Henry Nicholas

Henry Nicholas (or Hendrik Niclaes, Heinrich Niclaes) (c. 1501 - c. 1580), founder of the mystical Christian sect "Family of Love", was born in 1501 or 1502, at Münster, where he was married and was a prosperous merchant.

As a boy he was subject to visions, and at the age of twenty-seven charges of heresy led to his imprisonment. About 1530 he removed with his family to Amsterdam, where he was again imprisoned on a charge of complicity in the Munster revolution of 1534-1535. About 1539 he experienced a call to found his "Familia Caritatis." Moving to Emden, he lived there and prospered in business for twenty years, though he travelled with commercial as well as missionary objects to the Netherlands, England and elsewhere.

Nicholas worked through powerful friends to bring about change: Christopher Plantin, Abraham Ortel who called himself Ortelius, and the genre painter and political cartoonist Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Niclaes sought to bring about a wider religious reformation in Europe through his Family of Love. His activities in England contributed to the "Puritan" controversies which formed the backdrop of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England.

The date of his sojourn in England has been placed as early as 1552 and as late as 1569. In 1579 he was living at Cologne, where probably he died a year or two later. His doctrines seem to have been derived largely from the Dutch Anabaptist David Joris, who died in 1556.

For twenty years (1540-1560) Emden was Nicholas' headquarters, visiting England in 1552 or 1553. To this period belong most of his writings. His primary work was "Den Spegel der Gherechticheit dorch den Geist der Liefden unde den vergodeden Menscit I-IN. uth de hernmelisc tie Warheit betuget". It appeared in an English form with the authors revision, as "An introduction to the holy Understanding of the Glasse of Righteousness" (1575?; reprinted in 1649). The list of Nicholas' works occupies nearly six columns in the "Dict. Nat. Biogr". See also Belfort Bax, "Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists", pp. 327-380 (1903); and Strype's "Works, General Index".

He signed his works with his initials "H.N.", which coincidently also stood for "Homo Novus", "new man", which became a sort of call sign for the movement.

See also

* Family of Love

References