'Reforming' human and animal relationships in early modern Scotland, c.1560-1660.

The Protestant Reformation saw the suppression of Catholic culture and traditional folk practices in favour of a severe form of Calvinist moral discipline. The extensive church records kept in Scotland after 1560 provide a rare and important insight into everyday early modern life, and comprise a substantial source base through which to investigate the influence of Protestant reform on human-animal relations. The Kirk session and presbytery records (CH2, 1558-2006) held by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) provide one of Europe's richest bodies of evidence for understanding Reformation processes at a local level. There are a wide range of everyday human-animal interactions present in the records; for example, in Perth 'shameless persons' were fined for bringing their dogs to church (CH2/521, 1585). The church records allow for essential comparisons between different regions or parishes, rural urban divides, and highland and lowland agricultural practices. My analysis of the church record will therefore adopt a methodology of comparative case study. In addition, travel diaries- such as Martin's A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland -will be considered. These diaries often highlight highland-lowland differences between farming and animal husbandry and will therefore be used, alongside church records, to assess the impact that the Reformation had on everyday human-animal relationships.
Several scholars have written influential histories of the Scottish, and British, Reformation relevant to my approach. I will use the model of historical anthropology employed by Todd (2002) in her study of the impact of the Reformation on Scottish popular culture as a basis for my own research, whilst drawing on Alexandra Walsham's highly influential study The Reformation of the Landscape (2011). Walsham examines how theological and liturgical transformations both shaped, and were shaped by, the physical environment in which they occurred. She particularly highlights how religious change resulted in the modification of traditions and rituals pertaining to the landscape. Her work, however, does not consider animals- despite their fundamental place in the everyday lives of early modern people. My project will uniquely bring animals into the discussion of the 'Reformed' landscape for the first time, thereby producing a fuller understanding of the daily lives of people who lived and worked alongside animals, and informing wider understandings of Reformation ideas about the natural world.
My thesis will also examine how people thought about and interacted with animals in a predominantly agrarian society, where humans relied on animals for food, clothing and transport, and where animals played an important role in cultural belief systems. Schneider (2004) argues that the Reformation saw the demonisation of animism (the belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence) preserved in folk religion. This approach points to a direct shift in ideas about the natural world. However, my masters research traced a fluidity between the boundaries of human and animal within early modern Scottish folk belief which contrasted starkly with elite (learned) understanding, thus indicating a popular (and perhaps persistent) worldview more closely aligned with animism. My PhD thesis will investigate this further, and will consider what role the Scottish Reformation - and the sweeping changes in religious culture accompanying it - played in transforming Scotland from a society steeped in animism, to one with 'enlightened' attitudes towards animal husbandry and agricultural improvement, where animals played a more functional role.
The discipline of historical animal studies has found considerable purchase in English (Erica Fudge, 2006/2017), European (Joyce Salisbury, 1994; Karen Raber, 2013) and worldwide contexts (Virginia DeJohn Anderson, 2004; Susan Nance, 2010).