Robert Bellarmine

Robert Bellarmine, SJ (; 4 October 1542 – 17 September 1621) was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only 37. He was one of the most important figures in the Counter-Reformation.

Bellarmine was a professor of theology and later rector of the Roman College, and in 1602 became Archbishop of Capua. He supported the reform decrees of the Council of Trent. He is also widely remembered for his role in the Giordano Bruno affair, the Galileo affair, and the trial of Friar Fulgenzio Manfredi.

Early life
Bellarmine was born in Montepulciano, the son of noble, albeit impoverished, parents, Vincenzo Bellarmino and his wife Cinzia Cervini, who was the sister of Pope Marcellus II. As a boy he knew Virgil by heart and composed a number of poems in Italian and Latin. One of his hymns, on Mary Magdalene, is included in the Roman Breviary.

He entered the Roman Jesuit novitiate in 1560, remaining in Rome for three years. He then went to a Jesuit house at Mondovì, in Piedmont, where he learned Greek. While at Mondovì, he came to the attention of Francesco Adorno, the local Jesuit provincial superior, who sent him to the University of Padua.

Career
Bellarmine's systematic studies of theology began at Padua in 1567 and 1568, where his teachers were adherents of Thomism. In 1569, he was sent to finish his studies at the University of Leuven in Brabant. There he was ordained and obtained a reputation both as a professor and as a preacher. He was the first Jesuit to teach at the university, where the subject of his course was the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. He was involved in a controversy with Michael Baius on the subject of Grace and free will, and wrote a Hebrew grammar. His residency in Leuven lasted seven years. In poor health, in 1576 he made a journey to Italy. Here he remained, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to lecture on polemical theology in the new Roman College, now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University. Later, he would promote the cause of the beatification of Aloysius Gonzaga, who had been a student at the college during Bellarmine's tenure. His lectures were published under the title De Controversias in four large volumes.

New duties after 1589

Until 1589, Bellarmine was occupied as professor of theology. After the murder in that year of Henry III of France, Pope Sixtus V sent Enrico Caetani as legate to Paris to negotiate with the Catholic League of France, and chose Bellarmine to accompany him as theologian. He was in the city during its siege by Henry of Navarre.

The next pope, Clement VIII, said of him, "the Church of God had not his equal in learning". Bellarmine was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.

Upon the death of Pope Sixtus V in 1590, the Count of Olivares wrote to King Philip III of Spain, "Bellarmine ... would not do for a Pope, for he is mindful only of the interests of the Church and is unresponsive to the reasons of princes." In 1602 he was made archbishop of Capua. He had written against pluralism and non-residence of bishops within their dioceses. As bishop he put into effect the reforming decrees of the Council of Trent. He received some votes in the 1605 conclaves which elected Pope Leo XI, Pope Paul V, and in 1621 when Pope Gregory XV was elected, but his being a Jesuit counted against him in the judgement of many of the cardinals.

Thomas Hobbes saw Bellarmine in Rome at a service on All Saints Day (1 November) 1614 and, exempting him alone from a general castigation of cardinals, described him as "a little lean old man" who lived "more retired".

The Galileo case

In 1616, on the orders of Paul V, Bellarmine summoned Galileo, notified him of a forthcoming decree of the Congregation of the Index condemning the Copernican doctrine of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, and ordered him to abandon it. Galileo agreed to do so.

When Galileo later complained of rumours to the effect that he had been forced to abjure and do penance, Bellarmine wrote out a certificate denying the rumours, stating that Galileo had merely been notified of the decree and informed that, as a consequence of it, the Copernican doctrine could not be "defended or held". Unlike the previously mentioned formal injunction (see earlier footnote), this certificate would have allowed Galileo to continue using and teaching the mathematical content of Copernicus's theory as a purely theoretical device for predicting the apparent motions of the planets. 

According to some of his letters, Cardinal Bellarmine believed that a demonstration for heliocentrism could not be found because it would contradict the unanimous consent of the Fathers' scriptural exegesis, to which the Council of Trent, in 1546, defined all Catholics must adhere. In other passages, Bellarmine argued that he did not support the heliocentric model for the lack of evidence of the time ("I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown to me").

Bellarmine wrote to heliocentrist Paolo Antonio Foscarini in 1615:

and

In 1633, nearly twelve years after Bellarmine's death, Galileo was again called before the Inquisition in this matter. Galileo produced Bellarmine's certificate for his defense at the trial.

According to Pierre Duhem and Karl Popper “in one respect, at least, Bellarmine had shown himself a better scientist than Galileo by disallowing the possibility of a “strict proof” of the earth’s motion, on the grounds that an astronomical theory merely “saves the appearances” without necessarily revealing what “really happens.” Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, in his book, The Copernican Revolution, after commenting on Cesare Cremonini, who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, wrote:

Death
Bellarmine retired to Sant'Andrea degli Scozzesi, the Jesuit college of Saint Andrew in Rome. He died on 17 September 1621, aged 78. He was buried in the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome.

Works
Bellarmine's books bear the stamp of their period; the effort for literary elegance (so-called "maraviglia") had given place to a desire to pile up as much material as possible, to embrace the whole field of human knowledge, and incorporate it into theology. His controversial works provoked many replies, and were studied for some decades after his death. At Leuven he made extensive studies in the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians, which gave him the material for his book De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Rome, 1613). It was later revised and enlarged by Sirmond, Labbeus, and Casimir Oudin. Bellarmine wrote the preface to the new Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. Bellarmine also prepared for posterity his own commentary on each of the Psalms. An English translation from the Latin was published in 1866.

Dogmatics

From his research grew Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei (also called Controversiae), first published at Ingolstadt in 1581–1593. This major work was the earliest attempt to systematize the various religious disputes between Catholics and Protestants. Bellarmine reviewed the issues and devoted eleven years to it while at the Roman College. In August 1590, Pope Sixtus V decided to place the first volume of the Disputationes on the Index because Bellarmine argued in it that the Pope is not the temporal ruler of the whole world and that temporal rulers do not derive their authority to rule from God but from the consent of the governed. However, Sixtus died before the revised Index was published, and the next Pope, Urban VII, removed the book from the Index during his brief twelve-day reign.

In 1597-98 he published a Catechism in two versions ( and ) which has been translated to 60 languages and was the official teaching of the Catholic Church for centuries.

Venetian Interdict

Under Pope Paul V (reigned 1605–1621), a major conflict arose between Venice and the Papacy. Paolo Sarpi, as spokesman for the Republic of Venice, protested against the papal interdict, and reasserted the principles of the Council of Constance and of the Council of Basel, denying the pope's authority in secular matters. Bellarmine wrote three rejoinders to the Venetian theologians, and may have warned Sarpi of an impending murderous attack, when in September 1607, an unfrocked friar and brigand by the name of Rotilio Orlandini planned to kill Sarpi for the sum of 8,000 crowns. Orlandini's plot was discovered, and when he and his accomplices crossed from Papal into Venetian territory they were arrested.

Allegiance oath controversy and papal authority

Bellarmine also became involved in controversy with King James I of England. From a point of principle for English Catholics, this debate drew in figures from much of Western Europe. It raised the profile of both protagonists, King James as a champion of his own restricted Calvinist Protestantism, and Bellarmine for Tridentine Catholicism.

Devotional works
During his retirement, he wrote several short books intended to help ordinary people in their spiritual life: De ascensione mentis in Deum per scalas rerum creatorum opusculum (The Mind's Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things; 1614) which was translated into English as Jacob's Ladder (1638) without acknowledgement by , The Art of Dying Well (1619) (in Latin, English translation under this title by Edward Coffin), and The Seven Words on the Cross.

Canonization and final resting place
Bellarmine was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930; the following year he was declared a Doctor of the Church. His remains, in a cardinal's red robes, are displayed behind glass under a side altar in the Church of Saint Ignatius, the chapel of the Roman College, next to the body of his student Aloysius Gonzaga, as he himself had wished. In the General Roman Calendar Saint Robert Bellarmine's feast day is on 17 September, the day of his death; but some continue to use pre-1969 calendars, in which for 37 years his feast day was on 13 May. The rank assigned to his feast has been "double" (1932–1959), "third-class feast" (1960–1968), and since the 1969 revision "memorial".

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

 
 
 
 
 
 

 Butler, Alban (1866). May XIII. St. Robert Bellarmine, Archbishop of Capua and Cardinal, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 1621. In The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints. Dublin: James Duffy. PDF File. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05.
 
  (1839 edition)
 Rager, John C. (1930). Catholic Sources and the Declaration of Independence. The Catholic Mind, XXVIII, no. 13. Contains notable quotations by St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Thomas Aquinas in reference to the Declaration of Independence. Archived from the original on 2014-07-11
 
 
 
 
 Bauer, Stefan (2006). The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina's Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century. .

External links

Works of Bellarmine
 Opera Omnia - Google Books links to the 1870-74 reprint of his collected works in Latin.
 
 
Bellarmine, Robert (1614). A Shorte Catechisme of Card.all Bellarmine Illustrated with the Images. On Google Books.
Bellarmine, Robert (n. d.). On the Roman Pontiff. An Extract from St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, lib. II, cap. 30. Translated by Jim Larraby. With Introductory Remarks by John Lane. Archived from the original on 2018-12-06.
Bellarmine, Robert (n.d.). De Romano Pontifice, On the Roman Pontiff, 2 vol., 2015–2016, Mediatrix Press. Extract of Book II, Chapter 30 (published online with permission); extract of Book IV, Chapters 6 & 7 (published online with permission).
Bellarmine, Robert (1705). Steps of Ascension to God. Second Edition. London: W. Freeman. On Internet Archive.
Bellarmine, Robert (1753). Vita ven. Roberti cardinalis Bellarmini quam ipsemet scripsit rogatu familiaris sui p. Eudæmon Johannis Cretensis eruta ex scriniis Societatis [autobiography] (in Latin). On Google Books. In English in Woodstock Letters, Volume LXXXIX, Number 1, 1 February 1960, on the Jesuit Online Library (in Italian here, in French here)

Bellarmine, Robert (1847). The Art of Dying Well. Translated by John Dalton. London: Richardson and Son. PDF File. Archived from the original on 2008-12-18.
Bellarmine, Robert (2008). The Art of Dying Well. Read by Maureen O'Brien. Audiobook. On Internet Archive.
Bellarmine, Robert (n.d.). The Eternal Happiness of the Saints. London: Richardson and Son. On Internet Archive
Bellarmine, Robert (n.d.). The Eternal Happiness of the Saints. London: Richardson and Son. PDF File. Archived from the original on 2015-09-08.

Works about Bellarmine
CERL-Thesaurus on Robert Bellarmin (1542–1621)

1542 births
1621 deaths
People from Montepulciano
17th-century Italian Roman Catholic archbishops
Archbishops of Capua
Cervini family
Bishops in Tuscany
17th-century Italian cardinals
16th-century Italian Jesuits
Italian Roman Catholic saints
16th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians
Doctors of the Church
Early modern Christian devotional writers
Pontifical Gregorian University alumni
University of Padua alumni
Old University of Leuven alumni
Academic staff of the Old University of Leuven
Burials at Sant'Ignazio, Rome
17th-century Italian Jesuits
Jesuit saints
Jesuit cardinals
Jesuit archbishops
Inquisitors
17th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians
Italian librarians