SANDER, NICHOLAS (SANDERS)

Controversialist, historian, Catholic agent; b. Charlwood, Surrey, c. 1530; d. Ireland, 1581. An Oxford graduate and promising scholar, he left England shortly after the accession of Elizabeth (1559); went to Rome, where he acquired a doctor of divinity degree; and was ordained by Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph. In 1561 he accompanied Cardinal Stanislaus hosius to the Council of Trent and on subsequent missions to Prussia, Poland, and Lithuania. From 1565 to 1572 he was a member of the theological faculty of the University of Louvain. In this period Sander was authorized by the papacy to grant to priests in England faculties for absolving cases of heresy and schism and to prohibit Catholic attendance at Anglican services. He did not return to England to carry out the papal mandate. Instead, in 1573, Sander visited Madrid, where he received a pension from Philip II. He tried to stimulate a strong resistance to Elizabeth's government and he was commissioned by the papacy to go to Ireland for the purpose of inciting the Irish chieftains to rebellion. This latter effort failed, and as a fugitive Sander is alleged to have died of hunger and cold in the Irish hills.

Sander was very popular with English exiles and militant in his opposition to the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, advocating the excommunication and deposition of the Sovereign and "the stout assailing" of the kingdom. This prolific writer's most notable work, De visibili monarchia ecclesiae (1571), is important for its list of names of those who suffered various penalties for recusancy. He left in Spain the manuscript De clave David (1588), a reply to attacks on his De monarchia. He left also an unfinished manuscript. De origine ac progressu schismatis anglicani (Cologne 1585), which became the source material for many Catholic accounts of the English Reformation. Although intemperate in expression, it is generally conceded to be historically accurate.

Bibliography: r. bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, 3 v. (London 1885–90). n. sanders, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, ed. e. rishton, tr. d. lewis (London 1877). p. hughes, The Reformation in England. t. m. veech, Dr. Nicholas Sanders and the English Reformation 1530–1581 (Louvain 1935). A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time 5:476–479. É. amann, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 14.1:1090–93. t. g. law, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, 17:748–751. Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae 3:167–170.

[j. j. o'connor]