A Doleful Anniversary

On this day 8^th January, in the year 1697 a Scottish teenager, Thomas Aitkenhed, was hanged at the foot of the mound in Edinburgh and his body buried at the gallows where he was killed. Aitkenhead’s “crime” was to oppose what he saw as the “fantasies” of religious belief. 

The charge read that Aitkenhead  

“... ... had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop's Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.” 

In truth Aitkenhead was guilty of no crime other than talking loosely in the tavern to a “friend” who reported their conversation to the church authorities. But in 17^th century Scotland the Kirk had its own laws and its own courts. Alarmed at what they saw as too much free talk and free thinking which upset and opposed their own prejudices, and having the power to do so, the Kirk elders were determined to make an example of the lad. He was charged with blasphemy and duly hanged in the hostile presence of those who brought and prosecuted the accusation and who were reported to have tormented him even as the hangman’s noose was tightened around his neck. The historian Thomas McAuley said that "the preachers who were the poor boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and. . . insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered."

Ten years later in 1707 the Scottish and English Parliaments were united and in the following century the Scottish Enlightenment, one of the greatest flowerings of human thought in history, blossomed in the newly freed atmosphere of tolerance (relative) and freedom that ensued. 

Fifty years after Atkenhead’s killing David Hume published his “Treatise on Human Nature”, a sceptical inquiry which sought to explain natural phenomena from natural, not supernatural,evidence. Aitkenhead’s misfortune was to be born too soon, to be too free in his expression in a religion-dominated society and, probably, to be too young to think of the caution necessary in such an un-free atmosphere.

If ever there was a warning to keep church and state separate, and to ensure that government is secular and unprejudiced as to the personal beliefs of the citizen, the sad case of Thomas Aitkenhead echoes that warning down through the centuries.