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- Born June 19, 1566, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Died March 27, 1625, Theobalds, Hertfordshire, England.
King of Scotland (as James VI) from 1567 to 1625 and first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625, who styled himself “king of Great Britain.” James was a strong advocate of royal absolutism, and his conflicts with an increasingly self-assertive Parliament set the stage for the rebellion against his successor, Charles I.
James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. Eight months after James's birth his father died when his house was destroyed by an explosion. After her third marriage, to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, Mary was defeated by rebel Scottish lords and abdicated the throne. James, one year old, became king of Scotland on July 24, 1567; Mary left the kingdom on May 16, 1568, and never saw her son again. During his minority James was surrounded by a small band of the great Scottish lords, from whom emerged the four successive regents, the earls of Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton. There did not exist in Scotland the great gulf between rulers and ruled that separated the Tudors and their subjects in England. For nine generations the Stuarts had in fact been merely the ruling family among many equals, and James all his life retained a feeling for those of the great Scottish lords who gained his confidence.
The young king was kept fairly isolated but was given a good education until the age of 14. He studied Greek, French, and Latin and made good use of a library of classical and religious writings that his tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young, assembled for him. James's education aroused in him literary ambitions rarely found in princes but which also tended to make him a pedant.
Before James was 12 he had taken the government nominally into his own hands when the Earl of Morton was driven from the regency in 1578. For several years more, however, James remained the puppet of contending intriguers and faction leaders. After falling under the influence of the Duke of Lennox, a Roman Catholic who schemed to win back Scotland for the imprisoned Queen Mary, James was kidnapped by William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, in 1582 and was forced to denounce Lennox. The following year James escaped from his Protestant captors and began to pursue his own policies as king. His chief purposes were to escape from subservience to Scottish factions and to establish his claim to succeed the childless Elizabeth I upon the throne of England. Realizing that more was to be gained by cultivating Elizabeth's goodwill than by allying himself with her enemies, James in 1585–86 concluded an alliance with England. Thenceforward, in his own unsteady fashion, he remained true to this policy, and even Elizabeth's execution of his mother in 1587 drew from him only formal protests.
In 1589 James was married to Anne, the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, who, in 1594, gave birth to their first son, Prince Henry. James's rule of Scotland was basically successful. He was able to play off Protestant and Roman Catholic factions of Scottish nobles against each other, and through a group of commissioners known as the Octavians (1596–97), he was able to rule Scotland almost as absolutely as Elizabeth ruled England. The king was a convinced Presbyterian, but in 1584 he secured a series of acts that made him the head of the Presbyterian church in Scotland, with the power to appoint the church's bishops.
When James at length succeeded to the English throne on the death of Elizabeth I (March 24, 1603), he was already, as he told the English Parliament, “an old and experienced king” and one with a clearly defined theory of royal government. Unfortunately, neither his experience nor his theory equipped him to solve the new problems facing him; and he lacked the qualities of mind and character to supply the deficiency. James hardly understood the rights or the temper of the English Parliament, and he thus came into conflict with it. He had little contact with the English middle classes, and he suffered from the narrowness of his horizons. His 22-year-long reign over England was to prove almost as unfortunate for the Stuart dynasty as his years before 1603 had been fortunate.
There was admittedly much that was sensible in his policies, and the opening years of his reign as king of Great Britain were a time of material prosperity for both England and Scotland. For one thing, he established peace by speedily ending England's war with Spain in 1604. But the true test of his statesmanship lay in his handling of Parliament, which was claiming ever-wider rights to criticize and shape public policy. Moreover, Parliament's established monopoly of granting taxes made its assent necessary for the improvement of the crown's finances, which had been seriously undermined by the expense of the long war with Spain. James, who had so successfully divided and corrupted Scottish assemblies, never mastered the subtler art of managing an English Parliament. He kept few privy councillors in the House of Commons and thus allowed independent members there to seize the initiative. Moreover, his lavish creations of new peers and, later in his reign, his subservience to various recently ennobled favourites loosened his hold upon the House of Lords. His fondness for lecturing both houses of Parliament about his royal prerogatives offended them and drew forth such counterclaims as the Apology of the Commons (1604). To parliamentary statesmen used to Tudor dignity, James's shambling gait, restless garrulity, and dribbling mouth ill-befitted his exalted claims to power and privilege.
When Parliament refused to grant him a special fund to pay for his extravagances, James placed new customs duties on merchants without Parliament's consent, thereby threatening its control of governmental finance. Moreover, by getting the law courts to proclaim these actions as law (1608) after Parliament had refused to enact them, James struck at the houses' legislative supremacy. In four years of peace, James practically doubled the debt left by Elizabeth, and it was hardly surprising that when his chief minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, tried in 1610–11 to exchange the king's feudal revenues for a fixed annual sum from Parliament, the negotiations over this so-called Great Contract came to nothing. James dissolved Parliament in 1611.
The abortive Great Contract, and the death of Cecil in 1612, marked the turning point of James's reign; he was never to have another chief minister who was so experienced and so powerful. During the ensuing 10 years the king summoned only the brief Addled Parliament of 1614. Deprived of parliamentary grants, the crown was forced to adopt unpopular expedients, such as the sale of monopolies, to raise funds. Moreover, during these years the king succumbed to the influence of the incompetent Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Carr was succeeded as the king's favourite by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, who showed more ability as chief minister but who was even more hated for his arrogance and his monopoly of royal favour.
In his later years the king's judgment faltered. He embarked on a foreign policy that fused discontent into a formidable opposition. The king felt a sympathy, which his countrymen found inexplicable, for the Spanish ambassador, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar. When Sir Walter Raleigh, who had gone to Guiana in search of gold, came into conflict with the Spaniards, who were then at peace with England, Gondomar persuaded James to have Raleigh beheaded. With Gondomar's encouragement, James developed a plan to marry his second son and heir Charles to a Spanish princess, along with a concurrent plan to join with Spain in mediating the Thirty Years' War in Germany. The plan, though plausible in the abstract, showed an astonishing disregard for English public opinion, which solidly supported James's son-in-law, Frederick, the Protestant elector of the Palatinate, whose lands were then occupied by Spain. When James called a third Parliament in 1621 to raise funds for his designs, that body was bitterly critical of his attempts to ally England with Spain. James in a fury tore the record of the offending Protestations from the House of Commons' journal and dissolved the Parliament.
The Duke of Buckingham had begun in enmity with Prince Charles, who became the heir when his brother Prince Henry died in 1612, but in the course of time the two formed an alliance from which the king was quite excluded. James was now aging rapidly, and in the last 18 months of his reign he, in effect, exercised no power; Charles and Buckingham decided most issues. James died at his favourite country residence, Theobalds, in Hertfordshire.
Besides the political problems that he bequeathed to his son Charles, James left a body of writings which, though of mediocre quality as literature, entitle him to a unique place among English kings since the time of Alfred. Chief among these writings are two political treatises, The True Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doron (1599), in which he expounded his own views on the divine right of kings. The Poems of James VI of Scotland, 2 vol., were edited by James Craigie (1955–58). The 1616 edition of The Political Works of James I was edited by Charles Howard McIlwain (1918). (Source - Encyclopedia Britannic)
- By BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERE
The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2011
To pedestrians en route between Columbus Circle and Lincoln Center, the striking American Bible Society building at West 61st Street and Broadway is an architectural landmark. What people may not know, however, is that aside from the ABS, the building also houses the Museum of Biblical Art.
An outgrowth of the former Gallery of the ABS, the Museum of Biblical Art (MoBiA) opened to the public in 2005. Previous MoBiA exhibitions have focused on the biblical illustrations of Albrecht Dürer and his circle, Marc Chagall, and Altarpieces Medieval Spain, which investigated the cooperative relationship between Christian and Jewish artists in the medieval Iberian kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and the Catalonian region.
On Eagles' Wings: The King James Bible Turns 400
Museum of Biblical Art
Through Oct. 16
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MoBiA's current exhibition, "On Eagles' Wings"its title is taken from the line "Ye have seen . . . how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself." (Exodus 19:4)celebrates the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, first published in 1611. For all his scholarly proclivities, King James I didn't actually translate the Bible himself. However, as England's first Scottish-born king (who continued to rule Scotland as James VI), he championed the new edition. As the exhibition's curator, Liana Lupas, explains in the fine exhibition catalog (which she wrote along with the excellent audio tour), the King James Bible "originated in the King's desire to bring religious unity to his realm and was conceived as a revision of the English Bible published during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The King's team used the Hebrew and Greek text, the previous English versions and a variety of other translations and commentaries . . . aiming to produce a faithful rendition of the Hebrew and Greek originals and provide a translation appropriate for liturgical reading in churches while also avoiding theological disputes."
Four centuries later, the project's success is indisputable. Not only has the King James Bible been the standard Protestant English text and basis of most subsequent revisions, but it has inspired a large body of music in English-speaking countries, providing the text for Handel's oratorios ("Israel in Egypt," "Judas Maccabeus" and "Messiah") and a wealth of sacred music by British and American composers from Henry Purcell to Edward Elgar to Charles Ives; it has also been the source for easel paintings, murals and stained glass by legions of artists from Joshua Reynolds and William Blake to Edward Burne-Jones and John La Farge. Purely as literature, the majestic beauty of its poetry and prose is unsurpassed. Even in our skeptical age of Stephen Hawking and Christopher Hitchins, the King James Bible remains a supremely good read.
Hence, the MoBiA exhibition appeals to interests ranging from theology and the complexities of interpretation to the aesthetic delights of bibliophilia. Featuring more than 50 rare Bibles from the 15th through 21st centuries, the exhibition places the King James translation in the context of its predecessors, documenting the centuries-old controversy that led to its publication, and showing how it made its way though the English-speaking world thereafter. Beyond the books themselves?many of them profoundly beautiful?this is a show about the persuasive power of language, and how scholars were willing to face supreme punishment for the freedom to use the subtleties of language to translate, interpret and communicate the intangible issues of faith in their own tongue. As Ms. Lupas notes, while King James sponsored and protected his team of translators, many translators of previous generations were either executed for their troubles or exiled. Indeed, during the brief, tempestuous reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I (daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon), reading or owning an English Bible had been a capital offense.
Museum of Biblical Art
A 1620 display Bible for public access that would have been chained to a desk in accordance with the eighth commandment.
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The show opens with a c.1440 manuscript copy of John Wyclif's Bible, its exquisite calligraphy and illuminated initials representing untold hours of a scribe's life. Plainly visible are the faint preliminary lines drawn across the vellum pages to ensure correct spacing and size of each handwritten line and column of text. Wyclif (c.1330-84), a brilliant Oxford theologian, was the guiding light for a group of followers who made the actual translation. Though he was accused of heresy and banished from Oxford, the cultural centrality of the Wyclif translation in Medieval England is revealed by the 250 manuscript sources preserving the work in whole or in part, a large number compared to the mere 64 manuscript sources of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."
Although the printing press was introduced in England in 1476, no scriptures were printed there until the 1530s. The earliest translations were printed on the Continent, exemplified by the 1526 edition of William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament and his 1530 Pentateuch translation, published in Antwerp. Obliged to work in Germany, Tyndale had based his New Testament translation on the original Greek sources as well as Erasmus's Latin translation. But when copies arrived in England they were denounced by his enemy, the Bishop of London, and within four days a pile of them was ceremoniously burned before Old St. Paul's Cathedral, the medieval Gothic church later replaced by Sir Christopher Wren's domed masterpiece. Still in exile, Tyndale was imprisoned and burned at the stake in 1536.
In addition to documenting what it took to arrive at a widely accepted English Bible, the beautifully preserved copies of Tyndale, the 1535 Bible translated by Miles Coverdale, the splendid 1568 folio Bible translated and published under Queen Elizabeth's aegis and Robert Barker's first edition of the King James Bible (1611) attest to the sheer technical challenge of printing such a text. Johannes Guttenberg's invention of movable type had paved the way to commercial book publication, but when you examine these volumes, with their elaborate woodcut illustrations, elegant initial letters and handsome typefaces, consider the vast time and labor that went into early printing on a hand-operated flat-bed press. Hand-carved woodcut illustrations and initials worked splendidly because the relief-carved blocks could be printed along with the type on the same press. But later volumes, such as the first illustrated edition of the King James Bible, printed in Oxford by John Baskett in 1717, reveal new complexities. The handsome illustrations, with their fine lines and telltale embossed plate marks, are copper engravings. Though the text was still printed on a flat-bed press, copper engravings required an intaglio press, meaning a separate procedure. By 1846, when Harper & Brothers published their "Illuminated Bible" in New York, mechanized steam-run printing presses had replaced the old hand press. Here, the illustrations, by the immensely popular artist Gustave Doré, are wood-engravings, a 19th-century refinement of earlier woodcuts.
That the illuminating beauty isn't confined to the past is shown by the resplendent Pennyroyal Caxton Press Bible published in 1999. Handsomely printed on handmade paper, it is dramatically illustrated by Barry Moser (b.1940), a worthy successor to Doré. Faced with the impossibility of obtaining traditional end-grain boxwood blocks to engrave, Mr. Moser found a modern substitute?his striking designs were engraved on polymer resin.
Complementing the books is "the Four Holy Gospels," a series of five large nonrepresentational paintings and 89 illuminated initials (one for each chapter of the Gospels) by the Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura. Mr. Fujimura's layering technique makes use of Japanese materials and traditional mineral pigments ground from precious minerals, as well as touches of gold and platinum. Thus the depth of color he achieves evokes that of early Renaissance painting, and a shade such as ultramarine is alive with the adamantine sparkle of powdered lapis lazuli.
Nearby is a superb display showing the step-by-step process of conserving a worn 1638 Bible. Related vitrines show the wooden sewing frame, linen cords and threads of traditional hand bookbinding still used by rare book conservators today.
Finally, there are two splendid videos. The first records the actual conservation treatment of that 1638 Bible. The second is a 1969 documentary, "The Making of a Renaissance Book," filmed at the venerable Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp. Once you have seen the care and precision with which the typemaker carves and files a single letter as a model for casting lead slugs, you will never take an old printed book for granted again.
Mr. Scherer writes about classical music and the fine arts for the Journal.
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1566 - 1625 (58 years)