St. Salvator's Chapel, North Street

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 22 Oct 2011

St Salvator's College was founded by Bishop James Kennedy in 1450. The main entrance of the college chapel is unusual in that it faces the street rather than the internal quadrangle. It was in front of the entrance in 1528 that Scotland's first Lutheran preacher, Patrick Hamilton, was burned at the stake after being tried as a heretic on the orders of Archbishop James Beaton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Hamilton_(martyr) After the execution one of Beaton's retinue is alleged to have counselled him, "If ye will burn them, ye maun burn them in deep cellars, for the reek* o' Maister Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon." The lesson was lost on his nephew, Cardinal David Beaton. Eighteen years later, in 1546, he condemned the Protestant preacher George Wishart to the same fate, an act for which he was murdered in a revenge attack by a group of angry Protestants. These events signalled the start of the open hostilities that culminated in the Scottish Reformation of 1560. *smoke, but also implying stench Image

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