From a small city college in the sixteenth century the University of Edinburgh grew to be one of the world's greatest centres of scholarship, research and learning. Its history is told here by three of its leading historians with wit, verve and style. Copiously illustrated in colour and black and white, this is a book for everyone concerned with the university or the city of Edinburgh to read and enjoy. The authors consider the impacts of Reformation, Union with England, Enlightenment, and scientific and industrial revolutions. They show the university rising to the challenge of competition from Europe, describe the great periods of expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and chart the university's building from Old College to George Square. They explore its tense relationship with the city, explore the histories of student outrage and unrest, recall the days when blasphemy could be punished by death, and reveal that the university's department of anatomy once supported a thriving trade in body-snatching. Upheaval and crisis, triumph and achievement succeed each other by turns in a story that is entertaining, intriguing and surprising - and always interesting.

Volume XXIX/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. This special issue, guest edited by Alexander Broadie, particularly focuses on Seventeenth-Century Scottish Philosophers and their Philosophy. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.

The intellectual legacy of Andrew Melville (1545-1622) as a leader of the Renaissance and a promoter of humanism in Scotland has been obscured by "the Melville legend." In an effort to dispense with 'the Melville of popular imagination' and recover 'the Melville of history,' this work situates his life and thought within the broader context of the northern European Renaissance and French humanism and critically re-evaluates the primary historical documents of the period, namely James Melville's Autobiography and Diary and the Melvini epistolae. By considering Melville as a humanist, university reformer, ecclesiastical statesman, and man, an effort has been made to determine his contribution to the flowering of the Renaissance and the growth of humanism in Scotland during the early modern period.

Originally published in 1986, this book creates a vivid portrait of the interaction of Scottish ideas and early Victorian English society over 50 years, illuminated by detail and substantial in its range. The book delineates certain ideas of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment and the education that purveyed them. It considers those who taught and received that learning and how it was taken to England. There, through the mediation of politicians, lawyers, economists, doctors and others, the intellectual life of later 18th Century Scotland had a profound impact on many areas of historical development in early 19th Century England. The book concentrates on the influence of Scottish social thought and medical practice, high Whig politics and political economy, as well as the professional experience and socio-cultural significance of Scottish-trained physicians.

Until the nineteenth century, music occupied a marginal place in British universities. Degrees were awarded by Oxford and Cambridge, but students (and often professors) were not resident, and there were few formal lectures. It was not until a benefaction initiated the creation of a professorship of music at the University of Edinburgh, in the early nineteenth century, that the idea of music as a university discipline commanded serious consideration. The debates that ensued considered not only music’s identity as art and science, but also the broader function of the university within education and society. Rosemary Golding traces the responses of some of the key players in musical and academic culture to the problems surrounding the establishment of music as an academic discipline. The focus is on four universities: Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge and London. The different institutional contexts, and the approaches taken to music in each university, showcase the various issues surrounding music’s academic identity, as well as wider problems of status and professionalism. In examining the way music challenged conceptions of education and professional identity in the nineteenth century, the book also sheds light on the way the academic study of music continues to challenge modern approaches to music and university education.

Focusing on the social, intellectual, and political context in which medical education took place, Thomas Neville Bonner offers a detailed analysis of transformations in medical instruction in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States between the Enlightenment and World War II. From a unique comparative perspective, this study considers how divergent approaches to medical instruction in these countries mirrored as well as impacted their particular cultural contexts. The book opens with an examination of key developments in medical education during the late eighteenth century and continues by tracing the evolution of clinical teaching practices in the early 1800s. It then charts the rise of laboratory-based teaching in the nineteenth century and the progression toward the establishment of university standards for medical education during the early twentieth century. Throughout, the author identifies changes in medical student populations and student life, including the opportunities available for women and minorities.

This book considers the politics of patronage appointments at the universities in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews, exploring the ways in which 388 men secured posts in three Scottish universities between 1690 and 1806. Most professors were political appointees vetted and supported by political factions and their leaders. This comprehensive study explores the improving agenda of political patrons and of those they served and relates this to the Scottish Enlightenment. Emerson argues that what was happening in Scotland was also occurring in other parts of Europe where, in relatively autonomous localities, elite patrons also shaped things as they wished them to be. The role of patronage in the Enlightenment is essential to any understanding of its origins and course.

How freely can salvation be offered to people? How do Law and Grace find balance? What influence does federal theology have on the overall theological enterprise? How does a confessional church interact with both the civil government and other religious communions? These are the questions roiling the twenty-first-century church; these were the questions threatening to splinter the Scottish church in the early eighteenth century. In those earlier days of mounting theological confrontation withinthe Scottish church, Ebenezer Erskine - a parish minister renowned for his evangelistic zeal - had a major role to play. Through this examination of the theology and ministry of Erskine, one therefore gains not only a deeper understanding of a man critically important within Presbyterian history, but also insight into the pressing theological disputes of the day. By analysing Erskine's contributions to ongoing theological discussion, greater clarity is gained on the development of federal theology; on the root causes of the Marrow controversy; and on the challenges involved as increasing religious diversity penetrated lands once dominated by national churches. In these areas and more, Erskine serves both to illuminate an obscure era and torefine modern understandings of still controversial theological issues.

John Stuart Blackie was one of the most impressive and influential figures of nineteenth-century Scotland, as well as one of the most striking and flamboyant. As an intellectual he translated Goethe's Faust and brought first-hand knowledge of German philosophy to Scotland as a means of keeping the Enlightenment tradition alive. As first Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen from 1839 to 1852 and then as Professor of Greek at Edinburgh until 1882, he played a, perhaps the, central role in modernising the Scottish university curriculum, removing the dead hand of theological orthodoxy, raising standards (and the entry age), introducing tutorial teaching and establishing new chairs (including the Edinburgh chair of Celtic). His role in the reform of secondary school teaching was equally central. But Blackie was also a great 'public man', corresponding with great and famous throughout Great Britain and Europe, from Goethe and Carlyle to Ruskin and Gladstone, and filling the pages of newspapers and journals with writings on the major issues of the day. For the last thirty years of his life he became closely involved in issues of Scottish nationalism and home rule, and as champion of the crofters is largely responsible for their contemporary survival and unique status. Despite the existence of a rich archive of his papers and letters, there has been only one book devoted to his life: The Life of Professor John Stuart Blackie, the most distinguished Scotsman of the day, edited by J. G. Duncan and published in 1895.