by Eleanor McDowell

John Ogilvie was raised in the north of Scotland during the highly charged period of the Scottish Reformation. Born in 1579 into an influential Calvinist family, he was sent to Europe at the age of thirteen to broaden his education. After an absence of 22 years, he returned to Scotland as a Jesuit priest with a burning ambition to ‘un-teach heresy’. With less than a year into his mission, Ogilvie was brought to trial and sentenced to death for ‘treasonable offences’. During penal times, traditional forms of Catholic worship including the Mass, Marian devotion and religious imagery were outlawed. With the loss of sacraments, lack of priests and books to nurture devotion, the faithful required new ways of expressing their Catholic identity.