George Buchanan

George Buchanan (Scottish Gaelic: Seòras Bochanan; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth-century Scotland produced." His ideology of resistance to royal usurpation gained widespread acceptance during the Scottish Reformation. Brown says the ease with which King James VII was deposed in 1689 shows the power of Buchananite ideas.

His treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos, published in 1579, discussed the doctrine that the source of all political power is the people, and that the king is bound by those conditions under which the supreme power was first committed to his hands, and that it is lawful to resist, even to punish, tyrants. The importance of Buchanan's writings is shown by the suppression of his work by James VI and the British legislatures in the century following their publication. It was condemned by act of parliament in 1584, and burned by the University of Oxford in 1664 and 1683.

His father, a Highlander and a younger son of the old Buchanan family of Drumakill, owned the farm of Moss, in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, but he died young, leaving his widow, five sons, and three daughters in poverty. George's mother, Agnes Heriot, was of the family of the Heriots of Trabroun, East Lothian, of which George Heriot, founder of Heriot's Hospital, was also a member. Buchanan, a native speaker of Scottish Gaelic, is said to have attended Killearn school, but not much is known of his early education. His brother, Patrick Buchanan, was also a scholar.

In 1520, he was sent by his uncle, James Heriot, to the University of Paris, where he first came in contact with the two great influences of the age, the Renaissance and the Reformation. There, according to him, he devoted himself to the writing of verses "partly by liking, partly by compulsion (that being then the one task prescribed to youth)".

In 1522 his uncle died, and George Buchanan, who was at that time severely ill, was unable to stay in Paris and returned to Scotland. After recovering from his illness, he joined the French auxiliaries who had been brought over to Scotland by John Stewart, Duke of Albany, and took part in an unsuccessful siege of Wark Castle on the border with England in late 1523. In the following year he entered the University of St Andrews, where he graduated B.A. in 1525. He had gone there mainly to attend the lectures of John Mair on logic; and when Mair moved to Paris, Buchanan followed him in 1526.

In 1528 Buchanan graduated M.A. at Scots College, University of Paris. The next year he was appointed regent, or professor, in the College of Sainte-Barbe, and taught there for over three years. Sainte-Barbe was one of the most prestigious and advanced colleges at that time. George added to that prestige by creating new reforms in teaching Latin. In 1529 he was elected "Procurator of the German Nation" in the University of Paris, and was re-elected four times in four successive months. He resigned his regentship in 1531, and in 1532 became tutor to Gilbert Kennedy, 3rd Earl of Cassilis, with whom he returned to Scotland early in 1537 having acquired a great reputation for learning.

At this period Buchanan assumed the same attitude toward the Catholic Church as Erasmus: he did not repudiate its doctrines, but considered himself free to criticise its practice. Though he listened to the arguments of the Protestant Reformers, he did not join their ranks until 1553. His first literary production in Scotland, when he was in Lord Cassilis's household in the west country, was the poem Somnium, a satirical attack on the Franciscan friars and the monastic life generally. This assault on the monks was not displeasing to James V, who engaged Buchanan as tutor to one of his natural sons, James Stewart (not the son who was afterwards regent), and encouraged him in a more daring effort. The poems Palinodia and Franciscanus et Fratres remained unpublished for many years, but made the author hated by the Franciscan order.

In 1539 there was persecution in Scotland of the Lutherans, and Buchanan among others was arrested. Although the King had withheld his protection, Buchanan managed to escape and made his way to London, and then Paris. In Paris, however, he found himself in danger when his main enemy, Cardinal David Beaton, arrived there as ambassador, and on the invitation of André de Gouveia, he moved to Bordeaux. Gouveia was then principal of the newly founded College of Guienne, and by his influence Buchanan was appointed professor of Latin. During his time there several of his major works, the translations of Medea and Alcestis, and the two dramas, Jephthes, sive Votum and Baptistes (sive Calumnia), were completed.