John Major (theologian)

John Major 1469-1550, Scottish theologian and historian. He studied and taught at the Univ. of Paris. His works, all in Latin, were published there. He was one of the most famous teachers of scholastic philosophy of his day, at Paris and later at the Univ. of Glasgow and at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews. The best known of his works is Historia Majoris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae (Paris, 1521; Edinburgh, 1740). His History of Greater Britain, both England and Scotland was the first critical history of Scotland. An English translation by Archibald Constable was published (1892) with a biography by Aeneas J. G. Mackay. Major's name was also spelled Mair.

Major, John (or John Mair), (c.1467–1550), ‘the last of the schoolmen’. He studied at Cambridge and Paris, where he became a doctor of theology. He lectured on scholastic logic and theology at Glasgow and St Andrews, 1518–25, then returned to Paris, where he was regarded as the most eminent exponent of medieval learning. He published between 1509 and 1517 a Latin Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and a Latin History of Greater Britain, both England and Scotland (1521) in which he showed himself in advance of his times by advocating the union of the two kingdoms.