This paper examines the provision of schooling to Catholics in eighteenth-century Scotland. In the first half of the century, schools established in the Highlands by the SSPCK mainly served a religious purpose, because Protestants were convinced that education was both a preservative against and an antidote to popery. As for the Catholic Church in Scotland, it concentrated its efforts on providing education to those boys intended for the priesthood. However, as the century wore on, there was a clear shift in the attitude of Scottish Catholics towards education. This paper presents evidence which suggests that Catholics came to regard education as an asset rather than as a threat, and that the changing perception of the uses of education mirrors the evolution of the standing of Scottish Catholics in British society.
This collection of documents mainly consists of manuscripts held in the National Records of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. The records all relate to Catholics in Scotland in the 1720s and 1730s and to the state of the Scottish Mission in that period. All but one were penned by Church of Scotland ministers and Royal Bounty catechists. The remaining item is a memorial to Propaganda Fide written by a Scottish Catholic. These riveting accounts shed valuable light on the Scottish Mission and on the contrasting perceptions Protestants and Catholics had of the 'State of Popery' in the early eighteenth century.
While for Roman Catholics, the Bible was but one of the foundations of faith, it was the Protestants' "only safe guide." This essential disctinction made for different approaches to literacy which, in turn, induced Presbyterians to regard ignorance as the sine qua non for the survival of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. Therefore they deemed the schooling of all Scottish children the most efficient weapon in order to annihilate the Church of Rome. In the eighteenth century, Scotland was extolled for her achievements in the field of education. However, it was clear that the system devised by the Reformers had let the Highlands down and it was considered as no coincidence that there remained a number of Catholic strongholds in this region. Charity schools were established with a view to getting rid of both evils but as the years wore on, the growing lukewarmness of the Presbyterians' zeal had far-reaching consequences on their attitudes to education as they seemed to have forsaken the inheritance passed down from the sixteenth-century Reformers.
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