Latest revision as of 05:59, 4 November 2022

George Buchanan (1506-1582) was a Scottish historian and reformer who was among the family of Buchanans that were pioneer settlers in Lawrence County, Illinois in 1819 from Pennsylvania, then Kentucky. Descendants included founders of the Tunbridge Wells exclusive Lawrenceville Meeting Room, IL in 1917, which met in St. Francisville 1949-1992, and meets to this day in its former locale.

George Buchanan historical summary

George Buchanan was a teacher of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587), the only legitimate child of James V (1512-1542), who was King of Scotland 1513-1542, oft characterized as the "poor man's king" because of his "accessibility to the poor and his acting against their oppressors". George was also earlier a tutor to James V's son Lord James Stewart, at the request of the King inspired by his satirical works against Franciscan friars and monasticism.

Keith Brown, historian, called George Buchanan "the most profound sixteenth century Scotland produced", and is credited as a early Scottish reformer, joining the ranks of Protestant reformers in 1553, whose ideas lent to the ease in which James II, King of England (aka James VII, King of Scotland) was deposed in 1689, who was the last Catholic monarch of the U.K. His treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotus which was perceived by King James VI to encourage limitation of kingly power, and punishment of tyrants, was condemned by an act of parliament in 1584, and burned by the University of Oxford in 1683.

George was initially Catholic, and earned his B.A. at the University of St. Andrews in 1525, where he studied logic under John Mair, then followed the latter to Paris where he earned his M.A. at Scots College, University of Paris in 1528. He was appointed the next year as a professor of the prestigious College of Sainte-Barbe in Paris where he taught for three years, and reformed their teaching style of Latin, and served as a tutor to the 3rd Earl of Cassilis, Gilbert Kennedy, and returned to Scotland in 1537. At this time, he took a stance similar to Erasmus, who was critical of, but did not deny Catholic doctrine, and his poem Somnium, his first publication in Scotland, was the treatise that inspired King James V to elect him to tutor his son.

In 1547, he was invited to lecture in Portugal at the University of Coimbra, and was imprisoned four years later in the monastery of Sao Bento in Lisbon having been accused of Lutheran and Judaistic practices, where he began translating the Psalms into Latin, and released later that year. In 1553 he was appointed regent in the College of Boncourt back in France, then accepted an offer to tutor Marechal de Brissac, where he said to have converted to Calvinism. He returned to Scotland in the early 1560's, and then served as tutor to Mary, Queen of Scots by 1562, and joined the Reformed Church. In 1566, he was appointed principal of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, by the Earl of Moray, and in spite of being a layman, he was made Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1567, and the last lay moderator until 2004.

In 1570, George was appointed a royal tutor of young King James VI, who eventually authorized the KJV Bible translation in 1611, and instilled in him a "lifelong passion for literature and learning", as is said to have "sought to turn James into a God-fearing, Protestant king who accepted the limitations of monarchy, as outlined in his treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos. He also served during this era as a director of chancery, then a Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, which entitled him to a seat in the parliament.

Hugh Trevor-Roper called George Buchanan "by universal consent, the greatest Latin writer, whether in prose or in verse, in sixteenth century Europe", and wrote Latin "as if it were his mother tongue", it was said to have a "freshness and elasticity of its own" in contrast with classical authors. His Pompae verses were included in court entertainments during during the baptism of King James.

Sources

• Ancestry.com
  • 1910 Lawrence County history
• George Buchanan wiki
• TW AAB's 1917-2021