George Buchanan (1506 - 1582)

Born Feb 1506 in Killearn, Stirlingshire, Scotland

Ancestors

Died 28 Sep 1582 at age 76 in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

Biography

George Buchanan is Notable.

This profile is part of the Buchanan Name Study.

George Buchanan, (born February 1506, Killearn, Stirlingshire, Scot.—died Sept. 29, 1582, Edinburgh), Scottish Humanist, educator, and man of letters, who was an eloquent critic of corruption and inefficiency in church and state during the period of the Reformation in Scotland. He was also known throughout Europe as a scholar and a Latin poet.

George Buchanan was son of Thomas Buchanan who died about 1512 and his wife, Agnes Heriot. ^[1][2]

After attending the University of Paris and the University of St. Andrews, Buchanan became a teacher in the Collège de Sainte-Barbe in Paris. There he taught Latin according to the new method of Thomas Linacre ^[3], whose book in English on Latin grammar he translated into Latin (1533). Because of Buchanan’s two bitter attacks on the Franciscans—Somnium (1535) and Franciscanus et fratres (1527)—he was jailed as a heretic. He escaped and accepted a position as teacher at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, France. There Michel de Montaigne ^[4] was one of his pupils. Buchanan found diversion in translating Euripides’ Medea and Alcestis into Latin and in writing original dramas—e.g., Baptistes (1534) and Jepthes (1578)—attacking tyranny.

There is clear evidence that he was a Crypto Jew, a Marrano.

In 1547 he was teaching in a Portuguese experimental school. Accused of heresy, he was immured in a monastery for instruction but was released and allowed to leave Portugal in 1552. In captivity he had composed a paraphrase of the Psalms that was long used to instruct Scottish youth in Latin.

After serving as a tutor in France, during which time he wrote De sphaera (1555), a Latin poem in five books, and Epithalamium (1558), a poem on the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the French dauphin, he returned to Scotland in 1561. At first a supporter of Mary, he became her bitter enemy after the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley, in 1567. He helped to prepare the case against Mary that was presented to Elizabeth I and that resulted eventually in Mary’s execution. Under the several succeeding regents, he was tutor to the young king James VI and held other offices. De jure regni apud Scotos (1579), the most important of his political writings, was a resolute assertion of limited monarchy in dialogue form; Rerum Scoticarum historia (1582), which he was completing at the time of his death, traces the history of Scotland from the mythical Fergus.

George died in Edinburgh on 28 September 1582 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard on the following day. ^[5][6]

Sources

1. ↑ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Buchanan, George (1506–1582)
2. ↑ MacMillan: p. 5
3. ↑ Wikipedia:Thomas Linacre
4. ↑ Wikipedia:Michel de Montaigne
5. ↑ Wikipedia: George Buchanan
6. ↑ George Buchanan, 1582; Burial, Edinburgh, , City of Edinburgh, Scotland, Greyfriars Kirkyard; Find A Grave: Memorial #11667378

• MacMillan, Donald, "George Buchanan, A Biography", Edinburgh: George A. Morton, 1906

• When Scotland Was Jewish Page 9 Authors Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, Donald N. Yates. Edition illustrated. Publisher McFarland, 2013.

• Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History) by Martin Mulsow and Richard H Popkin. Nov 28, 2003. Page 25.

See also:

• Wikipedia: George_Buchanan

• Wikidata: Item Q715169, en:Wikipedia

• The Peerage: George Buchanan

• WeRelate:Georeg Buchanan

• Britannica: George Buchanan

• Undiscovred Scotnd: George Buchanan

• Being a translation, with notes and an Introductory essay, of George Buchanan's "De Jure Regni Apud Scotos"

Title When Scotland Was Jewish: DNA Evidence, Archeology, Analysis of Migrations, and Public and Family Records Show Twelfth Century Semitic Roots Authors Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, Donald N. Yates Edition illustrated Publisher McFarland, 2013 ISBN 0786455225, 9780786455225