Scotland’s links with the wider world in the late medieval and early modern period took many forms. The broad network of mercantile links between Scotland and mainland Europe that stretched from Spain to the Baltic States ensured a steady importation of both goods and materials, and of European artistic and architectural trends and products; and the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church that protected Scotland as its ‘special daughter’ (filia particularis) from English interference also ensured a steady cross-fertilisation in manifestations of piety such as saints cults and confraternities, as well as a regular tourist industry in the form of pilgrimage. However, one of the most fundamental links, and one which proved especially important in the formation of an intelligentsia and a ‘middle class’ in early modern Scotland, was the link between the universities of Scotland and their counterparts in mainland Europe. This brief talk will survey a range of key episodes in the history of the Scottish universities between 1413 and 1641 highlighting these links. Each of the universities founded in Scotland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – St Andrews (founded c. 1413), Glasgow (1451), King’s College Aberdeen (1595), Edinburgh (1582), and Marischal College Aberdeen (1593) – were modelled on different European institutions and took their curriculum and teaching from the latest trends in Continental educational practice, and their foundations will be surveyed in turn. The talk will also look at some of the Scottish scholars in this period that had considerable success on the Continent, and the much rarer instance of Continental scholars coming to Scotland, to show how this relationship with the wider world influenced early modern Scottish cultural life.  

Dr Steven Reid is Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Glasgow. Dr Reid is a member of the St Andrews History of the University Project and completed his doctoral research at the University of St Andrews .

If you would like to learn more about the St Andrews History of the University project please follow this link: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~sahup/