knox’s insistence on a purified liturgy was a crucial chapter in his life. Knox was exiled from this community and found himself in Geneva. It was within the English exiles in Geneva that Knox found a home, comradeship, and where he was part of a community that together created some of the most foundational developments for the English-speaking reformed community, including the Geneva Bible and the Forme of Prayers.
Knox’s strong opinions and his opposition to Mary I led him to write probably his most (in)famous tract, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Jane Dawson places this tract in context, helping us to understand not only the text and how polarizing it was at the time but also its consequences. Knox had alienated England’s new queen, Elizabeth I, and he was persona non grata in her realm.
He thus found himself in Scotland, working with the Protestant nobility. Their unlikely success in the years 1559-1560 led to the Reformation Parliament of 1560, and the creation of a reformed church in Scotland, but Knox was to be blocked by Elizabeth I from England and a planned mission to Ireland. While Elizabeth I may have kept Knox himself out of England, his ideas and those of his fellow Genevan exiles were foundational for the English Puritan movement.
In Scotland, Knox found the compromises made by other reformers unpalatable. His final years were spent preaching, but unable to create the pure church in Scotland that he had imagined.
This biography helps us to understand how important John Knox was, as well as helping us to understand that the movement for reformation in Scotland went far beyond one man. Whether one feels differently about Knox after completing it remains an open question, but one will understand him far more and understand his importance. One will also come away realizing something else. While Knox is one of our ancestors as Canadian Presbyterians, he is not our only ancestor. How we understand the Christian faith is vastly different from how he did. We celebrate Christmas. Knox would tell us: “Don’t—it’s not in the Bible.”
