ABSTRACT
The Renaissance opened the mind of man to the plastic arts, to painting, and to new forms of literature. Nineteenth-century writers, secure in their morality and their Protestantism, condemn the Roman Catholic Church in rounded terms: ‘The history of clerical celibacy is indeed tender ground. The first Scotsman to be executed for his adherence to the Reformed Religion was Patrick Hamilton, Abbot of Feme, who had learned the new doctrines from Luther himself. Naturally, because most of the riches of the Church lay in the hands of the bishops and the abbots, the new doctrines began by permeating the lower orders of the clergy. The friar, obviously a sound Scotsman who was sticking to his opinions, journeyed to St Andrews and consulted a well-known doctor from the Sorbonne as to whether what he had said could be counted as heresy.
