Worship is one of the key activities of churches. How that worship is understood and practiced can become a key point of conflict and division. Yet, as Stephen Mark Holmes notes, historians discussing the Reformation in sixteenth-century Scotland have often neglected to consider worship as a major source of contention. His rich and detailed book attempts to rectify that situation and in the process suggests some different ways of understanding, even periodizing, the religious change in this period.

The key interpretive concept Holmes explores is the concept of liturgical interpretation. Holmes argues that the Church understood elements of worship to have both a literal and a spiritual aspect, just as a scriptural text was understood to have multiple levels of meaning. Key to this was Saint Augustine’s understanding of the sacraments reflecting a meaning more profound than the physical symbols themselves. The term “liturgical interpretation” is used to define this approach where “the methods of patristic and medieval biblical exegesis” were applied to worship, including the physical space of churches and their decorations, as well as the liturgy itself (11). One of the principal commentaries on the liturgy was the thirteenth-century text Rationale divinorum officiorum produced by William Durandus, bishop of Mende. This extensive and widely known commentary on the liturgy not only described the elements of worship, but their inner meanings: for example, the priest’s stole was not simply an article of clothing, but symbolized the yoke of Christ, and the rituals performed as it was put on symbolized not only the priest taking on that yoke, but also his perseverance (the length) and his fight against lust (the way it was tied around his waist).

Using a variety of methods, Holmes explores evidence of this approach being used in Renaissance Scotland. He explores the marginalia in numerous texts of Durandus’s Rationale from Scotland in order to see how the book was used, as well as to reconstruct networks of Catholic reformers in Scotland in this period. The network in Aberdeen is of particular note as it helped to shape the distinctive religious character of this region. How this method was taught in schools as well as at the university level gives a sense of its importance. Physical artifacts, including church architecture, reveal considerable deliberation and conscious planning that, while not obvious to all, reflect the vision of those building the structures.

After having established the presence of liturgical interpretations in Scotland, Holmes then explores how they were contested. Worship, he argues, was central to the conflict between Catholic and Protestant Reformers. The attacks on the Mass by Wishart and Knox receive the attention they deserve. Knox brought to Scotland a way of reading scripture, an exclusive principle, which in terms of worship meant that one should follow precisely what God had expressly commanded in scripture with nothing added. Holmes lays out how this principle is expressed in key texts, including Knox’s sermon A Vindication of the Doctrine That the Sacrifice of the Mass Is Idolatry. Holmes argues that while Protestants challenged key elements of the traditional liturgy and simplified it, they continued to hold on to Augustine’s understanding that in worship there is a meaning beyond what we can see. They did not abandon liturgical interpretation, but altered and simplified it. While the first phase of these arguments played themselves out in the early sixteenth century and had largely ended by the mid-1560s, the author suggests that a renewed interest in liturgical interpretation can be seen in Walter Bruce’s Sermons upon the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (1590).

This is a fascinating book that focuses on a neglected area of study. The multiple methods all help the reader to better understand how worship was understood and contested in this period. Holmes has also demonstrated the vibrancy of Catholic reform networks prior to 1560. Some of the other implications the author suggests will certainly generate debate. Stephen Mark Holmes is to be thanked for focusing our attention on the central role played by worship and how worship was understood in the debates within sixteenth-century Scotland.