Who was John Knox?
Stained glass window in Long Beach showing John Knox admonishing Mary, Queen of Scots. From Covenant Presbyterian Church, Long Beach, California, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John Knox turns 500 this year. Actually, historians are not certain whether it was 1514 or 1515, but sometime around there, in the little market town of Haddington, Scotland , down the street from Saint Mary’s Church, Knox was born. As biographer Rosalind Marshall explains, much of Knox’s early life is unknown. He doesn’t enter the history books until his thirties, and what little we know about this life before then comes from pieces left for us by his contemporaries. For example, it’s believed that he attended Saint Andrews University and flourished in this studies, though there’s no evidence for it other than the word of Theodore Beza , his contemporary. Beza considered him a distinguished academician, and others called him “Mr. Knox” — a title reserved for those who held degrees. He likely spent som...