Andrew Melville (1545–1622). Writings, Reception, and Reputation ed. by Roger A. Mason, and Steven J. Reid

Abstract

Reviewed by: Andrew Melville (1545–1622). Writings, Reception, and Reputation ed. by Roger A. Mason, and Steven J. Reid Ian Hazlett Andrew Melville (1545–1622). Writings, Reception, and Reputation. Edited by Roger A. Mason and Steven J. Reid. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2014. Pp. xvi, 306. $134.95. ISBN 978-1-4094-2693-6.) This is a collection of studies on the enigmatic Andrew Melville, Scottish ecclesiastical activist, Latin poet, divinity professor, and nominally a minister. His fame lay in being the putative chief driver of Scottish de iure divino Presbyterianism and a stentorian watchman against the drift to church-state fusion. This involved quasi-Manichaean antagonism to both episcopacy and Erastianism, engendering [End Page 412] images of him as either a noble dissident or a subversive rebel. The positive picture of Melville projected his herculean efforts, along with his university reforms rooted in his humanist and Calvinist commitment, reinforced by a cosmopolitan past. The book advances the quest for the historical Melville that has been picking up steam after nearly two centuries of inertia. It aspires to strip Melville historiography from the coloring of Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Catholic accounts. There are allusions to a Melville “myth,” “legend,” and “fable,” but any revisionism is not pejorative or triumphalist. Sane reconstruction or reimaging is the objective. Retrieving and elucidating sources is the priority—especially his preferred medium of Latin poetry on various issues—but challenging, as Melville’s Latin is “difficult, gnarled and gritty . . . thorny, unyielding” (p. 175). Although some Melville prose is extant, he published nothing in that form in his lifetime—bequeathing a research black hole. The book has nine chapters (plus a sophisticated bibliography of Melville writings), but just seven authors, as Steven Reid is responsible for two chapters (full of nuggets) and the bibliography, as well as serving as coauthor of the introduction. Roger Mason’s detective work on Melville’s notes in copies of George Buchanan’s History of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1582) demonstrates its resonance in Melville’s ideas of kingship, church-state relations, and Presbyterian origins in antiquity to repudiate Catholic charges of innovation. However, Buchanan’s radicalism on tyrant deposition and tyrannicide apparently appealed less to Melville for reasons like loyalism, to which one could add a conservative Calvinism. Reid also raises the matter, suggesting that Melville’s reticence was due to a “theological mindset,” bowing to scriptural authority as in Romans 13 (p. 6) and the force of “theological imperatives” (p. 70). Yet among Reformed writers everywhere there was a spectrum from the very radical to the very conservative—all claiming biblical legitimation. Reid also considers Melville’s “two kingdoms” notion, the parallel autonomous spheres of spiritual and secular jurisdictions. “Strict separation” (pp. 47, 53) may not be the right formulation. In Reformed (as in medieval) theology there was legitimate intersection and degree of mutual coinherence, a sine qua non in what was still a Christendom situation. The lines of demarcation were the flashpoint, concerning the respective competencies circa sacra and in sacra including the definition of sacra—sketched by Melville (p. 53). The fluidity of the red line in some Protestant contexts made the question contentious. A chapter on Melville’s British political ideology by Arthur Williamson shows that along with other Scottish thinkers Melville’s influence was not confined to Scotland. A Protestant Britannia would have an eschatological mission to help overthrow the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, the Counter-Reformation, and Rome. To this anti-imperialist end “Scottish Judeocentric Calvinism” and “English apocalyptic philo-Semitism” (p. 92) would unite. Mark Elliot’s chapter on Romans commentaries by Robert Rollock, Robert Boyd, and Melville is not quite comparing like with like, since Melville’s “Romans” was manuscript material for college students and was not published until modern times. It reflects standard, early Reformation exegesis centering on justification, sanctification, and election, adding a Calvinist emphasis [End Page 413] on double predestination. Absent are echoes of the emerging covenant-of-grace theology, as in Rollock, due to become the hallmark of Reformed orthodoxy. Reid’s contribution on Melville’s anti-episcopal poetry highlights the latter’s preoccupation—corrosion in the spiritual jurisdiction due to bishops imposed by the monarch...