Summary:

Esko Nevalainen, The Scottish Covenanters’ Elite and the Image of the Archenemy

The image of the enemy is a very useful dimension when interpreting collective identity because it may reveal the other that the group concerned is opposing. In this way the image of the enemy is displaying the negative identity of the group that we are studying. In the case of the Scottish Covenanters in the 1630s and 1640s the archenemies were the Catholics both outside and inside the Isles.

This topic can be considered as embracing a number of factors concerned with boundaries in the history of international and cultural relations. It sheds light on the factors which led the Scottish Covenanters to feel that they were part of a given group or distinct from it. The problems encountered in the British Isles during the Civil War were close­ly connected with the way in which people experienced differences and with the resulting tensions which took on a violent mode of expression in the form of the English Civil War or the British Civil Wars.

The image of the Catholics, or the Papists as they were commonly branded, was referring to the archenemy. Still, it is important to notice that the Catholics were not seen only as one homogenous group. Here the example of the French is revealing and perhaps this is an element in which the differences between the religious and the political spheres are to be seen. However, the connections between religion and national aspects of identity are so closely inter-twined that it is appropriate to speak of religio-national or religio-political identity, and this connection must always be remembered.

The problem with episcopacy and the bishops in Scotland should be understood as a part of this great and universal confrontation between the godly and the followers of the Antichrist. In other words this brings us into the midst of the historical world view of the zealous Protestants of the time. The impacts of the Thirty Years’ War, in addition to the Civil War in the Isles, are crucial. In this light the apocalyptic vision of the Covenanters must be taken seriously enough if we are to understand the motives and characteristics of the ideas of the Covenanting elite.

Is it proper to interpret the Scottish Covenanters’ active role in the British Civil Wars as a defensive action against the arch-enemy, the Papist? This is worth pondering at least in the sense that could be seen within the schemas of their religio-national identity and world view, in which the apocalyptical dichotomy between the Protestants and the Papists was crucial.