Overview

This book analyses the Scottish kirk's use of public shame to persecute the kingdom's Catholic minority. In early modern Scotland, where the national church mandated that a specially constructed stool of repentance be placed directly in front of every minister's pulpit, the dreadful spectacle of public penance was a routine feature of parish life. The book examines this process of ritualised shame. Drawing on recent advances in the study of kirk discipline, underground Catholicism and the history of emotion, it unsettles understandings of religious persecution. Ryan Burns analyses the psychological pressure inflicted on religious dissidents, some of whom attempted suicide rather than submit to the repentance stool. The book examines the spectacle of public penance, as well as the Presbyterian kirk's often creative means of inducing humiliation.

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9781399552370

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Reviews

Covering more than 200 years with much vivid detail, this book is equally impressive in exploring the Kirk's attempt to convert Catholics by public humiliation, and the latter's parrying of those attempts by surrender, feigned conformity or occasional courageous defiance.--John Morrill, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge

Author Information

Ryan Burns is an Assistant Professor of History at Jacksonville State University. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2019 and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies. His research focuses on the history of shame and its intersection with the history of religion. Kirk Discipline and Roman Catholicism in Early Modern Scotland is his first book.

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