Knox DVD Trinity Digital, 2015 77 minutes £12
John Knox was a reformer and a revolutionary. Born circa 1514 he lived for nearly 60 years and was very much a child of his time – the time of Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
This film looks at the life and legacy of this man who lays claim to being Scotland’s greatest reformer.
Although ordained a Catholic priest he came under the powerful influence of the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s and 1540s and became a fiery orator for the Protestant cause. As was to be expected at the time he was virulently anti-Roman Catholic. He is particularly noted for facing down the most famous Scottish queen of all time. Easy therefore to see that for some he was valued; for others, vilified. At the deepest level, Christians at this time in Europe were divided over the authority of the Bible or that of the Church. Contact with Calvin and Zwingli in Geneva made him a powerful voice for reform of the church of his day. For the Reformers, the Bible supplanted the authority of the Church.
This film is a careful and engaging record of his life and times, combining occasional animations of events with continuity provided by a sympathetic narrator to keep the story moving on. Interviews with leading experts provide comments and explanations which help to fill in the background.
Knox might not be a sympathetic character to everyone given his passionate commitment to Calvinistic theology and his apparent misogyny (witness his book ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’). In real life his misogyny seemed to evaporate. He married twice. Perhaps it was his attitude to women in places of authority in the church that was the real cause of his protest and antipathy.
It might be kinder to remember just a couple of his sayings rather than the vituperative language more often associated with his fiery preaching – ‘A man with God is always a majority’ and ‘Prayer is an earnest and familiar talking with God’.
Some 500 years of momentous history have passed since Knox walked the earth but his influence is still felt in the country of his birth, not least as founder of the Scottish Presbyterian Church.