Kirk Discipline and Roman Catholicism in Early Modern Scotland

Presents an absorbing history of the interplay between Catholics and the early modern kirk

• The first book-length project to utilise parish kirk session records as a means of analysing religious persecution in Scotland
• Situates Catholics’ public penance, and the visible signs required, within the wider history of emotions and of kirk discipline in Scotland
• Examines Catholic resistance to Scotland’s unfolding Reformation, with particular attention given to how underground Catholics exploited ecclesiastical policies to their advantage
• Features a timely and underexplored study on Catholic immigration to Scotland, which undermined the kirk’s attempt at religious uniformity
• Analyses the decline of ecclesiastical persecution after 1660, as ministers came to see religious identities as increasingly fixed

This book analyses the Scottish kirk’s use of public shame to persecute the kingdom’s Catholic minority. In early modern Scotland, where the national church mandated that a specially constructed stool of repentance be placed directly in front of every minister’s pulpit, the dreadful spectacle of public penance was a routine feature of parish life. The book examines this process of ritualised shame.

Drawing on recent advances in the study of kirk discipline, underground Catholicism and the history of emotion, it unsettles understandings of religious persecution. Ryan Burns analyses the psychological pressure inflicted on religious dissidents, some of whom attempted suicide rather than submit to the repentance stool. The book examines the spectacle of public penance, as well as the Presbyterian kirk’s often creative means of inducing humiliation.