Andrew Melville (1 August 1545 – 1622) was a Scottish scholar, theologian, poet and religious reformer. His fame encouraged scholars from the European continent to study at Glasgow and St. Andrews.
He was born at Baldovie, on 1 August 1545, the youngest son of Richard Melville of Baldovie, and Geills, daughter of Thomas Abercrombie of Montrose. He was educated at the Grammar School, Montrose, and the University of St Andrews. He later went to France in 1564, and studied law at Poitiers. He became regent in the College of Marceon, and took part in the defence of Poitiers against the Huguenots. He then proceeded to Geneva, where he was appointed Professor of Humanity. He returned to Scotland in 1574 and was appointed Principal of the University of Glasgow in autumn of that year. He did much to establish the university on a proper footing and founded four chairs in Languages, Science and Philosophy. He was admitted as minister of Govan in conjunction 13 July 1577. Melville was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 24 April 1578. He opposed the Episcopal tendency in the Church, and did much to establish the Presbyterian form of government. He further did much to remodel the Scottish Universities, especially St Andrews; St Mary's thereafter being devoted to Divinity, Melville being appointed Principal thereof in November 1580. He was again elected Moderator of the General Assembly 24 April and 27 June 1582, and 20 June 1587. In the Assembly of October 1581, he took an active part in the libel against Robert Montgomery, Bishop of Glasgow, for simoniacal practices.
Melville was appointed on a commission to wait upon James VI in 1582, with a remonstrance and petition which, notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends, he presented. On 15 February 1584 he was summoned before the Privy Council for alleged treason in a sermon preached at St Andrews the June previous, and ordered to be imprisoned at Blackness, but his friends assisted him to escape to England. On Arran's fall he returned to Scotland and was restored by Parliament at Linlithgow in December 1585. In 1590 he became rector of the University of St Andrews, which office he held until 1597, and at the coronation of the Queen, 17 May 1590, he recited a Latin poem, the Stephaniskion. He was again appointed Moderator of the General Assembly, 7 May 1594, but on a visitation of the university by the King in June 1597, he was deprived of his rectorship. He attended the General Assembly at Dundee, March 1598, but was ordered to withdraw by the King.
In 1599 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Theology. He caused the Synod of Fife in 1599 to censure certain propositions in the Basilikon Doron by the King. At the Assembly at Montrose in March 1600 he unsuccessfully claimed his right to sit, but was successful in that at Burntisland May 1601. He took part in that held at Aberdeen in 1605 and offered, with others, a protest to Parliament at Perth in 1606 in favour of the right of free Assembly. For this he was summoned with others to London, where he was cited before the English Privy Council for writing a bitter Latin epigram against the accessories of Anglican worship and placed under the custody of John Overal, D.D., Dean of St Paul's, and afterwards of Bilson, Bishop of Winchester. Again brought before the Privy Council, he broke into a violent tirade against that Court and was committed to solitary confinement in the Tower. Henri de la Tour, Duke de Bouillon, having obtained his release, appointed him to the Chair of Biblical Theology in the University of Sedan, and Melville embarked for France 19 April 1611. He died unmarried after a series of illnesses at Sedan in 1622.
Early life and early education
He was born on 1 August 1545 at Baldovie near Montrose, Angus, the youngest son of Richard Melville (brother to Melville of Dysart).
Andrew was the youngest of nine sons of Richard Melville of Baldovy, near Montrose, where he was born 1 August 1545. He is described as the ninth son, yet speaks in a letter of 1612 as having outlived his ‘fourteen brethren.’ His father lost his life in the battle of Pinkie, when Andrew was only two years old and, his mother dying soon after, he was brought up under the care of his eldest brother Richard (1522–1575), afterwards minister of Maryton, who, at a proper age, sent him to the grammar school of Montrose.
At an early age Melville began to show a taste for learning, and his brother did everything in his power to give him the best education. He learned the rudiments of Latin at the grammar school of Montrose, after leaving which he learned Greek for two years under Pierre de Marsilliers, a Frenchman whom John Erskine of Dun had persuaded to settle at Montrose; such was Melville's proficiency that on going to the University of St Andrews he astonished the professors by using the Greek text of Aristotle, which no one else there understood. On completing his course, Melville left St Andrews with the reputation of "the best poet, philosopher, and Grecian of any young master in the land."
In 1564, at nineteen years of age, he set out for France to complete his education at the University of Paris. Having graduated at St. Andrews, he repaired to France in the autumn of 1564, reaching Paris from Dieppe after a roundabout and stormy voyage. He now attained great fluency in Greek, made acquirements in oriental languages, studied mathematics and law, and came under the direct influence of Peter Ramus, whose new methods of teaching he subsequently transplanted to Scotland.
He also attended the last course of lectures delivered by Adrianus Turnebus, professor of Greek, as well as those of Petrus Ramus, whose philosophical method and plan of teaching Melville later introduced into the universities of Scotland. It was also in Paris where Melville studied Hebrew under Jean Mercier, one of the leading hebraists of that time. From Paris he went to Poitiers (1566) to study civil law, and though only twenty-one was apparently at once made a regent in the college of St Marceon. After three years, however, political troubles compelled him to leave France, and he went to Geneva, where he was welcomed by Theodore Beza, at whose instigation he was appointed to the chair of humanity in the academy of Geneva.
In addition to teaching, Melville continued to study Oriental literature, and in particular acquired from Cornelius Bertram, one of his brother professors, a knowledge of Syriac. At Geneva as early as 1572 he met Joseph Scaliger and Francis Hottoman, who in 1572, after the massacre on St. Bartholomew's day, took up their abode in that city. While he lived at Geneva the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 drove immense numbers of Protestant refugees to that city, including several of the most distinguished French men of letters of the time. Among these were several men learned in civil law, and political science, and associating with them increased Melville's knowledge and enlarged his ideas of civil and ecclesiastical liberty.
In 1574 Melville returned to Scotland, and almost immediately received the appointment of Principal of the University of Glasgow, and began its renewal. Besides his duties in the university, he officiated as minister of the church of Govan, in the vicinity.
Melville set himself to establish a good educational system. He enlarged the curriculum, and established chairs in languages, science, philosophy and divinity, which were confirmed by charter in 1577. His fame spread, and students flocked from all parts of Scotland and beyond. He assisted in the reconstruction of King's College of the University of Aberdeen in 1575, and to do for St Andrews what he had done for Glasgow, he was appointed Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews, in 1580. His duties there comprised the teaching of theology, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and Rabbinical languages.
As a member of the General Assembly, he took a prominent part in all the measures of that body against episcopacy; and as he was unflinching in his opposition to that form of church government, he received the name of Episcopomastix, or The Scourge of Bishops. A remarkable instance of his intrepidity occurred at an interview, which took place in October 1577, between him and the Regent Morton, when the latter, irritated at the proceedings of the Assembly, exclaimed, "There will never be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished!" "Hark! Sir", said Melville, "threaten your courtiers after that manner! It is the same to me whether I rot in the air, or in the ground. The earth is the Lord's. Patria est ubicunque est bene. I have been ready to give up my life where it would not have been half so well wared, at the pleasure of my God. I have lived out of your country ten years, as well as in it. Let God be glorified, it will not be in your power to hang or exile his truth." This bold language Morton did not venture to resent.