Nicholas Sanders

Nicholas Sanders ( * 1530 in Charlewood, Surrey, † 1581 in Ireland ) was an English Catholic theologian and controversialist.

Life

Sanders was educated at Oxford and taught there under the rule of Mary Tudor church law. In 1559 he fled to Italy, where he became a priest. For some time he joined Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius. 1565 was appointed professor of theology at Louvain. There he published several treatises in defense of papal authority over the church. 1572 he went to Rome and consulted Pope Gregory XIII. on the situation of Catholicism in England. In 1577 he went to Spain to Philip II to move to England to declare war. This year, his " Origin and Progress of the English Schism " appeared in Latin, a pro-Catholic history of the Reformation in England. In 1579 he joined as papal envoy to the Desmond Rebellion in Ireland. After two years of persecution by government troops, he died there.