author
Alexander Hislop
1807–1865
A 19th-century Scottish minister and polemicist, he became widely known for fiercely argued attacks on Roman Catholicism. He is remembered above all for The Two Babylons, a book that remained controversial long after his death.
1 Audiobook
The Proverbs of Scotland
by Alexander Hislop
About the author
Born in Duns, Berwickshire, in 1807, Alexander Hislop became a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and spent much of his career in Arbroath. Contemporary reference sources describe him as the son of Stephen Hislop, a mason and church elder, and note that he was part of a family active in Scottish religious life.
He is best known for his strongly anti-Catholic writing, especially The Two Babylons, which grew out of an earlier pamphlet published in the 1850s. The book argued that Roman Catholic practices had roots in ancient pagan religion, a claim that made Hislop famous in some Protestant circles and deeply controversial in others.
Hislop died on March 13, 1865. Today he is chiefly remembered not as a novelist or poet, but as a forceful religious controversialist whose work had a long afterlife in Protestant debate and popular anti-Catholic literature.