John Knox

by Jane Dawson

Yale University Press, 2015

Sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation religious firebrand John Knox, founder of Presbyterianism and relentless scold to Mary Queen of Scots, has been the subject of countless biographical studies in the four hundred-and so years since his death, and the latest such study, this exhaustively-sourced full-dress biography by University of Edinburgh history professor Jane Dawson, may just be the finest of them all. It's certainly the most subtle in its understanding, finding rewarding nuances both in Knox's interpretation of the vile doom-doctrines he imbibed from John Calvin and in that most studied mental fencing match, his prickly relationship with Queen Mary.

Dawson's hope of softening the typical historical characterization of Knox as a “kill joy” is a bit odd and is scuppered from the outset by her own emphasis on Knox's self-appointed role as not just a preacher but a prophet:

Knox's understanding of his vocation as a preacher and a prophet gave him no choice but to continue to preach sermons in which he 'applied' biblical texts to the pressing issues of the day. These admonitions frequently included forecasts of the consequences of political actions and policies, and as the years went by this ability to foretell future events became increasingly important to Knox and his supporters. It was treated as a God-given verification of his prophetic role.

The mention of prophecy sets modern hackles on edge, as so it should, and it sent plenty of hackles on edge in Knox's own day when, for instance, William Maitland of Lethington warned his fellow Scots that they shouldn't take “every word proceeding from his mouth as oracles; and knaw that he is bot a man subject to vanitie; and that mony tymes dois utter his owin passiones and uther menis inordinat affectiones, in place of trew doctrine.'”

Readers get a full accounting of that “vanitie” in these pages, but this is nevertheless an entirely sympathetic biography; Dawson is steeped in his time and sentiments, and she's skilled in drawing out all the multi-faceted reactions he evoked in his contemporaries. Dawson seeks to humanize Knox, no doubt motivated in large part by how deeply repellant he is as a figure of biographical study, how small, how violent, how carping, how delusional, how treasonous, how precisely analogous to the radical Islamic fundamentalists of the early 21st century, constantly marrying medieval religious dogma with bomb-throwing.

Occasionally – but to a far lesser extent than virtually any other biographer of this venomous ranting lunatic – Dawson's sympathies get the better of her, leading to passages that are a bit too fulsome when applied to a man who never went a single day of his adult life without loudly advocating the murder of people he disliked:

At the very beginning of his ministerial career, Knox wanted his congregation to understand that he was not a speculative theologian and, significantly, he chose instead to appeal as a brother to their shared experience of affliction. His theology was driven by his heart and soul and rooted in his own experience. Most of its emphases reflected the doctrines that mattered most to him in his spiritual life. Even when writing, he spoke his theology to an audience. Most of his theological statements were made in response to the particular situations and problems he encountered during his ministry: they were never intended to be systematic or even consistent.

Or maybe Dawson is being more po-faced than it seems and that “driven by his heart and soul” bit is offered as wry commentary. There is ample wry commentary in Dawson's John Knox, and plenty of sharply-controlled prose – and despite some special pleading, Knox's knuckles are regularly rapped for his “inordinat affectiones.” Readers seeking to know Knox – for whatever mysterious reasons – could consult no better volume than this one.