2
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

Excerpt from The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

    By John Knox

    Reprinted in The Political Writings of John Knox, 1985

The 1500s witnessed a growing demand for religious reform in Europe. The Roman Catholic Church, which was inseparable from government, was increasingly seen as corrupt. It controlled vast wealth, and its priests and bishops often failed to practice the Christian virtues that they preached. Many clergy lived in luxury while ordinary people struggled to feed themselves. Though their religious vows required them to abstain from sex, many priests and bishops kept mistresses and fathered children. And clergy were often criticized for failing to minister properly to their congregations. In 1517 Martin Luther (1483–1546), a German monk, publicly challenged several Roman Catholic practices, including the sale of indulgences—a type of waiver from punishment for sins. By 1530 Luther's calls for reform had attracted a large and influential following. His writings, as well as those of other German reformers, began to reach religious leaders in other parts of Europe, including England and Scotland, and helped start the Protestant Reformation, a sixteenth-century religious movement that aimed to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the establishment of Protestant churches.

"It is a thing most repugnant to nature that women rule and govern over men."

John Knox (c. 1513–1572), leader of the Reformation in Scotland, had been born and raised a Catholic but turned to Protestantism in the 1540s. It was no easy matter to reject Catholicism. Those who challenged official church doctrines, as Protestants did, were considered heretics, and heresy was one of the most serious crimes imaginable. (Heresy is a religious opinion that conflicts with the church's doctrines.) In Scotland, as elsewhere in Europe, the penalty was death by burning at the stake.

Yet Protestant teachings attracted considerable interest in Scotland. England, its more powerful neighbor to the south, had broken ties with Catholicism in the 1530s when Henry VIII (1491–1547) declared himself the official head of the church in England. Many Catholics refused to acknowledge Henry's religious authority, but several powerful nobles supported the Protestant cause. In Scotland, too, Protestant lords had much political power. But Scotland also feared England's military might, and had forged an alliance with Catholic France to protect itself from a military takeover. The Scottish king, James V (1512–1542), had married a French Catholic noble, Mary of Guise (1515–1560), and after James's death she ruled the kingdom as regent on behalf of their infant daughter, Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots; 1542–1587). Scottish Catholics, therefore, were seen as loyal to the crown, while Scottish Protestants were viewed as supporters of England.

Knox fully believed that his calls for religious reform were necessary and required by God. But the Scottish government worried about Protestant threats to its power, and it condemned Protestant teachings. In 1545 Scotland executed preacher George Wishart (1513–1545) for heresy; he was strangled and burned at the stake. Knox had been one of Wishart's close followers, and had fought to defend Wishart against government forces.

In 1553 Mary I (1516–1558) became queen of England, and she immediately took steps to restore Catholicism as the country's official religion. Knox, who had been living in England, feared for his life and fled to Europe. In 1555 Mary began vigorously enforcing heresy laws against Protestants. Leading Protestant priests and bishops—among them some of Knox's close friends and associates—were arrested, thrown into prison, and burned at the stake. At first only the leaders were targeted, but over the course of about three years, Mary's government burned approximately three hundred people from all walks of life—including uneducated peasants and artisans, women and men, elderly and teenagers. Knox and other English Protestant exiles heard of these events with growing despair.

Knox saw this brutal persecution of Protestants as the result of women's power. In Scotland, Mary of Guise's government had ordered Wishart's death. But the suffering was much worse in England, where Mary I was relentlessly persecuting Protestants and sentencing them to be burned at the stake. The root of this evil, then, was women's rule. In Knox's view, women had seized authority that, according to the natural order of things, should belong to men. He considered it his duty not only to expose this terrible wrong, but also to urge his followers to correct the situation.

In 1558 Knox anonymously published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. In it he denounced the rule of women as against the natural order of the world. He used strong language to describe women as foolish, vain, sinful, weak, cruel, and irrational. He conveyed profound disgust at the idea that such "creatures" should be given authority to govern. The pamphlet specifically targeted Queen Mary, and called on the English to overthrow her. He stated that Mary's rule was England's punishment for having allowed her to take the throne, and he warned that the English must prove their repentance by removing her from power. At a time when the authority of legitimate rulers was unquestioned by the common people, Knox shocked Catholics and Protestants by urging nothing less than revolution.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women:

• Obedience to legitimate authority was the foundation of the social order in sixteenth-century Europe. The idea that ordinary people might have the right to overthrow a ruler was unheard of at this time.
• Knox's argument is that women are, by nature, inferior to men. This was not an unusual opinion for its time. Indeed, it was not until the twentieth century that the equality of women began to gain wide acceptance.
• To support his argument, Knox draws on the creation story in the Bible. In this story God first creates man, Adam, and gives him authority over all creation. Woman, Eve, is created as a companion for Adam, but is not given the same authority. Protestants support a literal interpretation of the Bible, and so Adam is considered superior to Eve, with God-given authority to rule.
• Knox also refers to the Christian concept of Original Sin. When Adam and Eve are first created they are completely without sin. But a serpent convinces Eve that she and Adam should disobey God, who had forbidden them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Eve, in turn, convinces Adam to disobey God's command. This disobedience is the Original Sin. For this sin, Adam and Eve are each punished. Eve's punishment is the pain of childbirth and the dominance of her husband. In Knox's view this means that God intends women to be ruled by men and therefore cannot rule a nation.

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion [control], or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious [contrary] to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and, finally, it is the subversion [ruin] of good order, of all equity and justice….

And first, where that I affirm the empire of a woman to be a thing repugnant to nature, I mean not only that God by the order of his creation hath spoiled woman of authority and dominion, but also that man hath seen, proved, and pronounced just [fair] causes why that it so should be. Man, I say, in many other cases blind, doth in this behalf see very clearly, for the causes be so manifest that they cannot be hid. For who can deny but it repugneth [opposes] to nature that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see, that the weak, the sick and impotent persons, shall nourish and keep the whole and strong, and, finally, that the foolish, mad, and frenetic shall govern the discrete and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight in civil regiment is but blindness, their counsel foolishness, and judgment frenzy, if it be rightly considered. I except such as God, by singular privilege and for certain causes known only to himself, hath exempted from the common rank of women, and do speak of women as nature and experience do this day declare them.

Nature, I say, doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment. And these notable faults have men in all ages espied in that kind, for the which not only they have removed women from rule and authority, but also some have thought that men subject to the counsel or empire of their wives were unworthy of all public office….

Would to God the examples were not so manifest. To the further declaration of the imperfections of women, of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites, I might adduce histories proving some women to have died for sudden joy, some for unpatience to have murdered themselves; some to have burned with such inordinate lust that, for the quenching of the same, they have betrayed to strangers their country and city; and some to have been so desirous of dominion that, for the obtaining of the same, they have murdered the children of their own sons. Yea, and some have killed with cruelty their own husbands and children. But to me it is sufficient (because this part of nature is not my most sure foundation) to have proved that men, illuminated only by the light of nature, have seen and have determined that it is a thing most repugnant to nature that women rule and govern over men. For those that will not permit a woman to have power over her own sons will not permit her, I am assured, to have rule over a realm; and those that will not suffer her to speak in defense of those that be accused, neither that will admit her accusation intended against man, will not approve her that she shall sit in judgment, crowned with royal crown, usurping [siezing] authority in the midst of men.

But now to the second part of nature, in the which I include the revealed will and perfect ordinance of God; and against this part of nature, I say that it doth manifestly repugn [oppose] that any woman shall reign or bear dominion over man. For God, first by the order of his creation and after by the curse and malediction [curse] pronounced against the woman by the reason of her rebellion, hath pronounced the contrary.

First, I say that woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him. As St. Paul doth reason in these words: "Man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. And man was not created for the cause of the woman, but the woman for the cause of man, and therefore ought the woman to have a power upon her head" (that is, a coverture [covering] in sign of subjection). Of which words it is plain that the Apostle meaneth that woman in her greatest perfection should have known that man was lord above her, and therefore, that she should never have pretended any kind of superiority above him no more than do the angels above God the creator or above Christ Jesus their head. So, I say that in her greatest perfection woman was created to be subject to man.

But after her fall and rebellion committed against God there was put upon her a new necessity, and she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of God pronounced in these words: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. With sorrow shalt thou bear thy children, and thy will shall be subject to thy man, and he shall bear dominion over thee." Hereby may such as altogether be not blinded plainly see that God by his sentence hath dejected all woman from empire and dominion above man. For two punishments are laid upon her, to wit, a dolor [sadness], anguish, pain as oft as ever shall be mother, and a subjection of herself, her appetites and will, to her husband and to his will. From the former part of the malediction can neither art, nobility, policy, nor law made by man deliver womankind; but whosoever attaineth to that honor to be mother proveth in experience the effect and strength of God's word.

But, alas, ignorance of God, ambition, and tyranny have studied to abolish and destroy the second part of God's punishment, for women are lifted up to be heads over realms and to rule above men at their pleasure and appetites….

What happened next …

Knox followed The First Blast with four additional publications. In a letter to Mary of Guise, he demanded that she reform the church in Scotland or else face God's punishment. He followed this with an appeal to the Scottish bishops, stating his belief that the clergy and the nobles should insist that the monarch follow the true religion; if the monarch refused, they had the right and the duty to rebel. A third letter addressed the "Commonality of Scotland," urging ordinary people to take matters into their own hands if the clergy and the nobility refused to overthrow a monarch who rejected the true religion. Finally, Knox wrote an outline for his proposed "Second Blast of the Trumpet," in which he acknowledged his authorship of the The First Blast. This outline added four further propositions: that a king's right to rule a Christian people comes not only from his birth, but from God; that no idolator (someone who worships idols, or religious icons) should be allowed to hold office in a Christian kingdom; that subjects cannot be required to obey rulers who reject the true religion; and that, if people have chosen a ruler who rejects the true religion, they have the right to remove and punish that ruler.

The English government quickly denounced The First Blast, and in June 1558 Mary I issued a royal proclamation banning heretical and treasonous writings from abroad. It stated that anyone possessing such writings should burn them immediately or risk being executed. Many Protestants also disapproved of Knox's anti-government argument, and dissociated themselves from it. John Aylmer (1521–1594), leader of English Protestant exiles in Europe, published a response to The First Blast in 1559. As quoted in Jasper Ridley's John Knox, it criticized the reformer for undermining the civil order by having "almost cracked the duty of true obedience."

Shortly after Knox published The First Blast, Mary I died and was succeeded by a Protestant, Elizabeth I (1533–1603). This presented a dilemma for Knox, for he did not wish to antagonize a ruler who was a fellow Protestant. He declared that he would be willing to accept her as queen if she acknowledged that she ruled through God's appointment alone, not through the laws of men. This did nothing to lessen her anger at the views expressed in The First Blast. Her secretary of state, William Cecil (Lord Burghley; 1520–1598), complained about the pamphlet to Protestant leader John Calvin (1509–1564) in Geneva, Switzerland, who assured Cecil that Knox had published it without his approval. Elizabeth remained so displeased by The First Blast that she refused to grant Knox a passport to travel through England in 1559.

Though Knox did not take part in active rebellions against the government in Scotland, The First Blast established an argument that justified such actions. Thus, it set the stage for armed revolts in Scotland and, later, in France and the Netherlands. The result of these religious wars confirmed Protestant control of the governments in England, Scotland, and much of western Europe.

Did you know …

• Mary I was not the first woman to inherit the throne in England. Henry I (1068–1135) named his daughter, Matilda (1101–1169), as his lawful successor and persuaded the English nobles to accept her as his heir. They agreed, but changed their minds after he died; Matilda fought for her right to the kingdom, but was defeated.
• Female rule had not been unknown in European kingdoms before Knox's time. In Spain, Urraca (1082–1126) ruled as queen of Castile from 1109 until her death; she had inherited the throne from her father, Alfonso VI. Another Castilian queen, Isabella (1451–1504), ascended the throne in 1474 after having persuaded her half-brother, Henry IV, to acknowledge her as the legitimate heir.
• Mary I was England's last Catholic ruler. English law still bars Catholics from ascending to the throne and requires that the monarch, who is the official head of the Church of England, be a Protestant.

Consider the following …

• Knox declared that Christian people had the right to overthrow lawful rulers who did not follow the true religion. Do you agree with this view? Are there any circumstances today, in your opinion, that could justify violent rebellion against a legitimate government?
• The extreme views that Knox expressed in The First Blast alienated many Protestants, especially in England. What role did this radicalism play in the establishment of the Church of Scotland? How might the Protestant cause have been affected differently if Knox had chosen a more moderate stance?

For More Information

BOOKS

Breslow, Marvin A., ed. The Political Writings of John Knox. Washington: Folger Books; London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1985.

Reid, W. Stanford. Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox. New York: Scribner, 1974.

Ridley, Jasper. John Knox. New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Tracy, James D. Europe's Reformations, 1450–1650. Lanham, MD and Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999.

PERIODICALS

Doran, Susan. "Elizabeth I: Gender, Power & Politics." History Today, May 2003. Also available at http://www.geocities.com/queenswoman/elizadoran.html (accessed on April 18, 2006).

WEB SITES

"John Knox." English Bible History. http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/john-knox.html (accessed on July 24, 2006).

"John Knox." Mary, Queen of Scots. http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/knox.htm (accessed on July 24, 2006).

"John Knox." http://www.newgenevacenter.org/biography/knox2.htm (accessed on July 24, 2006).

Maclean, Diane. "John Knox." The Scotsman: Heritage & Culture. http://heritage.scotsman.com/timelines.cfm?cid=1&id=40872005 (accessed on July 24, 2006).

Selected Writings of John Knox: Public Epistles, Treatises, and Expositions to the Year 1559. http://history.hanover.edu/early/knox.html (accessed on July 24, 2006).

Contumely: Disrespectful.

Ordinance: Authoritative command.

Manifest: Clearly apparent; obvious.

Impotent: Powerless.

Frenetic: Wildly excited.

Inordinate: Exceeding reasonable limits.

Adduce: Cite as an example.

Subject: Under the authority of another.

Irrevocable: Impossible to retract or undo.