May 7, 2023 - "Robert Bellarmine"

On March 3, 1599, Pope Clement VIII advanced Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit priest and theologian, to the College of Cardinals.  Jesuits usually shun opportunities for advancement in the Church.  Robert even tried to protest during the ceremonies.  But Pope Clement VIII ordered him to be silent and to accept his new responsibilities.  In honoring Robert Bellarmine in this manner, Pope Clement VIII stated that “We elect this man because the Church of God has not his equal in lerning.” Pope Clement was not only exercising good judgement with his decision, but he was also offering criticism of his predecessor, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90).  The death of Pope Sixtus V prevented him from putting Robert Bellarmine’s greatest work, the Disputations about the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of the Age on the “Index of Forbidden Books.”  In this work Robert had argued that the papacy had only indirect power in temporal affairs.  This was a position that made Pope Sixtus V quite angry.
 
Robert was born in 1542 in Montepulciano in Tuscany. One of his uncles, Marcello Cervini, reigned briefly in 1555 as the reforming Pope Marcellus II.  Robert did not ascend the hierarchical chain of command through his family connections, instead, it occurred by the power of his intellect and the tenacity of his will.  He entered the Society of Jesus when he was eighteen.  Ten years later he was ordained a priest after having studied at Rome, Padua, and Louvain.  He taught at Louvain from 1570 to 1576.  While there he combatted the errors of the Protestants and Michael Baius (1513-89), who was also a professor at Louvain who adhered to a strict late Augustinian position on grace and free will.  The position of Baius was condemned by Pius V in 1567.  In 1576 Robert became the new chair of “Controversial Theology” at the Jesuit Collegium Romanum which had been founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1551 and was officially recognized in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.  The university was later renamed the Gregorian University in commemoration of this recognition.  Bellarmine began to give lectures to prepare Jesuits and other clerics to answer the challenge offered by Protestant theology.  These eventually grew into the three volumes of the Disputations, the most important sixteenth-century Catholic response to Protestantism.  This was also the work that Sixtus V had planned to put on the “Index”, but his death prevented that from happening.  The publication of the Disputations marked a new era in the theological encounter between Catholicism and Protestantism.  Bellarmine was a very learned and methodical opponent whom Protestants could not afford to ignore.  He made good use of the historical research that he and Cardinal Baronius had compiled again the Protestant position.
 
Robert also served as the first Spiritual Director of the Jesuit students at the Roman College.  Among the students that he met and directed was St Aloysius Gonzaga.
 
In 1592 he was named the Rector of the Roman College.  The same year saw the publication of the Sixto-Clementine version of the Vulgate—a project in which Robert was heavily involved.  He worked to clean up errors that Pope Sixtus had introduced into the text through the pope’s arbitrary editing of the first version.  During this decade he also published two catechetical works.  After 1599 he combined his writing with his duties as an official in the Roman Curia.
 

Pope Clement also named the Bishop of Capua in 1602, where he served with distinction until he had to return to Rome in 1605 for the conclave that elected Paul V (1605-21).
 
The newly elected Paul V insisted that Bellarmine stay close at hand so that he could be one of his trusted advisors.  The last major controversy of Bellarmine’s life came in 1616 when he had to admonish his friend Galileo, whom he admired.  Bellarmine delivered the admonition on behalf of the Holy Office, that Galileo should not teach that the earth revolved around the sun.  More than one commentator has remarked that this is an example of the fact that saints are not infallible.
 
Bellarmine died on September 17, 1621.  The process for his canonization was begun in 1627 but delayed until 1930 owing to political reasons, largely stemming from his writings Pius XI declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1931.
 
Pope Benedict XVI remarked in his audience devoted to St. Robert Bellarmine in 2011 that a hallmark of Bellarmine’s spirituality was his vivid personal perception of God’s immense goodness.  This is why Robert Bellarmine felt that he was a beloved son of God.  It was a source of great joy for him to pause in recollection, with serenity and simplicity, in prayer, and contemplation of God.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John