SEEALSO: France; Francis I; Margaret of
Austria
Saxony .............................................
A medieval duchy of northern Germany
whose leaders, since 1356, had the privi-
lege of taking part in the election of the
Holy Roman Emperors. In 1422, the Wet-
tin dynasty was established by Margrave
Frederick II. During the sixteenth century,
Saxony became a hotbed of Protestant ac-
tivism, and the Saxon elector Frederick III
extended his protection to Martin Luther,
the monk who founded the Protestant
movement in Germany. After Luther’s
open declaration of a radical new doctrine
in the Ninety-five Theses, he was sum-
moned to Rome by the pope to answer for
his heresy. Frederick intervened, however,
and the pope relented, also granting Luther
safe passage to the Diet of Worms and
sheltered at the Wittenberg Castle. Protes-
tantism first took hold in Saxony under
Frederick’s successor John, who ordered
Luther’s new doctrine to be preached in
his domains and formed the Schmalkaldic
League to defend Saxony against the very
Catholic emperor Charles V. John’s succes-
sor John Frederick was defeated at the
Battle of Mühlberg in 1547. Protestantism
triumphed in Saxony, however, when Luth-
eranism became the official religion in the
early seventeenth century and all other
faiths were banned. Renaissance architects
raised new palaces and churches in the
capital city of Dresden, and the State Li-
brary founded in 1556 became the finest
collection in Germany, gathering books
and manuscripts from Europe, Asia, and
the Ottoman domains.
SEEALSO: Luther, Martin; Prussia; Refor-
mation, Protestant
Scotland ...........................................
Kingdom of northern Britain that re-
mained independent of the English king
throughout the Renaissance, but also kept
close economic and cultural ties with the
European continent. Scotland at this time
was ruled by the Stuart dynasty, which ar-
rived at the throne of Scotland with the
accession of King Robert II in 1371. At
this time the kingdom was fragmented in
several small, virtually independent earl-
doms under the authority of local rulers,
who paid little allegiance to the national
monarch. Through the fifteenth century,
the Stuarts managed to impose a measure
of central authority on the realm. By the
time of James IV, who ruled from 1488
until 1513, the earls had largely submitted
to the king.
After study on the continent, several
prominent Scottish clerics and scholars
had brought home the humanism and in-
tellectual curiosity of the Renaissance. An
important group of these scholars had
gathered around Desiderius Erasmus in
Paris, and several of them took part in the
founding of universities at Glasgow, Aber-
deen, and Saint Andrews in the fifteenth
century. Gradually, literacy and scholar-
ship spread down the social ladder from
the nobility to landowners to the middle
classes, while the arrival of the printing
press opened a new era of scholarship,
study, and intellectual debate. One promi-
nent Scottish poet, Gavin Douglas, trans-
lated Virgil’sAeneidinto the Scottish lan-
guage, which became the dominant
medium of government, business, and a
burgeoning school of Scottish Renaissance
poetry.
By trading its wool and other goods,
Scotland was also developing close eco-
nomic ties with the cities of the Baltic re-
gion and the European continent. In theScotland