1 August 1545 A.D. Andrew Melville
Born—Scottish Braveheart & John Knox’s #2 Man in Scottish Reformation
Editors. “Andrew Melville.” Encyclopedia
Britannica. N.d. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/374223/Andrew-Melville. Accessed 1 Aug 2014.
Andrew Melville, (born
Aug. 1, 1545, Baldovie, Angus, Scot.—died 1622, Sedan,
Fr.), scholar and Reformer who succeeded John Knox as a leader of the
Scottish Reformed
Church, giving that church
its Presbyterian character by replacing bishops with local presbyteries, and
gaining international respect for Scottish universities.
After attending
Scottish universities and the University of Paris, Melville left for Geneva
in 1569, where he studied under the Protestant Reformer Theodore
Beza. Returning to Scotland
in 1574, Melville set out to reform
its schools. As principal of the University
of Glasgow (1574–80), as visitor to Aberdeen (1575), and as
principal of St. Mary’s College at St. Andrews in Edinburgh (1580–1606), he
introduced educational methods he had learned from European scholars. Under his
influence, new students came from at home and abroad, and many foreign students
trained in Scotland returned to teach in Reformed institutions overseas. In
Scotland a vacuum had been left in Reformed Church governance after the death
in 1572 of its principal leader, John Knox, and Melville in 1574 began to act
in his stead, his major concern being the preservation of the independence of
the church from state control. The Second Book of
Discipline (1578), largely his work, was incorporated in the act of
religious settlement of 1592, but only after he had suffered virtual banishment
for it in 1584–85.
In 1597, when King James
VI of Scotland began to undermine the charter he had earlier granted, Melville
led the resistance against royal attacks upon the newly legitimated liberties.
Despite royal prohibition, a general assembly met at Aberdeen in 1605, but then
respected a royal order of dismissal by simply fixing the date of the next
meeting and conducting no other business. That act brought imprisonment or
banishment to 14 ministers, and in 1606 Melville was summoned to London
with seven other ministers by James, then James
I of England,
to help resolve the crisis. Melville’s group spoke in behalf of a new assembly,
but his satiric Latin poem composed to combat constant Anglican pressures on
him turned his own career in another direction. Imprisoned in the Tower
of London for four years for his intransigence, Melville was
released only to accept a chair in France,
that of biblical theology
at the University of Sedan, where he remained until his death.
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