particularly that of the primacy of St. Andrews. Family influence and political intrigue determined the outcome. Hamilton’s biographer, Lorimer, declared,
“The church’s patrimony suffers all the ignominy of a simoniacal partition in order to satisfy their covetousness and ambition; and a reconciliation of all parties is effected only when all parties are gorged with ecclesiastical booty.” — Peter Lorimer, Patrick Hamilton, page 17.
The Hamiltons were in the midst of the strife, their affiliation divided by the contending parties. Young Patrick could hardly have escaped being impressed by the flagrant corruption of the church — for which his parents had destined him.
Hamilton left Scotland in 1517, if not earlier, to attend the University of Paris. He studied Greek and Hebrew, and read the Scriptures in their original languages, and he took his master’s degree at the age of sixteen. It is true that obtaining a higher degree from a sixteenth-century university did not present the formidable academic hurdles that a similar achievement at the first-class university does today.
His stay in Paris proved to be the turning point of his life. He had passed from the middle ages of Scotland to the modern age of France, with its seething unrest and awakening to a new birth of religion. Here he came under the influence of Erasmus, who was an advocate of freedom of thought; it is even probable that he made the personal acquaintance of the man.
Of still greater importance to Hamilton was his reading of Luther’s
writings. Thus he learned about justification by faith, instead of by works, as he had been taught. A great many copies of Luther’s account of the Leipzig disputation between himself and Eck were distributed in Paris and at the university in 1519. University officials purchased copies in order to evaluate and criticize Luther’s orthodoxy. For more than a year the
doctors of the Sorbonne deliberated, and on April 15, 1521, in the presence of the faculty and students they declared Luther a heretic, and they burned his writings.
After Luther’s condemnation, Melanchthon took up his pen in defense of the great Reformer and the evangelical doctrines, and against the Sorbonne.
His writings, too, were consigned to the flames. All this Hamilton saw. He could not have been more propitiously stationed to watch the ebb and flow of this theological war, to determine what was good and what was bad about Catholicism and Protestantism alike.
He spent six years in Paris; the three years following his graduation he studied probably at Louvain, where Erasmus resided in 1521, and it is possible that he also spent some time in Basel after Erasmus had moved to that city.
In 1523 Hamilton was back in Scotland as a student in St. Andrews University. The following year he was admitted to the faculty of arts in St. Leonard’s College, where his proficiency in music led him to compose a mass arranged in parts for nine voices. This was presented in the
Cathedral of St. Andrews, with himself as conductor.
At this time Hamilton’s mind was probably still in a state of transition, a thoroughgoing Erasmian, but uncertain about Luther’s theology.
In 1525 the Scottish clergy placed a ban on Luther’s writings, which had been extensively circulated. Those who brought these works into Scotland were faced with imprisonment. Tyndale’s Bible had also reached Scottish shores.
It was probably the following year that Hamilton first openly declared his new convictions, perhaps prematurely urged on because of his irritation at papists’ actions against Luther’s writings. But as soon as he began
preaching he was faced with the proposition that either he cease doing so or die, for when Archbishop Beaton heard the rumor of Hamilton’s defection from the Catholic faith he made investigation and found him
“inflamed with heresy, disputing, holding and maintaining divers heresies of Martin Luther and his followers, repugnant to the faith.” — Ibid., p. 82.
Hamilton fled to Wittenberg, Germany, early in the spring of 1527, and associated himself with Luther and Melanchthon. He also met Tyndale and Frith, and for some time he studied under Francis Lambert, head of the
theological faculty at the newly founded University of Marburg. Lambert praised his learning and spiritual insight, and said,
“His learning was of no common kind for his years, and his judgment in divine truth was eminently clear and solid. His object in visiting the university was to confirm himself more abundantly in the truth; and I can truly say that I have seldom met with anyone who conversed on the word of God with greater spirituality and earnestness of feeling. He was often in conversation with me upon these subjects.” — Ibid., p. 93.
It was one thing to be converted to Protestantism through reading Luther’s writings and to hear about the Reformation from afar; it was an altogether different matter to associate personally with some of “the most illustrious teachers and heroes of the reformed faith” and to witness at firsthand the progress of the Reformation with its sweeping social, religious, and
political changes. For six months he steeped himself in the spirit and virtue of these men. This he needed to fortify himself for the trials ahead.
While at Marburg, Hamilton wrote in a balanced, antithetical style a treatise called Patrick’s Places, which deals with the distinction between topics such as the law and the gospel, justification and holiness, faith and works. Hamilton wrote,
“The law showeth us our sin, the gospel showeth us the remedy for it. The law showeth us our condemnation, the gospel showeth us our redemption. The law saith to the sinner, Pay thy debt; the gospel saith, Christ hath paid it. The law saith, Thou art a sinner;
despair — thou shalt be damned; the gospel saith, Thy sins are forgiven thee; be of good comfort — thou shalt be saved.” — Quoted by Robert F. Sample in Beacon Lights of the Reformation, pages 369, 370.
This brochure, written at Lambert’s suggestion, has the distinction of being “the earliest doctrinal production of the Scottish Reformation,” and it “became the cornerstone of Protestant theology in Scotland and
England.” Frith later translated it into English, and both John Knox and John Foxe include it in its entirety in their writings.
But Hamilton could not long remain away from Scotland, where he felt that God called him to deliver His message. Now he felt that he was prepared to face death, if necessary. He returned in the autumn of 1527 and began preaching to the nobility; to his own relatives in Kincavel, some of whom, including his brother and sister, joined him in the faith; as well as to a young lady of noble birth to whom he united himself in marriage. A daughter was born after his death.
Beginning with his family mansion, probably his brother’s house, where he gathered his first congregation, he soon preached in all the surrounding country, as
“he spared not to lay open the corruptions of the Roman Church, and to show the errors crept into the Christian religion; whereunto many gave ear, and a great following he had both for his learning and courteous behavior to all sorts of people.” — Quoted by Lorimer, op. cit., p. 105.
In January, 1528, he was invited by Archbishop Beaton to attend a conference of the heads of the church to consider “such points as might seem to stand in need of reform.” Some of his relatives attempted to dissuade him from going, because they feared for their kinsman’s life; but even though he knew he had not long to live, he resolutely turned his face to St. Andrews, “the Vatican of Scotland,” to accept the archbishop’s invitation. Here he lived in the lodgings provided for him by the archbishop.
The conference was held, and Hamilton defended his views. His opponents demonstrated such a conciliatory spirit that the young Reformer was permitted to teach in the university. This was all a part of the plan to get more evidence against him, for it was no easy matter to execute a member of such a noble family.
With utmost freedom he was permitted to go about the university for one whole month, instructing and disputing openly on all points he thought essential to bring about a reform in church doctrine and polity. Here at the ecclesiastical center and capital of Scotland he preached to students and faculty members, to various orders of monkhood — the Dominicans, Augustinians, the Franciscans — to noblemen, laymen, and priests, to all
in the classrooms and the cathedral, and to all who sought him out in his apartment. In this one month he was able to strike at the very heart of the nation with his message of reform.
At the end of February he was seized and brought to trial in the cathedral.
The charges made against him included his teaching that man is justified by faith and not by works, that faith, hope, and charity are so linked together that if an individual possesses one he has all, and if he lacks one he lacks all. Furthermore, he had stated that every true Christian must know whether he is in a state of grace, that no man is able by mere force of free will to do any good thing, that no one continues without sins in this life, and that corruption of sin remains in a child after baptism. He had
exhorted the people to read the word of God, and he stated that the people were able to understand it. Worshiping of images and saints he had
declared unlawful, as well as auricular confession, purgatory, and penance;
all were contrary to the Scriptures, and he had called the pope antichrist.
After the mock trial he was deprived of all dignities and benefices of the church, and the secular government carried out the execution. Lest an attempt to rescue him prove successful, a guard of 3,000 men conducted him from the cathedral to the castle. It is said that when his brother James heard what was about to happen, he gathered a strong force to interfere with the plans of execution; but a storm on the Firth prevented him from reaching St. Andrews in time.
On the same day he was tried Hamilton was hastened to the execution in front of the gate of St. Salvador’s College. At noon he was bound at the stake. As the iron chain fastened him to the pole, he prayed that the acute pain he might suffer would not cause him to say or do anything that would grieve his heavenly Father.
Hamilton died one of the most excruciatingly painful and prolonged deaths of any of the martyrs. He was tortured, not by intent but through
carelessness, with a slow fire in which the pile had to be kindled three times because of green wood. When some powder which had been placed among the pieces exploded and a chunk grazed his flesh, Hamilton calmly said, “Have you no dry wood? Have you no more gunpowder?”
When the iron chain had nearly burned through the center of his body, one of the observers asked him to show whether he still believed, by giving them some sign of his faith. With that Hamilton held up three fingers of a partly burned hand, and held them high until he died at six o’clock in the evening, just six hours from the time he had been tied to the stake.
“On the day that he died the papacy unwittingly kindled a fire which shone over all Scotland, in the flames of which it was itself consumed,” as “the reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it did blow.” — Sample, op. cit., p. 370.