Major

MAJOR (or MAIR), JOHN Scottish theolog ical and historical writer, was born at Gleghornie, near North Ber wick. He studied at Cambridge and in Paris, where he graduated master of arts in 1496. At St. Andrew's University George Buchanan was one of his pupils.

Major's voluminous writings may be grouped under

(a) logic and philosophy, (b) Scripture commentary, and (c) history. All are in Latin, all appeared between 1503 and 1530, and all were printed at Paris. The first group includes his Exponabilia (15o3), his commentary on Petrus Hispanus (1505-1506), his Inclitarum artium libri (1506, etc.), his commentary on Joannes Dorp (1504, etc.), his Insolubilia (1516, etc.), his introduction to Aristotle's logic (1521, etc.), his commentary on the ethics (1530), and, chief of all, his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences (1509, etc.) ; the second consists of a commentary on Matthew (1518) and another on the Four Gospels (1529) ; the last is represented by his famous Historia Majoris Britanniae tam Angliae quam Scotiae per J.M. (1521). In political philosophy

he maintained the Scotist position, that civil authority was de rived from the popular will, but in theology he was a scholastic conservative, though he never failed to show his approbation of Gallicanism and its plea for the reform of ecclesiastical abuses. He hoped to reconcile realism and nominalism in the interests of theological peace. He claimed that the historian's chief duty is to write truthfully, and he was careful to show that a theologian might fulfil this condition.

The History, on which his fame now rests, was reprinted by Free bairn (Edinburgh, 1740), and was translated in 1892 by Archibald Constable for the Scottish History Society. The latter volume con tains a full account of the author by Aeneas J. G. Mackay and a bibli ography by Thomas Graves Law.