Mapping the Scottish Reformation

Abstract

This article introduces readers to Mapping the Scottish Reformation, a digital prosopography of ministers who served in the Church of Scotland between the Reformation Parliament of 1560 to the Revolution in 1689. By extracting data from thousands of pages of ecclesiastical court records held by the National Records of Scotland, Mapping the Scottish Reformation (MSR) tracks clerical careers, showing where they were educated, how they moved between parishes, their age, their marital status, and their disciplinary history. This early modern data drives a powerful mapping engine that will allow users to build their own searches to track clerical careers over time andspace. In short, Mapping the Scottish Reformation puts clerical careers – and, indeed, Scottish religious history more generally – quite literally on the map.