After the Romans left Britain in the fifth century CE, Christianity began to emerge as Scotland’s dominant religion. The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh includes a number of displays about the Church (meaning Christianity) in Scotland.
The Medieval Era (the Middle Ages), which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century, was a time when the Roman Catholic Church was a dominant political, cultural, and religious force in Europe. In his book Life in the Middle Ages, Richard Winston writes:
“It so completely permeated medieval life in all aspects that, in a sense, we may say that the Church and its destiny was the Middle Ages. The Church Militant, it called itself, in order to emphasize that it was engaged in perpetual struggle against the forces of evil.”
The Church was a powerful social, cultural, and political force in Scotland for several centuries. In their book Caithness Archaeology: Aspects of Prehistory, Andrew Heald and John Barber write:
“One of the major socio-political events to transform Scotland in the post-Roman period was the spread and adoption of Christianity.”
By the end of the fifteenth century, the Church was wealthier than the King. The Catholic Church in Scotland owned land which it rented out. Over the years, in order to offset their sins, people had given land and money to the Church in order to obtain indulgences. In addition, the Church collected a special tax. The Church was rich and powerful, and a number of people viewed it as corrupt.
In the sixteenth century, everything began to change as reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and King Henry VIII challenged papal authority and the Roman Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian practice. This change is known as the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation swept across Europe, and Scotland was the last European country to “reform” its church and become a Protestant country.
When England became a Protestant country in 1534, this encouraged the growth of Protestantism in Scotland. Protestants smuggled English translations of the Bible and English language prayer books into Scotland. In 1541, King James V passed an Act of Parliament for reforming the Church in Scotland. Finally, in 1560 Parliament formally accepted the Reformation: the Pope’s authority over Scotland was ended and the Mass was forbidden in Scotland. The Protestant Church referred to itself as the Kirk.
The Kirk was organized into congregations which could choose their own minister and select elders to assist the minister.
The displays below show different artifacts associated with the Church in Scotland.
Witches
The Scottish Presbyterians adopted the witchcraft conspiracy idea as the reason for the torture and execution of women. According to a display in the National Museum of Scotland:
“They believed that the Presbyterian Church had a pact with God, and that witches had entered a pact with the Devil. They saw the so-called witches as the enemies of the church, state, and people of Scotland.”
In Scotland, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 were tortured and executed as witches. In Edinburgh, the Nor’ Loch was a swampy lake which was used in judging those accused of witchcraft: accused witches were bound up and dropped into the lake. If they floated they were guilty and burned at the stake; if they sank and drowned, they were innocent. Scotland executed more witches per capita than any other country.
The objects and images below, on display at the National Museum of Scotland, illustrate how the Scots put Biblical concept into action.
William Blackstone, in his 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, writes:
“To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages of the Old and New Testament.”
With regard to the persecution of witches in Europe, Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, reports:
“…their persecution required an extraordinary degree of credulity to get underway, for the simple reason that a confederacy of witches in medieval Europe seems never to have existed. There were no covens of pagan dissidents, meeting in secret, betrothed to Satan, abandoning themselves to the pleasures of group sex, cannibalism, and the casting of spells upon neighbors, crops, and cattle.”