The Hammer and the Fire E-Book

Henry Marsh

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 59

Beschreibung

In this collection Marsh moves via Kepler and Darwin into a celebration of nature, searching within our secular world to 'find a language' to render its mystery and concludes by touching on the great challenges we now face. Following The Guidman's Daughter with his poems on Mary, Queen of Scots, Marsh begins this new collection with a sequence exploring the life and times of John Knox, locating this ambivalent figure in the turmoil of the Scottish Reformation. Marsh moves via Kepler and Darwin into a celebration of nature, searching within our secular world to 'find a language' to render its mystery and concludes by touching on the great challenges we now face. Our striving to understand the nature of things hints, perhaps, at the possibility of a different kind of redemption.

Leseprobe

THE HAMMER AND THE FIRE

THE HAMMER AND THE FIRE

HENRY MARSH

2011

For Alice and Charlotte

Maclean Dubois

Also by Henry Marsh

A First Sighting, ISBN 0 9514470 1 7

first published in Great Britain in 2005

by Maclean Dubois,

Hillend House, Hillend, Edinburgh EH10 7DX

A Turbulent Wake, ISBN 978 0 9514470 4 8

first published in Great Britain in 2007

by Maclean Dubois.

A Trail of Dreaming, ISBN 13 978 0 9561141 0 5

in collaboration with the artist, Kym Needle,

published 2009

by the Open Eye Gallery,

34 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

The Guidman’s Daughter, ISBN 978 0951 47062

first published 2009

by Maclean Dubois

distributed by Birlinn.

Printed by CPI Antony Rowe

www.cpibooks.co.uk

Design by Cate Stewart

Distributed by Birlinn Ltd

Copyright by Henry Marsh 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

ISBN 978-0-9565278-2-0

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8579-0117-0

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editors of Dream Catcher and North Words Now where some of these poems were first published.

I am particularly indebted to Dr Rosalind Marshall for the rich source of detail in her book John Knox and for her other work on the Scottish Reformation. She kindly read the manuscript and offered her advice. The Swordbearer by my old friend, the Revd Stewart Lamont, was also very useful.

Peter Gilmour provided wise comments, as always, on the selection of the pieces.

But the publication of the collection would not have been possible without Professor Alexander McCall Smith and his team – Lesley Winton, his P.A., and the book’s designer, Cate Stewart. I owe them a great debt of gratitude.

The spectacular cover image of the Rosette Nebula I owe to Dr Nick Wright, University College London and the Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire. I must also thank Professor Janet Drew who very kindly and speedily facilitated what must have seemed a rather eccentric enquiry.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgements

The Hammer and the Fire

Introduction

At St Giles’ Kirk

George Wishart

In the French Galleys

Berwick

By the House of Dun

St John’s Kirk, Perth

The Reformation of Lindores Abbey

Remembering the Field of Pinkie

Loss

Of the Monstrous Regiment

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium

In Thrall

Sisyphus

Bunty Wallace

Edinburgh, 1572

Gethsemane

January, 2009

Homecoming

Origins

Origins

Oasis

Kepler’s Supernova

Cognition of Torture

The Mystery of Tides

Harmony of the World

Rainbows

The Watch

Lux

Lumen

Illumination

Light and Water

Dancing after Bees

Thinking Path

Sundew – Loch Druidibeg

At Loch Crócabhat

Black and White

October 1st

At the Window

Marsh Thistle

Like to Like

Glen Esk

By the Sound of Eriskay

Stonechat

Valhalla

Kestrel

Voyager

Colonsay

Rain-washed

Dirt Tosser

Trickster

Belhaven Bay

Mummy

Beach at Smeircleit

Drove Road

Echidna by Three Pine Trees Quarry

Handing On

Sun-dust

Lindisfarne

Jupiter

Wheelhouse – Cille Pheadair

Eco Demo

At the Royal

Singularities

Stroke

Inheritance

At South Lochboisdale

Dandelion Clock

Green Man in a Chapel

Sky Lines – Otterspool Promenade

For Charlotte

Walking

The Open Road

Art Lesson

The Hammer and the Fire

Introduction

It is likely that John Knox was born in Haddington, probably in 1514. It was during his childhood that Martin Luther sprang to prominence, his ideas being appropriated to justify attempts at social revolution in Germany. The association of religious reform and revolution was later reflected in events as they unfolded in Scotland. Against this background of growing European turmoil, Knox was ordained priest sometime in the late 1530’s. The details of his conversion to Protestantism are not known.

The Martyrdom of George Wishart in St Andrews in 1546 had a profound effect on Knox and may have precipitated a choice: should he follow Wishart’s example, or work at a safer distance to further the ends of Protestantism?

Following the murder of Cardinal Beaton, Knox was captured in St Andrews Castle by the French and taken as a galley slave. On his freedom, he made his way to England. For the next six years he moved between England, Dieppe, Geneva and Frankfurt.

Knox was happy in Geneva. He heard Calvin’s sermons in the sublime austerity of St Pierre’s Cathedral, began to study Hebrew and Greek, worked at translation for what would come to be known as the Geneva Bible, wrote and published. In the settled peace of Geneva he saw how Protestant reformation might be fulfilled. In dialogue with John Calvin, he set the question of whether the people of God had the right to depose idolatrous monarchs.

In Dieppe he had worked on The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. It is difficult for us to come to terms with his tirade against ‘that monster in nature… a woman clad in the habit of a man’. But Knox’s target was Mary I of England, that ‘cursed Jezebel’ and her persecution of Protestants who were being ‘consumed in the fire’. Knox argued that it was a duty to depose such female monarchs. He was supported in his extreme position neither by Calvin nor other leading reformers.

His stay in Frankfurt was disastrous, marked by vicious in-fighting with Protestant immigrants from England over the Second Book of Common Prayer. Finally, his expulsion from the city was engineered on the grounds of his regicidal ideas.

On a visit to Scotland in 1555-56 Knox visited influential house-holds, taking Bible study and conducting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in private. He was arguing that no compromise was possible with the Church of Rome. A decisive break was necessary. It was on such a mission that he visited John Erskine at the House of Dun near Montrose, in Angus. The momentum for change was gathering. It would become unstoppable.

He finally returned to Scotland in 1559 where, on the day after a sermon at St John’s Kirk in Perth on 11th May, in effect, revolution broke out across the Central Lowlands. Knox had preached on idolatry, attacking the Roman Catholic Mass on the grounds that transubstantiation had no scriptural authority. Knox’s notion of idolatry would be defined in The First Book of Discipline: ‘By idolatry, we understand the Mass, invocation of saints, adoration of images, and the keeping and retaining of the same; and, finally, all honouring of God not contained in his holy word.’

The next day, a priest celebrating mass chastised a boy for throwing a stone at the tabernacle – the ornate receptacle for the Eucharistic elements – thereby triggering riots and the sacking of religious institutions.

In the following year the Scots Parliament and General Assembly confirmed the Reformation by the adoption of The 1560 Scots Confession. In 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots returned from France but refused to give her royal approval. It was not finally endorsed by the Scots Parliament until December 1567, a few months after Mary’s abdication. Knox may well have written the first draft. However, the final version was the work of several reformers and its tone had been moderated. This doctrinal manifesto is surprisingly accessible – it also has an austere beauty.