Riches and reform : ecclesiastical wealth in St Andrews c.1520-1580 / by Bess Rhodes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rhodes, Bess, author.

Series:

St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.

St Andrews Studies in Reformation History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church finance--Scotland--St. Andrews--History--16th century.

Church finance.

St. Andrews (Scotland)--Church history--16th century.

St. Andrews (Scotland).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (211 pages).

Place of Publication:

Leiden Boston : BRILL, 2020.

Summary:

The Scottish Reformation is often presumed to have had little economic impact. Traditionally, scholars maintained that Scotland’s late medieval church gradually secularised its estates, and that the religious changes of 1560 barely disrupted an ongoing trend. In Riches and Reform Bess Rhodes challenges this assumption with a study of church finance in Scotland’s religious capital of St Andrews, a place once regarded as the ‘cheif and mother citie of the Realme’. Drawing on largely unpublished charters, rentals, and account books, Riches and Reform argues that in St Andrews the Reformation triggered a rapid, large-scale, and ultimately ruinous redistribution of ecclesiastical wealth. Communal assets built up over generations were suddenly dispersed through a combination of official policies, individual opportunism, and a crisis in local administration, leading the post-Reformation churches and city of St Andrews into ‘poverte and decay’.

Contents:

Front Matter

Copyright Page

Dedication

Abbreviations

Conventions

Acknowledgements

Plan of St Andrews in the Sixteenth Century

Introduction

Pre-Reformation St Andrews

Income and Estates

Administration

Donations and Expansion

Feuing

The Reformation Crisis

Settlement of the 1560s

Conflict and Disintegration

Legacy

Conclusion

Back Matter

Appendix

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-205) and index.

ISBN:

90-04-34799-2

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004347991 DOI