In this installment of the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Reid focuses on the cornerstone of the Reformation: the university. Focusing on the educational reforms of the Scottish Reformer Andrew Melville (1545–1622), Reid traces Melville's plan of reform for Scottish universities and explores the ramifications of this reform policy over the wider culture and society. Although Melville's work as a reformer is well known, there is less scholarly research that investigates “the process by which the Scottish universities shed their Catholic heritage” (3). The sources Reid uses for describing this shedding of Catholic identity are manuscript materials and university records and charters dating from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Although it used to be commonplace to highlight the Protestant Reformers' criticism of Aristotelian thought, more recent research from scholars such as Erika Rummell indicates that Aristotle still exercised considerable influence over university curricula in the sixteenth century. This was surely the context from which Melville worked when he was in Geneva alongside Theodore Beza. Reid argues that Melville's syncretization of humanist and Aristotelian thought was integral to his reforms in Scottish universities when he returned to Scotland after years of studying and teaching in continental Europe.
The first chapter of this book illustrates the decidedly medieval as well as Catholic nature of the three Scottish universities (Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews) when Melville arrived at the University of Glasgow in 1574. The future of that school in particular was “dire” and uncertain (32), but all three universities were in need of direction and reform.
In the second chapter Reid describes in detail the educational background and reforms of Andrew Melville, who was a gifted scholar and linguist. The thrust of Melville's reforms in Scotland combined his “humanist refocusing on Aristotle in the original Greek instead of in Latin translation” with his stress on biblical languages and sacred history within a Ramist methodology and Calvinist theology and ecclesiology (49). Beginning at St. Andrews and then extending to Paris, Poitiers, and Geneva, Melville received a thorough education that melded a variety of humanist subject matters. Despite this, Reid notes, “perhaps the most profound influence on Melville,” at least in terms of divinity, was the events of St. Bartholomew's Day, when thousands of Protestants were slaughtered (74).
The third and fourth chapters narrate Melville's arrival in Glasgow and the poor conditions he encountered, partly due to the premature death of the founder of the school William Turnbull. After he turned conditions around there by working closely with the civil and episcopal authorities, Melville left the leadership in trusted hands and moved with his nephew James to serve as the principal of St. Mary's at the University of St. Andrews with “high hopes” (95) for reforming all of Scotland. His efforts at St. Andrews, however, were met with difficulty due to a variety of issues, including his strong Presbyterianism, adherence to Ramism, personal conflicts, continued absence from the school, and inability to unite all the different factions of those in authority. Ironically, it was largely due to the “hard work and tenacity” of Melville's nephew James that the college continued during his tenure (143).
The last several chapters chronicle how the Scottish universities faired after Melville's reforms. Although Melville gradually gained considerable favor and influence at St. Andrew's, his popularity would eventually wane as the turn of the seventeenth century coincided with a “shift back towards royal and Episcopal priorities at the university” (172). By now it was apparent that Melville's success was only partial. To make matters worse, Melville found himself in a losing battle with the king over ecclesiastical reforms. After publicly denouncing the king and manhandling the Archbishop of Canterbury, his position at St. Andrews was vacated and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for several years. From then on, it was only a matter of time before Melville's influence at St. Andrew's (and elsewhere) would dissipate. As Reid explains in detail, “the era of ‘Melvillian’ reform . . . died out quietly in the final decades of the reign of James VI and I” (266). Although perhaps interpreted as a failure, Reid points out that Melville's reforms were instrumental in the future growth and development of the Scottish universities by the end of the century.
Overall, Reid's volume fills a needed gap in scholarship that explores the educational reforms at Scottish universities after the Protestant Reformation. Reid could have improved the book by including more comparisons and contrasts with the post-Reformation reforms and curricular changes of the English universities. He could have also drawn from the work that Mordechai Feingold and Nicholas Tyacke have contributed relative to the history of the University of Oxford. Nevertheless, Reid's adept usage of primary sources coupled with his augmentation of previous Melvillian scholarship makes this an important contribution. Reid illustrates well how Melville's “highly advanced” plan of reform, were it not stymied by politics, would have made Scotland one of “the most pre-eminent centres for reformed higher education in Europe” (271).
