Giovanni Ferrerio, Humanist: His Influence in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

Most scholars, one imagines, of sixteenth-century Scotland will think that Giovanni Ferrerio was a fairly marginal figure at the remote edge of Scottish life, his interest confined to his brief sojourn as tutor to the Cistercian monks at Kinloss and his work as continuator of Hector Boece’s history covering the reign of James III. Whether he might have had any say in Scottish ecclesiastical or educational policies or any wider contact with the court or leading Scots of the time and whether indeed he may have acted as a vehicle for the entry of Italian ideas, are questions that so far have scarcely been broached.