Conciliar authority in Reformation Scotland: the example of the Kennedy/Davidson debate, 1558–63

Abstract

‘For to the most parte of men, lawfull and godlie appeareth whatsoever antiquitie hath received’, complained John Knox in his 1558 First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women – and indeed for Knox and his fellow Protestants, the question of historical pedigree was troublesome. Catholic polemicists frequently posed some form of the question, ‘Where was your Church before Luther?’, and contrasted this problem with their own historical continuity, unbroken since the apostle Peter. Knox’s homeland of Scotland saw comparatively little sixteenth-century theological debate, but as in Reformation disputes on the continent, in Scotland historical superiority was claimed by Catholic and Protestant alike. A useful means of legitimation for either side, as Knox had said, was to demonstrate greater similarity to the primitive Church than one’s opponent. The appeal to superior historical precedent was particularly central to one Scottish debate, the printed theological exchange between Quintin Kennedy and John Davidson, and here it was slightly unusual in that these authors focused on the general council, rather than the papacy or episcopacy, as the means of historical legitimation.