The Origins of the Scottish Reformation

By (author) Professor Alec Ryrie

There is no other survey of the Scottish Reformation in print, and no book has focused on the movement’s origins since 1910. This book refutes partisan Catholic and Protestant narratives to argue that the Reformation was contingent and unpredictable: other outcomes were possible until the last minute, and the eventual outcomes were determined by politics and violence as much as by religion. It pays serious attention to the international context of the Scottish Reformation: using European comparisons, attending to the direct influence of European events, and in particular looking at the role of England and the emergence of early ideas of ‘British’ identity. It recaptures the lived experience of this important period in which Scottish and British identity was remade.