Rev J R Tallach
4. The Superintendents
As noted already, the office of superintendent was set up in the Scottish Church under the First Book of Discipline. In arranging for the supply of preachers throughout Scotland, appointments were made to the main cities but, lest the outlying areas be bereft of a gospel witness, some ministers were appointed to provinces or dioceses, as they were called. These areas were 10 in number and covered the whole of Scotland.
The duties of the superintendent were laid down very carefully to prevent their falling into the pattern of “yon idle bishops heretofore”.2 He was limited to three or four months in any year in his own parish, in one of the principal towns; the rest of the time he must visit throughout his diocese, preaching at least three times a week, ensuring that the area was provided with ministers or readers, supervising their work and behaviour and taking forward the education of the young and the care of the poor. The supervision, however, was mutual, as the ministers he was supervising might equally examine and judge his actions and complain of his faults and negligence.
Superintendents were appointed in the same way as other ministers, except that in their case the electors were not those in a single congregation but the inhabitants of the diocese, gentlemen and burgesses. The reference in the First Book of Discipline to their appointment reads: “Nothing desire we more earnestly than that Christ Jesus be universally once preached through this realm, which shall not suddenly be,” unless superintendents be appointed.3 They were seen as a missionary agency and the once in the above quotation speaks of the urgency of the provision which the situation required. Superintendents were appointed under these conditions to the West, Angus, Argyll and the Isles, Lothian, Fife, Strathearn and Perthshire. Three former bishops under the Roman Catholic Church professed conversion and joined the Reformers. They continued in their former dioceses: in Galloway, Orkney and Caithness. These men acted as superintendents and were to stop using the term bishop “in regard to their office”.4 Of the three converts from Rome, two proved unsatisfactory in that they spent too much time in Edinburgh pursuing other interests, but the overall judgement is that the other superintendents took their duties seriously. Many of the difficulties which arose from these appointments can be traced to the fact that too much was expected of them.
In view of the appointment of the superintendents, the charge has been laid against the early Reformers that they were Episcopalians at heart. However, though A R MacEwen states that Knox did not give the same importance to polity as he gave to doctrine and did not think the form of Church government was necessarily fixed in all times and in all circumstances, it is evident that, like Calvin, he favoured Presbyterianism and that the word superintendent was not another name for bishop. In the matter of discipline a bishop would have the power to excommunicate an offender. In the Scottish Kirk, in the ordinary course of events, an offender would be dealt with by his own minister acting with his own kirk session and with the consent of his congregation, with or without the participation of the superintendent of the area.5
Referring to the wider duties involved in their being “called as watchmen over His flock”, James Kirk says that “it would be difficult to determine any function performed by a superintendent which could not also be undertaken by another minister who received a short-term commission from the General Assembly to that effect”.6 Superintendents were not allowed by the Assembly to admit ministers into the church in their areas “without the assistance of three of their qualified ministers”. The usual reaction of the Assembly in the later 1560s was to appoint a commissioner, where originally a superintendent would have been appointed. Commissioners were simply ministers of the Church assigned to an area, in addition to their own parish, for a fixed term of usually a year. All of these factors lead to the conclusion that the office of superintendent, and bishop as defined by the Episcopalians, were radically different and in any event the office was not renewed in the Second Book of Discipline of 1578.
Finally, we may learn from Knox to value every believer and to give every believer his due place. In pursuit of this the Reformers had to fight Episcopacy from without, but later in the Church’s history bishops arose from within and threatened its witness. Concerning bishops without and bishops within, may we be ever vigilant and always delivered!
1The final part of a paper delivered at the 2010 Theological Conference. The last two articles outlined how the Presbyterian system was formed in the Scottish Church.
2J H S Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland, Oxford University Press, 1960, p169.
3Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland, p170.
4Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland, p 179.
5James Kirk, Patterns of Reform, T & T Clark, 1989, p 184.
6Kirk, Patterns of Reform, p 186.