Series 1 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Second volume)

INTRODUCTION
This little treatise, which I have translated at the request
of my father, the honorary secretary of the Scottish History-
Society, now appears in English for the first time. It was
published simultaneously at Rome in 4° and at Douai in 12°, in
1594, under the title De Antiquitate Christianas religumis apnd
Scotos, autore Georgia Thomsono, Scoto.1 Four years later Pos-
sevin, the learned Jesuit educationalist, included it in the third
edition of his Bibliotheca Selecta, vol. ii. p. 394 (Cologne, 1607),
introducing it in the following words: ‘Porro de Scotis, ne
pereat Scriptum quod non ita pridem ad manus nostras pervenit,
ad antiquitatem Christianae religionis apud Scotos pertinens,
idque a viro probo et docto Georgio Thomsono conscriptum,
hue illud attexendum duximus.1 From this it is clear that
Possevin was in ignorance of the Douai and Roman prints,
and assumed that the ‘ Scriptum1 was inedited. But he does
not seem to be in any doubt as to the authorship, for thrice
he ascribes it to George Thomson, whose name is on the
title-page. The whole question of the authorship has been
discussed at length by Dr. Law in vol. iii. of the Papers of
the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society (1895), but it may be
as well briefly to review the chief facts of the case.
In 1620, in his Scotia illustrior, Dempster, ‘ the too perfervid
Scot,1 ascribes the treatise to James Tyrie, the famous Scottish
Jesuit, asserting that Thomson was a pseudonym. Two years
later, in his Apparatus ad Historiam Scoticam, he appears
1 This edition, bearing the imprint, Duaci Typis Balthazari Belleri, sub
Circino, An. xciiii., is exceedingly rare and little known. Balthazar Bellere
began printing at Douai about 1500, but the book does not appear in Duthilloeul’s
Bibliographic Douaisienne. There is a copy in the Signet Library.—T. G. L.