Andrew Melville - Return To Scotland

Return To Scotland

In addition to teaching, Melville continued to study Oriental literature, and in particular acquired from Cornelius Bertram, one of his brother professors, a knowledge of Syriac. While he lived at Geneva the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 drove immense numbers of Protestant refugees to that city, including several of the most distinguished French men of letters of the time. Among these were several men learned in civil law, and political science, and associating with them increased Melville's knowledge and enlarged his ideas of civil and ecclesiastical liberty. In 1574 Melville returned to Scotland, and almost immediately received the appointment of Principal of the University of Glasgow, and began its renewal.

Melville set himself to establish a good educational system. He enlarged the curriculum, and established chairs in languages, science, philosophy and divinity, which were confirmed by charter in 1577. His fame spread, and students flocked from all parts of Scotland and beyond. He assisted in the reconstruction of the University of Aberdeen in 1575, and in order to do for St Andrews what he had done for Glasgow, he was appointed Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1580. His duties there comprised the teaching of theology, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and Rabbinical languages.

Melville created a fashion for the study of Greek literature. The reforms, however, which his new modes of teaching involved, and even some of his new doctrines, such as the non-infallibility of Aristotle, brought him into conflict with other teachers in the university. He was Moderator of the General Assembly in 1578, and took part in the organization of the Church and the Presbyterian method. Troubles arose from the attempts of the court to force a system of episcopacy upon the Church of Scotland, and Melville prosecuted one of the Tulchan Bishops (Robert Montgomery, d. 1609). For this he was summoned before the Privy Council in February 1584, and had to flee into England in order to escape a charge of treason.

After twenty months he returned to Scotland in November 1585, and in March 1586 resumed his lectures in St Andrews, where he continued for twenty years; he became Rector of the University in 1590. During the whole time he protected the liberties of the Scottish Church against all encroachments of the government. That in the main he was fighting for the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the Church is generally accepted. The chief charge against Melville is that his fervour often led him to forget the reverence due to an "anointed monarch." When the king acted in an arbitrary and illegal manner he needed the reminder that though he was king over men he was only "God's silly vassal." Melville's rudeness (if it is to be called so) was the outburst of just indignation from a man zealous for the purity of religion and regardless of consequences to himself.

He made this statement to King James VI of Scotland, later to become King James I of England.

"Sirrah, ye are God's silly vassal; there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is king James, the head of the commonwealth; and there is Christ Jesus, the king of the Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, not a lord, not a head, but a member." (The last twelve words are sometimes rendered as "not a king, nor a head, nor a lord, but a member".)