Cornerstone No . 184 , page 18
Scotland and Luther
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the event generally taken to mark the start of the Protestant Reformation , Martin Luther ’ s action in nailing up 95 theses attacking some of the practices and doctrines of the late Medieval Catholic church on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg . Scotland , and the Church of Scotland in particular , ultimately drew more in terms of theology , doctrines and forms of church government and polity from the other great founding father of the European Reformation , Jean Calvin , than it did from the more conservative figure of Luther . However , the influence of Luther was also important here , especially in the early years of the spread of Protestant ideas from the continent . Luther ’ s critique of Medieval Catholicism and his strong assertion of the doctrine of justification by personal faith alone , without recourse to works , the accumulation of merit or the activities of the church , first came into Scotland in the form of literature which circulated particularly in the east coast burghs . The first agent of Lutheranism to appear in Scotland seems to have been a Frenchman , Monsieur de la Tour , who arrived in 1523 to work for the Duke of Albany and suffered martyrdom when he subsequently returned to France . An Act of Parliament in 1525 banned the importation of any literature by or about ‘ that heretic Luther ’ into Scotland but this did not stop several eminent Scots taking up and promulgating his main ideas . The most prominent of them was undoubtedly Patrick Hamilton ( right , painting by John Scougal ( 1645- 1730 )), who was probably born near Glasgow around 1504 became a priest in 1526 . His open support for the teachings of Luther , notably the idea of justification by faith alone , brought him into direct conflict with James Beaton , Archbishop of St Andrews . In 1528 Hamilton was summoned before Beaton on charges of heresy , found guilty and slowly burnt to death at the stake on February 29 . The courage of Hamilton in facing his agonising death as the first Protestant martyr in Scotland had a considerable effect on promoting Lutheranism here . It made particular inroads in St Leonard ’ s College at St Andrews where both students and staff became outspoken critics of ecclesiastical corruption . Scotland ’ s second Protestant martyr , Henry Forrest , a Benedictine friar from Linlithgow and graduate of St Leonard ’ s College who had become Dean of the Abbey on the Isle of May , was burned to death near St Andrews Cathedral in 1533 for possessing a New Testament in English and affirming that Hamilton , whose death he had witnessed , was no heretic but a preacher of God ’ s truth .