Lewis Sabran
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Lewis Sabran (1652 - 1732) was a French and English Jesuit who was associated with the court of James II of England and who engaged in vigorous theological debates with both Church of England and Puritan spokesmen. He was the son of the marquis de Sabran of Provence, who was a representative of the French court in London, and educated at the Jesuit seminary of St. Omer, being ordained in 1679 and admitted to the Society of Jesus in 1688.
In 1687 he was made the royal chaplain to James II. A sermon he preached to the king on August 28th of that year on the invocation of saints led to a pamphlet war with William Gee, a Puritan. He also entered into a controversy with William Sherlock, the Anglican theologian. He was the assumed author of Dr. Sherlock Sifted from his Bran and Chaff in 1687, which Sherlock answered. Sabran answered the reply with An Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Preservative and then Dr. Sherlock's Preservative Considered in 1688. That same year he was made the chaplain to the infant Prince of Wales.
When the Glorious Revolution began, Sabran was responsible for getting the prince of Wales out of the country. He was then ordered to return to London before being allowed to escape. He disguised himself as an attendant to a group of Polish nobles but was discovered by a crowd and beaten and imprisoned. He was freed from prison, however, by order of the king. Dr. Sherlock coincidentally issued a reply to Sabran as the revolution was starting, entitled A Vindication: an Answer to the Cavils of Lewis Sabran.
After returning to France, Sabran was elected to be sent to Rome, Italy to the Vatican by the council of Watten in 1693. In 1699, the bishop of Liege made him the president of the seminary there to answer charges of Jansenism among the faculty. He remained there until 1704. In 1712, he was appointed as the headmaster of St. Omer, and in 1717 he was made the spiritual father of the English College of the Vatican. He died in Rome in 1732.
[edit] References
- Cooper, Thompson and Geoffrey Holt. "Lewis Sabran". In Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. vol. 48, 518-519. London: Oxford University Press.
