ESCOBAR, ANDREA de. - A very distinguished Benedictine theologian and canonist of the fifteenth century, born in Lisbon. His works, for the most part unpublished, have been handed down to posterity in an extraordinarily large number of manuscripts. He attended the Councils of Constance, Basilica, and Ferrara-Florence; before the latter he recanted his rigid conciliarist ideas.
Particularly worthy of notice is his treatise De Graecia errantibus, composed as a guide for the future Florentine union. In it, besides the originality of the sections elaborated independently of his model, St. Thomas, he was the first to uphold the principle not only of the validity but also of the legitimacy of the various rites in the Church, which must likewise be respected without giving preference to the Latin rite, provided that they are not tainted by doctrinal errors.
Many have written on E., but the facts of his life, owing to the lack thus far of a true knowledge of the sources, are generally presented with little critical certainty.