88 Facts About John Knox

John Knox was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation.

John Knox was the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

John Knox was caught up in the ecclesiastical and political events that involved the murder of Cardinal David Beaton in 1546 and the intervention of the regent Mary of Guise.

John Knox was taken prisoner by French forces the following year and exiled to England on his release in 1549.

John Knox exerted a reforming influence on the text of the Book of Common Prayer.

When Mary I ascended the throne of England and re-established Catholicism, John Knox was forced to resign his position and leave the country.

John Knox created a new order of service, which was eventually adopted by the reformed church in Scotland.

John Knox left Geneva to head the English refugee church in Frankfurt but he was forced to leave over differences concerning the liturgy, thus ending his association with the Church of England.

On his return to Scotland, John Knox led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, in partnership with the Scottish Protestant nobility.

John Knox helped write the new confession of faith and the ecclesiastical order for the newly created reformed church, the Kirk.

John Knox wrote his five-volume The History of the Reformation in Scotland between 1559 and 1566.

John Knox continued to serve as the religious leader of the Protestants throughout Mary's reign.

In several interviews with the Queen, John Knox admonished her for supporting Catholic practices.

John Knox was born sometime between 1505 and 1515 in or near Haddington, the county town of East Lothian.

All that is known of his mother is that her maiden name was Sinclair and that she died when John Knox was a child.

John Knox proceeded to further studies at the University of St Andrews or possibly at the University of Glasgow.

John Knox studied under John Major, one of the greatest scholars of the time.

John Knox was ordained a Catholic priest in Edinburgh on Easter Eve of 1536 by William Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane.

John Knox first appears in public records as a priest and a notary in 1540.

John Knox taught the son of John Cockburn of Ormiston.

John Knox did not record when or how he was converted to the Protestant faith, but perhaps the key formative influences on John Knox were Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart.

John Knox first moved to England, where in Bristol he preached against the veneration of the Virgin Mary.

John Knox was forced to make a public recantation and was burned in effigy at the Church of St Nicholas as a sign of his abjuration.

John Knox returned to Scotland in 1544, but the timing of his return was unfortunate.

Wishart travelled throughout Scotland preaching in favour of the Reformation, and when he arrived in East Lothian, John Knox became one of his closest associates.

John Knox acted as his bodyguard, bearing a two-handed sword in order to defend him.

John Knox had avoided being arrested by Lord Bothwell through Wishart's advice to return to tutoring.

John Knox toyed with the idea of fleeing to Germany and taking his pupils with him.

John Knox expounded on the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel, comparing the Pope with the Antichrist.

John Knox's sermon was marked by his consideration of the Bible as his sole authority and the doctrine of justification by faith alone, two elements that would remain in his thoughts throughout the rest of his life.

The Protestant nobles and others, including John Knox, were taken prisoner and forced to row in the French galleys.

John Knox's health was now at its lowest point due to the severity of his confinement.

John Knox was ill with a fever and others on the ship were afraid for his life.

John Knox replied that he knew it well, recognising the steeple of the place where he first preached and he declared that he would not die until he had preached there again.

John Knox was obliged to use the recently released 1549 Book of Common Prayer, which maintained the structure of the Sarum Rite while adapting the content to the doctrine of the reformed Church of England.

John Knox modified its use to accord with the doctrinal emphases of the Continental reformers.

John Knox's father, Richard Bowes, was a descendant of an old Durham family and her mother, Elizabeth Aske, was an heiress of a Yorkshire family, the Askes of Richmondshire.

John Knox attempted to obtain the consent of the Bowes family, but her father and her brother Robert Bowes were opposed to the marriage.

Towards the end of 1550, John Knox was appointed a preacher of St Nicholas' Church in Newcastle upon Tyne.

John Knox condemned the coup d'etat in a sermon on All Saints Day.

John Knox was asked to come to London to preach before the Court.

John Knox returned to London in order to deliver a sermon before the King and the Court during Lent and he again refused to take the assigned post.

Knox disembarked in Dieppe, France, and continued to Geneva, where John Calvin had established his authority.

John Knox had recently overseen the Company of Pastors, which prosecuted charges of heresy against the scholar Michael Servetus, although Calvin himself was not capable of voting for or against a civil penalty against Servetus.

John Knox asked Calvin four difficult political questions: whether a minor could rule by divine right, whether a female could rule and transfer sovereignty to her husband, whether people should obey ungodly or idolatrous rulers, and what party godly persons should follow if they resisted an idolatrous ruler.

Bullinger's responses were equally cautious, but John Knox had already made up his mind.

John Knox attacked the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, calling him "no less enemy to Christ than was Nero".

John Knox therefore agreed on a temporary order of service based on a compromise between the two sides.

Cox brought John Knox's pamphlet attacking the emperor to the attention of the Frankfurt authorities, who advised that John Knox leave.

John Knox was accompanied to the trial by so many influential persons that the bishops decided to call the hearing off.

William Keith, the Earl Marischal, was impressed and urged John Knox to write to the Queen Regent.

Shortly after John Knox sent the letter to the Queen Regent, he suddenly announced that he felt his duty was to return to Geneva.

John Knox wrote a final letter of advice to his supporters and left Scotland with his wife and mother-in-law.

John Knox recommended Geneva to his friends in England as the best place of asylum for Protestants.

John Knox preached three sermons a week, each lasting well over two hours.

John Knox's two sons, Nathaniel and Eleazar, were born in Geneva, with Whittingham and Myles Coverdale their respective godfathers.

The women rulers that John Knox had in mind were Queen Mary I of England and Mary of Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scotland and regent on behalf of her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots.

John Knox therefore published it anonymously and did not tell Calvin, who denied knowledge of it until a year after its publication, that he had written it.

Two days after John Knox arrived in Edinburgh, he proceeded to Dundee where a large number of Protestant sympathisers had gathered.

John Knox was declared an outlaw, and the Queen Regent summoned the Protestants to Stirling.

John Knox dispatched the Earl of Argyll and Lord Moray to offer terms and avert a war.

John Knox promised not to send any French troops into Perth if the Protestants evacuated the town.

John Knox was indiscreet and news of his mission soon reached Mary of Guise.

John Knox returned to Edinburgh telling Croft he had to return to his flock, and suggested that Henry Balnaves should go to Cecil.

John Knox accused him of inciting a rebellion against her mother and of writing a book against her own authority.

John Knox answered that as long as her subjects found her rule convenient, he was willing to accept her governance, noting that Paul the Apostle had been willing to live under Nero's rule.

John Knox responded that she should not be troubled by what had never harmed her.

John Knox charged that Knox spoke irreverently of the Queen in order to make her appear contemptible to her subjects.

John Knox asked Knox to use his influence to promote religious toleration.

John Knox defended their actions and noted she was bound to uphold the laws and if she did not, others would.

Mary surprised John Knox by agreeing that the priests would be brought to justice.

John Knox noted that though he was not of noble birth, he had the same duty as any subject to warn of dangers to the realm.

Stewart and Maitland, wanting to keep good relations with both the Kirk and the Queen, asked John Knox to admit he was wrong and to settle the matter quietly.

John Knox refused and he defended himself in front of Mary and the Privy Council.

John Knox argued that he had called a legal, not an illegal, assembly as part of his duties as a minister of the Kirk.

John Knox retorted that the Bible notes that Israel was punished when it followed an unfaithful king and that the Continental reformers were refuting arguments made by the Anabaptists who rejected all forms of government.

John Knox made passing allusions to ungodly rulers which caused Darnley to walk out.

John Knox was summoned and prohibited from preaching while the court was in Edinburgh.

John Knox fled to Kyle in Ayrshire, where he completed the major part of his magnum opus, History of the Reformation in Scotland.

John Knox continued to preach, spoke to students, and worked on his History.

The regent, Lord Morton, asked the General Assembly to continue paying his stipend to his widow for one year after his death, and the regent ensured that John Knox's dependents were decently supported.

John Knox was survived by his five children and his second wife.

Nathaniel became a Fellow of St John Knox's but died early in 1580.

John Knox died young and was buried in the chapel of St John's College in 1591.

John Knox was a successful reformer and it was this philosophy of reformation that had a great impact on the English Puritans.

John Knox has been described as having contributed to the struggle for genuine human freedom, by teaching a duty to oppose unjust government in order to bring about moral and spiritual change.

John Knox was notable not so much for the overthrow of Roman Catholicism in Scotland, but for assuring the replacement of the established Christian religion with Presbyterianism rather than Anglicanism.

In that regard, John Knox is considered the notional founder of the Presbyterian denomination, whose members number millions worldwide.