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JOHN MAJOR OF HADDINGTON 
 
c At nescio qua natale solum dulcedine cunctos ducit et 
 immemores non sinit esse sui.' 
 
 Dedication by John Major of the Edition of his Commentary, ' In Quartum 
 Librum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi,' to Alexander Stewart, Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews, 1509. 
 
 {Fifty Copies Printed) 
 
MEMOIR OF 
 
 JOHN MAJOR 
 
 OF HADDINGTON 
 
 DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF PARIS: AFTERWARDS REGENT IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITIES OF GLASGOW AND SAINT 
 
 ANDREWS AND PROVOST OF THE 
 
 COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR 
 
 1469-70—1550 
 
 A Study in 
 
 Scottish History and Education, By 
 
 M. J. G. MACKAY 
 
 LL.D., ADVOCATE 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 Privately Printed by T. and A. CoKSTABLE 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1892 
 
NOTE 
 
 The references to the Appendix will be found in the 
 Translation of John Major's History of Greater 
 Britain, by Archibald Constable (Scottish History 
 Society), as an Introduction to which, this Memoir, 
 originally delivered as an Address to the Students of 
 the University of St. Andrews, has been printed. 
 
1469-70- 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 John Major or Mair was born in 1469-70, the eleventh 
 year of the reign of James in., at Gleghornie, now a farm- 
 house, perhaps then a* hamlet, in the parish of North Berwick, 
 about two miles inland from Tantallon 1 , the castle of the 
 Douglases, and three miles from Hailes 2 , the castle of the 
 Hepburns, to both of which families, though himself of humble 
 origin, his talents introduced him. Crawford, the historio- 
 grapher, in the Life prefixed to Freebairn's edition of Major's 
 History, dates his birth as early as 1446, and Dr. Mackenzie, 
 in his Lives of Scots Writers, as late as 1478; but he corrects Major's birth 
 this in the preface to his second volume from information he 
 had received from Paris, and assigns 1469 as the true date. 
 A passage in one of Major's works proves that he was really 
 born in 1469-70, for he states in the preface to a new edition, 
 published in 1519, that he had then reached the confines of 
 his forty-ninth year; and this is confirmed by the fact that 
 he graduated as Doctor in Theology at Paris in 1505, a 
 degree which could not be taken under the age of thirty-five 3 . 
 Major was alive in 1549, when he was excused from attending 
 
 1 Appendix 11., p. 437. 2 Appendix II., p. 425. 
 
 3 I am indebted to Mr. Archibald Constable for directing my attention to this 
 passage : ' Licet enim Martinus Magister [i.e. Martin le Maistre] qucestione pen- 
 ultima de temperantia dicat seniores junioribus in re scholastica invidere; non 
 sum de numero juniorum ; nam hoc libro absoluto quadragesimi notii annifunbrias 
 aggredior.' — Johannis Majoris in exordio proelectionis lib. quarti sententiarum ad 
 auditores propositio. See Appendix II., p. 437. This Preface is not printed in the 
 earlier editions of 1509 and 1516. Mr. Hume Brown has supplied me with the 
 further corroboration of this date that a degree in theology could not be then taken 
 at Paris before the age of 35. It is due, however, to Dr. Mackenzie, a writer some- 
 what unfairly disparaged, to mention that he arrived at the true date of Major's 
 birth in the correction made in the Preface to the second volume of his Lives of 
 Scots Writers. 
 
2 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 a Provincial Council at Edinburgh on account of his age, and 
 died in that or the following year, when his successor as 
 Provost of the College of St. Salvator at St. Andrews was 
 appointed. His long life of seventy-nine years was thus passed 
 in the century which preceded the Scottish Reformation, a 
 memorable period in the history of Scotland and of Europe. 
 At Gletjhomie, He refers to Gleghornie as his birthplace in the History l , and 
 Berwick.*" styles himself ' Glegornensis ' in the titles of several of his other 
 
 works. In his quaint manner, when he mentions any event 
 which occurred near North Berwick, he notes the precise dis- 
 tance, a token that he retained an affectionate recollection of 
 his early home. The oatcakes baked on the girdle over the 
 ashes, the mode of grinding meal and brewing beer, the way 
 of catching crabs and lobsters at North Berwick, the habits of 
 the Solan Geese of the Bass, the popular superstitions still 
 current in the most civilised part of Scotland 2 , even the exact 
 time at North Berwick, are described with the close observa- 
 tion of a frequent eye-witness, and leave little doubt that he 
 was born in one of the thatched cottages whose fragile char- 
 acter he deplores 3 , and was the son of one of the labourers, or 
 perhaps one of the small farmers, probably of some church 
 lands in the neighbourhood. It is possible his father was the 
 tacksman of Gleghornie itself, whom he uses as an illustration 
 in a passage of his Commentary on the Fourth Book of the Sen- 
 tences of Peter Lombard 4 . But of his parents or descent nothing 
 is certainly known. A boy of parts in that age, however 
 humble his parentage, had opportunities of distinguishing him- 
 self if he chose Learning or the Church as his profession. A 
 
 1 History, i. vi. pp. 33-4. 
 
 2 Dubitatur adhuc : Isti Fauni et vocati brobne [brownies'] apud nos domi qui non 
 nocent, ad quod propositum talia faciunt. Respondetur : multa referuntur de 
 talibus : ut proterere tantum tritici in una nocte vel sicut xx. viri terere possunt. 
 Projiciunt lapillos inter sedentes prope ignem ruri, ridere videntur, et similia 
 facere. Insuper dubitatur : an possunt futura predicere ; et movetur dubitatio. 
 Sunt aliqui apud nostrates Britannos qui more prophetico futura predicunt utpote 
 de raorte et homicidio aliquorum. — Expos, in Matt., ed. 15 18, fol. xlviii. 
 
 3 History, I. v. p. 30. 4 Dist. xv. Qusest. 45. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 3 
 
 pious reference to the custom of his childhood amongst the 
 country-folk of Scotland, that when the children went to bed 
 they asked their parents' blessing with outstretched hands, and 
 the father gave it with God's blessing added, shows one part of 
 his education had begun at home l . 
 
 His name is a common one in Scotland ; indeed in the Latin His name. 
 form of Major it is known in England and on the Continent. 
 It may have been derived from the office of Maor (Scotice 
 Mair) or serjeant, the executive official of the Celtic thane, who 
 remained attached to the court of the sheriff; or, more probably, 
 in Lothian it meant no more than 'elder', when, surnames 
 coming into use, it was necessary to distinguish between two 
 persons of the same Christian name. It is noticeable that in 
 several of the entries in the Registers of Paris, Glasgow, and 
 St. Andrews, he is described as 'Johannes {i.e. Alius) Majom" 2 , 
 as if his father had first assumed the surname. Whether he 
 owed it to his parents, or to the monks who detected his aptness 
 for learning, Major received the rudiments of a good education 
 in his own neighbourhood, almost certainly at the school of 
 Haddington, already noted amongst the schools of Scotland, At school at 
 where a little later John Knox was a scholar. In remem- 
 brance of this, in some of his works he describes himself as 
 1 Hadingtonanus', and in the dedication of his treatise on the 
 Fourth Book of the Sentences to Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dun- 
 keld, and Robert Cockburn, Bishop of Ross, he makes the follow- 
 ing grateful reference to his connection with Haddington and its 
 school : — ' These reasons have led me to dedicate this work to 
 you, for not only is each of you like myself a Scottish Briton 
 [Scotus Britannus\ but also my nearest neighbour in my native 
 land. The Dialogue in the Preface to my treatise on the First 
 Book explains the distance from the birthplace of one of you 
 
 1 Ibid. Dist. xxiii. Qucest. 2. 
 
 a So Prantl in his Geschichte der Logik, iv. 217, throughout calls Majoi 
 Johannes Majoris. But I incline to think, on a view of the whole evidence, 
 that this is merely from his name usually appearing on the tftle-ptgU of his 
 works in the genitive case. 
 
 Haddington. 
 
4 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 [Gavin Douglas, who was born at Tantallon] is not more 
 than a Sabbath-day's journey. Haddington has a still fuller 
 right to rejoice in the origin of the other [Robert Cockburn], 
 the town which fostered the beginnings of my own studies, and 
 in whose kindly embraces I was nourished as a novice with the 
 sweetest milk of the art of grammar, and carried on in my 
 education to a pretty advanced age [longiuscula oetas\ and it is 
 not more than five miles from Gleghornie where I was born. 
 So that many persons call me not wrongly a Haddington man. 
 Besides, I have enjoyed the friendly and familiar society of.you 
 both, at home as well as at Paris, and have been honoured by 
 your public commendation, of which I cannot speak fully in few 
 words. Therefore, as Sallust says of Carthage, " I prefer to be 
 silent rather than say too little ". For these causes I have deter- 
 mined to dedicate this work to you, which I pray you to review 
 not with severe and harsh eyebrows, but with the benignant 
 and modest countenances habitual to you. Farewell. Paris, 
 in the College of Montague, the Kalends of December 1516. 1 
 
 That he was one of the youths of humble origin his country 
 
 has often produced, eager to learn, patient in study, fond of 
 
 argument, and of comparison, with what is called an inquisitive 
 
 intellect, is proved by his subsequent career. 
 
 Before 1493 in A curious but tantalising reference in his History as to his 
 
 England or personal experience informs us that Major spent seven years in 
 
 the Borders. j.j ie nor ^} 1? or m0 re probably the borders \ of England. When 
 
 defending his country from the charge of poverty, on the 
 
 ground that oatmeal was a common diet (for long before Dr. 
 
 Johnson this was a vulgar scoff), he remarks : ' It is the food 
 
 of almost all the natives of Wales and of the northern 
 
 English, as I know from my own seven years 1 experience of 
 
 that people [ut a septennio expertus sum 2 ], as well as of the 
 
 Scottish peasantry, and yet the main strength of the Scottish 
 
 1 A somewhat minute knowledge of the Borders between England and Scot- 
 land is shown in his History, 1. v. p. 19. 
 
 2 Perhaps the meaning is ' as I have known by experience for seven years', 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 5 
 
 and English armies is in the peasantry — a proof that oat bread 
 is not a thing to be laughed at."* 
 
 But as he positively states in the Dedication of his edition 
 of Aristotle's Ethics to Wolsey 1 that he first crossed the Borders 
 when he went through England to Paris in 1493, it would seem 
 that he considered Gleghornie on the Borders, — a flexible term 
 at this period of internecine raids, and his acquaintance with 
 the habits of the English may have been derived from the 
 Northumberland moss-troopers. 
 
 He chose the vocation of a travelling scholar, an excellent 
 combination of the Middle Ages, in many respects preferable 
 to the more sedentary training of modern times. His name 
 does not appear as a student at either of the Scottish univer- 
 sities then founded, in both of which he was afterwards 
 a teacher, but before 1493, when already a man of twenty- 
 three, he found his way to Cambridge. That university, though 
 somewhat inferior to Oxford in numbers and reputation, as 
 he notes with a candour creditable to a Cambridge man, and in 
 spite of the attractions of Baliol College, possibly because of the 
 dislike of North-countrymen which was a tradition of mediaeval 
 Oxford, was then a favourite school for Scottish students. 
 George Wishart, the first of the Scottish Reformers, was not 
 long after a student at Corpus Christi, in the same university. 
 
 He studied for a year, but attended lectures apparently T493> at (l0r ] s 
 only for three months 2 , at God's House, the earlier foundation bddac.' Cain ' 
 converted into Christ's College in 1505. He selected it for a 
 reason strange to us, but at that time natural, because it 
 was situated in the parish of St. Andrew 3 , the patron saint of 
 Scotland, and of the diocese to which Major himself belonged. 
 The church dedicated to that saint still stands opposite the 
 College gate over which, as at St. John's, the other foundation 
 of the Lady Margaret, the mother of Henry vn. and grand- 
 
 but this scarcely removes the puzzle of the passage, as Major had been in England 
 long before 1 5 iS, the date when his History was written. 
 
 1 Sec Appendix 1I., p. 448. ' J History, 1. v. p. 25. 3 //'/'</. 
 
6 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 mother of Margaret, wife of James iv., the Tudor arms are 
 boldly sculptured. It may have been a consequence of this 
 portion of his education that he became through life a 
 strenuous advocate of the union of Scotland with England. 
 The higher culture and refinement of English life certainly 
 made an impression on the country-bred Scot. 
 
 ' While I was a student at Cambridge,' he says in one of 
 the sidenotes which relieve the dry style of his History, 
 ' during the great festivals I spent half the night awake listen- 
 ing to the bells. The university is on a river, so from the 
 undulation of the water their sound is sweeter. 1 With the 
 freedom from prejudice which was one of his characteristics, 
 he remarks that the bells of St. Oseney, the cradle of Oxford, 
 ' are the best in England, and that as in music the English 
 excel all nations, so they excel in the sweet and artistic modu- 
 lation of their bells ' h 
 
 1 No village of forty houses is without fine bells. In every 
 town of any size you hear the sweetest chimes from terce to 
 tercel He enlarges, and, as his manner is, generalizes from 
 his observations, the minuteness of which is noteworthy : 
 6 although you may find a few as finished musicians in Scotland 
 as in England, there are not nearly so many of them 2 .'' 
 
 These remarks, intended for the ear of his own countrymen, 
 to prompt them to the study and practice of music, have been 
 long in bearing fruit. To a Scottish student returning from 
 the English universities, the bells of his native town are not 
 yet such as he would willingly lie awake to hear, and still too 
 often recal by contrast the chimes of the churches and college 
 
 1 History \ ill. i. p. no. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. iv. p. 27, with which compare 1. v. p. 30, where he laments that 
 the Scottish priests were ignorant of the Gregorian Chant, and his statement 
 (vi. xiv. p. 366) that James I. learned music in England. ■ Bells were not 
 universal in parish churches in Scotland even at the end of last century. It 
 often happened that there was nowhere to hang them : a theologian of 1679 
 inveighs against " that pitiful spectacle, bells hanging upon trees for want of bell 
 houses.' " — Joseph Robertson, Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals, p. 102. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 7 
 
 chapels on the banks of the Isis or the Cam, the sweet changes 
 rung in the towers of St. Mary in both universities, or of Christ 
 Church, where the bells of Oseney Priory are said to have 
 found a home in the Gatehouse tower. 
 
 From Cambridge Major passed in 1493 to Paris, probably 
 his original destination. Paris was then, especially for theo- 
 logians, the most famous university in Europe. Its colleges 
 were crowded with students from almost all countries, 
 even the distant extremities of Europe — Scandinavia, Spain, 
 Scotland — as yet without complete universities of their own. 
 There were as many as 10,000 at the lowest estimate. But 
 national jealousy and the growth of Oxford and Cambridge had 
 recently withdrawn the English students, and the Scotch who 
 continued to frequent it were now enrolled in the Natio Ale- 
 manica (or German) which had been substituted for the older 
 name of the Natio Anglicana. Before he crossed the Channel 
 Major had probably visited Oxford as well as Cambridge, and his 
 brief notes on the universities 1 and a few of the principal towns 
 in England, which bear marks of personal observation, deserve Description of 
 notice, as there are few diaries of intelligent travellers in the end Tow^s g and 
 of the fifteenth century now extant 2 . ' Londinum ', he says, Universities. 
 ' which was called by the Britons London, is situated on the 
 Thames, a river thrice the size of the Seine at Paris. It is 
 visited by the ships of all nations, and has a very fine bridge and 
 church. One mile to the west lies Westminster, where there is 
 a royal palace, the monuments of the kings, and the seat of 
 justice. Three miles to the East is Greenwich the royal port, 
 where you may see in abundance barges passing up to London 
 and down to the sea with sails or the tide. London elects a 
 wealthy and senior tradesman yearly as Mayor, before whom a 
 
 1 He more than once refers to Oseney Priory. The long list of the famous 
 men who had studied at Oxford and the comparison between the colleges at 
 the two Universities indicate a knowledge of both. 
 
 2 History , I. v. p. 21. 
 
8 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 sword is carried as an emblem of justice, whose duty it is if 
 corn is dear to import it to lower the price. It exceeds Rouen, 
 the second city of France, in population, but is far before it in 
 wealth. It is enriched by being the seat of justice, the almost 
 constant residence of the king, and by the affluence of its 
 merchants. Some Englishmen, with whom I agree, count the 
 population of Paris three times that of London, but it is not 
 three times as wealthy. In the Thames there are three or four 
 thousand tame swans; but', he adds with characteristic caution, 
 fc I merely repeat what was told me, for, though I have seen, 
 I have never counted them. York is the second city of 
 England, the see of an archbishop, distant fifty leagues from 
 Scotland, a town of large extent, but not rich or populous, 
 through the want of the three advantages London has. The 
 third city is Norwich, an Episcopal See, in which that kind of 
 cloth called Ostade is manufactured, both single and double. 
 There are other considerable cities, — as Bristol ; Coventry, a 
 good town without a river, which is remarkable ; Lincoln, 
 formerly famous, and many more 1 . England has two famous 
 universities : Oxford, celebrated abroad, which has produced 
 eminent philosophers and theologians, as Alexander Hales, 
 Richard Middleton, John Duns the Doctor Subtilis, Ockhajn, 
 Adam the Irishman, Strode, Bradwardine, and others V Of its 
 colleges he names Magdalen and New as the foremost, each 
 with a hundred bursaries — some in divinity and others in arts. 
 4 The other university is Cambridge, a little inferior to Oxford 
 in number of students and reputation for letters. 1 Of its 
 colleges he mentions King\ which may be compared with New 
 College, Oxford; Queens'; a Royal Hall — inferior to Queens 1 
 
 1 The somewhat eccentric list of English towns mentioned by Major is pro- 
 bably accounted for by the fact that in each of them there was a Franciscan 
 monastery. 
 
 2 See note Hist. I. v. p. 23, as to the philosophers named by Major, fourteen 
 in all, of whom it is noticeable that at least eight were Franciscans. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 9 
 
 College — the future Trinity, not yet risen to the dignity of a 
 College ; Christ's College, where he studied himself, and Jesus, 
 formerly a convent for women, reformed by Doctor Stubbs 1 , 
 the nuns having been ejected. ' I approve', he adds, t of this 
 ejection, for if convents become houses of ill fame, good in- 
 stitutions must be put in their place.' 
 
 ' The course of study in the English universities is seven or 
 eight years before graduating as master in arts. They do not 
 pay much attention to grammar. The government of the 
 university is in the hands of a Chancellor, like the Rector of 
 Paris elected yearly, and two Proctors who have jurisdiction 
 over laymen as well as students. The number of students is 
 4000 or 5000, and though that of laymen [i.e. townsmen] is 
 greater, they don't venture to rise against the students, who 
 would soon put them down. The students are all adults, 
 and carry swords and bows, being for the most part of good 
 birth.' 
 
 He concludes this fragmentary but interesting sketch by 
 praising the morality of the English in comparison with the 
 Scottish ecclesiastics, and making one of the semi-ironical 
 observations of which studious men are fond : ' For courage, 
 prudence, and other virtues the English don't think they are 
 the least nation in the world, and if they meet a foreigner who 
 has parts or bravery, it is much to be regretted, they say, that 
 he was not an Englishman. 1 
 
 While the dates of Major's studies at Cambridge and visit to 
 Oxford are not quite certain, the commencement of his curri- 
 culum at Paris is fixed by an entry in the Register of Matri- 
 culation in the University under the year 1493 : ' Johannes Paris, 1493. 
 
 . . . — w t Studies 
 
 Mair Glegornensis, Diocesis S. Andrea?.' He commenced Ins ;u College of 
 course of Arts at the College, of St. Barbe, of which Etienne 
 
 1 Stubbs is unknown to the historians of Cambridge, and the real reformer 
 and founder of Jesus College was John Alcock, Bishop of Ely (Mullinger, p. 321), 
 to whom Major refers in his Biblical Commentary. 
 
10 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Migrates to 
 Montaigu. 
 
 Elected a 
 Fellow of 
 Navarre. 
 
 Bonet l , a philosopher and physician, was then principal, under 
 John Boulac or Bouillache, curate of St. Jacques La Boucherie, 
 afterwards Principal of the College of Navarre, and graduated as 
 Licentiate in 1494 and as Master in 1496. His countryman, 
 John Harvey 2 , of the Scots College, was then Rector of the 
 University, and Major held under him the honourable office of 
 Procurator of the German Nation, and became its Quaestor 
 or Treasurer in 1501. From the College of St. Barbe Major 
 migrated at the suggestion of Natalis or Noel Beda 3 , afterwards 
 a celebrated leader of the Sorbonne, to the College of Montaigu, 
 then under the government of a Fleming, John Standonk, 
 who reformed it ; and Standonk having been banished by 
 Louis xii., Major, by the advice of Boulac, was affiliated to 
 the College of Navarre 4 , though he continued to teach philo- 
 sophy as Regent in Arts in that of Montaigu at least down 
 to and probably after the year 1505, when he graduated as 
 Doctor of Theology. Remaining in Paris for twelve or thir- 
 teen years after his graduation he became one of its most 
 famous Professors of Theology, as he had been formerly of 
 Logic and Philosophy. It is probable, indeed, that he lectured 
 simultaneously, as he certainly published his lectures in both 
 Faculties during the same period (1509-1518). 
 
 The period of Major's residence in Paris was a marked epoch 
 in the history of France and the University. It was the zenith 
 of the Renaissance. The Revival of Learning, begun in Italy 
 in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had in the sixteenth 
 crossed the Alps, and under the leadership of Erasmus taken 
 root in France, England, Germany, and the Low Countries. 
 It was the France of the last five years of Charles vm. (1483- 
 
 1 As to the Principalship of Etienne Bonet, see Quicherat, St. Barbe, pp. 
 54-64. He was elected 1483, and died 1497. 
 
 2 Of John Harvey I find no mention except in Mackenzie's Lives of Scots 
 Writers, 2 Pref. p. 12 1. 
 
 3 As to Noel Beda, see Hume Brown's Memoir of Buchanan, p. 69. 
 
 4 Launoi : Regice Navarra Hist. Op. iv. p. 396. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 11 
 
 1498), of the reign of Louis xn. (1498-1515), and the first 
 three years of Francis i. (1515-47), during which Major passed 
 his life as Student, Regent in Arts, and Doctor in Theology 
 in its capital. During these years the consolidation of the French history 
 
 i-i-ii/». •■■ t, -ii during Major's 
 
 kingdom and the formation of modern France by the absorp- residence in 
 tion of the great feudal houses was completed. Charles vm. by 
 marrying Anne, heiress of Brittany, united the French Wales 
 to the Crown, and Louis xn. retained it, divorcing his wife 
 Jane of France and marrying the widow of Charles. He 
 added himself the large domains of the House of Orleans. 
 Encouraged by the growth of their kingdom and the divisions 
 of Italy, the French monarchs made the fatal attempt to annex 
 parts of the peninsula where so many Frenchmen found their 
 tombs. The survivors brought back the learning, arts, and 
 manners of the more civilised but more luxurious south. 
 History repeated with altered names the lines of Horace: — 
 
 ' Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes 
 Intulit agresti Latio.' 
 
 Italy, unlike Greece, was overrun, not subdued. In 1494 
 Charles vm. marched through Rome to Naples ; but his 
 campaign was a triumph not a conquest. Louis xn. renewed 
 the war, claiming Milan as well as Naples, for whose partition 
 he entered into a league with Ferdinand of Aragon. That 
 astute monarch succeeded in gaining the whole, and became 
 in 1504 king of the Two Sicilies. 
 
 In 1508 along with Pope Julius n. the two ambitious kings 
 joined in the League of Cambrai to crush the Republic of 
 Venice, but the Pope suddenly deserted his French allies and 
 made a new league, which he called the Holy League, to drive 
 the French barbarians from Italy. Though Louis defeated the 
 Spaniards at Ravenna the aid of the Swiss enabled the Pope to 
 accomplish his purpose. The French quitted Italy before the 
 death of Louis in 1515. His successor, Francis L, a young 
 and hazardous monarch, engaged in a contest for the Imperial 
 
12 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Crown and the primacy of Europe with Charles v., who on the 
 death of his grandfather Maximilian became emperor. Francis 
 recovered Milan, but was taken prisoner at Pavia in 1525, and 
 though he broke the treaty of Madrid and resumed the war in 
 Relations of 1529 he was forced to relinquish Italy. While these events 
 
 England and , . , . 
 
 Scotland. were occupying the politicians and armies of Europe, Scotland, 
 
 which had been at peace with England during the reign of 
 Henry vn., through the marriage of his daughter to James iv., 
 quarrelled with Henry viii., and lost her king by the fatal 
 defeat of Flodden in 1513. Henry vm. was too busy with his 
 relations to the Continent to press his advantage. His aim as 
 regards Scotland was to prevent the French alliance and main- 
 tain an ascendancy at the court of his sister's infant son. The 
 failure of this aim was due largely to his sister, the mother of 
 the king, and to Albany, a Frenchman in all but his name, who 
 threw their influence into the scale in favour of France. The 
 Regency of Albany led in 1523 to the renewal by the Scots 
 of the Border War and the siege of Werk, the failure of which 
 destroyed the prestige of the Regent. 
 
 During the period the history of which has been sketched 
 in outline, France was both on political and educational 
 grounds the natural resort of the Scottish student ambitious 
 of carrying his studies to the highest point and sure of a hos- 
 pitable reception from a nation which had never forgotten the 
 ancient bonds that united Scotland and France. France as it 
 then was is described in the beautiful verses of the great contem- 
 porary Scottish scholar, the pupil of Major, George Buchanan : 
 
 c At tu beata Gallia 
 Salve ! bonarum blanda nutrix artium, 
 Orbem receptans hospitem atque orbi tuas 
 Opes vicissim non avara impertiens, 
 Sermone comis, patria gentium omnium 
 Communis.' 
 
 Its Capital has been painted in a brilliant passage of a great 
 French author of our day, who combined the knowledge of an 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 13 
 
 antiquary and the imagination of a poet, with which we may 
 enliven the prose of a biographic sketch. 
 
 In the fifteenth century, writes Victor Hugo 1 , 'Paris was Paris in the 
 divided into three totally distinct and separate cities, each lo 
 with its own physiognomy, individuality, manners, customs, 
 privileges, and history : the City, the University, and the 
 Ville. The City, which occupied the island, was tlie mother of 
 flie two others, like (forgive the comparison) a little old woman 
 between two handsome strapping daughters. The University 
 crowned the left bank of the Seine. . . . The Ville, the most 
 extensive of the three divisions, stretched along the right bank. 
 The City, properly so called, abounded in churches, the Ville 
 contained the palaces, the University the colleges. The island 
 was under the Bishop, the right bank under the Provost of 
 Merchants, the left under the Rector of the University, the 
 whole under the Provost of Paris, a royal not a municipal 
 office.' Omitting details, let us fix our attention on the Univer- 
 sity, the part of Paris of which Major was a citizen, for foreign 
 students acquired the rights, indeed more than the rights, of 
 citizens, and the Scotch at this time those of nationality. 
 
 'The University brought the eye to a full stop. From the The University 
 one end to the other it was a homogeneous compact whole. 
 Three thousand roofs, whose angular outlines, adhering 
 together, almost all composed of the same geometrical 
 elements, seen from above, presented the appearance of a 
 crystallisation. The forty-two colleges were distributed among 
 them in a sufficiently equal manner. The curious and varied 
 
 1 This bird's-eye view of Paris should be compared with the old plans and 
 maps of the sixteenth century. Zeiller's views were taken in the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, but two show Paris as it was in 1620, and are probably 
 accurate representations of Paris as it was in Major's time. M. Adolphe Betty's 
 'Plan du College de St. Barbe et de ses environs vers 1480' is given in 
 Quicherat's St. Barbe. The clever reconstruction by Mr. II. \Y. Brewer in 
 Rose's Life of Loyola unfortunately places Montaigu College inaccurately. The 
 description by Victor Hugo in the text has necessarily, but unfortunately, re- 
 quired to be condensed. 
 
14 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 summits of these beautiful buildings were the productions of 
 the same art as the simple roofs they overtopped ; in fact they 
 were but a multiplication by the square or cube of the same 
 geometrical figures. Some superb mansions made here and 
 there magnificent inroads among the picturesque garrets of the 
 left bank, the Logis de Never s and de Rouen, which have been 
 swept away; the Hotel of Cluny, which still exists for the 
 consolation of the artist. The Rouen palace had beautiful 
 circular arches. Near Cluny were the baths of Julian. There 
 were, too, many abbeys : the Bernardines, with their three 
 belfries ; St. Genevieve, the square tower of which, still 
 extant, excites regret for the loss of the whole ; the Sorbonne, 
 half college, half monastery, an admirable nave of which 
 still survives : the quadrangular cloister of the Mathurins ; 
 its neighbour, the cloister of St. Benedict ; the Cordeliers, with 
 their three enormous gables side by side; and the Augustines^ 
 graceful steeple. The Colleges, an intermediate link between 
 the cloister and the world, formed the mean in the series of 
 buildings between the mansions and the abbeys, with an 
 austerity full of elegance, a sculpture less gaudy than that of 
 the palaces, less serious than that of the convents. Unfortun- 
 ately scarcely any vestiges are left of edifices in which Gothic 
 art steered with such precision a middle course between 
 luxury and learning. The churches, both numerous and 
 splendid, of every age of architecture, from the circular arch 
 of St. Julian to the pointed ones of St. Severin, overtopped 
 all, and, like an additional harmony in this mass of harmonies, 
 shot up above the slashed gables, the open-work pinnacles and 
 belfries, the airy spires, whose line was a magnificent exaggera- 
 tion of the acute angle of the roofs. The site of the University 
 was hilly. To the south-east the hill of St. Genevieve formed 
 an enormous wen, and it was a curious sight to see the 
 multitude of narrow winding streets now called Le Pays Latin, 
 those clusters of houses, which, scattered in all directions from 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 15 
 
 the summit of that eminence, confusedly covered its sides down 
 to the water's edge, seeming, some of them to be falling down, 
 others to be climbing up again, and all to be holding fast by 
 one another. 1 The more minute geography of the Pays Latin 
 has been learnedly described by M. Quicherat, from whom we 
 learn that the College of Montaigu 1 stood at the angle between site of 
 the Rue St. Etienne des Pres and the Rue des Sept Voies, 
 haying opposite to it on the other side of the latter street the 
 small College de Portet, the Hotel de Marly, the Cemetery of 
 the Poor Students, and the Great Gate of the Abbey of St. 
 Genevieve 2 . At the back of the buildings of Montaigu ran a 
 narrow lane appropriately called ■ La Rue des Chiens \ on the 
 opposite side of which Montaigu possessed two small gardens 
 bordering on the property of its rival, the College of St. Barbe, 
 and the cause of frequent quarrels 3 . 
 
 The Scottish student whose course we are attempting to 
 follow, poring day and night over ponderous folios we now 
 scarcely touch with the tips of our fingers, the commentators 
 on Aristotle and the expounders of the Master of the Sen- 
 tences, had little time to mark the minute features of the 
 scene. Still, he breathed its air, and can scarcely have failed 
 to receive some of the spirit which filled with pride most 
 scholars, from whatever country they came. A few remembered 
 with opposite feelings the hardships of the student. Erasmus 
 was one of these. Buchanan too wrote a poem describing the 
 miserable condition of the teachers of Literae Humaniores in 
 Paris when without a post. But, returning seven years after 
 from Portugal, his pen, which could flatter as well as satirise, 
 celebrated the charms of Paris as those of a beloved mistress, 
 and his return to happy France, the nurse of all good arts. One 
 
 1 The site of Montaigu, of which some fragments still remained in 1861, is 
 now occupied by the Bibliotheque de St. Genevieve. 
 3 Quicherat's Histoire de St. Barbe, p. 17. 
 9 Ibid. 25. 
 
1C LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 of its attractions with which Hugo closes his description cannot 
 have escaped Major's musical ear : — ' Behold at a signal proceed- 
 ing from heaven, for the sun gives it, those thousand churches 
 trembling all at once. You hear solitary tinkles pass from 
 church to church ; then see (for at times the ear too seems 
 endowed with the power of sight) all of a sudden, at the same 
 moment, how there rises from each steeple, as it were a column 
 of sound, a cloud of harmony. At first the vibration of each 
 bell rises straight, pure, separate; then, swelling by degrees, 
 they blend, melt, and amalgamate into a magnificent concert. 
 Say if you know r anything in the world more rich, more dazzling, 
 more gladdening, than this tumult of bells, this furnace of music, 
 these ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes 
 of stone three hundred feet high, than that city which is 
 but one orchestra, this symphony as loud as a tempest/ 
 Contrast of How different must this have been from the capital of Major's 
 
 Paris and . 
 
 Edinburgh. own country, the gray metropolis of the North, whose silence 
 was broken not by harmony but by brawls, with one narrow 
 street from the Castle to the Abbey, the backbone of a 
 skeleton ribbed on either side with vennels, wynds, and closes, 
 which ran on the north to the North Loch and its marshes, 
 on the south to the lower level of the Cowgate, here and there 
 varied by a small church, monastery, or hospital, but only 
 with a collegiate church, St. Giles, for a Cathedral, the plain 
 Tolbooth for a Palace of Justice, and Holy rood, recently 
 built in imitation of a minor French Palace, for its Royal 
 residence, as yet without a college, without mansions, and 
 without walls, and numbering only some four or five thousand x 
 houses, chiefly of wood. Yet, one who viewed the surrounding 
 country from the low but noble hill, named after Arthur, 
 guarding Edinburgh on the east, and let his eye follow the 
 
 1 History, II. vi. p. 82. So the earlier editions of Froissart ; but Buchon 
 says the correct text is 400 or 500. The truth probably lies between these 
 figures. But see footnote \ p. 28. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR IT 
 
 curves of the Forth, with the Law of North Berwick and the 
 Bass as its outlying forts, the sea-ports of Fife studding its 
 northern margin ; on the west the Castle Rock, rising sheer 
 from the North Loch, the woods of the Dean or Den, Drum- 
 sheugh, and Corstorphine Hill ; and on the south the slopes 
 of the Braids succeeded by the Pentland Hills, with Highland 
 mountain tops beyond the Forth closing the horizon, might 
 claim for Edinburgh a natural site not inferior to Paris, fitting 
 it to be the capital of the small country whose scenery it 
 reproduced in miniature — the Loch, the River, and the Sea, 
 the Moor, the Forest, and the Mountain. Greater than any 
 external difference was the contrast between the intellectual 
 barrenness of Edinburgh and Paris, the venerable museum of 
 learning, the busy hive from which old and new ideas were 
 swarming, to settle in all lands. The Scottish student in 
 Paris passed from the schoolroom to the world, from solitary 
 study to the society of colleges, whose number, Major notes, 
 sharpens wits. The poorest became, as if by natural magic, a 
 free citizen of the university, the mother of knowledge and 
 eloquence, of the arts and sciences : the arts which so long had 
 ruled the past; the sciences, yet unconscious of their young- 
 strength, which were to divide the empire of the future. 
 
 Three of these Colleges demand our special attention: Mont- Momaigu 
 
 . College. 
 
 aigii, where Major first taught in aits ; Navarre, where, as well 
 
 as at Montaigu, he lectured on the scholastic philosophy ; and 
 
 the Sorbonne, where he lectured on the scholastic divinity 1 . 
 
 1 ■ The epithet of " last of the Schoolmen " is commonly given to Gabriel Biel, 
 the summarizer of Ockham, who taught in Tubingen, and died in 1491. His 
 title to it is not actually correct, and it might be more fitly borne by Francis 
 Suarez, who died in 161 7. But after the beginning of the fifteenth cenfury 
 scliTJrasticism was divorced from the spirit of the times.' — Article scholasti- 
 cism, Encyclop. Britannica, 9th ed. The truth is, no one scholastic can be 
 called the last. The method or form of philosophy so called died at different 
 dates in different countries. A critic who has done me the favour to read this 
 Introduction maintains it is not dead yet, but still taught in Romanist seminaries. 
 It is sufficient for the present purpose to say that no English or Scottish School- 
 man later than Major has a place in any of the leading histories of philosophy. 
 
 B 
 
18 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 He was destined to be among the last of the schoolmen, the 
 teachers of the old learning by the rigid scholastic discipline 
 and methods. The new light of the revival of classical litera- 
 ture had already dawned. The Renaissance, or new birth, 
 from which on the mother's side the Reformation or new form 
 of creed and of morals was to spring, could not but affect the 
 thoughts and opinions of those who were passing through 
 manhood under its influence. To observe how this influence 
 acted upon Major and his pupils gives the uneventful career of 
 scholars a singular and unexpected interest. 
 
 The College of Montaigu, an old college of the beginning of 
 the fourteenth century, founded by Ascelin, the Seigneur of 
 that name, had fallen so low towards the end of the fifteenth, 
 that it had only eleven shillings of rent for endowment, its 
 buildings in ruins, and, as might be expected, scarcely any 
 students. John Standonk, a native of Mechlin in Brabant, a 
 man of humble origin, saw in its poverty an object for zeal, 
 and an opportunity for a much -needed reform in the Univer- 
 sity. This remarkable man, whom Erasmus, no partial judge, 
 describes as one ' whose temper you could not dislike, and 
 whose qualifications you must covet, who, while he was very 
 poor, was very charitable ', after taking his degrees in arts and 
 theology with distinction, though poverty forced him to read 
 by moonlight in the belfry to save oil, was placed in this 
 college by the Chapter of Notre Dame, its superior, in 1480, 
 became its principal in 1483, and Rector of the University in 
 Standonk's 1^85] He"sdugHt out the titles of its property which had been 
 lost sight of, and secured new endowments, especially from 
 Louis Malet, Sieur de Granville, Admiral of France. The con- 
 stitution he introduced was based on rules of economy and 
 asceticism resembling those of a monastery. He had seen with 
 regret, continues Crevier, the historian of the University, whose 
 narrative we abridge, ' that the bursaries founded for the poor 
 had often been swallowed up by the rich, and determined to 
 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 19 
 
 found a College for the true poor, amongst whom, he remarked, 
 were often to be found elevated spirits and happy natural 
 parts, reduced by misery to a state unworthy of their genius, 
 but who, if cultivated, might become great men and pillars 
 of the Church. With this view, and to preserve the Col- 
 lege from the invasion of the rich, he subjected his students 
 to a hard life.** At first his scholars were sent to the Convent 
 of the Chartreuse to receive, in common with beggars, the 
 bread distributed at its gates. 'All the world knows 1 , he 
 proceeds, ' the frugal nourishment of these youths — bread, 
 beans, eggs, herring, all in small quantity, and no meat. 
 Besides, they had to keep all the Fasts, — that of Lent 
 was kept also in Advent, — and on every Friday, as well as on 
 special occasions. Nothing could be poorer than their dress and 
 beds. They rose at cock-crow, constantly chanted the service 
 of the Church, worked in the kitchen and refectory and 
 cleaned the halls, the chapel, the dormitory, and the stairs. 
 Their superior was called minister or servant of the poor, not 
 by the too proud titles of master or principal. He received in 
 this world only the cost of his living, dress, and of taking his 
 degrees, exclusive of the Doctorate, but a celestial reward in 
 eternity. 1 Richer students had separate rooms, refectory, and 
 chapel. Their fees were devoted to the maintenance of the 
 poor. Remembering his native as well as his adopted 
 country, Standonk instituted similar colleges at Cambrai, 
 Louvain, Mechlin, and Valenciennes, so that the College of 
 Montaigu became the chief of an order. The peculiar dress 
 of its students was a small cape or hood, from which they 
 were called Capetians, a symbol of their poverty, and, like 
 the garb of Charterhouse boys, exposing them to the gibes of 
 wealthier scholars. 
 
 The noble aim of Standonk, like that of the religious Erasmu 
 orders, broke down through being carried to an extreme. ° X 
 Erasmus, a contemporary of Major at Montaigu, lias left 
 
20 LIFE OF JOHiN MAJOR 
 
 a biting satire on it in his colloquy — of Ichthyophagia — 
 between a Salt-fishmonger and a Butcher, who complains of 
 want of custom from a college which ate no meat. 
 
 'About thirty years ago', says the Fishmonger, 'I lived 
 at the college called Vinegar College [i.e. Moiis Acctus]? a 
 
 pun on Mons Acutus, or Montaigu. The Butcher. 'That's 
 
 indeed a name of wisdom. Did a Salt-fishmonger live in that 
 sour college ? No wonder he is so acute a student in divinity, 
 for I hear the very walls speak divinity.' — The Fishmonger. 
 1 Yes, but as for me I brought nothing out of it, but 
 my body infected with the worst diseases, and the largest 
 quantity of the smallest animals. . . . What with lying hard, 
 bad diet, late and hard studies, within one year, of many young 
 men of a good genius some were killed, others driven mad, 
 others became lepers, some of whom I knew very well, 
 and, in short, not one but was in danger of his life. 
 Was not this cruelty against our neighbours ? Neither was 
 this enough, but, adding a cowl and hood, he took away the 
 eating of flesh."' More follows to the same purpose. It is 
 easy to see the exaggeration, but Erasmus, too wise to rest in 
 Ascetic exaggeration, closes with the remark : ' Nor do I mention these 
 
 discipline. , 
 
 things because I have any ill will to the college, but I thought 
 it worth while to give this warning lest human severity should 
 mar inexperienced and tender youth under the pretence of 
 religion. If I could but see that those that put on a cowl 
 put off naughtiness I should exhort everybody to wear one. 
 Besides, the spirit of vigorous youths is not to be cowed to 
 this sort of life, but the mind is rather to be educated to 
 piety.' Not less sensible are the remarks of Crevier, who 
 condemned Erasmus for want of moderation in his censures. 
 4 The health of young men requires to be attended to, and it is 
 to attack it by two batteries to fatigue the spirit by study and 
 the body by a too severe regimen. The discipline of Standonk 
 has not been able to maintain itself. Besides mitigations 
 
 
encomium on 
 gu. 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 21 
 
 introduced by usage, it had to be softened by express rules. 1 
 Yet it was still described by a German artist, who visited Paris 
 in 1654, as 'a stately college in which ill-bred boys [ungerathene 
 Kinder] are treated as if in a House of Correction. We were 
 not allowed to visit it with our sword, supposing it might be 
 used to set them free n . 
 
 Erasmus had the bodily infirmity which, as in a great chief 
 of our literature lately lost, too often accompanies intellectual 
 power. He said of himself he had a Protestant stomach, but 
 a Catholic soul. A Protestant who has rarely dined in his life 
 without meat can scarcely realise what a bad fish and vegetable 
 diet, broken only by frequent total fasts, must have been. 
 Major, who probably heard the taunts of Erasmus before they Major's 
 found a place in in his Colloquies, takes frequent occasion to Montai 
 refer to Montaigu College in a different spirit, calling it * an 
 illustrious museum" 1 , 'a frugal, but not ignoble house 1 , 'the 
 nurse of his studies, never to be named without reverence 1 . 
 Yet he seems himself to have suffered from the hard life, 
 for he mentions, in the dedicati on of the Parva LogkaUa, a 
 fever which had nearly cost him his life. He had doubtless 
 seen many of his contemporaries and pupils, besides David 
 Cranstoun, carried to the Graveyard of Poor Students, which 
 lay opposite the College gate. 
 
 To the Scottish father in the end of the fifteenth century, 
 inquiring to what college shall I send my son, or to the youth 
 left to shift for himself with scanty purse, these hardships 
 were too distant to be thought of. The College of Montaigu Scottish 
 offered the double attraction of economy and fame. Hither, Montaigu. 
 besides many forgotten names, came, during the time of Major's 
 connection with it, George Dmulas from Lothian, a learned 
 Greek and Latin scholar, afterwards Preceptor of the Knights 
 of St. John in Scotland ; Hector Boece, the historian, from 
 Dundee, who praises Standonk as an exemplar of all the virtues ; 
 
 1 Topographia Galluc, by Martin Zciller ; Frankfort, 1655. 
 
N 
 
 22 LIFE 6F JOHN MAJOR 
 
 and three other Angus men : Patrick Panther, who became 
 secretary to James rv., writer of most of the Epistolae Regum 
 Scotorum in James iv.'s and part of James v.'s reign ; Walter 
 Ogilvy, celebrated for his eloquent style, and William Hay, 
 schoolfellow of Boece at Dundee, afterwards his colleague and 
 successor in the King^s College of Aberdeen l . Here too were 
 four countrymen of Major from East Lothian : George Hep- 
 burn 2 , of the house of Hailes, Abbot of Arbroath, afterwards 
 Bishop of the Isles, who fell at Flodden ; Robert Walterson 3 , a 
 co-regent ; David Cranstoun 4 and Ninian Hume, his pupils. 
 Cranstoun dying young, but already distinguished, left his 
 property to the College ; the other was one of Major's favourite 
 students. In Paris, possibly at Montaigu, as we learn for the 
 first time from one of Major's prefaces, at the same period 
 studied Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, whose chequered 
 ecclesiastical and brilliant literary career gained him a prominent 
 place in the history as well as the literature of Scotland ; and 
 Robert Cockburn, a Haddington man, afterwards Bishop of 
 Ross 5 , and Gavin Dunbar 6 , afterwards Archbishop of Glasgow, 
 whose studies in philosophy at Paris, and in the civil and canon 
 law at Angers, overlooked by his biographers, are commemo- 
 rated in Major's dedication of his Commentary on St. Luke. 
 
 The number of Scottish students at Paris during the time of 
 Major's residence must have been very considerable, though 
 it is impossible to give an exact estimate. The German 
 Nation, the name substituted for the English Nation in 1378, 
 after the withdrawal of the English, had been originally 
 divided into three tribes : Germania Superior, Germania 
 
 1 Hector Boece : Abcrdonensium Episcoporum Vitae, p. 6o. 
 
 2 Uncle of first Earl of Bothwell. See Keith : Scottish Bishops, p. 174. 
 
 3 Provost of Bothanis and Rector of Petcokkis, grants a charter of lands in 
 Haddington to support a chaplain at the church of the Holy Trinity at Had- 
 dington. — Great Seal Reg., 8th April 1539, No. 1902. 
 
 4 Michel : Les Ecossais en France, ii. p. 324. See Appendix I. p. 412 : Biblio- 
 graphy of D. Cranstoun. 
 
 5 Bishop 1508-21. — Keith, p. 42. 6 Archbishop 1524-47.— Keith, p. 521. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 23 
 
 Inferior, and Scotia, which included the Irish and the few 
 English who remained, continued to be the name of the 
 third till 1528, when the tribes were reduced to two : the 
 Continent ales and the Insulani, perhaps a concession to the 
 dislike of the English to be classed under Scotia when the 
 relations between England and France had somewhat improved. 
 Besides the more celebrated of his countrymen already men- 
 tioned, we find references in Major's prefaces to Hugo Spens, his other Scots- 
 predecessor as Principal of St. Salvator's ; GavinJLogy, Rector 
 of St. Leonard's ; John Forman, Precentor of Glasgow 1 , a kins- 
 man of the archbishop of that name ; Peter Chaplain 2 , Rector 
 of Dunino, and Peter Sandilands 3 , Rector of Cakler ; Robert 
 Caubraith 4 , George Turnbull 5 , friends of Ninian Hume, — so, 
 probably, like him, Lothian men ; George Lockhart 6 from Ayr- 
 shire; Robert Bannerman, Thomas Ramsay 7 , William Guynd, 
 and John Annand. The list might be much enlarged from the 
 Accounts of the German Nation from 1494 to 1530, fortunately 
 preserved in the archives of the University, and still extant in 
 the library of the Sorbonne 8 . In the year 1494, when Major 
 
 1 Protocol Book of Cuthbert Simon, Grampian Chid, pp. 285, 478, 480, 484, 
 485, 486. 
 
 2 Canon of St. Salvator and Rector of Dunino. — Great Seal Reg. 1513-46, 
 Index, p. 803 ; ibidem, Nos. 354, 2168, 2605. 
 
 3 Hector Boece in Abcrdonensittm Episcoporitm Vitae, p. 58, mentions amongst 
 the Professors at St. Andrews, Wilhelmum Guyndum, Johannem Annandiae, 
 ' viros spectatae doctrinae qui tametsi hactenus magisterii in theologio renuerunt 
 fastigium de se modestius sentientes doctoribus tamen eos nemo dixerit eruditione 
 infcriores.' Annand was the first Professor in Arts (in re literaria) of St. 
 Leonard's, id. p. 59. 
 
 4 Robert Caubraith, a pupil of Major, and author of several works on Logic, 
 described by Prantl, iv. p. 257, may perhaps be Robert Galbraith, Rector of 
 Spot in 1534. — Great Seal Reg., No. 1332. 
 
 5 George Turnbull may perhaps be the Rector of Largo of that name. — Great 
 Seal Reg. 1517, No. 1355. 
 
 6 George Lockhart, a pupil of Major, wrote several works on Logic, described 
 in the Bibliographical Appendix, infra, p. 414. 
 
 7 Canon of St. Salvator, and Rector of Kemback 1517. — Great Seal Reg., 
 No. 175. 
 
 8 Charles Jourdain's Excursions Historiques d travers le Moycn Age, 1888 : 
 1 Un Compte de la Nation d'Allemagnc au xv e siecle.' 
 
24 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 passed as licentiate, of twenty-nine fellow-graduates eleven were 
 Scotchmen, besides eight bachelors. His election as Quaestor 
 or Receiver of this Nation in 1501 is proof that he possessed 
 the confidence of his fellow-students, and the passages from 
 the Prefaces to his works printed in the Appendix show that 
 many of them, not only his own compatriots, but Frenchmen, 
 Belgians, and Spaniards, were his warm admirers and personal 
 friends. Seldom has the contemporary fame of a Professor 
 risen higher or spread wider. 
 The value of Of his favourite and most distinguished pupil Daviol-Crans- 
 
 oatineal diet. . . 
 
 toun Major tells a significant anecdote*. When in his first 
 course of theology, two fellow-students, Jacobus Almain of 
 Sens 2 and Peter of Brussels 3 , of the order of Friar Preachers, 
 twitted him in the court of the Sorbonne, on the day of the 
 divinity lecture, before his comrades, that the commons in 
 Scotland eat oatmeal, as they had heard from a friar who had 
 travelled there. They wished, says Major, to try a man whose 
 quick temper they knew, by this jest which was really 
 honourable to his country ; but he attempted to deny it as a 
 discredit. We understand, indeed, he adds, * that a French- 
 man coming from Britain brought home with him some of these 
 cakes [panes] as curiosities [monstra]\ He then describes with 
 singular accuracy and evident pride the mode of making them, 
 and recals Froissart's 4 statement that the Scotch, both nobles 
 and commons, used them in their campaigns, as if to say (for 
 he leaves deductions to his readers), — ' Let Frenchmen and 
 
 1 Hist. i. ii. p. io. 
 
 2 Almain's works on Logic, described by Prantl, iv. p. 238, appear to be lost, 
 but his Theological Dissertation against Cardinal Caietan, and in favour of the 
 authority of Councils as superior to that of the Pope, is preserved, p. lviii. 
 
 3 Peter of Brussels wrote Quaestiones on the Organon of Aristotle, a Com- 
 mentary on Peter the Spaniard, and Quodlibeta. — Prantl, iv. p. 275. He died 
 1511. On the title-page of his Quaestiones, published after his death in 1514, 
 he is described as ' a most strenuous defender and interpreter of Thomas Aquinas \ 
 He was regarded as a lost sheep recovered for the fold of the Thomists. 
 
 4 Froissart, ii. 19. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 85 
 
 Englishmen laugh, my countrymen have won battles on this 
 fare 1 . Froissart might almost have been the Frenchman who 
 brought home the oatcakes, so keenly does he seem to have been 
 struck by the poverty of the Scots. 4 When the barownes and 
 knightes of Fraunce, who were wonte to fynde fayre hostelryes, 
 halles hanged, and goodly castelles, and softe beddes to reste 
 in, sawe themselfes in that necessite, they began to smyle, and 
 said to the admyrall, Sir, what pleasure hath brought vs 
 hyder ? we neuer knewe what pouertie ment tyll nowe : we 
 fynde nowe the old sayinge of our fathers and mothers true, 
 whane they wolde saye, Go your waye, and ye lyue long, ye 
 shall fynde harde and poore beddes, whiche nowe we fynde ; 
 therfore lette vs go oure voyage that we be come for ; lette vs 
 ryde into Englade ; the longe leivyenge here in Scotlande is to 
 vs nother honourable nor profytable.' 
 
 To the youth of such a country the food of the College of 
 Montaigu would not seem so poor as to Erasmus, a native of 
 wealthy Rotterdam. 
 
 In 1499 Standonk, the second founder of Montaigu, was 
 banished from Paris. He had quarrelled with Louis xn. as to 
 the privileges of the students of the university, of which he was 
 so strenuous an advocate that he advised a cessation of all 
 studies, and even of the services in the churches, if they were 
 infringed. He had touched the king in a still more delicate 
 point, the divorce of Louis from Jane of France, the daughter 
 of Louis xi., and his marriage to Anne of Brittany, widow of 
 Charles viil, his half-brother. It was very likely in conse- Major lectures 
 quence of this banishment of Standonk, and the royal dis- college, 
 pleasure with the College of Montaigu, that Major became 
 affiliated to the College of Navarre, from which he got the 
 income of a fellowship 1 and the post of theological professor, 
 but he continued to act as regent in Montaigu, where he~had 
 taken his degree in arts, which entitled him to teach, and did 
 1 Launoi : Historia, p. 598. 
 
2G 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 His Spanish 
 students. 
 
 * 
 
 not avail himself of his right to migrate to Navarre. The 
 substance of his lectures on Logic, printed before in separate 
 parts, was collected in 1508 in one volume, printed at Lyons, 
 and dedicated to his pupil Ninian Hume. In the dedication 
 lie mentions that he had been urged by Louis Coronel, his 
 brother Antony 1 , and Gaspar Lax 2 , three Spanish students, to 
 print his commentaries on the Summulae of their countryman, 
 Peter the Spaniard. They pleaded that as he had given some 
 of his lectures on logic to his countryman David Cranstoun, 
 James Almain of Sens, Peter Crockaert of Brussels, and Robert 
 Senalis of Paris 3 , they had equal reason to ask for a similar 
 favour. But he urges reasons on the other side (for even the 
 preface of a schoolman must be argumentative): his own inertia, 
 the severe criticism of works of living authors, and his change 
 of vocation to that of the study of the Sentences of Peter 
 Lombard. He had always been willing to lecture slowly, that 
 whoever wished might commit his lectures to writing. ' It is 
 natural, however", he continues, 'that I should publish at 
 large and distinctly what they wrote down from memory after 
 dinner and supper. If I had imagined my lectures would have 
 circulated so widely, I would have bestowed greater pains on 
 them. But I did not know how to recall them, and since they 
 were much sought after at the booksellers', I should at least 
 have ploughed my own ground so far as my poor abilities 
 allowed. It is easy', he concludes, ' to get angry. Unlearned 
 as well as learned write poems everywhere. I dedicate these 
 lectures to you both on account of your noble birth and your 
 diligence in the knotty points of dialectic — knowing you 
 will accept this little book, though unworthy of you, out of 
 regard for the good-will of the author. Robert Walterson of 
 
 i The author of many Logical Treatises. — Prantl, iv. p. 53. 
 
 2 Gaspar Lax, of Aragon, also a writer on Logic. — Prantl, iv. p. 255. 
 
 3 The Exponibilia, his first printed work in Paris, 1503 (Bibliography, No. 1), 
 the Commentaries on Peter the Spaniard at Lyons in 1505 (No. 2); other 
 Logical Tracts at Paris in 1506 (No. 5). 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 27 
 
 Haddington, a co-regent with me in Montaigu, and our friend 
 John Zacharias, beg to be remembered to you. Farewell.' 
 
 A letter from Louis Coronel 1 to his brother Antony is Louis Coroners 
 annexed, written in the enthusiastic vein of a young disciple Ma j or> 
 overflowing with praise of the learning of Paris, ' whose 
 streams flow to the remotest nations, and whose purest water 
 springs from Mons Acutus, " the Hill of God", a rich mountain 
 in which it pleaseth him to dwell, for the words of the Psalmist 
 may without absurdity be applied to it — whose founder was 
 Standonk, whom God has taken to himself 2 , and where our 
 master, John Major, lectured, whose learning will commend 
 him not only to posterity but to eternity \ His small part 
 has been, he modestly says, to revise the press and add a table 
 of contents, which he dedicates to his brother in studies as 
 in kin. In similar, even more high-flown, language Robert 
 Senalis compared Montaigu to Parnassus, the Mons Sacer of 
 Ovid, ' changing Sacer into Acer, in spite of the false quantity, 
 to correspond to the French name of Montaigu ', the philosophy 
 taught there to the fountain of Hippocrene — 
 
 1 Fons nitet in medio vitreis argenteus undis 
 Gregorius celeri quern pede ferit equus — 
 
 and Major himself to ' the Gregorian horse Pegasus', for 'its 
 Pegasus \ he says, ' is that incomparable master in Arts and 
 Philosophy, my Professor, whom I cannot praise as much as he 
 deserves, John Major, who flies on his own wings higher than 
 the clouds would carry him, till he passes above all spirits in 
 sublimity \ 3 
 
 The treatise or lectures of Major on Logic are in the style Majors 
 which might be almost called stereotyped of mediaeval scholas- Logic!* 
 
 1 Louis Coronel of Segovia was less famous than his brother Antony, who 
 wrote several works on Logic in which he followed Major. — Prantl, iv. 252. 
 Both brothers were pupils of Major. Antony edited and concluded Major's 
 Libri Consequentiantm ; see p. 28. 
 
 2 Standonk died 1501. 
 
 3 ' Robert] Senalis Oratio ' : Paris, 15 10. 
 
28 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 tics. He commences with the special proposition or thesis 
 ' Whether complex terms should be used M ,asa sort of prelude 
 or introduction, and then comments in short almost shorthand 
 tracts on various points of Logic. This is followed by two 
 boo^s on Terms and a tractate on the Liber Summularum of 
 Petrus Hispanus 2 , which forms the chief part of the book. 
 Discussions are appended on the Predicables with the tree of 
 Porphyry ; on the Predicaments ; on Syllogisms ; on Places [de 
 Locis] ; on Fallacies ; on matters which can be explained and 
 those which are insoluble ; a small tract entitled, after the 
 example of Aristotle, Libri Posteriores; and another, Libri Con- 
 sequentiarum, begun by Major but concluded by Antony Coronel. 
 In the same volume is continued a treatise on Parva Logicalia, 
 probably a separate course of lectures, with a fresh dedication 
 to Ninian Hume. The whole is concluded with a discussion 
 of a proposition or thesis 'On the Infinite"', and one of the 
 Dialogues of which Major, like other Schoolmen, was so fond, 
 entitled 'Trilogus inter duos logicos et magistrum\ 
 College of The College_ofJS[ayarre which hospitably adopted the cele- 
 
 brated Scottish Regent was in all respects a contrast to 
 Montaigu. A Royal College founded in 1305 by Jeanne of 
 Navarre, the wife of Philip the Fair, it had continued to 
 receive endowments from sovereigns and nobles, and was the 
 richest, perhaps the only very rich, college in a university where 
 poverty, although not the extreme poverty of Montaigu, was 
 the rule. It had twenty bursars in grammar, thirty in logic, and 
 twenty in divinity, and secured the ablest teachers. Its church 
 was used by the French Nation and for university sermons, which 
 gave it a certain precedence. It had the custody of the univer- 
 sity archives and a splendid library. A reform of the fifteenth 
 
 1 De complexo signijicabili. A fuller list of the contents of Major's Logical 
 Lectures is given in the Bibliography, and an explanation of some of the terms 
 used, in Appendix to Life, II. p. 94. 
 
 2 Peter the Spaniard, who became Pope John XXI., and whose Summula were 
 the text-book of Logic as the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, Bishop of Paris, 
 were of Divinity. 
 
 Navarre. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 29 
 
 century made it a college * de plein exercice 1 , with a full curri- 
 culum in Arts, in which Logic as well as Grammar and Rhetoric 
 were taught. It had even retained two courses in Theology, which 
 the Sorbonne tried to absorb to the exclusion of other colleges. 
 But its chief fame was due to an illustrious succession of students 
 and doctors. Launoi, himself a fellow in the seventeenth century, 
 wrote an elaborate and admirable history of Navarre, which |^?^. s s of 
 includes lives of ' its host of celebrated men \ Room is still Navarre. 
 found in the Annals of Learning in the fourteenth century for 
 Nicholas Oresm e. one of its masters, a political economist, a 
 Greek scholar, and a mathematician, and Nicholas Clemangis, 
 the theologian ; in the fifteenth, for Pet er D'A illy, bishop of 
 Cambray, and John Gerson, ' the most Christian Doctor 1 , and 
 in the sixteenth, for Budaeus, the friend and rival of Erasmus 
 in the revival of the study of the classical languages. To 
 Launoi's work we owe the most authentic record of Major's 
 career in Paris, for Major also was deemed one of the chief 
 luminaries of Navarre. D'Ailly and Gerson, successively Chan- 
 cellors of the L T niversity as well as Principals of Navarre, led the 
 famous movement for reform within the church which asserted 
 itself in the beginning of the fifteenth century, at the Councils of 
 Pisa (1409) and Constance (1414-18). They were the principal 
 authors or authorities in favour of the supremacy of General 
 Councils over the Pope, the early champions of the Gallican 
 Liberties, who after so many gallant struggles were only 
 finally defeated by the Ultramontane doctrine of Papal Infalli- 
 bility established as de jide by the Vatican Council of the 
 present century. Colleges like nations have traditions, and 
 the connection of Major with Navarre, where Gerson's name still 
 exercised great influence, favoured his adoption of the Gallican 
 position that the Pope was not the ultimate authority when 
 opposed by a General Council. His views on this point, 
 carried to lengths from which Major himself would have 
 shrunk, by his pupils Knox and Buchanan, form a link in the 
 chain of opinion which produced the Reformation. 
 
30 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Navarre sup- 
 ports Gallican 
 doctrines. 
 
 \ 
 
 A special opportunity arose during Major's residence in Paris 
 of reasserting Gallican doctrines. 
 
 The policy which led Charles vin. and Louis xn. to claim 
 parts of Italy, and to assert their claim by the sword, brought 
 the latter monarch into conflict with Julius il, the strenuous 
 maintainor of the temporal rights and spiritual supremacy of 
 the Papacy. In the course of this conflict Louis tried the 
 bold stroke of calling a Council to overrule the Pope. The 
 Council of Pisa met in 1511, was adjourned to Milan and 
 finally to Lyons, but owing to the failure of Louis's Italian 
 campaign accomplished nothing. During its sittings Cardinal 
 Thomas Cajetan published a book on the papal side, impugn- 
 ing its authority, and Louis applied to the University of 
 Paris to answer it. The task was intrusted to James Almain, 
 a young Master of Arts and member of the College of 
 Navarre, one of Major's pupils. This Liber de Auctoritate 
 Ecclesice et Conciliorum adversum Thomam Caietanum has 
 been sometimes credited to Major as joint author, but 
 Launoi, our best authority, ignores this. Almain probably 
 sought his advice, and Major we may be certain was present 
 in the crowded auditory of approving theologians when it 
 was publicly read at Paris. The treatise of Almain supported 
 views quite in accordance with the teaching of his master. 
 In the later edition of the works of Gerson 1 there is inserted 
 an appendix ' Doctoris Majoris Doctoris Parisiensis Disputa- 
 tiones de Statu ac Potestate Ecclesise excerptae ad verbum ex 
 ejusdem Commentariis in Librum Quartum Sententiarum \ 
 This appendix contains arguments proving (1) That the polity 
 of the church is monarchical or constitutional (as we now say) 
 as distinguished from absolute ; (2) That Bishops and Parish 
 Priests were both directly instituted by Christ (a step in the 
 direction of Presbyterian equality); and (3) That the Pope 
 has not the power of the sword over Christian Kings and 
 
 1 Opera Gersoni\ Antw. ed. 1760, vol. ii. pp. 1121, 1131, 1145. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 31 
 
 Princes; also Disputations on the Authority of the Council 
 over the Pope and of the Power of the Pope in Temporal 
 Affairs. These latter disputations consist of extracts from 
 Major's later work, 'A Commentary on Matthew", and show 
 that he gave a wide scope to the idea of a commentary in order 
 to introduce opinions he desired to promulgate. 
 
 In JJ505-6 Major graduated as Doctor in Theology, and as 1505-6 Major 
 by a rule of the College of Navarre Professors in Arts were Theology. 
 obliged to leave off lecturing in that Faculty after attaining 
 this degree, then or soon after he transferred his services 
 to the Theological Faculty, and, still living in Montaigu, 
 commenced to lecture in. the Sorbonne on the Sentences of 
 Peter Lombard, the recognised text- book of the theological 
 school. 
 
 The Sorbonne had different traditions from Navarre, and The Sorbonne. 
 was the head and centre of Roman orthodoxy. It is 
 perhaps not altogether fanciful to see in the balancing 
 character of his mind some traces of the influence of 
 schools which represented opposite tendencies — Reform and 
 Conservatism, Independence and Authority. A more ancient 
 foundation of the middle of the thirteenth century, the 
 Sorbonne had been instituted and organised by Robert de 
 Sorbonne, chaplain of St. Louis, as a college for secular priests 
 and the cultivation of theology. Its endowments and its num- 
 bers were small. It had only thirty fellows (socii) and com- 
 moners (hospites), the former always in orders and bachelors 
 and doctors in theology, the latter, bachelors of the same 
 faculty. But the small numbers and the strictness of the 
 rules as to election of fellows gave the Doctors of the Sor- 
 bonne a distinction, and in process of time — especially at epochs 
 when doctrinal questions became prominent — an authority, 
 which led to their being recognised as a necessary constituent 
 part of the divinity faculty, and to the gradual suppression 
 of theological teaching in other colleges. The influence of 
 
1 
 
 32 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 the Sorbonne, which became as it were a Divinity Hall, was 
 exercised against the new light shed upon theology by the 
 study of the Scriptures in the original languages and affords a 
 warning to those who would exile theology from the Univer- 
 sities. Before Major became one of the Doctors they had 
 condemned the study of Greek and Hebrew as adverse to 
 theology. Shortly a fte r he returned to Scotland they set the 
 example (immediately followed by Oxford and Cambridge) of 
 burning the works of Luther. This act was the occasion of a 
 violent tract by the mild Melanchthon, — * A Defence of Martin 
 Luther against the furious decree of the Parisian Theolo- 
 gasters *, in which Major came in for a share of the invective. 
 ' 1 have seen ', he says, ' the commentaries on Peter Lombard 
 by John Major, a man, I am told, now thejmnce of the Paris 
 Meters. What waggon-loads of trifles ! What pages he 
 fills with dispute whether horsemanship requires a horse, 
 whether the sea was salt when God made it, not to speak of 
 the many lies he has written about the freedom of the will, 
 not only in the teeth of the Scriptures, but of all the school- 
 men. If he is a specimen of the Paris Doctors, no wonder 
 they are little favourable to Luther." 1 
 Sorbonnic To the Sorbonne, besides graver defects of the scholastic 
 
 theology, Major is said to have owed his singularly cramped 
 Latin. A Sorbonnic style was a nickname for the style 
 opposed to the easier and better form of composition which 
 the study of the ancient classics and the use of the vulgar 
 tongues introduced. YetLatin at best was now an old-fashioned 
 garb, worn with grace by scholars like Erasmus, Buchanan, 
 Scaliger, but to inferior genius or the ordinary man a rigid 
 uniform which constrained the free play of the mind. Every 
 one must regret that Majors like Buchanan^ history was not 
 written, as Bellenden's translation of Boece was, in the dialect 
 of their native country, which both knew so well. They might 
 1 Melanchthonii Opera, i. p. 398. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Scotland, 1515. 
 
 possibly have preserved for a time Scottish prose, as Dunbar 
 and Douglas preserved Scottish poetry, to the enrichment of 
 the future language and literature of Britain. 
 
 Four years after his theological degree an attempt was made 
 by his friend Gavin Douglas to recall Major to Scotland 1 . In 
 1509 a precept passed the Privy Seal at the instance of 
 Douglas for his presentation to the office of Treasurer of the 
 Chapel Royal, then vacant. But for some reason, probably 
 Major's unwillingness to quit the duties of a teacher, which he 
 preferred to those of ecclesiastical office, the project fell 
 through. It would appear, however, from a passage in his 
 Commentary on the Fourth Book of the Sentences, that Major 
 did revisit Scotland in 1515. The passage referred to first Major visits 
 appears in the edition of 1519 2 , and in it he states that when 
 he had been at home four years before and visited the M onaste ry 
 of Melrose, he was told of a frequent custom of the Abbots to 
 let their rich pastures with the sheep to tenants on condition 
 that they should be liable for loss of the stock — in other words, 
 under the contract known in Scottish law as a Bowing Con- 
 tract 3 . He adds that in answer to repeated inquiries he was 
 told this custom had led to the pauperisation of the tenants or 
 sheep-masters, who had formerly lived like wealthy patriarchs. 
 It is enough, he concludes, to show the iniquity of such con- 
 tracts. The passage is curious as evidence how keenly the 
 Doctor of Theology still watched the rural pursuits in which 
 he had probably spent his boyhood. It is a warning also, in 
 the meagreness of our information as to the details of his life, 
 against the assumption that he may not have more than once 
 returned to Scotland during his Paris residence. It was but 
 a short voyage of about a week, with favourable weather, from 
 
 1 Memoir of Gavin Douglas, by John Small, Librarian of the University of 
 Edinburgh, prefixed to edition of his works. 
 
 2 Dist. xv., Qu. 46, fob clxiii. 
 * See Hunter, Landlord and Tenant, i. 344. This anomalous form of Lease is 
 
 now confined to dairy farms, and as to its local limits. — Kankinc, Leases, p. 255. 
 
 \^ 
 
 / 
 
34 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Theological 
 Studies. Peter 
 Lombard. 
 
 n 
 
 Calais or Dieppe to the English or Scottish east coast ports, yet 
 had it not been for this solitary and casual reference, we should 
 not have known that Major ever came back to Scotland till his 
 return in 1518, the occasion of which will be noticed presently. 
 
 His first published work on theology was his Commentary on 
 the 4ith Book of Peter the LombarcTs Sentences, issued in 1509. 
 This was followed by his Commentary on the First and Second 
 Books in 1510, and on the Third in 1517. The popularity of 
 these Commentaries was shown by new editions of the Fourth 
 Book in 1512, 1516, 1519, and 1521, of the First in 1519 and 
 1530, of the Second in 1519 and 1528, and of the Third in 1528. 
 
 Nor was the scholastic and philosophical activity of Major 
 confined to the publication of his own works. He edited in 
 1505, along with a Spaniard, Magister Ortiz 1 , the Medulla, or 
 Essence of Logic, by Jerome Pardus 2 ; in 1510 a short tract of 
 Buridan 3 ; in 1512 the epitome, by Adam Godham 4 , of the four 
 Books of the Sentences, as abridged by Henry Van Ojta 5 , a 
 Viennese doctor of the end of the 14th century ; and in 1517 
 he suggested to two of his pupils and superintended the first 
 issue of the Report at a Parisiensia of his famous countryman 6 
 John Duns Scotus. Ockham was the pupil of Duns Scotus. 
 Buridan and Godham were pupils of Ockham 7 . Three cer- 
 
 1 Ortiz, at first an opponent in Paris, afterwards a patron in Spain, of Ignatius 
 Loyola, was one of Charles v.'s agents in Rome in the case of Queeen Katharine. 
 The biographer of Ignatius states that when Ortiz broke down under the strain 
 of the spiritual exercises at Monte Cassino, St. Ignatius, to cheer his friend, 
 danced for him the old national dance of the Basques. It cheered him so that 
 he was roused from his stupor and finished his exercises. — Stewart Rose, Ignatius 
 Loyola, p. 123. Many of his despatches from Rome, with reference to the 
 Divorce, are in the Calendars of State Papers, Rolls Series. He is called by 
 Mr. Froude ' a bitter Catholic theologian, with the qualities of his profession.' — 
 The Divorce, p. 159. 
 
 2 The contents of the Medulla are described by Prantl, iv. p. 246. 
 
 3 John Buridan {ob. c. 1358), a voluminous writer on Logic and Metaphysics, 
 whose works are described by Prantl, iv. p. 14. 
 
 4 See his Life in Diet, of Nat. Biography. 
 
 5 A Viennese writer on Theology as well as Logic {ob. 1397). — Prantl, iv. p. 103. 
 c History, iv. xvi. p. 207. 7 History, iv. xxi. p. 230. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR ^ 
 
 tainly, perhaps all, of these writers were Franciscans. Duns 
 Scotus was the founder of the school which, taking his name, 
 separated itself from the hitherto orthodox scholastic doctrine 
 of Thomas Aquinas 1 . Ockham was the founder of the still Ma i or incli 1 nPS 
 
 1 to Nominalism, 
 
 more radical revolt of the Nominalists against the Realists 2 — 
 and in this Godham 3 and Buridan 4 followed him. It eventually 
 led, according to Haureau, to the dissolution of the Scholastic 
 Philosophy 5 . While Major is careful not to identify his own 
 opinions with any of these authors, it is impossible to overlook 
 the fact that he chose their writings for republication. 
 
 In the singular conclusion of his life of Adam Godham, 
 now for the first time reprinted 6 , Major assigns the first place 
 amongst the learned men of Britain to the Venerable Bede, 
 the second to Alexander Hales, but he adds Ockham and 
 Godham would have contended for it were not Hales so much 
 their senior. These two he pronounces equal, and contrasts 
 them in a passage which is a sample of his style and criticism 
 
 1 Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus were both Realists. But Duns set the 
 first great example of a breach in the unity of scholastic doctrine, so that 
 Schwegler {History of Philosophy, Hutchison Stirling's translation, p. 145), even 
 says : ' The whole foundation of scholastic metaphysics was abandoned the 
 moment Duns Scotus transferred the problem of Theology to the practical sphere. 
 With the separation of theory and practice, and still more with the separation in 
 Nominalism of thought and thing, philosophy became divided from theology, 
 reason from faith.' 
 
 2 He is classed by the writer who has most exhaustively examined his writings 
 as one of the Moderns, or of the school of Scotist Terminists. See Appendix to 
 the Life, No. II. 
 
 :; ( iot^iam, a somewhat obscure schoolman, whose name was sometimes spelt 
 Woodhaxn, is rated higher by Major than by the veterans of philosophy. He 
 attended Ockham's lectures at Oxford, and died, 1358, at Norwich, where he was 
 a member of the Franciscan Convent, or at Bubwell, near Bury. — Diet, of Nat. 
 Biography 1 s.v. goddam ; Prantl, ii. p. 6. 
 
 4 John Buridan, who died shortly after Goddam, was a much more decided 
 follower of their common master Ockham, and expressly declared the distinction 
 between Metaphysics and Theology to be that the former recognised only what 
 ci add be proved by reason, while the latter proceeded from certain dogmatic 
 principles which it accepted without evidence, and reasoned from them — Prantl, 
 iv. p. 15. Buridan is perhaps now chiefly remembered by the fallacy of the 
 Asinus Buridani, though the Ass is not to be found in his writings. 
 
 5 Philosophic Scholastiquc. 6 Appendix n. p. 431. 
 
3G LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 at their best. ' Ockham and God ham are equals in logic and 
 in either kind of philosophy (Ethics and Metaphysics?). Ock- 
 ham in commenting on the Sentences is wordy and diffuse, 
 Godham is concise and firm ; if OckhanVs dialectic (dialogus) 
 did not stand in the way, the younger writer would carry off 
 the palm. Ockham's intellect was sublime and daring, God- 
 ham's noble and solid. The one with knitted brow, lowered 
 eyebrows, and flashing eyes, as a warrior from youth, disputes 
 with gravity. The other, with calm brow and raised eyebrows, 
 laughingly pleases every one, and resolves everything (diluit 
 omnia), so that I prefer neither. 1 
 
 This balancing, hesitating, and inconclusive judgment is 
 very characteristic of Major's intellect. Though he is positive 
 enough in his opinions on individual points, and in resting 
 finally on orthodox conclusions, many of his arguments were, 
 it would be wrong to say sceptical 1 , but as little dogmatic as 
 was possible in a schoolman. It is also deserving of note that 
 he praises ' the Dialogus of Ockham ', for that work is described 
 in his History as ' treating of many things concerning the Pope, 
 and the Emperor, laying down nothing definitely, but leaving 
 everything to the judgment of his audience 1 . This too was 
 Major's method when he came to deal with ticklish points as 
 to the Pope's authority. '• But if Major supposed he really left 
 the question of the Pope's authority where he found it, he 
 deceived himself. The tendency of his thoughts could not be 
 concealed, and his doubts and questions were solved and 
 answered by the younger generation's acts. 
 Major attempts The exact position of Major amongst the scholastic philoso- 
 Nominaiism phers is a subject which would require and repay a separate 
 on^minaJist mono g ra P n - It is beyond the power of the present writer to 
 
 Principles. 
 
 1 Mr. Owen, in his Evenings with the Skeptics^ Longmans, 1881, does not 
 hesitate to class even the earlier schoolmen, Erigena, Abelard, Aquinas, as semi- 
 Sceptics, but the tendency became more distinctly marked in William of Ockham 
 and the Nominalists. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 37 
 
 furnish it, and would exceed the limits of this sketch, as well 
 as probably exhaust the patience of most of its readers 1 . Yet 
 to leave it altogether untouched — to present any however 
 imperfect a portrait of the last of the Scottish School- 
 men without some notice of his philosophical standpoint 
 would be the play of Hamlet without Hamlet. Fortunately 
 Mapor has himself, in a short passage of the Preface to the 
 standard edition of his Commentary on the Fourth Book of the 
 Sentences, published in 1519, given a clue to the aim of his 
 philosophy. 'I have yet seen,'' he writes, 'none of the 
 Nominalists who has carried his work on the Fourth Book of 
 the Sentences to the core and the close {ad umbillcum et calcem), 
 and this others retort on them as an opprobrium, saying that 
 the Nominalists are so occupied with Logic and Philosophy 
 that they neglect Theology. And yet there are various sub- 
 jects of Theology which presuppose Metaphysics. I will 
 attempt therefore to apply the principles of the Nominalists 
 to the several Distinctions of the Fourth Book of the Sentences, 
 and to write one or more questions which the R ealis ts too, if 
 they pay attention, can easily understand. Either way, 
 Theology, about which I shall specially treat, will be common 
 ground. 1 Here again we find Major taking in the great con- 
 troversy which divided the schools since the time of Ockham, 
 and some have thought from a much earlier date, the position 
 of a mediator, and endeavouring for the sake of Theology to 
 reconcile Realism and Nominalism. 
 
 In 1518, having completed his work as lecturer on the 
 Master of the Sentences, Major at last accepted the call his own 
 country made on him to take part in its higher education. 
 It is possible that his friend Gavin Douglas, now Bishop of 
 Dunkeld, who revisited France in 1517 to negotiate the Treaty 
 of Rouen, had renewed his entreaties with success. On 25th 
 
 1 Sec further on Major's position as a Logician and Philosopher, Appendix to 
 the Life, No. n. p. 94. 
 
38 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Regent in 
 Glasgow. ' 
 1518. 
 
 June 1518 Major was incorporated 1 , before Adam Colquhoun, 
 the Rector, as Principal Regent of the College and Paeda- 
 gogium of Glasgow,* and is described as Canon of the Chapel 
 Royal at Stirling and Vicar of Dunlop, endowments no doubt 
 bestowed on him to induce him to leave Paris, and which 
 prove that he must have taken orders, though he devoted 
 himself entirely to the educational side of the ministerial 
 office. 
 
 In several passages of his writings he defends evidently with 
 a personal reference the ecclesiastics who devoted themselves 
 to philosophy and education in preference to pastoral duties. 
 In one of these he says : ' Nor is there a reasonable ground for 
 frequenting universities, except in so far as a man learns by 
 attending lectures, so that he may return to his flock with 
 greater learning. But if he is sufficiently instructed to be able 
 to draw doctrine from books only, he can do that both in the 
 flock committed to him and on Mount Caucasus, or the Rock 
 of Parmenides. He too who continues to read theology in the 
 university is equivalent to a preacher ; nay more, he creates 
 preachers, which is a greater work than to preach. He is most 
 certainly excused if he has no cure of souls, and if he has 
 simply received the order of the ministry. ... If such a one, 
 too, residing in a university, has a cure in the neighbourhood, 
 it is not necessary that he should live in his parish, but it is 
 sufficient if he have a good vicar to administer the Sacraments, 
 provided he gives the food of life on festival days to his flock, 
 and hears confessions and doubtful cases. For it is hard to 
 say to a learned man, accustomed to live and converse with 
 learned men, that he ought always to live in a country village. 
 Truly it seems sufficient for him to dwell in the nearest town 
 or city, and frequently to visit his parishioners, taking care that 
 he is not absent on festival days unless for a reasonable cause \ 2 
 
 1 Register of Glasgow College. 
 
 3 In Quartum, Dist. xxiv. Qu. 2, fol. clxvii. 
 
y 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 39 
 
 In 1522 he is again named in the Glasgow Records as Pro- 
 fessor of Theotog y and Trea surer n f thp C hapel R oyal, as well 
 as Vicar of Dunlop, and in 1523 he represented one of the 
 Nations as elector (intram) of the new Rector. On 9th June 
 of the same year he migrated to St. Andrews^ where he was R^ent in St. 
 incorporated under the titles of Theological Doctor of 
 Paris and Treasurer of the Chapel Royal on the same day as 
 Patrick Hamilton, the future martyr, who had studied under 
 himjn Glasgow. 
 
 Little ~T6cord remains of Major's Glasgow period. He 
 doubtless continued, perhaps repeated, his Paris lectures on 
 Logic and Theology, and we find his name occurring in con- 
 nection with the election of Rector and other College business. 
 He was present at a congregation in 1522, when the Rector, 
 James Stewart, protested against a tax being imposed on the 
 University 1 . He is styled throughout the entries of the Uni- 
 versity Records, where his name occurs, 'Principalis Regens 
 Collegii et Paedagogii ', but the principal Regent in the old 
 constitution of Glasgow was only the senior Professor, and the 
 office of Principal in the modern sense did not then exist. 
 
 The whole of his residence in Glasgow was less th an fiv e John Knox one 
 years, but it would be memorable, if for no other reason, for ciasg 
 one of his pupils. John Knox, a Haddington boy, had a 
 link with Major, whose strong local feeling we have seen, and 
 Major may have been the cause that, instead of going to St. 
 Andrews, Knox matriculated at Glasgow in 1522. Unfor- 
 tunately the Glasgow period of Knox's education is the barest 
 in material of any part of his life. The future Reformer 
 appears to have quitted the University without a degree, and 
 his practical intellect led to his commencing life neither as a 
 philosopher nor a theologian, but as a church notary 2 . His 
 mind was of the quality which matures late, but often pro- 
 
 1 Munimenta Universitatis Glasguensis, p. 143. 
 
 2 Memoir of John Knox, Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 of his pupils at 
 
Major's time. 
 
 40 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 duces the strongest fruit. The only reference he makes to 
 Major belongs to a later period, when they were both at St. 
 Andrews, in a passage in which he describes his old master as 
 i a man whose word was reckoned an oracle in matters of 
 religion", proving that Major retained his previous reputation. 
 
 Glasgow in Glasgow was at the time Major lived in it a small but 
 
 beautiful city, situated on a fine river, not yet deepened by 
 art so as to be a channel of commerce. It was chiefly known 
 as the See of the great bishopric founded by Kentigern, 
 restored by David i. when Prince of Cumberland, and recently 
 raised to the dignity of an archbishopric, which embraced the 
 south-west and parts of the south of Scotland. The University 
 founded in the middle of the previous century had been poorly 
 endowed, and did not become celebrated till its reform by 
 Andrew Melville after the Reformation. 
 
 The Archbishop during Major's residence was James Beaton, 
 uncle of the more famous Cardinal ; and the translation of 
 James to the See of St. Andrews in 1523 synchronises so well 
 with Major's removal to the elder and then more distinguished 
 University, that we can scarcely err in supposing that the one 
 promotion led to the other. 
 
 Major at St. If Edinburgh or Glasgow was a contrast to Paris, much 
 
 more was St. Andrews. By nature, the site now so venerable 
 between the sands at the mouth of the Eden and the rock- 
 bound coast at one of the extremities of the little realm of 
 Scotland, seemed destined for a fishing village or haven for 
 small craft which already in considerable numbers dared the 
 stormy sea and brought their native land in contact with the 
 civilisation of Europe. But towns did not rank then by size or 
 even by wealth. St. Andrews had a threefold dignity in the 
 eyes of the pious Catholic and the ecclesiastical scholar. It 
 held the relics of the patron Saint of Scotland. It was the 
 primatial See. It was the first, and still, notwithstanding 
 the foundation of Glasgow and Aberdeen, the principal Uni- 
 
 Andrews 
 ******* 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 41 
 
 versity. The Bulls for its foundation had been obtained by 
 Bishop Wardlaw in 141V tutor and friend of James i., who 
 confirmed the privileges granted to it in 1432. Bishop 
 Kennedy had founded the first College of St. Salvator in 1456, 
 and ten years before Major's incorporation St. Leonard's, 
 or the New College, had been endowed by Archbishop Stewart, 
 the bastard of James rv., and Prior John Hepburn. St. Sal- 
 vator was instituted as a College for Theology and the Arts, 
 for divine worship combined with scholastic exercises. Its 
 members were a Provost, who was to be a Master or Doctor 
 in Theology, a Licentiate and a Bachelor of the same Faculty, 
 four Masters of Arts, and six poor Clerks. 
 
 St. Leonard's was modelled after the college for poor scholars 
 at Lou vain, itself a copy of Montaigu College. Its foundation 
 consisted of a Principal and four Chaplains, two of them 
 Regents, and twenty Poor Scholars, instructed in the Gregorian 
 chant, and six of them Students of Theology. Its statutes, 
 drawn by Prior Hepburn, were of the strictest kind as regards 
 discipline, and the richer students, not on the foundation, 
 were to be obliged to conform to them. The scholars were to 
 be admitted on examination : not older than twenty-one, poor, 
 virtuous, versed in the first and second parts of grammar, good 
 writers, and good singers. The subjects prescribed for lectures 
 were grammar, poetry, and rhetoric, logic, physics, philosophy, 
 metaphysics, and one of the books of Solomon. It does not 
 appear that Major, when he came to St. Andrews, was at 
 first specially attached to either College, and as lectures con- 
 tinued in the Paedagogiurm which Beaton converted into the 
 College of St. Mary in 1527, it is not possible to say where his 
 lectures were delivered ; but he continued to teach according to 
 the same methods the same subjects as in Paris and Glasgow 
 — Logic and Theology. 
 
 In 1523, 1524, and 1525, lie was elected one of the Dean's offices held by 
 Assessors in the Faculty of" Arts. In 1523 and 1525 he Andrew*. ' 
 
42 
 
 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Completion of 
 his study of 
 Aristotle. 
 
 was one of the deputies appointed to visit St. Salvator. In 
 1524 he was one of the Auditors of the Quaestor's accounts, 
 and also one of the Rector's Assessors. The last date at which 
 his name appears at this period was on 22d January 1525. It 
 re-appears after an interval of nearly six years on 6th November 
 1531, when he was again elected one of the Deans, probably of 
 the Faculty of Theology. 
 
 During his residence at Glasgow and St. Andrews it appears 
 probable that Major paid special attention to the philosophical, 
 and in particular the logical studies he had relinquished for 
 a time in Paris, but now resumed for the sake of his own 
 countrymen in the smaller universities of Scotland, which were, 
 as they have always been, undermanned, and could not afford 
 in that age separate professors even for philosophy and 
 divinity. This would, account for his Introduction to the 
 Dialectic and whole Logic of Aristotle, a new and recent 
 edition of his earlier work, digested in twelve books, which was 
 issued by Badius Ascensius in Paris, while he was still absent 
 in 1521, and the ' Eight Books of Physics with Natural Philo- 
 sophy and Metaphysics,'* published in 1526, shortly after his 
 return, by Giles Gourmont, famous as a printer of Greek, and 
 soon followed by his Logical Questions, issued from the same 
 press in 1528. He finished his "Aristotelian studies by the 
 issue of a Treatise on the Ethics, published by Badius in 1530. 
 He had thus, with a rare completeness, embraced in his 
 Lectures and Works almost the whole range of the Aristotelian 
 Philosophy. When we remember that an edition of a single 
 work of Aristotle, or a single classic author, has been deemed 
 sufficient for the labours and the fame of a modern university 
 professor, we appreciate the indefatigable industry of Major, 
 and we learn how little the nineteenth century can afford to 
 despise the sixteenth in the matter of philosophical erudition. 
 
 Nor were these treatises of Major mere editions or com- 
 mentaries on Aristotle. He reproduced and reduced in them 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 43 
 
 the substance of the thoughts of the great master to the 
 scholastic method. So they were the effort and the fruit of 
 independent thought. The scholastic method was then becom- 
 ing antiquated, and was alien to the modern spirit. While it 
 addressed itself to the highest problems which the human mind 
 can attempt to solve or pronounce insoluble — the nature of 
 God, the origin of man and the universe, the being and 
 working of the mind itself — it descended also to the most 
 trivial details, and put the most casuistical questions, which 
 the sarcasm of Melanchthon, the satire of Rabelais, and the 
 epigram of Buchanan could hardly exaggerate. 
 
 Still Major's work, always acutely critical and argumenta- 
 tive, was at least an educational discipline. It awakened and 
 stimulated thought, perhaps the greatest service any teacher 
 can render to his pupils. It is not surprising that one class of 
 them learnt to swear by their master as an oracle, and another 
 to criticise his method and despise its results. 
 
 In 1525 he returned to Paris and the College of Montaigu, Returns to 
 
 ° ° ' Paris, 1525. 
 
 probably to escape the troubles of the times. The earl of 
 Angus was then at the head of affairs, and Major's patron, 
 Beaton, had to hide himself in the disguise of a shepherd. 
 Major probably also was glad of the opportunity his return His Biblical 
 
 fn . . . Commentaries, 
 
 afforded to superintend the publication of his Exposition of the 
 Four Evangelists, which was issued from the press of Jodocus 
 Radius Ascensius in 1529. His absence saved him from being v 
 a spectator of, probably an actor in, the trial of Patrick 
 Hamilton, one of his Glasgow pupils, who was condemned 
 for heresy by an Assembly of Bishops and Theologians at 
 St. Andrews, and burnt before the gate of St. Salvator on 
 29th January 1528 ; but it was only to see a similar scene in 
 the streets of Paris — the martyrdom of Berquin ; for the 
 decree of the Sorbonne in 1521 that • flames rather than 
 reasoning should be employed against the heresies of Luther 1 
 was applied to the Lutherans ai well ai their works. Amongst 
 
44 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 the doctrines for which Hamilton died were the assertions 
 that it was lawful for all men to read the Word of God ; 
 that image-worship, and the Invocation of Saints and the 
 Virgin, were unlawful ; that masses for the dead were vain ; 
 that there was no such place as purgatory ; that sin could be 
 purged only by repentance and faith in the blood of Christ 
 Jesus. There is no reason to suppose that Major would have 
 dissented from the sentence any more than his master Gerson 
 had from that against Huss. The Doctors of Louvain, who 
 were in close sympathy with the Sorbonne, congratulated 
 Major con- Beaton on having performed a commendable act, and Major's 
 Lutheran dedication of his Commentary on St. Matthew refers to the 
 
 heresy. new r s recently received that Beaton had, ' not without the ill- 
 
 will of many, manfully removed a person of noble birth, but an 
 unhappy follower of the Lutheran heresy \ The allusion is 
 an euphemistic reference to the martyrdom of Hamilton. 
 
 To St. Andrews during Major's residence came a Highland 
 youth, attracted by his fame, destined by nature for learning, 
 already with some of the experience of a man. George 1 , the 
 son of Thomas Buchanan of the Moss, in Lennox, early lostliis 
 father, and was sent when fourteen, at the cost of his maternal 
 uncle, James Heriot of Traprain, in East Lothian, to Paris ; 
 but after two years 1 study of the Latin classics the poverty of 
 his mother brought him home, and he served with the French 
 troops of Albany at the siege of Werk. The hardship of a 
 winter camp led to an illness, and, after recruiting his health 
 at home, he entered the Paedagogium at St. Andrews in 1524. 
 On 3d October 1525 he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. 
 Major having gone to Paris in that year, Buchanan either 
 accompanied or followed him, but entered, not as might have 
 been expected the College of Montaigu, but the Scots College 
 de Grisy, in which he was admitted ad eundem as BacKelor on 
 
 =3MK 
 
 1 A more favourable view of the character and conduct of George Buchanan 
 will be found in Mr. P. Hume Brown's Memoir, 1890. 
 
 4 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 45 
 
 10th October 1527. There is no proof that Major was, as has 
 been alleged, at the expense of his maintenance, but probably 
 he befriended a young man connected with East Lothian as 
 well as St. Andrews, whose talents foretold his future eminence. 
 In 1529 Buchanan was elected Procurator of the German 
 Nation, the highest honour then open to the Scottish student, 
 having lost a prior election only through the superior claim of 
 his blind countryman, Robert Wauchope, afterwards Bishop of 
 Armagh. Buchanan has left two reinarks on Major, in them- 
 selves not unfair, but very unjust if taken as a summary of his 
 whole teaching. ' John Major at that time taught Dialectic, George 
 or rather Sophistic", he says, ■ in extreme old age at St. 
 Andrews'; and in the well-known epigram which associates 
 their names, the pupil again expresses his repugnance for the 
 scholastic triflings the younger generation found in works 
 their elders deemed the glory of the University of Paris : — 
 
 Cum scateat nugis solo cognomine Major, 
 
 Xec sit in immenso pagina sana libro, 
 Non mirum titulis quod se veracibus ornat ; 
 
 Nee semper mendax fingere Creta solet. 
 
 When he proclaims himself thus clearly 
 As ' Major ' by cognomen merely, 
 Since trifles through the book abound, 
 And scarce a page of sense is found, 
 Full credit sure the word acquires, 
 For Cretans are not always liars ! 
 
 The sting of the epigram is the last, not the first, line, 
 
 which was taken from Major's description of himself on the 
 
 title-page of more than one of his books 1 . Neither reverence 
 
 nor gratitude were qualities of Buchanan, but the difference 
 
 of age to a large extent accounts for his estimate of Major. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than the Contrast be- 
 
 . . tween Major 
 
 doctor of the Sorbonne trained at the feet of its masters, himself and Buchanan* 
 
 recognised as one of them, without poetic imagination, and 
 
 1 See Appendices I. and II., pp. 430, 434, 435, 439. 
 
46 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 with little experience of practical life except as seen from the 
 cloister and the chair, and his young pupil already versed in 
 the Latin Classics and the thoughts not of Thomas Aquinas 
 and Duns Scotus, Peter the Spaniard and Peter the Lombard, 
 but of Virgil, Horace, Catullus, and Martial, and who had 
 seen not Paris merely but the Camp. A supercilious and 
 unmeasured contempt for old-fashioned learning in a youth of 
 genius has had examples before and since Buchanan. In truth 
 Buchanan learnt more than he was conscious of from Major. 
 The study of the sacred texts, the independent view of the 
 sources of political authority, and the inclination towards exact 
 historical inquiry, were notable points in Major's mental atti- 
 tude, and can scarcely have failed to influence his students. 
 The common opinion that the seeds of the De Jure Regni, 
 and what are sometimes called the republican, but more 
 accurately the constitutional, views of Buchanan's History were 
 derived in part from Major's teaching, seems well founded. His 
 position marks a stage through which the European mind 
 had to pass before it abandoned scholasticism for humanism, 
 the Roman for the Reformed doctrines, Absolute for Consti- 
 tutional Government. The same Tendency has indeed been 
 marked in earlier schoolmen by the historians of philosophy. 
 What was special to the case of Major was that this Tendency 
 was during his life coeval with the Renaissance Movement 
 north of the Alps, and that while the Master resisted, his 
 younger and active-minded disciples combined the necessary 
 results of the union of the Tendency with the Movement. 
 
 Major's History, a copy of which, printed by Badius Ascensius 
 in 1521, must have been in the St. Andrews Library, pro- 
 bably was known to the omnivorous student whose elaborate 
 work, more than fifty years later 1 , was to eclipse its fame. 
 
 The form of this History is unique. It is written in a 
 scholastic style, and every now and then breaks out into logical 
 
 1 The first edition of Buchanan's History was published by Alexander 
 Arbuthnot at Edinbuigh, 1582. 
 
 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 47 
 
 arguments. But what has been called in the nineteenth centurv 
 the critical spirit, in the mode in which it manifested itself in the Scholastic form 
 sixteenth century, is to be traced from the first page to the last. sp jri t f his 
 A renewed zeal for historical study was one of the features lstory * 
 of the time. The age of the Monkish Chronicles and the 
 Mediaeval Annals was past. It was no longer possible to write 
 history in the style of Matthew Paris and John of Fordun, or 
 of Sir John Froissart, or even of Philip de Commines. With 
 the advent of the new learning the historical instinct led all 
 nations to desire a more exact account of their origin, and a 
 more philosophical narrative of their progress, not merely 
 stating events in the order of their occurrence, but tracing 
 them to their causes. A series of historical works issued 
 from the press of Badius about this period, in some of which 
 there was more, in others less, of this instinct. The history of 
 the kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth was published 
 in 1508, the History of Scotland by Hector Boece in 1526, and 
 that of Paulus Jovius, De Rebus Gestis Francorum et Regum 
 Franciae in 1536, 1 besides some of the best old Chronicles, 
 Saxo Grammaticus and Gregory of Tours. It was probably in 
 contrast to Geoffrey of Monmouth's title to his History 
 ' Britannice Utriuxque regum et principum Origo et Gesta *, 
 that Major adopted the title of ' Historia Major is- Britannia'". 
 The lively and inquisitive Italian, Polydore Vergil, who had 
 been sent in 1504 to collect Peter's Pence in England, was 
 specially attracted to the early annals of Britain, and wrote 
 in 1509 to James iv. for information as to the succession of 
 the Scottish kings, but the information does not seem to have 
 been supplied. Shortly before the death of Gavin Douglas in p G i y dore 
 1523 he met that prelate in London, and resumed his inquiries. Gavm Douglas. 
 Their conversation is typical of the contest going on in manv 
 minds between the old traditional and the new critical view of 
 
 1 The Compendium super Francorum Gestis, by Robert Gaguin, published 
 in 1497, appears to have been well known to Major, and is written note in his 
 spirit than any of the other Histories of his time. 
 
48 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 history. It is interesting too as showing that the Bishop's 
 
 education in history had not advanced so far as that of his 
 
 old friend Major the theologian, although there is some reason 
 
 to believe that in theology the opposite was the case, and that 
 
 Douglas leant more than Major towards the doctrines of the 
 
 Reformation. This is a not uncommon phenomenon. The 
 
 critical part of the intellect applies or confines itself to different 
 
 departments in different minds. Douglas, according to Vergil, 
 
 asked him * not to follow the account recently published by a 
 
 certain Scot which treats as a fable the descent of the Scottish 
 
 kings from Gathelus, the son of an Athenian king, and Scota, 
 
 the daughter of Pharaoh ', and furnished him with the usual 
 
 fictitious pedigree to prove it. The Scot was beyond doubt 
 
 Major, whose History had been published two years before. 
 
 Polydore was, like Major, incredulous. ' When I read the notes 
 
 of Douglas ', he says, ' according to the fable I seemed to see 
 
 the bear bring forth her young. Afterwards when we met, 
 
 as we were accustomed, this Gavin asked my opinion ', and 
 
 Polydore then argued, from the silence of the Roman historians, 
 
 that there could have been no Picts or Scots in Britain prior to 
 
 the Roman conquest, and, he adds : ' This Gavin, no doubt a 
 
 sincere man, did the less dissent from this sentence, in that it 
 
 plainly appeared to him that reason and truth herein well 
 
 agreed, so easily is truth discovered from feigned phrases'. 
 
 The death of Douglas by the plague prevented Polydore from 
 
 further enjoying the benefit of his conversation. 
 
 The History of Major was entitled Historia Major is Britan- 
 
 nlae tarn Angliae quam Scotlae per Johannem Mqjorem natlone 
 
 quidem Scotum prqfessione autem theologum. 
 
 Title of Major's < Maior Britain'' was no doubt, in its first intention, meant 
 History. ... . 
 
 to distinguish Britain from Brittany, the lesser land of the 
 
 Britons, just as Scotland, 'Scotia Minor'*, in mediaeval Latin, 
 
 prior to the eleventh century, was distinguished from Ireland, 
 
 the ' Scotia Major' of the Scottish race. But it signified the 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 49 
 
 author's presage of the greatness of the small island whose 
 annals he relates. There is possibly too a play on his own 
 name. It was Major's History of Major Britain. It was also 
 an early essay to find a name that, without offence to the pride 
 of either nation, should comprise Scotland as well as England, 
 for which James i. afterwards hit upon the happy name of 
 Great Britain, leaving to the nineteenth century to give Greater 
 Britain a more fit application to the dependencies and colonies 
 which the natives of the little island have conquered or acquired 
 beyond the Atlantic or in the islands of the Antipodes. 
 
 Major dedicated his work in a short preface to his young Major's dedica- 
 sovereign James v., whom he describes as celebrated for his 
 noble disposition and high birth, derived from both kingdoms, 
 alluding to his descent as grandson of Henry vn. as well as heir 
 of James iv. The preface is a defence against the charges of a 
 possible critic that he had deviated from the practice of his- 
 torians in dedicating his history ; that a theologian should not 
 venture to write history ; and that he has used the style of a 
 theologian rather than an historian. To the first he answers 
 that he has read no dedication by Sallust or Liw, either 
 because they wrote none, or because their dedications are lost. 
 Sallust, indeed, had no reason for a dedication, as he wrote 
 before the Romans had kings (emperors). Livy, perhaps, had 
 no wish to dedicate, deeming it more glorious to offer the fruits 
 of his labours to the Gods and posterity rather than to any 
 mortal. But nearly all the poets, even when they wrote 
 history, dedicated their works. Valerius Maximus invoked 
 Caesar when about to describe the annals not only of his own 
 but of other nations. St. Jerome, St. Augustine, our own 
 Venerable Bede, as well as other ecclesiastical writers, used 
 dedications. He has followed their example, but, to avoid 
 suspicion of flattery, has left the history of recent times to 
 others. The charge that a theologian should not write history 
 he denies. It is the province of a theologian to define matters 
 
 D 
 
50 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 of faith, religion, and morals, so he cannot be deemed to 
 depart from it when he not only states acts and their authors, 
 but also determines whether they had been rightly or wrongly 
 done. Besides, it would be his aim that the reader of his 
 History should learn not only what had been done, but also 
 how men ought to act, from the experience of so many cen- 
 turies. For his style, it might have been more polished, but 
 he doubted if more suitable to his subject. If the names of 
 Scottish places and persons were expressed in Latin words the 
 natives would scarcely recognise them. We see from this 
 curious observation how narrowly Major missed writing in the 
 vernacular. Perhaps, could he have printed his book at home, 
 he might have done so. But, no doubt, he also desired to be 
 read by the learned throughout Europe. 
 
 It has always been the aim of our kings, he concludes, to 
 act greatly rather than speak elegantly, so it should be the 
 aim of all students to think rightly and understand the matter 
 in hand sharply rather than to write elegantly or rhetorically. 
 Of this the two Scots, John Scotus Erigena 1 and Duns Scotus, 
 Bede, Alcuin, and many others are examples. It is his hope 
 that the king may read happily the history of his race 
 dedicated to his felicity and live to the age of Nestor. 
 Scheme of the The history which follows narrates in six books in a succinct 
 style the annals of England and Scotland from the earliest 
 times to the marriages of Henry vii.'s daughters, Margaret to 
 James iv. of Scotland, and Mary to Louis xn. of France, and 
 after his death to the Duke of Suffolk. The part relating to 
 Scotland is naturally fuller, but the combination of the two 
 histories was done of set purpose to aid the view which Major 
 insists on that the two crowns should be united by marriage. 
 With the same object, Major treats the English more favourably 
 
 1 Although the epithet 'Erigena ' is now admitted to be of later date, the current 
 and better opinion seems to be that John Scotus was an Irishman, but Duns 
 Scotus was almost certainly, as Major thought, a Scotchman. — R. Lane Poole, 
 History of Mediaval Thought, p. 55 n 2. 
 
 
 History. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 51 
 
 than our earlier historians. He is the first Scottish advocate Major an advo- 
 
 • • rwn o Cate *° r l ^ e 
 
 for the Union. * I state this proposition, he says : ' Ine Scots Union. 
 ought to prefer no king to the English in the marriage of a 
 female heir, and I am of the same opinion as to the English 
 in a similar case. By this way only two hostile kingdoms 
 flourishing in the same island, of which neither can subdue the 
 other, would be united under one king, and if it is said the 
 Scots would lose their name and kingdom, so would the 
 English, for the king of both would be called king of Britain. 
 Nor would the Scots have any reason to fear the taxes of an 
 English king. I venture to answer for the English king that 
 he would allow them their liberties as the king of Castile 
 allows the people of Aragon. Besides, in case it is for the 
 well-being of the republic, it is proper that taxes should be paid 
 to the king according to the necessity of the occasion. The The nobility 
 
 wrong in oppos- 
 
 Scottish nobles, as I think, are unwilling to have one king with ing the Union. 
 
 power over the whole island, and the English nobles are of like 
 
 mind, because the nobility would not dare to go against such 
 
 a king. Yet a single monarch would be useful even to the 
 
 nobles. They would flourish by justice; no one would dare 
 
 use force against another. Their homes and families would 
 
 be more permanent. No foreign king would invade their 
 
 country, and if they were injured, they would be able without 
 
 fear to attack others.'' 
 
 Such opinions were in advance of his age. It is singular 
 how a Scotsman bred in France should have adopted them. 
 Experience must have convinced him that the prosperity of 
 his country pointed to an English union rather than to a 
 French alliance. 
 
 Another point on which the opinions of Major are un- Major on 
 expectedly liberal, at least to those who have not followed State. 
 with minute attention the course of medieval thought, is as to 
 the relation between Church and State. In this connection 
 he repeats the sentiments to which he had given utterance in 
 
53 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 commenting on the Gospel of Matthew, and which he may 
 have learned from the writings of Ockham, D'Ailly, and 
 Gerson. Referring to the excommunication of Alexander n. 
 of Scotland by the Papal Legate on the ground that Alexander 
 had sided with the English barons against King John, he 
 says : ' Perhaps fearing more than was reasonable ecclesias- 
 tical censures, he restored Carlisle to the English king. If 
 he had a just title to Carlisle, he had no reason to fear the 
 papal excommunication. Various of his predecessors had held 
 it, nor do I see how he had lost the right, and whatever might 
 be the fact as to that, he could have appealed from the legate 
 to his superior. But perhaps you will object that even the 
 unjust sentence of a pastor (i.e. an ecclesiastic in charge of a 
 flock and with power to excommunicate) is to be feared. To 
 which we will easily answer. If it is unjust, it is as if null, and 
 there is no reason to fear it. For an unjust excommunication 
 is no more an excommunication than a dead man is a man. 
 Not only in Britain, but in many other places, men too lightly 
 entangle themselves with ecclesiastical censures. No one, 
 unless he commits mortal sin, ought to be excommunicated 
 either by law or man, and for contumacy alone excommunica- 
 tion is to be pronounced by man. If he will not hear the 
 church, saith the Scripture (Veritas), let him be as a heathen 
 and publican. Therefore by the opposite argument, if he will 
 hear the church, why should lie be ejected from the company 
 of believers ? It follows that we think many persons excom- 
 municated are in grace." This is bold language for an ecclesi- 
 astic of the Roman Church, but by allowing excommunication 
 for contumacy, Major leaves a loophole through which his 
 conscience crept when he approved the burning of Patrick 
 Hamilton. This explains too how he and men of like views 1 
 
 1 Jourdain has an interesting and instructive Essay on this subject, dealir 
 with writers of an earlier date {Excursions Historiques, 1888, p. 524) : ' Memoire 
 sur La Royaute Francaise et le Droit Populaire d'apres les Ecrivains du Moyen 
 Age'. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 53 
 
 were tolerated by the Roman Church, which has always School opinions 
 
 J , . as to C'hurcn 
 
 allowed considerable latitude to men of learning and ability and S;ate. 
 who have conceded to the Church the final sentence — the last 
 word, whether of temporal or eternal condemnation. 
 
 When he deals with John's abdication and payment of the 
 ransom for his crown to the Pope, Major raises the difficulty 
 whether a king can give the right of his kingdom or fixed pay- 
 ments out of it to any other person. If he gave the right of 
 the kingdom to the Turk or any other not the true heir, the 
 gift would be plainly null. The proof is : ' The king has the 
 right of the kingdom from a free people, nor can he grant that 
 right to any one contrary to the will of the people". 
 
 A king cannot be said to act rightly who, without the 
 counsel of his nobles, declares that his revenues are to be 
 given away to any one. The proof is : ' Such a tax, without 
 express or tacit consent, burdens the people, and such a tax the 
 people are not bound to pay. Further, the contest between 
 the king and the Church of England was as to goods taken 
 from that particular church, and specially from the Cistercians. 
 It is clear, restitution ought to have been made to the par- 
 ticular church. It was idle in John to suppose that because 
 he gave a quota to Rome, he was absolved from restitution to 
 the Church from which he had taken the property.'' Here the 
 doctrine of restitution, a favourite and sound doctrine of the 
 manuals of the Confessional, is very skilfully turned against both 
 John and the Pope. It is, after all, robbing Paul although you 
 pay Peter l . He concludes with allowing that if John and the 
 English people agreed to give an annual payment to the Pope 
 it would be otherwise, for it does not concern the king's purse, 
 but is given by the people itself. These are almost the con- 
 stitutional principles embodied by the barons in the charters 
 of the Liberties of England, but which Buchanan generally 
 
 1 The proverb is more often cited in the reverse form, but is known in both 
 forms. 
 
54 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOK 
 
 Constitutional gets the credit of introducing into Scotland. He may have 
 Doctrines. . . _ . 
 
 derived them in part at least from his old master. When we 
 
 read Barbour's Bruce or Blind Harry's Wallace, we trace their 
 parentage to a still earlier date. They were the fruit of the 
 War of Independence. Perhaps they may be traced to a more 
 distant epoch, to the resistance which Galgacus and our remote 
 Celtic forefathers made to the Roman legions. Major tells an 
 anecdote which shows they existed before the War of Inde- 
 pendence in the breast of the patriot leader. Wallace, he says, 
 always had in his mouth lines his tutor had taught him : — 
 
 ' Dico tibi verum, Libertas optima rerum ; 
 Nunquam servili sub nexu vivite, fili.' 
 
 With equal distinctness Major, in treating of the succession 
 of Bruce, states he does not place Bruces right on the ground 
 of priority of descent, but because Baliol, by surrendering the 
 crown to Edward, forfeited his right. ' A free people gives the 
 strength to the first king whose power depends on the whole 
 people. Fergus the first had no other right. I say the same 
 of the kings of Judea ordained by God.' He further argues 
 that the people can depose for his demerits a king and his 
 successors, founding on the precedents of the Roman kingship 
 which was abolished, and the Carlovingian dynasty which was 
 founded when Pepin by the will of the people deposed the 
 Merovingian line. 
 Government The proof from the establishment of the Roman republic 
 
 Swathe 11 ^ C snows another source from which views in favour of r the 
 people. foundation of government on the will of the people were 
 
 drawn by scholars in the time of Major. The Greek and 
 Roman classics, above all Livy, recently translated into French, 
 and soon after into Scotch by Bellenden, presented the noble 
 spectacle of a free republic. It is noticeable that Major 
 frequently reflects on the tyranny and want of patriotism of 
 the nobles. Wallace is his hero rather than Bruce, and in a 
 fine passage which reminds us of the poem of Dante in the 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 55 
 
 Convito \ he argues that ' there is no true nobility but virtue 
 and its acts. Vulgar nobility is nothing but a windy mode of 
 talk." He laughs at his countrymen, who think themselves all 
 cousins of the king, and says he used to argue with them jocu- 
 larly in this way : * They would grant no one was noble unless 
 both his parents were noble. If so, was Adam noble or not ? 
 If he was not, they denied the premiss. If he was, then so 
 were all his children. So it follows either that all men are 
 noble or none.'' It is evident that we are listening to a repre- 
 sentative of the Commons, to a forerunner of Robert Burns in 
 the strangely different garb of a medieval philosopher. A 
 similar or cognate argument was expressed in the popular 
 rhyme of the English peasants — 
 
 ' When Adam delved, and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman ? ' 
 
 Like all clear-sighted men at this period, Major saw the Abuses in the 
 urgency of reform in the Church. He approves the saying demned. 
 of James i., that David i. had injured the Crown by lavish 
 grants to Bishops and Monks. He expresses his regret at the 
 poverty of parishes and parish churches in Scotland in com- 
 parison with England, at the gross abuses of pluralities and 
 non-residence, and his surprise that the Scottish prelates had 
 not earlier applied some part of their great revenues to found- 
 ing Universities. He especially condemns the wealthy abbots 
 who live in the court more than in the cloister, who think they 
 do well when they enrich their convent by oppressing the poor 
 labourers of the ground. The true end of religion is to subdue 
 the lusts of the flesh, and wealth is adverse to this end. When 
 
 1 ' It follows then from this, 
 That all are high or base, 
 Or that in time there never was 
 Beginning to our race. 
 
 Where virtue is there is 
 A nobleman, although 
 Not where there is a nobleman 
 Must virtue be also.' 
 The Convito, Fourth Book (Miss E. Price Sa)crj>' translation). 
 
56 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 he describes Bishop Kennedys character he blames him for 
 holding the Priory of Pittenweem in commendam along with so 
 great a See as St. Andrews, and for the cost of his sumptuous 
 tomb ; and he raises the question whether a bishop has more 
 than a qualified right of property in the revenue he derives 
 from the church. In the passages of his History in which 
 he attacks the oppression of the nobles and the corruption 
 of the ecclesiastical dignitaries we recall the language of the 
 Satires of Henryson, Dunbar, and Lindsay 1 . Against the 
 abuses of ill-regulated monasteries Major more than once 
 inveighs 2 , and though he maintains the binding nature of 
 vows, he admits the difficulty of the question. On the 
 critical point of the privilege of ecclesiastics to be exempt 
 from the judgment of lay courts, while he takes, as might be 
 expected, the side of the Church in discussing the struggle 
 between Henry n. and Becket, he allows this was not by 
 divine right, and might be otherwise in special circumstances. 
 He even goes so far as to condemn the multiplication of 
 miracles, and remarks (though earlier as well as later examples 
 of the same train of reasoning may be found) that miracles 
 do not prove holiness, for John the Baptist, the holiest child 
 born of woman, wrought none, and that a vow of chastity 
 might be a vow of the foolish virgins if it hurt the state. 
 
 With regard to the facts of his History Major shows a won- 
 derfully sound historical instinct, distinguishing truth from the 
 fables with which the Scottish annals were then encrusted. 
 His work is a sketch, and much is omitted ; but the student 
 who reads it will have little to unlearn. In this respect he is 
 far superior to his contemporary Boece, and even to Buchanan, 
 who copied Boece in the earlier part of Scottish history. 
 
 1 With these passages in the History may be compared his denunciation in his 
 Commentary on St. Matthew of ' the grasping abbots who make things hard for 
 the husbandmen ', fol. lxxiv. verso 2. 
 
 2 Compare Commentary on St. Matthew, fol. Ixxiii. verso 2: ' If I were as rich 
 as Midas, I would rather throw my money into the Seine than found a religious 
 house where men and women take their meals together.' 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 51 
 
 He discards at once the foundation fable of the Scottish Majors criti- 
 cism of early 
 kings being descended from Scota the daughter of Pharaoh, Scottish 
 
 7 ... I History, 
 
 and takes the firm ground of Bede as to their Irish origin, and 
 
 inclines to the further opinion, which may be true though 
 not proved, that they came from Spain to Ireland. The 
 Picts, following Bede and their own traditions, he states, came 
 also by way of Ireland from Scythia, and he ascribes probably 
 rightly their name to the practice of painting their bodies. 
 Although he did not succeed in detecting the insertion of 
 forty kings between Fergus i. Mac Fercha and Fergus n. Mac 
 Ere, he shows his distrust of it by reckoning only fifteen where 
 Fordun and Wyntoun had made forty. Buchanan, who ought 
 to have known better, has compiled a list still longer and 
 less intelligible, which corrupted Scottish History at the foun- 
 tainhead till the sources were purified first by Father Innes, 
 and more completely in our day by Mr. Skene. It is signifi- 
 cant of how far Major was in advance not merely of his own 
 but of a later age that Dr. Mackenzie, writing in 1708 his 
 memoir of Major, supposes the reduction of the number of the 
 kings to be a misprint. 
 
 He argues from the life of Xinian as well as Bede that the 
 Picts and Britons had occupied Scotland before the Scots 
 migrated from Ireland. Bede's authority and his own know- 
 ledge as a Lothian man of the dedication of the Church at 
 Whittingham to St. Oswald, enable him to assert the fact of 
 the whole of Lothian having been in the time of Bede under 
 the Northumbrian kings. He refers to the Commentaries of 
 Bede and to Alcuin as proof of the learning of the Northumbrian 
 ecclesiastics of the eighth century, though he says they were 
 not well versed in the knotty questions of the Schoolmen and 
 the Sorbonne. He says boldly that the Church of St. Columba 
 had priests and monks but not bishops, in which he is in sub- 
 stance right, even though it be held proved that there was an 
 order of bishops whose only known function of preeminence 
 
58 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 was the ordination of priests. For how different was such a 
 bishop from the lordly diocesan prelates of Major's own time ! 
 He gives correctly the date of the union of the Picts and Scots 
 in the middle of the ninth century under Kenneth Macalpine, 
 and leaves as a doubtful point what is still doubtful — how long 
 Abernethy had been the chief seat of the Pictish Church before 
 its transfer to St. Andrews. He remarks that the Picts 
 held St. Andrew in great honour, from which he jumps to 
 the possibly sound conclusion that the Picts held the richer 
 and level parts of the country, while the Scots occupied the 
 mountains. The Anglo-Saxon period of English history and 
 the contemporary history of Scotland from Kenneth Macalpine 
 to Malcolm Canmore is very rapidly sketched, and there are 
 many errors in the attempt to synchronise the kings. 
 independent After Canmore the history is more clear and accurate, and 
 
 view of* the 
 
 later history. though the reigns of the English kings are slurred, a distinct 
 portrait of each of the Scottish monarchs is presented : Alex- 
 ander the Bold (' audax '), who imitated his father in bravery 
 and zeal for justice; the good king David; Malcolm, who 
 followed the piety of his ancestors ; the long reign of William 
 the Lion ; Alexander the Second, who fought with John on 
 the side of the English barons, and lost nothing his ancestors 
 had gained, observing justice during his whole life ; the third 
 Alexander, who rivalled his father in the goodness of his reign. 
 The War of Independence is told as might be expected by a 
 Scottish patriot, and the true characters of Wallace and Bruce 
 are defended against the attacks of Caxton's Chronicle ; but 
 he rejects as fabulous the visit of Wallace to France, which 
 subsequent research has confirmed, on the ground that this 
 visit is not mentioned by the French or the Latin Chronicles 
 of Scotland. David n. he characterises, though brave, as 
 a weak king, and he blames the want of patriotism which 
 led him to name an English prince as his successor. The 
 second and third Robert are less distinctly drawn. James i. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 59 
 
 is the finest portrait. It has been copied in all subsequent Characters of 
 
 the Jameses. 
 
 histories. ' In person short, but stout and robust, of the 
 finest intellect but somewhat passionate. Skilled in games, 
 he threw the stone and hammer further than any one, and was 
 a swift runner. He was a trained musician, and second to none 
 in the modulation of his voice. In harp playing he surpassed, 
 like another Orpheus, the Irish and Highland Scots, the masters 
 of that instrument. All these arts he learned in France and 
 England during his long captivity. In Scottish poetry he 
 was very skilful, and very many of his works and songs are 
 still held by the Scotch in memory as the best of their kind. 
 . . . He was not inferior to, perhaps was greater than, Thomas 
 Randolph in administering justice. He excelled his father, 
 grandfather, and great-grandfather in virtue, nor do I prefer,' 
 he concludes, 'any of the Stewarts and their predecessors, 
 without counting the present boy (James v.), to James L 1 
 
 Of James n. he says, many gave him the palm amongst 
 active kings because he applied all his zeal to war and showed 
 himself equal to any knight. 4 I place," however, ' his father 
 before him both in intellect and courage, but in temper he 
 much resembled his father/ Of James in. he speaks with less 
 praise, giving only the negative encomium, of which his 
 countrymen are fond, that there have been many worse 
 kin^s both abroad and at home. James iv. was not inferior 
 to James n., as appears from his deeds. ■ Many of the Scots,'' 
 be remarks, ' secretly compare the Stewarts to the horses 
 of Mar, which are good in youth but bad in old age; but I do 
 not share this view. The Stewarts have preserved the Scots in 
 good peace, and have held in hand the kingdom left by the 
 Bruces undiminished. 1 There is a boldness in judging and 
 distributing praise and blame to the kings very characteristic 
 of Major and his count rvmen. His judgment is not that of a 
 partisan, but of a contemplative historian. Not less interest- 
 ing, pointed, clear, and fair are the brief remarks which he 
 
CO LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 
 makes on the character of his countrymen than on those of the 
 kings. His foreign residence helped him to gauge their insular 
 vanity and intense family pride. But it had not diminished 
 his patriotism. Love of his country and desire for its true 
 welfare is everywhere conspicuous in his writings. ■ Our 
 native soil attracts us with a secret and inexpressible sweetness 
 and does not permit us to forget it\ he wrote to Alexander 
 Stewart, the archbishop of St. Andrews, while he was still 
 living in Paris, in the dedication of the edition of his Com- 
 mentary on the Fourth Book of the Sentences l . 
 
 It was during Major's second residence in Paris that Francis i. 
 — who, like James v., had at first hesitated to prosecute the 
 Reformers, and even leant towards them, partly from policy, 
 as a means of attacking the Emperor through the German 
 Lutherans, and partly from scholarly tastes, which made him 
 a patron of the Renaissance — went over to the side of the Old 
 Church. He had tried to persuade Erasmus to return to 
 France and preside over the new r Royal College, in which the 
 three ancient classical languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, 
 were to be taught ; but Erasmus was too prudent. Francis 
 had twice saved from the stake Berquin, the translator of 
 Erasmus, a man, like Hamilton, of good family, but on a third 
 declaration of heretical opinions abandoned him to his fate. 
 The Sorbonne The Doctors of the Sorbonne were bitter enemies of Erasmus, 
 Erasmus. and, led by Major's old patron, Noel Beda, now their Syndic, 
 
 they induced the University to condemn his principal works. 
 His ' Colloquies 1 had been so popular, that a Paris printer 
 issued 24,000 copies of one edition ; they were even used as a 
 text-book in some of the University classes. The Theological 
 Faculty had already taken the alarm in 1526, and petitioned 
 Parliament to suppress the work, but nothing was done. Two 
 years later Beda, in the name of the Theological Faculty, 
 applied to the University. The Faculties of Canon Law and 
 1 Appendix II., p. 420. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 61 
 
 Medicine, and the French Nation, sided with the Faculty of 
 Theology in condemnation of a book dangerous to youth. 
 The German Nation was willing to interdict its use in the 
 classes. The Nations of Picardy and Normandy desired to 
 write to the author, asking him to correct his errors. The 
 Rector embraced the more severe view, which had the balance 
 of authority in its favour, and the book was absolutely 
 condemned. 
 
 Beda was at this time so powerful in the University, and Changes in 
 
 . l-ii-mr-iT Francis i.'s 
 
 even with the mob of Fans, aptly styled by Michelet tiie attitude. 
 false democracy, that he was called the King of Paris. The 
 influence of his mother Ann, a fervent Catholic, drew Francis 
 in the direction of Rome. The excess of Lutheranism began 
 to show itself in the Anabaptists. The monarchs of Europe 
 began to fear that their authority might be impugned as well 
 as that of the Pope. A comparatively trifling incident is said 
 to have finally decided Francis. Some one — no one knew 
 who — broke an image of the Virgin and Child on the Sunday 
 before Easter 1525, in the Rue des Rosiers in Paris. It was 
 at once attributed to the Reformers. 
 
 The University, led by Beda, went in solemn procession, 
 preceded by 500 youths with candles, to the place of the 
 sacrilege,- deposited their candles, and returned for a solemn 
 expiatory service at the Church of St. Catherine. Two days 
 later the King headed a still larger procession, in which the 
 Princes of the Blood Royal, the Ambassadors, the Higli 
 Officials of the Court, the Church, and the University, took 
 part, and replaced the broken image with one in silver, amidst 
 the acclamations of the people. 
 
 A condemnation of the translation of the New Testament, 
 prepared by the Faculty of Theology in 1527, was at last 
 IMued i n 153 1. Encouraged by this success, and the martyr- 
 dom of several less conspicuous Lutherans which followed thai 
 of Berquin in 1529, Beda ventured on the condemnation of 
 
62 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 
 Le Miroir de Tame pfcheresse, a mystical and devotional work 
 by the king's sister Margaret, Queen of Navarre, and he 
 attacked the Royal Professors, who were now beginning to 
 carry out a pet project of Francis — the institution of the new 
 College for free instruction in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 
 His zeal had carried him a step too far. For these offences 
 he was compelled to make a public apology, was imprisoned 
 during the King's pleasure, and the uncrowned king, one of 
 the many victims to the ■ vaulting ambition which overleaps 
 itself', died a captive at Mont St. Michel. Francis i., like 
 Henry viii., was not a religious but a despotic monarch, who 
 would brook no rival in Church or State. 
 TheSorbonne It is not certain whether Major joined the Doctors of the 
 viii. 's Divorce. Sorbonne in their sanction given in January 1530 to the divorce 
 of Henry viii., contrary to the wishes of the fanatical but 
 orthodox Beda. The records of the period have been de- 
 stroyed ; but as the opinion was issued during his residence, it 
 is probable he concurred in it. While we condemn this act, 
 it must be remembered that it was in one aspect a declara- 
 tion of the independence of the temporal power against the 
 Pope, which would find favour with the Gallican Doctors. 
 Francis i., in an angry letter to the Parliament of Paris, 
 expressly condemned Beda's proposal to refer the matter to 
 the Pope, as trenching on ' the liberties of the Gallican Church 
 and the independence of the Theological Council, for there 
 is no privilege belonging to the realm on which we are more 
 firmly determined to insist'. 
 Loyola, Calvin, Michelet notes that during these years three men, different 
 
 Rabelais. . _° J . ._ . _ 
 
 in every respect except in the greatness of their fame, came to 
 
 Paris to complete their education — Ignatius Loyola, who com- 
 menced his education in grammar at Montaigu in 1528, John 
 Calvin, who entered the College of Ste. Barbe in 1523, and 
 Francis Rabelais. Rabelais's college has not been discovered, 
 but probably he was in Paris from 1524 to 1530. With none 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 63 
 
 of them can Major have had much sympathy ; but it marks the 
 pregnant character of the time and place that they produced 
 such contrasts as the ascetic militant founder of the Society of 
 Jesus, whose rule was to surpass even Papal absolutism ; the 
 Protestant theologian whose discipline, almost as strict as that 
 of the Jesuits, and founded on principles as plausible, once its 
 premisses are admitted, was to succeed the Lutheran as the 
 latest form of the reformed Church ; and the satirist whose 
 coarse and giant laughter, a revulsion from the rules alike of 
 the old orders and of the new sects, was to shake the founda- 
 tions of the Church in France and become the parent of the 
 best and worst in modern French literature. The irony of 
 Erasmus, and the satire of Rabelais, were almost the only 
 weapons which could be used by reformers who wished to 
 escape the fate of Berquin. Major himself came in for a 
 chance stroke of the lash of Rabelais, who places amongst the 
 books in the library of St. Victor, ' Majoris de Modo faciendi 
 boudinos 1 — * Major on the Art of making Puddings.'' 
 
 Before finally leaving Paris for Scotland Major completed Major's final 
 
 ..11 • i- • i • v • /> i r published 
 
 his labours in Logic by issuing a new edition of the Intro- works. 
 duction to Aristotle's Logic in 1527, and a new treatise, 
 Quaestiones Logicales, in 1528, and his labours in Philosophy 
 by an edition of the Ethics of Aristotle in 1530, and his labours 
 in Theology by new editions of his Commentaries on the First, 
 Second, and Third Books of the Sentences in 1528-1530. 
 But the chief employment of this portion of his life was an 
 elaborate Commentary and Harmony of the Four Gospels, which 
 he had projected in 1518, when he published his Exposition of His Biblical 
 St. Matthew, and now in 1529 published as a complete work. 
 Each Gospel has a separate dedicatory letter. St. Matthew is 
 dedicated to his chief Scottish patron, James Beaton, Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews; St. Mark to his old college friend, 
 John Bouillache, Curate of St. James in Paris; St. Luke to 
 James Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow ; and St. John to his 
 
64 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 old pupil, Robert Senalis, now Bishop of Vence. The Doubts 
 and Difficulties he had inserted in the earlier edition of the 
 Commentary on St. Matthew were not reprinted, but the 
 complete work had an appendix of four questions : — 
 (1) Whether the Law of Grace is the only true Law; (2) 
 What are the degrees of Catholic Truth ; (3) On the number 
 of the Evangelists; (4) On the site of the Promised Land. 
 Dedication to The letter to Beaton explains the object which Major had 
 in view in this work. It was to show the Harmony of the 
 Gospels with each other and of each in itself, and to preserve 
 the tradition of the doctrine of the Roman Church. In carry- 
 ing out this intention he has refuted the errors of Theophylact l , 
 the Bulgarian Bishop, and of the Wycliffite, Hussite, and 
 Lutheran sects. The errors of others he has noted without 
 naming them, ' for Christians have been taught not to call a 
 brother Racha. 1 
 
 * He has dedicated it to James Beaton, because he owed to 
 him a good part of his studies, alluding doubtless to the offices 
 he had held at Glasgow and St. Andrews, and who became a 
 teacher on this subject, was suitable to Beaton's name, pro- 
 fession, race, education, and conduct (mores). ' His name 
 "Jacob" means a supplanter, as he had been of heresy, 
 and "Beaton 11 signifies a noble herb, an antidote to poison, 
 as he had shown himself of the vigorous poison of the 
 Lutherans. His profession and office made it his duty to study 
 and preach the Gospels, and his race, as that of every illus- 
 trious family, to protect the Church. Finally, his conduct in 
 removing, not without the envy of many, a noble but unhappy 
 follower of the Lutheran heresy. 1 The work which follows 
 His orthodoxy answers to the design. It is a rigidly orthodox commentary, 
 reforming spirit, in which Major allows himself much less freedom than in his 
 
 1 Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria (d. 1112) achieved a lasting reputation 
 by his Commentaries on the Gospels, the Acts the Epistles of St. Paul, and 
 the minor Prophets. — Hardwicke's Church History of the Middle Ages, p. 273. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 65 
 
 writings on the Books of the Sentences, or in his History, or 
 even in the Doubts which he had inserted in the earlier 
 edition of the Commentary on St. Matthew. If he spares 
 others who have held erroneous views, he never hesitates to 
 condemn in the strongest language the heretics who had denied 
 the doctrine of transubstantiation, — Berengarius, who had been 
 condemned by the Council of Vercellae, Wyclif by that of 
 Constance, and the Germans of his own time who had revived 
 the same heresy, and of whom he did not know whether Oeco- 
 lampadius, Zwingle, or Luther was the worst. Transubstantia- 
 tion, he vehemently reiterates, is the doctrine of Scripture, of 
 the Church, and of the Fathers of the Church. It is also the 
 doctrine 'of our Theological Faculty of Paris 1 . Whoever 
 denies it is a foolish heretic.' He defends the monastic life 
 and the celibacy of the clergy against the Lutherans 2 , but 
 admits that there were monasteries and nunneries which 
 required reform, and again, as in his History, he mentions with 
 approval the case of the English nunnery which, when he was 
 pursuing his studies at Cambridge, he had seen transformed 
 into a college by the Bishop of Ely 3 . So too he strongly con- 
 demns the bestowal of livings on unworthy priests, or even the 
 preference of a less worthy candidate and the pluralities which 
 were so common in the Church in his day. 'Those deceive 
 themselves," he says, ' who think that the approval even of the 
 Supreme Pontiff can reconcile such things to the dictates of 
 Conscience V He insists on the duty of preaching, especially 
 by the prelates of the Church. In a curious passage 5 which 
 seems to have a personal reference, in commenting on the fact 
 that some of Christ's kinsmen did not acknowledge Him, he 
 adds 'just as our relations treat us as mad because we spend 
 
 1 In Joann. caput vi., fol. cclxxxviii. 2 In Matth. fol. lxxii. 
 
 3 John Alcock, Bishop of Ely, was the Reformer of the Nunnery of St. 
 Radegunde, which he converted into Jesus College, Cambridge.— Mullinger, 
 p. 321. 
 
 4 In Matth. fol. lxxx. 5 In Marc fol cxvj 
 
 E 
 
66 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 our whole activity in philosophy and theology. They wish us 
 rather to apply ourselves to the law to gain honour and 
 wealth, and take offence at all knowledge which is not lucra- 
 tive. According to their false estimation we exist for them 
 and not for our own salvation and the glory of God. For 
 they say, What profit does he bring to us ? Let his library, 
 with its books, be burnt. And they think the more sublimely 
 any one philosophises, and thereby magnifies the power of 
 God, that he is so much the greater fool V 
 
 Such have been the recriminations of those who pursue know- 
 ledge for its own sake, and of those who follow it for gain, in 
 all ages ; but probably at no time was the contrast sharper than 
 between the monastic student of the middle ages, who had 
 taken the vow of poverty, and the practical man his relative 
 or neighbour, who devoted his life to the acquisition of 
 wealth. While strenuously maintaining the worship of the 
 Saints against the Lutherans and other heretics, he admits 
 that there was a possibility of abuse which must be corrected 
 by the proper ecclesiastical authorities 2 . The use of Images 
 in Churches he altogether approves, and condemns the revival 
 by Wyclif and Luther of the heresy of the Greek Church in 
 the time of Leo the Iconoclast with regard to them 3 . These 
 examples may suffice to indicate the spirit of the teaching of 
 Major as a biblical Commentator. He stands firm in the 
 old paths of the Roman and Catholic Church, and treats all 
 deviations from its doctrine as pestilent and poisonous heresy. 
 But like the best Romanists of his age, he favours reforms 
 within the Church and by the Church itself. 
 
 The last of Major's published works was a return to his 
 earliest master. The Ethics of Aristotle, with Commentaries 
 by himself, were printed at the press of Badius Ascensius in 
 1530, 4 shortly before his return to Scotland. 
 
 1 In Marc. fol. cxvii. 2 In Joann. fol. cccxxii. 
 
 3 In Joann. fol. cccxiii. 4 Appendix I., p. 407. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 67 
 
 More interesting even than the subject of the work is the Dedication of 
 
 . Major's Com- 
 
 Preface which preserves the memory of the relations between mentary on 
 Major and the great minister of Henry viii. As it contains Aristotle to 
 several references to his own life, and is one of the best of 
 his numerous dedications, we give a translation of what were 
 probably his last published words, for the twenty years he still 
 survived were spent in other pursuits than authorship 1 . 
 
 On the Kalends of June 1530 he wrote to Wolsey the fol- 
 lowing dedicatory letter : — 
 
 ' To the most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Lord 
 Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Presbyter of the Holy Roman 
 Church by the title of St. Cecilia, Archbishop of York, 
 Primate of England, and Legate a Latere of the Apostolic 
 See, John Major of Haddington, with all observance, greeting. 
 
 ' I have often and long determined with myself, and conceived 
 in my mind, most bountiful of Prelates, to dedicate to some English 
 prince the first fruits of my poor thoughts, such as they are, and 
 that for good reasons as I think. The first of them, not to be 
 diffuse, is the love of our common country, which is innate in all 
 living creatures; for we, separated only by a small space, are 
 enclosed together in one Britain, the most celebrated island in all 
 Europe, as in a ship upon a great ocean. My second reason is 
 our community of religion and of studies. My third and, not to 
 multiply words, my last and strongest reason is the desire to avoid 
 ingratitude, the least note of which was deemed even by the 
 Persians the most odious stain. For I have been received and 
 honoured by Englishmen with such frequent hospitality, such 
 humane and genial converse, such friendly intercourse, that I 
 cannot be longer silent without showing a forgetful mind. Forty 2 
 years ago, if I reckon rightly, when I first left my father's house 
 and went through England to Paris, I was received and retained 
 with so great courtesy by the English, that during a whole year I 
 learned the first rudiments of a good education in arts in the very 
 celebrated College of Cambridge, now illustrious by the name of 
 Christ. Afterwards, so far as I was permitted by the never-changing 
 
 1 For the original, see Appendix II., p. 448. 
 
 2 It was really thirty-six or thirty-seven, for Major went to Taris in 1493, »fter, 
 as this Preface informs us, a year's residence in England. 
 
68 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 sea (per mare perpetuum), I always made my journeys to and from 
 France through England. Besides, what I hold and will always hold 
 in fresh and constant memory so long as there is breath in my body, 
 it is now the fourth year since your Grace, Most Reverend Legate, 
 most bountiful and chief of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of England, 
 entertained with the old hospitality of Christians one of my humble 
 condition when I was again making my journey to France, and 
 invited me to the College of Letters, then recently founded by your 
 magnificent beneficence at Oxford 1 , to do the best I could to 
 enlighten it by my presence and teaching, and made me the offer 
 of most splendid remuneration. But so great a love possessed me 
 for the University of Paris, my mother, and for my fellows in study, 
 besides the desire to complete the books which I had already 
 begun, that I could not accept the post so freely offered and so 
 honourable. Now therefore, that I may not seem altogether for- 
 getful of such great benefits, and that I may produce what during 
 so many years I have laboured with, I inscribe and dedicate to you, 
 who are both so great a Prince in ecclesiastical rank and the 
 Maecenas not only of all theologians but of all men of letters, that 
 most celebrated work on Ethics, written by Aristotle, the Prince of 
 philosophers in the judgment of many, and explained by my own 
 commentaries, of however little value these may be. As in the rest 
 of his writings he has surpassed others, in this work he seems to 
 have surpassed himself, that is the power of human nature. For 
 in almost all his opinions he agrees with the Catholic and truest 
 Christian faith in all its integrity. He constantly asserts the Free 
 Will of man. He declares with gravity that suicide, to avoid the 
 sad things of life, is the mark not of a truly brave but of a timid 
 spirit. He separates honest pleasures which good men may seek 
 after from the foul allurements the Turks propose for themselves. 
 He places the happiness which man may attain to in the exercise 
 of the heroic virtues. And he pursues with admirable judgment 
 the examination of the two kinds of life, I mean the active and the 
 contemplative, which were figured in the Old Testament by the 
 sisters Rachel and Leah, and to us by Martha and Magdalene 2 . 
 
 1 Christ Church was begun by Wolsey in 1525, but never completed on his 
 plan. The Cardinal's College, as it came to be called, was forfeited by Henry 
 viii., and finished on an inferior scale by the king. — Brewer's Henry vni. 
 
 2 Mary, the sister of Martha, supposed by mediaeval commentators to be 
 Mary Magdalene. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 69 
 
 For he applies the one to the life of the gods, the other to the 
 life of mortals. 
 
 In fine, in so great and manifold a work, if it be read as we 
 explain it, you meet scarcely a single opinion unworthy of a Chris- 
 tian man. Wherefore, Most Magnificent Father, as you lately 
 received me with such humanity and benevolence, we beg you now 
 to accept this new birth, which, even if it were, as I wish, much 
 better than it is, was long ago your due, and is now at last dedi- 
 cated from my heart to your Eminence.' 
 
 Do the Latin superlatives and high-flown style strike us as Time and tone 
 antiquated and exaggerated ? Let us recognise qualities which honourable to 
 are better than any style, however perfect in taste and propor- ajor * 
 tion — the ardent patriotism, the Academic spirit, the recog- 
 nition of the nobility of the morals of the heathen philosopher, 
 and the warm gratitude for Wolsey's kind offices. Let us 
 remember too that when Wolsey had offered to place Major 
 in the College which he was endowing with more than royal 
 munificence, he was at the summit of his power ; but when this 
 dedication was written he had fallen so low that in England 
 there was scarcely any one ' so poor to do him reverence." 1 
 In October of the previous year he had been prosecuted under 
 the Statute of Provisors for accepting the Legatine office, 
 which entailed the penalties of Praemunire and placed all he 
 possessed at the king's mercy. On the 17th of that month he 
 had been compelled to surrender the Great Seal ; an inventory 
 of all his goods had been taken, and two days later he had 
 confessed the charge and submitted himself to the king's 
 pleasure. Though pardoned in February 1530, and restored 
 to the Archbishopric, he had been finally deprived of his other 
 great benefices, Winchester and St. Albans. He had retired 
 to his diocese in failing health and fallen spirits, and at the 
 time when Major was writing this dedication he was travelling 
 by slow stages from Grantham to Newark, and from Newark 
 to Southwell, where he spent Whitsuntide. 1 
 
 1 Brewer's Reign of Henry vin., ii. 413. 
 
70 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 He lived till 29th November 1530, and wrote many piteous 
 and unavailing letters to the king to be restored to some 
 portion of the property of which he had been stripped, and, 
 above all, that the Colleges of Ipswich and Christ Church 
 might be spared. They were the darling objects of his bene- 
 ficence, and intended to perpetuate his name. 'By Wolsey 
 himself, 1 writes Mr. Brewer, ' the loss of power, the forfeiture of 
 his estate, and even his exile to York were regarded with indif- 
 ference compared with the ruin of his colleges. For recovery 
 of the former he made little or no effort. For the preservation 
 of his colleges he bestirred himself with ceaseless and untiring 
 energy, employing all the little influence he possessed, or 
 believed he possessed, with men in power to rescue them from 
 the hands of the spoiler.'' 
 
 It may also be noted to the credit both of Wolsey and 
 Major that Wolsey was a pronounced Thomist, and had even 
 acquired the epithet of Thomistkus. Yet this had not hin- 
 dered the Cardinal from offering the post of teacher in his 
 college to one who like Major inclined to the position of the 
 Scotist philosophy, and did not prevent Major, while insisting 
 on the Freedom of the Will, the key-note of Duns Scotus 1 
 separation from the doctrine of Aquinas, from expressing his 
 gratitude and dedicating his work to AVolsey. 
 
 To both the great Minister and the great Schoolman the 
 Renaissance had imparted some of its reconciling influences. 
 When we consider Major's work as a whole we are sensible 
 that he was more in place in the Sorbonne than he would 
 have been at Christ Church, in a college which retained 
 the old subjects and methods of teaching rather than in one 
 which aimed at adopting the new learning. Still his con- 
 nection with the college ennobled by the name of Christ 
 at Cambridge, when a student, and his narrow escape from 
 becoming a Professor in the college which received the same 
 name at Oxford, and favoured a reform in education, was 
 something more than an accident in his life. It shows how 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 71 
 
 near he stood, and was deemed by some of his contemporaries 
 to stand, to the parting of the ways between the Mediaeval and 
 the Modern plans of University education. But when he was 
 summoned to his own country as a director of public instruction, 
 it was the Mediaeval Scholasticism and not the Modern Human- 
 ism that he followed both at Glasgow and St. Andrews. He was 
 a Modern only in Logic, and in the restricted and technical sense 
 in which that word was used to denote the schoolwhich made 
 the doctrine of ' Terms ' the cardinal part of Logic. He was a 
 keen reformer of ecclesiastical abuses, but was not prepared for 
 reform either in dogmatic theology 1 or educational methods. 
 
 The Bibliography of Major's works compiled by the learned Bibliography of 
 zeal of Mr. T. Graves Law, Librarian of the Library of the illustrates his 
 Writers to the Signet, and the kind aid of the keepers of the 
 principal Libraries where his works are still to be found, is a 
 valuable key to the biography of Major, and an interesting 
 chapter in the history of the early French press. For it 
 was in France that all hi6 works were printed. The art of 
 printing, like the other fine arts which were the offspring 
 of the Revival of Letters, was a late comer to Northern 
 Britain. Chepman and Millar's press, in the Southgait of 
 Edinburgh, issued its first sheets, the primitiae of Scottish 
 printing, in 1508, and its last, so far as known, in June 1510. 
 A single sheet of eight small leaves which contains the Com- 
 passio beatae Marine is the solitary record of the names of John 
 Story the printer and Carolus Stute the publisher. A copy of 
 The Buke of the Hoiclat, discovered by Mr. David Laing, in 
 the binding of some early Protocol Books, completes the brief 
 sum of Scottish printing between 1510 and 1520, one of the 
 most active periods of the early press of France and Germany. 
 The first work of Thomas Davidson, the next Scottish printer, 
 did not appear till 1542, when Major had for twelve years 
 
 1 This is strikingly shown by his dedication in 1530 of a new edition of his 
 Commentary on the First Book of the Sentences to John Mayr (or Major), the 
 Suabian called Eck, from his birthplace, the most celebrated champion of the 
 Church against Luther. Appendix II., p. 449. 
 
n LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 ceased publishing. Necessity as well as choice, due to his long 
 residence in France, made him select Lyons and Paris as the 
 birthplace of his literary children. There was no press in his 
 native country which could have issued his voluminous works, 
 and few buyers had there been such a press. How different 
 was the case in France, whose famous printers vied with each 
 other in producing them, and the demand was sufficient to 
 produce editions of the same work by different publishers, and 
 frequent revised editions of some by Major himself. A rapid 
 survey of these will illustrate at once the activity of the French 
 press and the popularity of Major. Major seems to have com- 
 menced by printing at Paris in 1503 his first Logical Lectures 
 on Exponibilia, at the press of John Lambert, and two years 
 later he issued his Commentaries on the logical Summulae of 
 Peter the Spaniard from the press of Francis Fradin in Lyons. 
 In 1508 John De Vingle, another Lyons printer, father of the 
 more famous Peter, the Calvinist printer of Geneva, published 
 his whole lectures on Logic as a Regent in Arts, which were 
 sold in the same town by Stephen Queygnard, and of which 
 there was a new edition in 1516. He had also in 1505 issued, 
 along with Magister Ortiz, in Paris, the Medulla Dialcctices of 
 Jerome Pardus. In 1508 his Commentary on the Fourth Book 
 of the Sentences was printed by Philip Pigouchet, and sold by 
 Ponset le Preux, and it was republished by Badius Ascensius 
 in 1516 ; and in 1516 his lectures in Arts were reprinted in 
 Paris by John Gran dj on, and sold by Dyonysius Roce. 
 
 Why several of these earlier works were published at Lyons 
 has not been clearly ascertained. It may be conjectured that 
 as Lyons was as early as Paris x a centre of printing 2 , and 
 already possessed forty printers in the fifteenth century, 
 although Paris had more than double that number, some 
 chance introduction may have led Major to resort to them. 
 
 1 Monteil : Histoire des Fran$ais, iii. p. 305. 
 
 2 Brunet, Supplement par mm Bibliophile, s.v. LYONS, notes that it was then 
 the chief market for books, as Frankfort afterwards, and now Leipzig. 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 73 
 
 The Lyons printers and publishers employed by Major were His numerous 
 Francis Fradin (1505), Stephen Queygnard (1508), John De publishers! 
 Vingle (1508), Martin Boillon (1516). An edition of the 
 Summulae of Peter the Spaniard was published in Venice by 
 Lazarus de Soardis in 1506, and another at Caen in 1520. 
 With these exceptions, and after 1516, Paris became his sole 
 place of publication, and his principal publishers were John 
 Grandjon and Badius Ascensius. But besides these we find 
 frequently the following Parisian printers and publishers : 
 John Parvus (Petit), who appears to have been a partner of 
 Badius : Constantine Lepus, James le Messier, J. Borlier, John 
 Lambert, Dyonysius Roce, William Anabat, Giles Gourmont, 
 the partner of Petit after the death of Badius, Durand Gerlier, 
 and Johannes Frillon. 
 
 Several of the last-named printers, with the exception of 
 Petit and Gourmont, were probably pirates, who then as now 
 preyed upon the works of celebrated and fashionable authors, 
 and may be left in the obscurity they merit. Grandjon and 
 Badius deserve a brief record. Of Grandjon little is known John Grandjon. 
 except that he was one of the most voluminous publishers or 
 bibliopoles of the University of Paris, and that his shop was in 
 the world-famed Clos Bruneau, with whose name the Parisian 
 students startled the ears of the watch by their cry, ■ Allez au 
 Clos Bruneau, vous trouverez a qui parler\ His sign, which 
 hung over his shop, and was engraved as a device on his books, 
 was a group of great rushes (magni junci) in a marsh, a pun on 
 his name of Grand or Grant Jon. 
 
 Jodocus Badius was a still more celebrated printer, and jodocus 
 deserves recognition by Scottish historical students, for to a ms * 
 his press we owe the two first printed histories of Scotland, 
 that of Hector Boece, as well as that of John Major. Born 
 at Asc, near Brussels (whence his name Ascensius), about 
 1 468, after finishing his education at Ghent and Brussels, and 
 visiting Italy, he settled in Lyons as a lecturer on Latin, but 
 derived probably a larger income as corrector of the press for 
 
74 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 Jean Treschel, one of the earliest Lyons printers. Marrying 
 the daughter of Treschel, he migrated to Paris about 1498, 
 and there began to print on his own account. His press, of 
 which a facsimile is given on the title-page of his books, 
 was established in the Aedes Ascensianae, and, till his death 
 about 1536, was the most prolific in Paris. No less than 400 
 volumes, the greater part folios and quartos, issued from it. 
 They included the most important Latin classics, on several 
 of which he wrote a Commentary, a translation by his own 
 hand of Sebastian Brand's Ship of Fools, and many historical, 
 philosophical, and theological works. He was employed not 
 only by French but also by English and Scottish authors, who 
 were doubtless attracted to a printer who was also a scholar. 
 He began to print for Major in 1516, and continued to do so 
 down to 1530. His eldest daughter, the wife of Robert 
 Stephen or Etienne, became the ancestress of a famous race 
 of printers. The second was the wife of Jean Roygny, who 
 carried on his father-in-law's press, and the youngest of 
 Michael Vascosanus, also a well-known Parisian printer. His 
 son Conrad became a Protestant, and retired with his brother- 
 in-law Robert Stephen to Geneva. If the epigram of his 
 grandson Henry Stephen could be trusted, Badius must have 
 had several other children, though his books were his most 
 numerous progeny. A sentence which he inscribed on several 
 of his volumes may be commended to publishers : — ' Aere 
 Meret Badius Laudem Auctorum Arte Legentium,"' which may 
 be freely translated : — 
 
 f His authors praised his grateful heart, 
 His readers praised his graceful art.' 
 
 In one of Major's volumes Badius celebrates the author in 
 Latin verse 1 , and Major frequently records his gratitude for 
 
 1 Iodocus Badius Lectori. 
 Quartum Maioris, Lector studiose, suprema 
 
 lam tersum lima, perlege, disce, cole. 
 Quern si cum reliquis trutina perpenderis eque : 
 
 Pridem alijs maior, se modo maior erit. [From the In Quartum, ed. 1521.] 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 75 
 
 the care of the press of Badius. One of these passages will 
 appeal to the feelings both of the reader and the writer for 
 the press. ' I had no human aid ', he writes, ' except that of the 
 printer, who has laboured with the greatest vigilance that com- 
 mas, periods, and other stops should not be left out, although 
 the copy was written by various hands ; for my amanuensis 
 was sometimes prevented by the lectures which he had to attend, 
 and my own handwriting was difficult for others to read'. 1 
 
 Another point of contact between Major and the early uiric Gering, 
 Parisian press deserves mention. Uldericus Guerinck or Ulric pr i ntcri a bene" 
 Gering, the French Caxton, or first Parisian printer, was factor of Mont- 
 closely associated with the College of Montaigu. During his 
 life he was a constant benefactor of its poor students, and by 
 his will he left it the half of his goods and the third of the 
 debts due to him. With the proceeds of this legacy the 
 College bought the farm of Daunet, near the Marne, and 
 the Hotel de Vezelay, which was situated between Montaigu 
 and the College of St. Michel. On the latter site were built 
 rooms for the classes of Grammar and Arts soon after 1510, 
 the year when Gering died, and in the Chapel of the College a 
 portrait of its benefactor was hung with an inscription describ- 
 ing him as * Proto-Typographus Parisius 1469', and recording 
 his benefaction. In these class-rooms Major may have lectured, 
 and in that chapel he must have frequently worshipped 2 . 
 
 In 1531 Major returned from Paris to St. Andrews, and Major at 
 
 ^— — - — ^ — — » — — ^ — ^ ^ ^*^*^ St. And rev 
 
 resumed his lectures on Theology. Three years after, the death Provost of 
 of Hugh Spens 3 caused a vacancy in the office of Provost of 
 St. Salvator, and Major was appointed. The first entry of his 
 name in that office after his return is on 4th November 1535, 
 when he was again elected an Assessor of the Dean of Faculty 
 of Arts. He was annually re-elected, at least till 1538. He was 
 
 St. Andrews. 
 Provost of 
 St. Salvator. 
 
 1 Exordium Libri Quarti Sententiarum. Appendix II., p. 439. 
 3 Annals of Parisian Typography, by Rev. W. Parr Gresswell, 1815, the 
 frontispiece of which is the portrait of Gering. 
 
 * His tomb bcarb the inscription, ' Obiit anno domini 1534, et 21 die Julii.' 
 
76 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 also one of the Rector's Assessors from 1532 to 1544, with 
 which was generally joined the office of Rector's Deputy : the 
 Assessor was one of the Council of the Rector, and the Deputy 
 his representative when absent. In 1539 he founded, along 
 with William Manderston, a chaplaincy or bursary in St. 
 Salvator's, and endowed it with the rents of certain houses in 
 South Street, St. Andrews. The holder was to celebrate 
 masses for the souls of the founders and their relations, and 
 of James v., Mary of Guise, and Cardinal Beaton. In 1545 
 Peter, the Chaplain of St. Salvator, is mentioned as his 
 coadjutor, and Major ceased, from the increasing infirmity of 
 age, to hold any of the annual offices of the University, but 
 retained the Provostship till his death in 1549 or 1550, when 
 he was succeeded by William Cranstoun. 
 
 Buchanan spoke of him as already in extreme old age in 
 1524. This appears to us somewhat of an exaggeration, as he 
 was only fifty-four. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the ordi- 
 nary limits of human life were counted shorter in that age than 
 in ours. The date of his birth, now precisely ascertained, 
 proves that before his death he exceeded by ten years the 
 term of life allotted by the Psalmist. 
 
 Another reason may be suggested for the censorious tone 
 of all Buchanan's notices of Major. If we could implicitly 
 Tames Laing's cre dit the gossiping and malicious Doctor of the Sorbonne, 
 and^uchanan J ames Laing, Major had actually taken part in the con- 
 demnation of Buchanan for heresy in 1539, because he 
 recommended James v., as it was absurdly put, to eat the 
 Paschal Lamb in Lent, or, as the fact may have been, to 
 break the fast which the Roman Church enforced during 
 that season. ' The king ', says Laing, 6 summoned the Doctors 
 of Theology at St. Andrews, amongst whom was John Major, 
 a man of the greatest piety and learning in Philosophy as 
 well as Theology . . . and when the question was proposed to 
 him he answered : " He who says, Most Christian king, that 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 77 
 
 you ought to eat the Paschal Lamb wishes you to become a 
 Jew, and to live according to the customs of the Jews, who 
 deny that Christ has yet come or was born of the Virgin. For 
 the Paschal Lamb is an institution of the ceremonial law, and 
 every ceremonial law is dead once Christ has suffered, as the 
 apostle clearly says in the fifth chapter of the Galatians." ' 1 
 
 Though this story bears the marks of being largely apo- 
 cryphal, Cardinal Beaton appears certainly to have been the 
 instigator of Buchanan's imprisonment, from which he escaped, 
 as he tells us in his own Life, while the guards were asleep 2 . 
 When he was again arrested in Portugal, one of the charges 
 against him was that he had eaten flesh in Lent 3 , and there 
 is nothing improbable in this having formed part of the 
 earlier accusation in Scotland, or that Major may have been 
 consulted by James v. on the point. If so, Buchanan's dislike 
 of Major had another ground besides his contempt for the 
 logical and sophistical teaching of the Professor. 
 
 That the closing years of Major's life were those of enfeebled 
 age is shown by the appointment of a coadjutor, and by the 
 fact that he was excused from attending the Provincial Council 
 of Edinburgh in July 1549, in whose records he is described 
 as Dean of the Faculty of Theology of St. Andrews, on the 
 ground that he was ' annosus, grandaevus, debilis \ 4 Although 
 Buchanan exaggerated, Major's productive life ended with his 
 second residence in Paris. No later work proceeded from his 
 ready pen, and we have scanty notices of what he did in St. 
 Andrews as head of St. Salvator. Perhaps the absence of a 
 press in Scotland capable of producing such works as his, and 
 the occupations of the principal of a College, precluded him 
 from further literary labours. But there were other and deeper 
 causes. The state of Scotland was not favourable to the calm 
 
 1 Jacobus Langaeus De Vita, Moribtis atque Gestis Haercticorum nostri tern 
 ports. Paris, 158 1. 2 G. Buchanani Vita Sua. 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Joseph Robertson : Eccksiae Scoticanae Concilia, p. 82, 
 
78 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 production or revision of philosophical or theological com- 
 mentaries. The time for contemplation had passed, the time 
 for action had come. Major was not a man of action. To 
 one who had finally chosen to abide by the old church and 
 yet had fostered some liberal ideas, which he hoped the 
 Church would itself realise, the progress of the Reformation 
 and the means adopted to stifle it must have produced thoughts 
 best buried in silence. It was too late to change his opinions. 
 However liberal in other matters, the Holy Roman Church was 
 still to the venerable Doctor of the Sorbonne the exponent of 
 sound faith in religion. It is seldom that a man of serious 
 thought alters his views after middle age. Had he been 
 twenty years younger it might have been different. 
 Knox and Two glimpses of Major in his old age are given in the 
 History of the Reformation by John Knox, which show that 
 although he adhered to the old church he was willing to hear 
 its abuses condemned in the strongest language. In 1534 a 
 Friar William Airth preached at Dundee against the abuses 
 of cursing and of miracles, and the licentious lives of the 
 bishops. John Hepburn, Bishop of Brechin, having called him 
 a heretic for uttering such opinions, ' the Friar, impatient 
 of the injury received, passed to St. Andrews and did com- 
 municate the heads of his sermon with Master John Mair, 
 whose word then was holden as an oracle in matters of reli- 
 gion, and being assured of him that such doctrine might well 
 be defended, and that he would defend it, for it contained no 
 heresy, there was a day appointed for the said Friar to make 
 repetition of the sermon \ Airth accordingly re-delivered it in 
 the parish church, and amongst his hearers were Major and 
 the other heads of the University. The sermon was on the 
 text, ' Truth is the strongest of all things \ Knox gives its 
 substance, which was certainly bold enough, but as it touched 
 chiefly morals and not doctrine it might escape the charge of 
 heresy. ' One matter', says Knox, * was judged harder, for he 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 79 
 
 alleged the common law, " That the Civil Magistrate might 
 correct Churchmen and deprive them of their benefices for 
 open vices *V 
 
 It shows the critical moment the Reformation had reached Major at 
 in Britain that the same Friar, according to Knox, having Public Ser- 
 escaped to England, was cast into prison by Henry vm. for 
 defence of the Pope. But Henry, as Buchanan tells us, was 
 then intent on his own ends rather than purity of religion, 
 ' burning men of opposite opinions at the same stake \ 
 
 Major was again present at a still more memorable occasion 
 thirteen years later, in 1547, when Knox first preached in 
 public at the earnest request of John Rough, Minister of 
 St. Andrews, Sir David Lindsay, the poet, and Balnaves, a 
 lawyer, one of the first Judges of the Court of Session. His 
 text was from the seventh chapter of Daniel, 'And another 
 King shall rise after them, and he shall be unlike unto the 
 first, and he shall subdue three kings, and shall speak great 
 words against the Most High, and shall consume the saints of 
 the Most High, and think that he may change times and laws, 
 and they shall be given into his hands until a time and times 
 and dividing of times 1 . 
 
 After explaining the prophecy of the fall of the four 
 empires — the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman, he 
 declared that on its destruction rose up that last beast, which 
 he declared to be the Roman Church : but before he began to 
 open its corruptions he defined the true kirk as that which 
 heard the voice of its own Pastor Christ, and would not listen 
 to strangers. Then, grappling more closely than any preacher 
 had yet done with the corruptions of Rome, 'he deciphered 
 the lives of the Popes and of all shavelings for the most part, 
 and proved their doctrine and laws to he_contrarv to those of 
 God the Father and of Christ \ ffSJpM^g Pontiff we should £ 
 remember, was Alexander vi., ■ that monster', to quote the just 
 condemnation of Villari, whose enormities made even the 
 
80 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 vices of Sixtus iv. to be forgotten. Knox's crucial instance of 
 false doctrine was the same as Luther's — 'Justification by 
 works, pilgrimages, pardons, and other sic baggage, instead 
 of by faith through the blood of Christ which purgeth from 
 all sin."* Treating of the ecclesiastical law he condemned the 
 observance of days and abstinence from meats and marriage, 
 both of which Christ made free. He reached his climax by 
 quoting the claims alleged on behalf of the Pope, as ' That he 
 cannot err, can make wrong of right and right of wrong, and 
 can of nothing make somewhat \ Finally, he said, turning 
 from the congregation to the seats of honour, 'If any here 
 (and there were present Master John Mair, the Provost of the 
 University, the Sub-prior, and many Canons with some Priors 
 of both orders), will say that I have alleged Scripture doctrine 
 or history otherwise than it is written, let them come to me 
 with sufficient witness, and I, by conference, shall let them see 
 not only the original where my testimonies are written, but 
 prove that the writers meant as I have spoken." Even this 
 daring language would apparently have passed unchallenged 
 had not Hamilton, the Archbishop-elect, written to Winram, 
 the Sub-prior, rebuking him for suffering it. A conference was 
 accordingly held, in which Winram disputed with Knox, but 
 left the brunt of the argument to a Friar Arbuckle, for 
 Winram himself already inclined to the reformed doctrines, 
 which he ultimately adopted. 
 Major and To understand the position of Maior, the representative of 
 
 the Scottish r . . 
 
 Reformation, a former generation brought face to face with the ideas and 
 events of the new era, when, in Scotland at least, Reform came 
 so quickly as almost to outstrip the Revival of Learning, we 
 must recal briefly the course of Scottish affairs from his return 
 to St. Andrews till his death. 
 
 St. Andrews was then, more than at any other time, a 
 political and religious centre; and, though himself inactive, 
 Major came constantly in contact with the chief actors 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 81 
 
 in the tragedies of which Scotland, not yet finally com- 
 mitted to the Roman or the Reformed Church, became the 
 scene. 
 
 The young king, James v., whose tutor and playfellow had James v. 
 been David Lyndsay of the Mount, whose father had chosen 
 Erasmus as preceptor for his bastard half-brother, the Arch- 
 bishop of St. Andrews, whose confessor, Seton, had imbibed 
 some Reformed doctrines, whose uncle, Henry viii., had plied 
 him with flattery and promises, wavered, like Francis i., between 
 Rome and the Reformation. He gave signs that he might 
 accept the latter. He set on foot a reform of the Cistercians, 
 the richest and most corrupt of the older orders of Monks. He 
 employed Buchanan to describe the hypocrisy which made 
 even more odious the Franciscans, whose poverty and asceticism 
 had sometimes become the cloak of a still more dangerous 
 licence, threatening the family, and not merely the cloister, 
 with corruption. He had at last succeeded in obtaining a 
 portion of the exorbitant revenues of the Bishops for the 
 foundation of a College of Justice, one of the most urgently 
 needed reforms ; for the Baronial and Ecclesiastical Courts 
 rivalled each other in the delay, the cost, and often the denial 
 of justice. 
 
 But other influences operating on the unstable mind of 
 James prevailed. In 1534 Henry vm/s divorce received the 
 sanction of Parliament. Whoever, knowing the facts, judged 
 it by any but a purely English standard must have begun to 
 doubt whether good morals and justice were always on the 
 side of the Reformers. One of its consequences was to put an 
 end to the project of James's marriage to Mary Tudor, now 
 disinherited. In 1535 he refused to meet his uncle on the 
 English side of the Border, and in March of the following 
 year a treaty of marriage was made between him and Mary de 
 Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Vendome. In winter he 
 went to France, and, displeased with his proposed bride, pre- 
 
 F 
 
Beaton. 
 
 82 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 ferred the delicate beauty of Madeleine, the daughter of Francis i. 
 The Scotch King was received by the French Court with the 
 honours usually paid only to the Dauphin, and the citizens 
 of Paris thronged to see him, and receive his largesse as he 
 passed through the streets of their beautiful capital. Madeleine 
 having died in midsummer 1537, an embassy, with David 
 Beaton, Bishop of Mirepoix, at its head, soon negotiated 
 another French alliance. The choice fell on Mary, daughter 
 of the Duke of Guise, widow of the Duke of Longueville. This 
 marriage, celebrated at St. Andrews in June 1538, finally de- 
 cided the King in favour of the Roman Church. The family 
 of Guise was devoted to it. The uncle and brother of the 
 new Queen were Cardinals, and David Beaton secured the 
 Cardinal same coveted dignity by promoting the match as Wolsey had 
 done by a similar service. Roman ecclesiastics of the worldly 
 type have always been promoters of politic marriages in the 
 interests of the Church. In 1539, soon after christening the 
 young prince, the first short-lived fruit of the marriage, in hfs 
 cathedral, James Beaton died. He had not been a favourite 
 with the King, who had even written to the Pope, complaining 
 of the aggrandizement of this obscure family, but he succeeded 
 in transferring or leaving his wide benefices to his kinsmen. 
 His nephew, David, already Abbot of Arbroath, became Arch- 
 bishop ; Dury, a cousin, Abbot of Dunfermline ; and Hamilton, 
 another of his kin, Abbot of Kilwinning. David Beaton now 
 acquired complete ascendancy in the councils of the King. 
 He persuaded the clergy to the politic step of making James a 
 larger grant out of their revenues. As Archbishop he con- 
 vened an assembly of nobles, prelates, and doctors of theology, 
 of whom Major was one, at St. Andrews, and pronounced an 
 oration against the danger to the Church from heretics who 
 professed their opinions openly even in the Court, where they 
 had found (he said) too great countenance. Sir George Borth- 
 wick, captain of Linlithgow, was condemned in absence for 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 83 
 
 denying the authority of the Pope and accepting the heresies of 
 England, and his image was burnt in the Market Place of St. 
 Andrews l , Henry vin. made a last attempt to have a personal 
 interview with his nephew, but Beaton's influence prevented it. 
 A war ensued, in which the defeat of the Scotch under Oliver 
 Sinclair at Solway Moss proved fatal to James, who sank under 
 the blow, and died at Falkland on 14th December 1542, seven 
 days after the birth of Mary Stuart. In spite of a will pro- 
 duced, it was alleged forged by Beaton, appointing him 
 Regent, the Estates chose Arran as next heir to the Crown. 
 Beaton was for a short time put in ward, but made terms with 
 Arran, and became Chancellor in 1543. The failure of Henry's 
 negotiations for the marriage of the infant Queen to his son 
 Edward was followed by Hertford's ruthless raid, which revived 
 the old hatred of the English throughout Scotland. On 1st 
 March 1546 George Wishart was burnt before the gate of the 
 Archbishop's castle at St. Andrews. Four other victims of 
 humble birth had shortly before been executed at Perth. In Murder of the 
 less than three months, on 28th May, the Cardinal was 
 murdered in his own castle by Norman Lesley and a small 
 band of young men of good family from Fife, some of whom 
 had private wrongs to revenge, but chiefly in retaliation for 
 Wishart's death. Shutting themselves up in the castle, where 
 they received supplies from England, and were joined by per- 
 sons of like mind, amongst whom was John Knox, they were 
 closely besieged by the Regent's forces, and compelled to agree 
 to terms by which, on receipt of absolution from Rome, they 
 were to surrender the castle. In the meantime the siege was 
 raised, and the son of Arran given them as a hostage. It was 
 during this critical interval that Knox preached the daring 
 sermon at which Major was present. In the summer of 1547 the 
 absolution arrived, but its terms were equivocal, and the besieged 
 refused to accept it. In June, Strozzi, the French Admiral, 
 
 1 May 1540. 
 
84 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 arriving with a fleet, the siege was renewed. * Cannons were 
 planted, some on the steeple of the Parish Church, some on 
 the tower of St. Salvator's, and some in the street that leads 
 to the castle/ On 29th July a breach in the south wall 
 forced a capitulation. The besieged saved their lives, but 
 were sent to France as prisoners in the French galleys. The 
 death of Henry viii. had prevented the coming of an English 
 fleet for their relief. Another raid by Hertford, now the Pro- 
 tector Somerset, followed, and the loss by the Scots of the 
 battle of Pinkie led to the infant Queen being sent to France 
 for safety. Supported by French troops the Scotch were able 
 to make head against the English, and recover the castles 
 which had been lost, and Scotland was made a party to the 
 Death of French peace with England in April 1550. It was probably 
 
 _. shortly before its conclusion that Major died. 
 
 Who can wonder that amid such scenes an old man who had 
 survived his generation held his peace. The flames kindled by 
 the Inquisition were being revenged by the dagger of the 
 assassin. Almost the last news he heard was that the Lamp 
 of the Lothians, the fine Church of Haddington, at whose' 
 altars he had worshipped, had been burnt; almost the last 
 sight he saw was the flash of cannons on the Castle from the 
 tower of St. Salvator. On the one side stood the Church in 
 which he had been born and bred, the Queen Dowager, his 
 patrons the bishops, and most of his older friends both in 
 France and Scotland ; on the other, his ablest pupils and an 
 increasing number of the Scottish people, both gentry and 
 burghers. For the one cause fought the French Monarch and 
 Court, whose brilliant corruption he must well have known ; 
 for the other, the English king was defying the laws of his 
 own realm to carry out his will, while his generals were harry- 
 ing, burning, bombarding the Scottish towns in a manner 
 which recalled the havoc of the wars of Edward I. 
 
 The Council of Trent just assembled evinced a desire to 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 85 
 
 reform the Church from within, and several Scottish bishops, 
 notably Hamilton, the Prelate who succeeded Beaton, were 
 ready to minimise the Roman doctrine and to remedy the most 
 flagrant abuses. To one who could brook a question upon the 
 matter, — who did not see, as the Reformers did, in the Pope 
 Antichrist, in Rome Babylon, in its doctrine idolatry, in its 
 casuistry a root of moral corruption, — still more to one whose 
 inveterate habit it was to argue everything from both sides, 
 there might well seem room for hesitation, for delay, for 
 choosing the older as the safer path. Behind the external 
 tumult, to one who was a theologian and philosopher, living 
 in the world of thought more than of action, there were 
 arrayed on the side of Rome, once its premisses were accepted, 
 the forces of Logic and Casuistry, for which he had the affec- 
 tion the adept feels for the weapons of his own craft. 
 
 There was also the terror of the stake ; for, after all, most Character 
 men are human. Martyrs are amongst the smallest of minori- 
 ties in the human race. During the preceding centuries 
 persecution had all but extinguished the doctrines of Wycliffe 
 and of Huss. Even after the revival of learning had borne 
 its natural fruit in the decay of superstition, it arrested the 
 Reformation in Italy and Spain and the greater part of France. 
 
 The life whose course from such materials as exist we have 
 followed was not that of a hero or a martyr. But if the 
 character and conduct of Major have been rightly interpreted 
 they have value of their own not to be overlooked. They 
 bring vividly before us the Scottish man of learning as he was 
 in this perilous age, when new ideas and a new faith were 
 clashing with the old not merely in the field of argument but 
 by fire and sword. 
 
 Major the lifelong student, and devoted professor, who pre- 
 ferred, as he himself savs, 'to teach rather than to preach''; 
 fond of his books; fond of music as the relaxation, and of Major and 
 argument as the business, of his life, but fond also of lis pupils p^d. 001 " 
 
86 LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 
 
 and his country, did what lay within his capacity to improve 
 his pupils and inform his countrymen. But it was beyond 
 his power to reform his age by the potent words, and un- 
 flinching courage, which in spite of grave errors make most 
 of his countrymen reverence, and impartial judges of other 
 nations respect, the name of John Knox. The deeper, stronger 
 work of the Reformer has, as it deserved, lasted longer than 
 the work of his master the Schoolman. Even when that part 
 of it which is dogmatic has been superseded, that part of it 
 which is moral will continue, for it rests near the foundations of 
 social and religious life, while that part of it which is national 
 will always remain an integral and crucial chapter in Scottish 
 History. The philosophy and the theology of Major served 
 for his generation only, quickened the thoughts of some of 
 his students by attraction, and of others by repulsion, and 
 then quietly sank into oblivion. Only a stray passage here 
 and there has been brought to light in modern times by the 
 diligent investigator of the progress of European thought or 
 as an aid to the understanding of his character. 
 character of ' Habent sua fata libelli.' 1 The short history which he 
 
 History probably valued least of all his works has had a longer life. 
 
 It was reprinted in the last century by Freebairn, and has 
 always been favourably known to students of Scottish History. 
 In the hope that it may reach a still wider circle, the History 
 is now for the first time translated by Mr. Constable, a task 
 rendered difficult from its terse and occasionally abrupt style, 
 but accomplished through familiarity with Major's thoughts, 
 acquired by a prolonged and patient study of his writings and 
 character. An estimate of its chief characteristics has already 
 been given in this sketch of the life of the author. It is not 
 a history to read for new information. History is a progres- 
 sive branch of knowledge. Much more is known now than 
 Major knew of our ancient annals. But his work will always 
 be interesting as the first History of Scotland written in a 
 
LIFE OF JOHN MAJOR 87 
 
 critical and judicial spirit, and as presenting the view of that 
 history in its past course and future tendency taken by a 
 scholar of the sixteenth century, who, though he halted in the 
 old theology, was so far as history is concerned singularly far- 
 sighted and fair. Such qualities are not even yet so common 
 amongst historians that we can afford to neglect an early 
 example of their exercise. M. M. 
 
APrENDIX TO THE LIFE. 
 
 I.— NOTICES OF JOHN MAJOR IN FRENCH AND 
 SCOTTISH RECORDS. 
 
 Note. — I am indebted to Monsieur Chatelain of the Sorbonne for an exact 
 copy of the references to Major in the ' Liber Receptoris Nationis Alamanie,' 
 which has been preserved for the years 1494 to 1501. Mr. J. Maitland Ander- 
 son, the Librarian of the University of St. Andrews, has done a similar service 
 by making a careful excerpt of all entries relating to Major in the Records 
 of that University. The references to the offices he held in the University of 
 Glasgow have been taken from the printed volume of its Munimenta. 
 
 M. M. 
 
 (1.) University of Paris. 
 
 Archives de VUniversite de Paris, Registre 85. 
 ' Liber Receptoris Nationis Alamanie.' 
 
 (Anno 1494). — Sequuntur nomina licentiatorum huius anni. 
 
 Johannes Maior dyoc. sanct. Andree, bursa valet 4 sol. 1 lib. 
 
 (Anno 1495). — Inter nomina incipientium huius anni : 
 
 Dns Johannes Mair dioc. see Andree cujus bursa valet 4 or sol. i. lib. 
 pro jocundo adventu et cappa rectoris. . . . ii. lib. 
 
 (At the end of the year 1498, following upon the accounts of the 
 Receiver, i.e. * Robertus Valterson, dioc. S. Andree/ may be 
 seen the signature of the procureur, who thus vouched for the 
 Receiver's statement of accounts : — ) 
 
 Ita est, 
 Johannes H. Maior. 
 
 Anno dominice incarnationis 1501 coadunata fuit Germanorum natio 
 apud edem divi Mathurini ad decern klas octobres super novi 
 receptoris electione, ubi pacatissime ut putatur, deo inspirante, 
 delectus fuit magister Johannes Mair gleguocensis diocesis sanct. 
 Andre. Qui et receptas et impensas ea serie qua sequitur ut cum- 
 que executus est. 
 
 The Receiver who succeeded Major, e Mag. Christianus Hermanni,' 
 was elected in 1502 ' in vigilia Sanct. Mathei.' 
 
 A° 1506. Lie. (in theol.) Johannes Major, Scotus, de collegio Montano. 
 Ordo Lie. 55 (Bibl. Nat. ms. No. 15440). 
 
 [v. Budinsky : Die Universitat Paris, 1876, p. 91.] 
 
APPENDIX 89 
 
 (2.) University of Glasgow. 
 
 Copy of a letter of Exemption from Taxation granted by James v. 
 to the University of Glasgow, confirming prior exemption. 20 May 
 1522. 
 
 This letter is said to have been obtained at their own expense f per 
 venerabilem virum Magistrum Jacobum Steward prepositum ecclesie 
 collegiate de Dunbertane ac Rectorem Johannem Majorem theologie Munimenta 
 professorem thesaurarium capelle regie Striuilingensis vicariumque de tetfc^jias ^ei'" 
 Dunlop ac principalem regentem Pedagogij Glasguensis. ' si S) i. p . 47 . 
 
 General Congregation of the University, 3d November 1518. 
 
 Amongst others incorporated by the Rector, Adam Colquhoun, Canon ibid. n. p. 133. 
 of Glasgow, was ' Egregius vir Magister Johannes Major, doctor Parisien- 
 sis ac principalis regens collegii et pedagogii dicte universitatis canonicus- 
 que capelle regie ac vicarius de Dunlop.' 
 
 General Congregation of the University of Glasgow on 24th May 
 1522, under the presidency of James Stewart, Provost of the 
 Collegiate Church of Dumbarton, and Rector of the University, 
 and John Major being present, who is described as Professor of 
 Theology, Treasurer of the Chapel Royal of Stirling, Vicar of 
 Dunlop and Principal Regent. 
 
 The Rector explained the privileges of the University with reference Ibid. 11. pp. 134, 
 to exemption from taxation. On the same day Major was appointed one 1 +*- 
 of the auditors of the Accounts of the Foundation of David de Caidyow 
 for a chaplaincy at the altar of the Virgin in the Cathedral. /bid. p. 143. 
 
 At a General Congregation of the University at the Feast of Saints 
 Crispin and Crispinian, 1522, for the election of a new Rector. 
 
 John Major was one of the three ' intrantes' who continued James Ibid. 11. 147. 
 Steward in the office. 
 
 Register of the 
 Privy Seal, lib. 
 
 Presentation by James v. of Treasurership of Chapel Royal, dated v " ° ' I44> 
 
 1st June 1520, in favour of Mr. Andrew Durie in view of the Jh e chapel 
 
 resignation of John Mair, Professor of Theologv and last Treasurer. Royal— Gram- 
 
 OJ pun Club, p. 
 
 liv. 57-98. 
 
90 APPENDIX 
 
 (3.) University of St. Andrews. 
 
 [Maioris — Mayr — Maior — Major used interchangeably. Usually declined 
 according to the context, Maioris, Maiorem, Maiore.] 
 
 [Acta Rectorum.] 
 1523, June 9. Incorporated. [Entry as in Irving's Buchanan.] 
 
 1523, Jan. 17. Elected one of the deputies to visit St. Salvator's College. [Entry 
 
 as in Irving's Buchanan.] 
 
 1524, Nov. 7. Q ne f t h e Auditors of the Accounts of the Quaestor of the Faculty 
 
 of Arts for the year 1523-24. 
 
 1524, Feb. last. Elected one of the Rector's Assessors and Deputies. 
 
 1525, Jan. 22. Elected one of the Deputies to visit St. Salvator's College. 
 
 1532, Feb. last. Elected one of the Rector's Assessors and Deputies. 
 
 1533, Jan. 15. Elected one of the Deputies to visit St. Salvator's College. 
 
 1534, Feb. Elected one of the Rector's Assessors and Deputies, 
 penult. 
 
 He was further elected to the same posts on the last day of Febru- 
 ary 1536 ; April 30, 1539 ; March 2, 1539 ; March 1, 1540. 
 
 Elected one of the Rector's Assessors on the last day of February 
 1541, 1542 ; one of the Rector's Assessors and Deputies on the last day 
 of February 1543 ; and (?) 1544. 
 
 There was elected as one of the Assessors, ' Petrum Capellanj Domus 
 IS4S- Saluatoris Prefect] Coadiutorem. ' 
 
 The Assessors were appointed ' ad assistendum eidem domino rectorj 
 et eidem consiliendum.' 
 
 The Deputies were appointed ' ad exercendum rectoris officium in eius 
 absencia.' 
 
 [Acta Facxiltatis Artium Univ. St. And.]. 
 
 1523, Nov. 3. Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Canonicum capelle regie 
 
 Stirlingensis]. 
 Mar. 19. Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Thesaurarius capelle regie 
 
 Stirlingensis]. 
 
 1524, Nov. 3. Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Thesaurarius capelle regie 
 
 Stirlingensis]. 
 
 1525, Mar. 4. Named as one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Thesaurarius capelle regie 
 
 Stirlingensis]. 
 
APPENDIX 91 
 
 Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Thesaurarius capelle regie 
 Stirlingensis]. A P r - 8 * 
 
 Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. Thesaurarius capelle regie 
 Stirlingensis]. Nov - 3- 
 
 Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. only]. *S3*» Nov - 3- 
 
 Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. vicarius dunloppij successor 
 prefecti collegij Sancti Saluatoris]. x 533» Nov - 4- 
 
 Elected one of the Dean's Assessors [I.M. prefecti Coll. Sti. Salu.]. 1534 , Nov. 3. 
 
 Elected do. do. do. 1535. Nov. 3- 
 
 Elected do. do. do. 1537, Nov. 3. 
 
 Named as do. do. do. Nov. 10, 
 
 Elected do. do. do. 1538, Feb. 1. 
 
 Register of Documents connected with St. Salvator's College. 
 
 'Maister Jhon Mayr' is first mentioned as 'Prowest of the College/ 1536, May 3. 
 on February 1536, and other references to him as ' Prepositus Coll. 
 Eccles. S. Salvatoris ' occur on the following dates : 1540, Feb. 25 ; 
 1539, Jan. 9 ; 1542, May 31 ; 1544, Aug. 3, Apr. 29, Apr. 30, May 1, 
 May 2 ; 1543, Apr. 13, Apr. 18; 1535, Feb. 15. None of these entries 
 throw any light on Major's personal history, with the exception of that 
 under Jan. 9, 1539. This is a charter granted by Major in conjunction 
 with William Manderston, founding a chaplaincy or bursary (Capel- 
 lania seu Bursa) in S. Sal. College (with power to the Rector and his 
 Assessors to transfer it to St. Mary's College) — the holder to celebrate 
 Masses for the souls of the founders and their relations, James v. and 
 Mary his Queen, Cardinal Beaton, etc. The endowment consisted mainly 
 of annual rents of tenements in South Street, St. Andrews. 
 
 Extracts from the Acta Rectorim Univ. St. Andrew. 
 
 Curia tenta per venerabilem et egregium virum magistrum alex- 1540, June 15. 
 andrum balfowr rectorem de Longcardy vicarium de Kilmany 
 almeque vniuersitatis sancti Andree rectorem In capella beate 
 Marie uirginis infra claustrum collegij sancti saluatoris situata 
 martis decimoquinto Iunij In anno domini Jaj v c . xlmo. 
 
 In causa exactionum recusatoriorum fore declinatoriarum implice 
 duplice et triplice venerabilis et egregij virj magistri nostri ■agifltri 
 Johannis maioris prepositj collegij sancti saluatoris et domini Johannis 
 
92 APPENDIX 
 
 vynchestre capellanj pronund. 1 ante pronunciacionem comparuit prefatus 
 venerabilis vir magister Johannes mair et contentus fuit quod pre- 
 fatus rector cognosceret in principali causa domini Johannis vynchestre 
 contra eum non obstantibus exactionibus prefatis productis per suum 
 procuratorem a quibus insiluit et admisit prefatum rectorem in Judicem 
 in dicta causa prout tenore presentis acti admittit et eapropter de con- 
 sensu partium prefatus rector decrevit pro cedend. in principali causa 
 veneris super sedendo modificacionem appensa fact, per prefatum domi- 
 num Johannem vynchestre qua prefatum prepositum usque ad discus- 
 sionem principalis cause. 
 
 Die xxvj februarij Anno Domini millesimo quingentesimo 
 quadragesimo. 
 
 1540, Feb. 26. Christi nomine invocato nos Alexander balfour vicarius de Kil- 
 
 many ac rector alme vniuersitatis sanctiandree Judex in causa et 
 partibus subscriptis pro tribunali sedentes in quadam causa petitionis 
 summarie sane cedule querile coram nobis mota et adhuc pendente 
 indecisa inter discretum virum dominum Johannem vinschester capel- 
 lanum actorem ab vna et venerabilem et egregium virum magistrum 
 nostrum magistrum Johannem maiorem sacre theologie professorem 
 prefectumque ecclesie collegiate sancti saluatoris intra ciuitatem sancti- 
 andree reum partibus ab altera judicialiter cognoscentes auditus prius 
 partium predictarum petitione reuersione ceterisque Juribus hinc hide 
 productis et repetitis per nos visis auditis et intellects remotis et ad 
 plenum discussis juxta ea que vidimus audiuimus et cognouimus Juris- 
 peritorum comunicato consilio et sequueltio quibus fidem fieri fecimus 
 relacionem in eadem solum deum pre oculis habentes eiusque nomine 
 sanctissimo priusque inuocato per hanc nostram sententiam diffinitiuam 
 quam ferimus in his scriptis pronunciamus decernimus et declaramus 
 prefatum venerabilem virum magistrum nostrum magistrum Johannem 
 mair prepositum ecclesie collegiate antedicte a petetis et in petitione 
 dictj domini Johannis vinschester capellanj absoluend. fore et absoluj 
 debere prout absoluimus per presentes necnon obstan allectis pro parte 
 dictj domini Johannis coram nobis et minime probatis prout ex deductis 
 coram nobis legitime probatim et compertim extitit dictumque dominum 
 Johannem vinschester capellanum in expensis litis factis et fiendis eadem 
 nostra sententia diffinitiua condemnantes Ipsarum tamen expensarum 
 taxacione nostro judicio in posterum reseruata lecta et in scriptis re- 
 dacta fuit hec nostra sententia diffinitiua die sabbato xxvj to februarij Anno 
 dominj millesimo quingentesimo xlmo in presentiis Johannis dowglas 
 henricj schaw domini Johannis young capellani junioris georgij makke- 
 sone cum diuersis aliis. 
 
 
 Perhaps contraction for ' pror.untianda. 
 
APPENDIX 93 
 
 Die xij mensis Decembris anno domini etc. xlij lata erat 1 presens i54 3 » Dec - I2 - 
 sententia per infrascriptum rectorem in insula beate marie infra 
 claustrum sancti saluatoris collegij. 
 
 Cristi nomine inuocato nos Thomas barklay huius almj vniuersitatis 
 sanctiandree ac de neffa Rector Judexque cause et partibus infrascriptis 
 pro tribunalj sedentes in quadam causa appellacionis a grauamine discretj 
 virj domini Johannis vinsister capellanj a venerabilj et egregio viro magis- 
 tro Johanne mair preposito collegij sancti saluatoris intra ciuitatem 
 sanctiandree citati contra et aduersus discretum etiam virum dominum 
 thomam Kyneir capellanum [ac ipsum prepositum] appellatos ad nos et 
 nostrum auditorium rectoratus interiect ... si in eadem deuolut . . . alias 
 judicialiter ventilata cognoscentes auditis prius partium predictarum peti- 
 tione respontione allegacionibus processu judicis a quo et ceterisque juribus 
 hincinde productis per nosvisis intellectis et ad plenum discussis juxta ea 
 que vidimus audiuimus et concipimus jurisperitorum comunicato consi- 
 lio et sequuto quibus fidelem fierj fecimus relacionem in eadem solum 
 Deum pre oculis habentes eiusque nomine sanctissimo primitus inuocato 
 per hanc nostram sententiam diffinitiuam quam ferimus in his scriptis 
 pronuntiamus decernimus et declaramus dictum magistrum Johannem 
 Mair prepositum antedictum judicem a quo suas literas citatorias dicto 
 domino Johannj appellantj ad citandum dictum dominum thomam coram 
 sepefato preposito ad exhibendum et ostendendum quendam assertum 
 collacionem vna cum singulis aliis suis juribus si que de capellania vocata 
 de balcolmy [habuit] intra dictum collegium fundata ad effectum videndj 
 et audiendj huiusmodi collacionem et alia jura cassari annullarj et re- 
 tractarj et propter raciones dandas male et iniuste denegasse ipsumque 
 Dominum Johannem propterea bonum et juste a prefato preposito ad 
 nostrum auditorium appellasse et prouocasse vlteriore que cause prin- 
 cipal) cognitionem nobis reseruantes dictumque magistrum Johannem 
 prepositum antedictum eadem nostra sententia diffinitiua in expensis 
 litis condemnantes ipsarum tamen expensarum taxacione nostro judicio 
 in posterum reseruata. 
 
 Major's name, as prepositus collegij Sancti Saluatoris, also occurs in a x 541. Oct. 7. 
 document regarding the power of the Rector, etc., dated 7th October 1544. 
 Also in an Absolutio of 1541. See Lee's Church History, i. 82, note. 
 
 It also appears in separate charters and writs in the possession of the 
 United College under the following dates :— 1532, 1534, 1536, 1538, May 
 15, 1542, 1553. In this last Martin Balfour is named as Executor of Mr. 
 John Mair. Martin Balfour was Rector of Duninoch, Bacchelaurius in 
 sacris litteris et decretis, Officialis S. Andreoe principalis in 1542 (Charter 
 Great Seal Reg. 11 May 1542, No. 2GG2), and is described as 'Professor 
 sacrarum literarum ' in Charter 25 Sept. 1542, ib. No. 2?M. 
 
 1 There are two short contracted words here very faint. The first seems to 
 begin with/, and the second with a. The conjectural reading of • presens sen- 
 tentia' is due to Professor Mitchell. 
 
94 APPExNDIX 
 
 II. 
 
 NOTE ON THE SCHOOL OF THE TERMINISTS TO 
 WHICH JOHN MAJOR BELONGED. Chiefly from 
 Dr. Carl Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, Band iv. Leipzig, 1870. 
 
 The series of Terminist Scotists commenced with Nicholas Tinctor 1 , 
 who was followed by Pardus 2 and Bricot 3 . A pupil of Pardus and 
 of Bricot, John Major taught at Paris in the college of Montaigu, 
 was an extremely fertile writer, collected numerous scholars round 
 him and excited them to literary activity. While we must refrain 
 from referring to his Commentaries on Peter Lombard and the 
 physical and ethical writings of Aristotle, we find a number of 
 smaller or greater works by him on Logic in which he frequently 
 treated the same subject in new editions. He edited an edition 
 of the Commentary of John Dorp 4 on Buridan 5 , to which it is 
 
 1 Prantl, iv. p. 198, 199. Tinctor published a Commentary on the Su?7imul(B 
 of Petrus Hispanus, which is expressly designed on the title-page as ' Secundum 
 Subtilissimi doctorisjohannis Scoti viam compilatumj and a later work, in which 
 he is described as a follower of Thomas Aquinas, is only according to Prantl (note 
 117) 'a bookseller's puff or advertisement \ 
 
 8 Hieronymus or Jerome Pardus, a lecturer on Logic of the school called by 
 Prantl 'Terminist Scotists.' His Medulla dyalectices, 1505, edited by Major 
 and Jacobus Ortiz, is his only known work. — Prantl, iv. p. 246. 
 
 3 Thomas Bricot, who published alone or in collaboration with George of 
 Brussels several logical tracts between 1492- 1505. — Prantl, iv. p. 199. 
 
 4 John Dorp's Commentary was first published at Venice 1499, and twice by 
 Major, Paris 1504, folio, and Lyons 15 10, quarto. At the close of the latter 
 edition Dorp is called ' verus nominalium opinionum recitator'. — Prantl, iv. 
 p. 237, note 357. 
 
 5 John Buridan, who died not before 1358, was one of the earliest Nominalists, 
 and following Ockham declares Theological Dogma and Philosophy to be incom- 
 mensurable. 'Metaphysics differs from Theology in this, that while both treat 
 of God and Divine Things Metaphysics does not consider God and Divine Things 
 except in so far as they can be proved and concluded or induced by demonstra- 
 tive reasons. Theology, on the other hand, holds certain articles of belief as 
 principles without evidence, and considers further what can be deduced from 
 such articles.' — Prantl, iv. p. 15, note 58. 
 
APPENDIX 95 
 
 unnecessary further to refer, as he added to Dorp only some short 
 marginal notes. But in addition he composed several treatises 
 which were collected and printed more or less completely, some of 
 them as Commentaries on Petrus Hispanus, and others Lectures 
 he gave in the Faculty of Arts (Libri quos in artibus emisit). At 
 a later date he collected the Logic of Aristotle and the Summulae 
 of Petrus Hispanus in an Introductorium, and finally he added Ques- 
 tiones with reference to the old Logic (Fetus Ars). 
 
 If we first confine ourselves to the order of the collective edition, 
 we find it commences with a treatise De complexo significabili, in 
 which he gives, like his master Pardus in his Medulla, an affirma- 
 tive answer to the question as to the existence of complex terms. 
 Then follow two Libri Terminorum, in the first of which, after fixing 
 the logical meaning of the word Term, almost all possible divisions 
 of the Term are discussed by means of doubts and their solutions, 
 and in the second book the same subject is treated in somewhat 
 altered order, after which he places Abbreviationes 'Parvorum Logic- 
 alium 1 . Next follow the Summulce, that is, a commentary on Petrus 
 Hispanus, where we find in the introduction a reference to Gerson's 
 utterances on the use of logic, and also a ridiculous play of letters 
 with the word Summulce. The contents of this part are a commen- 
 tary on the first four tracts of Petrus Hispanus, where at the 
 close of the doctrine of Judgment (following Bricot) 2 there is a 
 special explanation of the term Contingent, and of the question 
 current since Buridan wrote as to the variation of the middle 
 term 3 . Besides, the subject of the divisions of the Term is again 
 examined, with reference to the views of Marsilius 4 , and at the 
 close of the Categories a Tree of the Predicaments is added. In 
 treating of the Syllogism Major repudiates the Fourth Figure as 
 an unnecessary multiplication more sharply than earlier writers. 
 He adduces, like his teacher Pardus, sophistical examples for each 
 Mood. The Topics and the refutation of Fallacies he treats sum- 
 marily, because especially in the first there is much unnecessary 
 matter. 
 
 1 The Parva Lcgicalia were topics which were not treated specially by 
 Aristotle, but deduced by minor authors from passages in his works. — Prantl, 
 iv. p. 204, note 153. 
 
 2 Prantl, iv. p. 203. 8 Prantl, iv. p. 34. 
 
 4 Not Marsilius of Padua but of Inghen (d. 1396), a leading Professor of Logic 
 at Heidelberg, whose writings are very voluminous, and in general follow Ock- 
 ham, Buridan, and other Nominalists though with some variations. — Prantl, iv. 
 pp. 94-102. 
 
96 APPENDIX 
 
 A second division of the work begins with the Exponibilia l in 
 which there is nothing new, for he follows Paulus Venetus 2 and 
 Petrus Mantuanus 3 . Then follow the Insohibilia, with reference 
 to which the statement of the principles of others affords the chief 
 interest, for in this part also he follows the explanations of Paulus 
 Venetus. The Commentary added to the second Analytic appears 
 in an improper place and calls for no special remark. We have 
 this portion of the work not from the hand of Major but of his 
 pupil Coronel. The Parva Logicalia follow in six tracts, from which 
 we learn that they were reckoned a part of the Fetus Logica 4 
 while the Consequentia and Exponibilia were deemed to belong to 
 the Nova Logica. 
 
 The contents of this part consists of a controversial exposition 
 of Petrus Hispanus with frequent use of Peter of Mantua and 
 George of Brussels. Finally there is inserted a concise exposition 
 of the Obligatona 5 and Argumenta Sophistica, in which we notice a 
 disposition to contest every proposition sophistically, and in addi- 
 tion a monograph on the Infinite in which all possible sophisms 
 which belong to this subject are examined. After what has been 
 said it is not necessary to examine in detail the two last-named 
 writings of Major on Logic, for in the Introductorium he merely 
 repeats what he had written before, and the Qucestiones are only a 
 commentary of the usual kind on the Fetus Ars in the sense of the 
 Terminists. 
 
 Among the scholars of Major may be named first David 
 Cranston of Glasgow, who taught in Paris, and wrote a treatise on 
 Insohibilia and Obligatoria. As to the first of these, he proceeds 
 
 
 1 The Exponibilia were certain words of frequent occurrence in propositions 
 which required to be expounded to avoid ambiguity and sophisms. 
 
 2 Paulus Venetus (d. 1428) is treated at length by Prantl (iv. pp. 118, 140), 
 who considers his writings as marking the most extreme growth of the Scholastic 
 Logic. He commented on the Physics, Ethics, as well as on the Logic of 
 Aristotle. 
 
 3 Petrus Mantuanus, a Logician of the Terminist School, published circa 
 1483.— Prantl, iv. p. 176. 
 
 4 The Vetus Logica or Ars was not the older logic in point of time but that 
 which treated of the remoter or less immediate parts of logic, while the Nova 
 Logica treated of the Syllogisms and its parts and forms. — Prantl, iv. p. 176, 
 note 9. 
 
 6 The Obligatoria was the division of Logic which dealt with disputation. 
 The disputant was obliged either to maintain (sustinere) or reject (desustinere) 
 or to doubt (dubitare) the proposition advanced. Hence the doctrine of Obligations 
 was divided into ' Positio' ' Depositio ' and 'Dubitatio.' — Prantl, iv. p. 41. 
 
APPENDIX 97 
 
 from a statement of the various opinions of others to his own 
 attempt to treat the Insolubilia 1 in accordance with the generally 
 accepted rules of Logic. . . . With the Obligatoria he adopts, in 
 comparison with Major, a somewhat modified division of the Term, 
 where, for the first time, we meet with an express application of 
 the different sorts of opposition to the doctrine of Concepts. From 
 the same school came Antony Coronel of Segovia, a very fertile 
 writer, who wrote a Commentary on the Categories, an Exposition 
 of the doctrine of Judgments and the properties of Terms, under 
 the title of Rosarium, an Explanation of the Posterior Analytics of 
 Aristotle, and a monograph on Exponibilia and Falktciae. He also 
 revised and completed a tract of his master, Major, on Consequentia . 
 ... A second Spaniard bred in the school of Major was Caspar 
 Lax. Of his three works, namely Termini, Obligationes, and 
 Insolubilia, the first is merely a repetition of what Major had 
 taught on this subject. The high self-esteem which the Terminists 
 of the school of Major had reached is shown in a letter of a 
 friend of Lax, Antony Alcaris, which is printed in the treatise of 
 Obligationes. In this the ' clear, perspicuous, useful, sweet, and 
 splendid' dissertations of the Modern are contrasted with the 
 'languid, arid, jejune, obscure, and little pleasing' works of the 
 Ancient Philosophers. . . . Another scholar of Major was Johannes 
 Dullart from Ghent, who wrote Qucestiones on the Categories and a 
 treatise on the De Interpretation of Aristotle, in which he shows 
 extensive reading, and his decided partisanship with the Term- 
 inists. ... A fellow-scholar of the last-mentioned writer was the 
 Scotchman, Robert Caubraith. William Manderston, also a Scotch- 
 man, and several other Spaniards of minor note, are described as 
 belonging to the same school. 
 
 The reader who desires to follow the intricacies of the mediaeval 
 logic must refer for further details to Prantl's exhaustive and 
 learned work. 2 But for the sake of those who may wish to form a 
 general idea of the distinction between the Antiqui or Reales and 
 the Modemi or Nominates, and of the position of the Terminists, 
 
 1 The Insolubilia were divided into three modes — (i) Those which could not 
 be solved in any way ; (2) those which could not be solved because of some im- 
 pediment ; and (3) those which were difficult to solve. As example of the first 
 was given an invisible sound, of the second a stone hidden in the earth, and of 
 the third an invisible sun. — Prantl, iv. p. 40, note 158. 
 
 2 Prantl, iv. p. 174, points out that at the close of the fifteenth century the 
 Terminists were the majority, though denounced by the orthodox Thomists. 
 
98 APPENDIX 
 
 as the school of which Major was a leader was called, we borrow 
 from the same writer the following passages : — 
 
 ' We first notice a continuation of the earlier tendencies in 
 Logic until the year 1472, when we find the definition of the 
 Party differences followed by a development through the Term- 
 inist Scotism, which was opposed by a preponderating conserva- 
 tive Thomism. From about the period 1480-1520 (i.e. practically 
 Major's period) a long series of the now reigning school of the 
 Terminists appears.' . . , l If we direct our attention to Paris, it 
 is easily to be understood that in the Sorbonne only the elder 
 views were permitted. On the other hand, the University had 
 actively participated in the gradual development of the various 
 new opinions, and had even accepted the views of the Terminists. 
 But in 1473, in consequence of the intrigues of John Boucard, 
 assisted by a former Sorbonnist, Johannes A Lapide, the Moderns 
 had been placed under a bann, and their works in the Library 
 had even been chained, so that they could not be read. The 
 doctors called Nominates were those who on principle attached 
 extreme importance to the properties of Terms, including the 
 doctrines of Insoluhilia, Obligationes, Consequentia, while the Realists 
 applied themselves to things and despised the doctrine of Terms ~. 
 The dispute was therefore, in the first place, one as to the method 
 of Logic, and only in the second place concerned with the meta- 
 physical question as to Universals, with reference to which the 
 Terminists claimed for themselves the praise of strict orthodoxy. 
 In the year 1481 the Royal Edict against the Nominalists was 
 rescinded, and their books were again allowed to be read. 
 
 At the time therefore that Major came to the University the 
 Nominalist doctrine had resumed its popularity all the more 
 because of the persecution which it had suffered, and Major's own 
 masters in Logic, Thomas Bricot 3 and Jerome Pardus 4 , both 
 belonged to it. The subtleties and sophistries which the new 
 Nominal logic of the Terminists in the hands of Major and his 
 followers ultimately led to, as exemplified in Prantl's extracts 
 from their works, largely justified the contempt which Buchanan 
 and other disciples of the Renaissance bestowed on it. But none 
 
 1 Prantl, iv. p. 186. 
 
 - It was with reference to this distinction, perhaps, that Erasmus stated his 
 apophthegm which appears to contain the truth of the matter : ' Cognitio ver- 
 borum prior est, cognitio rerum potior est,' though that apophthegm has a wider 
 application than the merely logical controversy of the Schools. 
 
 3 Prantl, iv. p. 199. * Ibid. p. 246. 
 
APPENDIX 99 
 
 the less was this stage in logical doctrine an attempt to clear the 
 meaning of words from dubiety in the same line which William of 
 Ockham formerly, and Hobbes and Locke subsequently, followed. 
 It was also, as has been generally recognised by historians of 
 philosophy, both through its merits and demerits, one of the 
 auses which led to the dissolution of the Scholastic Philosophy. 
 That Major belonged to this school in Logic (for though he made 
 an attempt to reconcile the Realists and Nominalists, it was, as we 
 have seen, by assuming the principles of the latter) reacted on his 
 philosophical position, and made him incline to the views of 
 Ockham, the works of two of whose followers he edited. But in 
 Theology he claimed to be and was strictly orthodox, and ends 
 several of his theological treatises with the usual formula, that he 
 submitted all he taught to the Church and the Theological Faculty 
 of Paris. 
 
 It is proper to keep in view that he was also a Scotist, and pro- 
 moted the publication of the Report ala, an abridgment of the 
 Parisian Lectures of the Doctor Subtilis. Both the followers of 
 Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus claimed to be orthodox, and 
 that their philosophy kept within the limits which the Church 
 allowed to the Schools. Perhaps the Scotists were even more 
 vehement than the Nominalists in the assertion of the soundness of 
 their Theological Doctrine, in order to allay suspicions. But the 
 Roman Church, as if by natural instinct, and the historians of 
 philosophy who have regarded the subject from an external stand- 
 point, concur in regarding Aquinas and not Duns as its true 
 champion among philosophers. Scotism is now almost dead, and 
 the present Pope is doing his best to revive the study of Aquinas. 
 But important as Thomas Aquinas is in the history of philosophy, 
 the attempt to restore his old authority as the Master of Philo- 
 sophy in the nineteenth century is a hopeless attempt. Scholasti- 
 cism in any form is now impossible. 
 
 The Terminists, as the School to which Major belonged was 
 styled, in some respects occupied an intermediate position between 
 the Scotists and Thomists, the Nominalists and the Realists, but 
 with a decided leaning to the former; and Major is frequently 
 claimed by historians of philosophy, as by Tennemann ' and 
 
 1 Bohn's Translation of Tennemann's History of PhiK^ophy, p. 241. Uebcrweg 
 does not mention Major by name, but reckons amongst the Nominalists who 
 followed Ockham in the fourteenth and fifteenth century several of hi* masters : 
 'John Buridan, Rector of the University of l'aris, of importance because of his 
 
100 APPENDIX 
 
 Prantl 1 , as a Scotist and Nominalist. It was natural that Major 
 should adopt this school. He claimed Duns Scotus as his country- 
 man, for he had no more doubt of Duns's Scottish than Wadding 
 in the following century had of his Irish origin. His chief masters 
 were Franciscans, who believed in Duns Septus as a member of 
 their own order. And he came to Paris at a time when the 
 Nominalist development of Scotism was the reigning philosophy 
 in the university. 
 
 Similar causes led him to adopt (following Ockham, Gerson, 
 and D'Ailly) the anti-papal position of the Gallican Church. 
 
 The Franciscans, speaking generally, for there were exceptions, 
 opposed the absolute claims of the Ultramontane Italian Popes. 
 Their doctrine of Evangelical Poverty cut at the roots, as has been 
 well pointed out by Mr. Owen 2 , both of the temporal power of the 
 Pope and the excessive wealth of the prelates and some of the 
 ecclesiastical orders. No one accepted more completely than 
 Major this doctrine. Indeed most, though not all, of his opinions 
 which appear to us bold and anti-papal may be traced to this 
 source. In his writings we constantly come across passages which 
 appear to be copied almost word for word from the works of 
 Ockham or of Gerson. It is because of this that he may be 
 considered, as Ockham has also been, an unconscious precursor 
 of the Reformation in spite of his resting finally in all questions of 
 Faith in rigidly orthodox conclusions. 
 
 Nor can we overlook the fact that, like so many other Schoolmen, 
 the method he adopted of arguing all questions on two sides, the 
 Yes and No method as it has been styled, — the doubts which he 
 raised and by no means always solved, and the habit of leaving 
 
 examination of the Freedom of the Will and his Logical works ; Marsilius of 
 Inghen ; Peter D'Ailly, who while defending the Church Doctrine yet gave the 
 preference to the Bible above Tradition, and the Council above the Pope ; and 
 John Gerson, D'Ailly's scholar and friend, who combined Mysticism with Scholas- 
 ticism.' — Geschichte der Philosophies ii. p. 215. In an instructive passage, too 
 long to quote, he compares Duns Scotus with Kant, and shows how the critical 
 tendency begun by Duns was carried further by Ockham and the Nominalists, 
 ii. p. 204. 
 
 1 Prantl treats Major throughout (iv. p. 247 et seq.) as belonging to the Scotist 
 Terminist or Terminist Scotist School. 
 
 2 Dr. Karl Werner, who writes from the Roman point of view, coincides with 
 Mr. Owen on this point, and remarks that Ockham's opposition to the Papacy 
 turned on the dispute raised by the Franciscan zealots as to the vow of poverty. — 
 Die nachscotistische Skolastik, Wien 1883, p. 17. 
 
APPENDIX 101 
 
 many points to the judgment of his readers, had, what Mr. Owen has 
 called, with reference to the greater names amongst the Scholastics, 
 a skeptical tendency. It is possible to exaggerate this tendency, 
 but it is impossible to deny its existence. He followed Duns 
 Scotus too in submitting all authority, even the authority of the 
 Church in philosophical matters, and especially in the practical 
 and moral department of conduct, to the test of reason and justice. 
 This it is which has caused the ' Subtle Doctor ' to be looked upon 
 with suspicion by the Church, and to be regarded by historians of 
 philosophy as the first great dissolvent of the older orthodox 
 scholasticism. Major and the Terminists were less bold in philo- 
 sophising than Duns, less bold in action than Ockham, but not the 
 less did their writings and the opinions they introduced tend in 
 the same direction. It was no accident which led Major to direct 
 the republication of the Lectures of Duns at Paris and the logical 
 treatises of the disciples of Ockham. 
 
 Prantl, to whom we are indebted for the substance of most of 
 this note, but who must not be held responsible for the view taken 
 in it, remarks in the Preface to his fourth volume, after having 
 made a thorough examination of every known work of the logicians 
 of the later period of scholastic logic, that to describe even useless 
 works is not in itself useless if it saves others from a like labour. 
 But this is a too modest under-estimate of his own valuable 
 labours and of the writings of the Schoolmen. 
 
 Their method and philosophy were not a mere marking of time, 
 or a retrogression. It is true they were not great original thinkers 
 like the chief masters of Greek or Modern Philosophy. But they 
 conducted a progressive process — a disputation, to use a word 
 which would have been more familiar to them — between Dog- 
 matic Theology, Ancient Philosophy, and Mediaeval Thought, 
 which was necessary to the mental development of Europe. 
 ' Mens agitat molem et inter se corpora miscet.' In this develop- 
 ment Major took a minor but a distinct part, as will be acknow- 
 ledged the more his writings are studied with the attention 
 directed, neither to their form, which is thoroughly scholastic, nor 
 to their explicit conclusions, which are completely dogmatic and 
 orthodox, but to their 'obiter dicta' and ultimate tendency. 
 
 It was even, we may venture to say, this tendency, which had 
 more free play when he came to write history, that gave its 
 critical, practical, and independent character to his historical work ; 
 for the thoughts of such a man in the ages of Scholasticism were 
 
102 APPENDIX 
 
 
 not disconnected, but pervaded by the same method to whatever 
 subject he turned them. This consideration may also justify the 
 length of the present note in a work primarily concerned only with 
 Major as a historian and not as a philosopher. 
 
 M. M. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 
BY THE SAME WRITER 
 
 The Practice of the Court of Session in Scotland. 
 
 A Memoir of Sir James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount Stair: 
 
 a Study in the History and Law of Scotland. 1873. 
 
 A Memoir of and Introduction to the Poems of William 
 Dunbar : a Study in the History and Poetry of Scotland. For 
 the Scottish Text Society. 1889. 
 
 An Outline of the History of Scotland, published in the 
 ' Encyclopedia Britannica,' 9th edition. 
 
 A Sketch of the History of Fife : a Study in Scottish History 
 and Character. 1890. 
 
 Scottish Proverbs, chiefly of Fife Origin. 1S91. 
 
 A Sketch of the History of the Law of Scotland : an 
 Address to the Scots Law Society. Journal if Jurisprudence. 
 
 The Art of Legal Composition : an Address to the Juridical 
 Society of Glasgow. The English Law Quarterly. 1887. 
 
 The Science of Politics : Its Methods and its Uses. The Juridical 
 Review, 1890. 
 
 Speech as a Mode of Business : an Address to the Scots Law 
 Society. Journal of Jurisprudence. 1891. 
 
 Preface to the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 1508-13. 
 
 Published under the Direction of the Deputy Clerk Register of 
 Scotland. Vol. XIII. 1891. 
 
 Preparing for Publication. 
 
 A Manual of the Practice of the Court of Session in 
 Scotland.