Author Description

"This is the first modern, book-length study of the case of Thomas Aikenhead, the sometime University of Edinburgh student who in 1697 earned the unfortunate distinction of being the last person executed for blasphemy in Britain." "Taking a micro-historical approach, Michael F. Graham uses the Aikenhead case to open a window into the world of late-seventeenth-century Edinburgh and Scotland. This book brings together many of the critical themes in Scottish and British history in a period of transition from the confessional era of the Reformation - which emphasised the defence of orthodox belief to the more open civil society and polite, literary world of the Enlightenment, of which Edinburgh would become a major centre." "Graham traces the roots of the Aikenhead case in seventeenth-century Scotland and the law of blasphemy which was evolving in response to the new intellectual currents of biblical criticism and deism. He analyses Aikenhead's trial and the Scottish government's decision to uphold the sentence of hanging. Finally, he details the debate stimulated by the execution, carried out in a public sphere of print media encompassing both Scotland and England. Aikenhead's case became a media event which highlighted the intellectual and cultural divisions within Britain at the end of the seventeenth century."--Jacket.