The Legacy of Persecution that Haunts St Andrews

How the Reformation Swept Through the Town

St Andrews is haunted. Once considered the ‘second Rome’ of Scotland, St Andrews’ vital religious heritage has since faded into the mottled facades of crumbling castles, the curves of oft-trodden seaside paths, and the scant plaques memorialising a tempestuous past. The more recognizable homages — such as the ‘P.H.’ cobbled into North Street, marking the spot where Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake in 1528 — have been subsumed into the innocuous rituals of modern university life (see students expertly dodging the initials in the class-to-class scramble, lest they incur the wrath of martyrs past). As the ruins of the old world sink deeper into the ground, what do they leave behind and how do we remember them?

Despite his fame around town, St Andrews’ role in the Scottish Reformation neither began nor ended with the execution of Patrick Hamilton. The young theologian’s dissent against the Catholic Church was just one event in St Andrews’ history of religious persecution. Almost a century earlier, a Bohemian named Pavel Kraver (also known as Paul Craw) was accused of heresy by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews and founder of the University, and was summarily executed on 13 July 1433. The school’s role as a centre of theological Catholic instruction incentivised its faculty and leaders to take particularly brutal action against dissidents, who were often current or former students. The events of the Reformation therefore did not just surround the University, but actively enveloped and implicated it in the violence. 

In 1472, Pope Sixtus IV elevated the town of St Andrews to an Archbishopric, cementing the town’s importance in a Christendom whose unity was fracturing. Archbishop James Beaton, who ordered Hamilton’s execution, passed on the position of archbishop to his nephew, Cardinal David Beaton, in 1539. As Archbishop of St Andrews, Beaton continued his uncle’s legacy of persecution. In 1546, Beaton arrested famed Protestant preacher George Wishart and executed him. This decision would prove to be a grave mistake on Beaton’s part. 

Later that year, Protestant nobles seized St Andrews Castle and assassinated Beaton, hanging his corpse out the window. The castle was held by the nobles for months. During this time, John Knox, one of the leaders of the Scottish Reformation, came to St Andrews to deliver his first sermon. French troops eventually stormed the castle, blasting through its walls and imprisoning its occupants. With these events in mind, the ruins of St Andrews Castle appear less idyllic and more grotesque, even against the bluest skies.

The last Protestant martyr of St Andrews, Walter Milne, was burned at the stake by Archbishop John Hamilton in 1558. By this time the tides of the Reformation had changed. Soon after, John Knox led a purge of ‘all monuments of idolatry,’ destroying images, altars, and books. In 1559, Knox declared the former seat of Scottish Catholicism reformed. 

History can sometimes seem so grandiose as to become unreal, and present-day life so immediate and mundane as to appear trite by comparison. The transformation of St Andrews from the centre of the Scottish Reformation to a picturesque tourist town dominated by its university epitomises this experience. Treading the quiet streets of St Andrews, it is easy to forget the bloodshed that once marred this town. Heretics and cardinals have been traded in for seasonal golfers and harried students. The smell of burnt flesh and the conspiratorial climate have been washed away by time. Although the Reformation and its visceral reality grow more distant with each passing day, I think St Andrews will remain haunted for a long time.

Image from Wikimedia Commons