A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots

George Buchanan (1506-82) was one of the most distinguished humanists of the Northern European Renaissance. Hailed by his contemporaries as the greatest Latin poet of his age, he is chiefly remembered today as a radical political theorist whose Dialogus, first published in Edinburgh in 1579, justified the deposition of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567 on the basis of a theory of popular sovereignty, which vested in the people the right to resist, depose and kill tyrannical monarchs. Dedicated to his