BUCHANAN, GEORGE (1506-1582), the greatest of the Scottish humanists of the 16th century, was born at Killearn, Stirlingshire, in Feb. 1506. He had already spent two years as a student at Paris, and had served in a strenuous campaign with Albany's French troops in Scotland when he heard the lectures of John Mair or Major at Aberdeen in 1524. Mair took him to Paris next year. Buchanan lived the hard life of the Paris student of those days, and after concluding his course stayed on in Paris and the neighbourhood until 1536. To this period belongs his Somnium, directed against the Franciscans. After his return to Scotland the king asked him to satirize the friars, and there is no doubt that his Franciscanus et. Fratres helped on the Reforma tion. But James was not prepared to defend the satirist against the clergy and Cardinal Beaton procured Buchanan's imprison ment. He escaped to Bordeaux, where he taught Latin for three years; there he composed his four tragedies, Baptistes, Medea, Jephthes and Alcestis, to be acted by the students, among whom was Montaigne, who always kept a kindly feeling for his tutor. At this period he also wrote many amatory Latin verses. He returned to Paris in the late '4os and then to Coimbra in Portugal, to be head of the newly established college. But the report of his attacks on the Franciscans had preceded him, and he was again imprisoned, this time in a monastery, in the hope that he might be reclaimed for orthodoxy. He occupied his enforced leisure by preparing a Latin verse translation of the Psalms. After his release he visited Scotland, but soon returned to Paris. It is almost certain that during this last stay in France, Buchanan ranged himself definitely on the side of the Calvinists.
In 1560 or 1561 he returned to Scotland, and in April 1562 was installed as tutor to the young Queen Mary. Buchanan then openly joined the Reformed Church, and in 1566 was appointed by the earl of Moray principal of St. Leonard's college, St. An drews. His great reputation for learning and administrative capacity led to his appointment as moderator of the general assembly in 1567. He had sat in the assemblies from 1563. Buchanan accompanied Moray to England as secretary to the commission which was to meet the English commissioners at York on the business of the guilt of Mary, Queen of Scots. Part of the Casket Letters (q.v.) were exhibited at this meeting, and Buchanan declared, with Lethington, that they were in Mary's handwriting. The conference was then transferred to West minster. Accusations were afterwards brought against Buchanan of having forged the documents found in the casket. Of this there is no proof, and the charge is inherently improbable, but it must be admitted that Buchanan was a willing agent in Moray's dis ingenuous handling of the case against the queen. Buchanan's Detectio, printed in Latin in 1571, was based on the Book of Articles handed in by Moray to the conference in Dec. 1568, in which the charges against Mary were first formulated. When the work was brought to Mary's notice she justly described it as a "defamatory book," and remarked that she had expressly desired that he should not be near her son. Buchanan had been appointed one of the preceptors of the young king James VI. in 1570. He was director of chancery, and then became lord privy seal, a post entitling him to a seat in the parliament, which he held at least till 1579. He died on Sept. 28, 1582.
His last years had been occupied with two of his most im portant works. In the De Jure Regni apud Scotos (1579) Bu chanan lays down the doctrine that the source of political power is the people, that the king is bound by those conditions under which the supreme power was first committed to his hands, and that it is lawful to resist, even to punish, tyrants. This work was condemned by Act of parliament in 1584, and again in 1664; and in 1683 it was burned by the University of Oxford. His history of Scotland, Rerum Scoticarum Historia, was completed in and published in 1582. Buchanan's purpose was to "purge" the national history "of sum Inglis lyis and Scottis vanite" (Letter to Randolph), but he exaggerated his freedom from partisanship.
Buchanan wrote Latin as if it had been his mother tongue. His translations are more than versions ; the smaller satirical poems abound in wit and in happy phrase ; his two tragedies, Baptistes and Jepthes, have an undiminished European reputation for academic excellence. In addition to the works already named, Buchanan wrote in prose Chamaeleon, a satire in the vernacular against Maitland of Lethington, first printed in 1711; a Latin translation of Linacre's Grammar (Paris, ; Libellus de Prosodia (Edinburgh, 1640) ; and Vita ab ipso scripta biennio ante mortem (16o8), ed. by R. Sibbald (17o2). Other poems are Fratres Fraterrimi, Elegiae, Silvae, two sets of verses entitled Hendecasyllabon Liber and lambon Liber; three books of Epi grammata; a book of miscellaneous verse; De Sphaera (in five books), suggested by the work of Joannes de Sacrobosco, and intended as a defence of the Ptolemaic theory against the new Copernican view.
Buchanan's works were edited by Ruddiman (17i5) and by Burman (1725) . The Vernacular Writings, consisting of the Chamaeleon (u.s.), a tract on the Reformation of St. Andrews university, Ane admonitioun to the Trew Lordis, and two letters, were edited for the Scottish Text Society by P. Hume Brown. The principal biographies are: David Irving, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of George Buchanan (1807 and 1817) ; P. Hume Brown, George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer (189o) and George Buchanan and his Times (1906) ; Rev. D. Macmillan, George Buchanan, a Biography (1906). Buchanan's quatercentenary was celebrated at different centres in Scotland in 1906, and was the occasion of several encomia and studies. A verse translation of the Baptistes, entitled Tyrannicall-Government Anato mized (5642), has been attributed to Milton; its authorship is discussed in the Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies (1906). The records of Buchanan's trial, discovered by the Portuguese historian, G. J. C. Henriques, were published by him under the title George Buchanan in the Lisbon Inquisition. The Records of his Trial, etc. (1906). On the Detectio, see R. H. Mahon, The Indictment of Mary Queen of Scots.