Modern Scotland Research Articles

How a volcanic eruption helped create modern Scotland

How a volcanic eruption helped create modern Scotland

Away with the fairies: the psychopathology of visionary encounters in early modern Scotland.

In early modern Scotland, several visionaries experienced vivid relationships with spirits. This paper analyses their experiences historically, with the aid of modern scholarship in medicine, psychology and social science. Most of the visionaries were women. Most of their spirit-guides were fairies or ghosts. There could be traumas in forming or maintaining the relationship, and visionaries often experienced spirit-guides as powerful, capricious and demanding. It is argued that some visionaries experienced psychotic conditions, including psychosomatic injuries, sleepwalking, mutism and catatonia. Further conditions related to visionary experience were not necessarily pathological, notably fantasy-proneness and hallucinations. Imaginary companions and parasocial relationships are discussed, as are normality, abnormality and coping strategies. There are concluding reflections on links between culture and biology.

Wielding the brazen serpent: the variety and power of biblical typology in early modern Scotland

ABSTRACT In early modern Scotland, both ministers and the laity used typology as a key way of interpreting the Bible, discerning a variety of powerful ways that biblical types resonated in their own context. This article focuses on one of the most frequently expounded types in this period: the brazen serpent. It begins by exploring how its appearances in Numbers, 2 Kings, and John’s Gospel were expounded in Scotland, showing that while types were principally figures of Christ they also had a variety of edifying and rhetorical applications. This article then takes William Guild’s use of the brazen serpent in his typological handbook, commentaries, and sermons as a case study, to illustrate how typology functioned in practice, contending that biblical types played an important role in allowing early modern exegetes to shift or reinforce their expositions, without resorting to more figurative methods of interpretation that were frequently rejected by Reformed theologians.

Peter C. Jupp, Douglas J. Davies, Hilary J. Grainger, Gordon D. Raeburn and Stephen R. G. White, Cremation in Modern Scotland: History, Architecture and the Law

Peter C. Jupp, Douglas J. Davies, Hilary J. Grainger, Gordon D. Raeburn and Stephen R. G. White, <i>Cremation in Modern Scotland: History, Architecture and the Law</i>

The Power of Pathos: James Burn Russell's Life in One Room and the Creation of Council Housing

James Burn Russell's pamphlet, Life in One Room (1888), is almost certainly the best known and, as is argued here, the most influential published work in the history of social reform in modern Scotland. Regardless of Russell's own intentions and political beliefs Life in One Room became the default source for those who sought to promote housing for the working class and council housing in particular. It is remarkable just how often, and at what length, it was quoted in writings about and referenced in debates on housing before the first world war, during the war and after. This article seeks to identify the influence and attraction of Russell's pamphlet with particular reference to the author's opposition to social Darwinism and to its literary qualities. Russell's style was quintessentially Victorian but this is not to dismiss it as hopelessly sentimental. Informed by recent approaches to the history of Victorian culture and literature we can see how Russell, equally at home in the arts as in the sciences, consciously used sentimentalism or pathos to get his message across to the wider public.

Bruce, Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland, 1900–2012

Bruce, <i>Scottish Gods: Religion in Modern Scotland, 1900–2012</i>

The Long Road: Catholic Schools and Catholic social integration since 1918 (Cardinal Winning Lecture, 2017)

Critics, past and present, of state-funded denominational education in Scotland after 1918 have often asserted that the system has promoted social division, separateness and even fostered sectarianism. This lecture – the Cardinal Winning Lecture, 2017, delivered to the St Andrew's Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education, University of Glasgow – disagrees with these views. Instead, the presentation argues that Catholic schooling, in addition to its recognised importance in Christian spiritual formation, has been a crucial influence promoting the integration of a formerly disadvantaged and marginalised community into modern Scotland. ‘Integration’ is defined for this purpose as the process of incorporation into mainstream society as equal citizens. The lecture considers the long and rocky road to this achievement by setting the educational experience within the broader context of Scottish religious, social, political and economic history in the twentieth century.

How King Arthur Invented Christmas: Reimagining Arthur and Rome in Early Modern Scotland and England

How King Arthur Invented Christmas: Reimagining Arthur and Rome in Early Modern Scotland and England

Usage guides, social commentary and views on education in Late Modern Scotland

This contribution discusses two texts published at the height of Late Modern times (Mitchell 1799 and Anon. 1826), in order to trace the roots of well-established labels occurring in assessments of Scottish usage even to this day.1 In particular, attention is paid to the qualifiers that the books employ both to stigmatize and to commend forms, so as to outline the kind of ideological stance they conveyed. The two relatively short books are now included in the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing, and will be presented within the framework of that collection as significant instances of books circulating when linguistic self-consciousness affected both upwardly-mobile speakers and well-educated users. Models of correct usage were found to be useful tools for the acquisition or improvement of both social status and prestige – aims which still resonate with users today and the pragmatic value of which is only just beginning to be explored in a new light.

Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland, edited by Steven J. Reid and David McOmish

Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland, edited by Steven J. Reid and David McOmish

Jenny Wormald

In the later 20th and early 21st centuries, Jenny Wormald was the most original, and one of the pre-eminent, historians of late medieval and early modern Scotland.&#x0D;

Enforcing uniformity: kirk sessions and Catholics in early modern Scotland, 1560–1650

In the decades following the Scottish Reformation, Scottish parliaments passed a series of penal laws against Catholics and expressions of Catholic religious practice. In an act of 1594 the death penalty was prescribed on the first offence for wilfully hearing Mass; but no Scot was ever executed for hearing Mass. The same law of 1594 encouraged local presbyteries to convert any suspected Catholic under their jurisdiction. As historians of the Scottish Reformation begin to appreciate the crucial role that kirk sessions played in suppressing Scottish Catholicism, this article adds to recent studies which seek to offer a corrective to much previous scholarship on the persecution of Scottish Catholics – which tended to focus almost exclusively on civil enforcement – and explores the impact of parish church courts on Scottish Catholicism, highlighting the effectiveness of public penance, shaming, and psychological pressure as the most useful tools for enforcing uniformity.

Petitioning in early seventeenth-century Scotland, 1625–51

ABSTRACTIn contrast to recent work on England and other parts of Europe, research on petitioning in early modern Scotland is still in its early stages, notably in respect of its political significance in a comparative context. This article investigates supplicatory activity in Scotland during a crucial period in which the petition came under intense scrutiny. The 1630s saw a determined attempt by King Charles I’s Scottish government to clamp down on the use of supplications to express criticism of royal policy; assertive, but carefully controlled, petitioning was one part of a resistance strategy that resulted in the downfall of the king’s regime. When a new government came to power in 1638 headed by the Covenanters, petitioning activity came to be seen as a potential challenge to their authority. Petitioning does not appear to have invoked ‘opinion’ in 1640s Scotland as has been claimed for England; the printed petition remained a rarity in Scotland. Nevertheless constitutional reform, combined with the wartime conditions of the 1640s, generated more recourse to petitioning, and the government recognized opportunities to enhance its claims to legitimate rule. A preliminary investigation of everyday petitions to the government during the 1640s shows how the narratives constructed by supplicants often sought to endorse its values and ideals, but that this type of petitioning was also used by supplicants to critique the government’s policies and hold it to its own rhetoric.

Petitioning in the Scottish church courts, 1638–1707

ABSTRACTThis article explores the use of petitions in, and by, the courts of the Church of Scotland. It distinguishes between routine petitions and addresses concerning matters of national significance. The former were submitted to the church courts by individuals or groups, and requested that the courts take decisions or perform particular actions. These petitions reveal much about the exercise of discipline, poor relief and ecclesiastical administration, and provide rich evidence of the engagement of ordinary people with the church courts. The second type of petition was usually addressed to parliament or another secular body by one of the higher church courts. In studying petitions on national affairs, we can identify how the formulae of humble supplication were adapted for the purpose of protest, and thus comment on the tensions between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of early modern Scotland.

Neither inside nor outside the corridors of power: prosaic petitioning and the royal burghs in early modern Scotland

ABSTRACTThis article explores early modern petitioning in the context of urban Scotland. It focuses on prosaic rather than political petitioning, on the basis that the former was more truly characteristic of what the purpose of petitioning was understood to be by most of those who engaged in it. The burghs of Scotland provide an added dimension to the history of petitioning because of the role of their national assembly (the Convention of Royal Burghs), which was simultaneously a recipient of petitions, a conduit for its members’ petitions to the crown, and a petitioner of the crown in its own right. This article also reveals how changing practices of petitioning shed light on the development of the early modern Scottish state, as the Convention of Royal Burghs found its members increasingly bypassing it and instead they resorted directly to central government institutions.

The petition in the Court of Session in early modern Scotland

ABSTRACTPetitions to Scotland’s central civil court, the Court of Session, contained common features of style despite being presented for a wide range of purposes. As well as being employed in the course of procedure in a number of litigated cases, the petition was used to obtain entry to an office, or in seeking an equitable remedy which might relieve imminent suffering. In many cases they offer detailed narratives about everyday life, commerce, politics and religion which preserve a great deal that may be of value to the legal and social historian. Some petitioners, such as the poor and vulnerable, enjoyed a privileged status entitling them to have their claims heard summarily. A number of petitions, written by lawyers in order to persuade, contain ideas about liberty, justice and reason reflecting the fact that they were addressed to a court of both law and equity. This contribution identifies the features of such petitions, attempts to classify them, and considers their wider historical significance.

The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560–1625, by Sebastiaan Verweij

The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560–1625, by Sebastiaan Verweij

Peter Jupp, Douglas Davies, Hilary Grainger, Gordon Raeburn and Stephen White, Cremation in Modern Scotland: History, Architecture and the Law

Peter Jupp, Douglas Davies, Hilary Grainger, Gordon Raeburn and Stephen White, <i>Cremation in Modern Scotland: History, Architecture and the Law</i>

Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland. Steven J. Reid and David McOmish, eds. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 260. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xi + 300 pp. $167.

Neo-Latin Literature and Literary Culture in Early Modern Scotland. Steven J. Reid and David McOmish, eds. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 260. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xi + 300 pp. $167. - Volume 71 Issue 2

Roman Corbridge and the Corbridge Hoard: Reconstructing the World of Roman Britain

The last vestiges of the Roman-British world exist throughout modern day Britain and Scotland, ranging from coin hoards in the countryside to Roman urban remains in modern English cities. In particular, the Roman town of Corbridge in northeastern England played an important role throughout the history of Roman Britain and also is home to a variety of material culture evidence that has helped shape how the modern world views and understands Roman Britain. By examining modern Corbridge, its history, and the Corbridge Hoard, one can reconstruct and better understand the Roman world of Britain during this period both militarily and culturally.