robert bellarmine

 

Wealth and honors attended at his birth, bidding for eulogies on such illustrious infancy. “Educated”, to borrow the words of his biographer, Fuligatto, “in the bosom of most excellent parents, from being a diminutive infant, he had scarcely reached years of an enlightened discretion when he gave indications of his future greatness and incomparable probity. Indeed, some judged that he had found, in the hands of God, Creator of “human minds, a good soul,—a soul in which Adam himself would not have sinned, as it had formerly been said of St. Bonaventure”.

This marvel of unstained purity, according to Fuligatto, loved religion in preference to play, and acted over again in the nursery the ceremonies of the Church. A stool served him instead of altar, whereat he mimicked mass. On the seat of a high-backed bench, just peeping over the top, and wearing something white, he preached, in his way, about the sufferings of Christ, much to the delight of his mother, who, like many others, taught her little Robert to play at religion when he was six or seven years old, and left him to play out the game with greater art at sixty or seventy.

Montepulciano, Italy

She spared no pains, however, to bring him up according to the straitest sect of her religion, suffering him only to associate with elder boys, and they of his own rank; and, after he had risen to eminence, his elder sister Camilla stated that when only nine or ten years old he gave up childish sports, and was especially careful never to walk too quick. Public fame in Montepulciano retained the memory of that edifying gravity; and, in due time, many of the old people deponed as much on oath. As he grew bigger, the same propensity to imitate Priests continued. It is related that when rambling in the country, he was wont to amuse himself with catching birds, playing on the fiddle, and preaching from the trunk of a tree. Being even then an ardent orator, he gathered audiences.

But, amidst all this childishness, young Robert had higher thoughts: perhaps observing that the path to eminence could only be trodden by the diligent, and certainly impelled by a strong desire after knowledge, he became a diligent student, and not only rose early for prayers, as required to do, but often stole from his bed at night, and by help of a flint and steel struck light, lit his fire, and outran the morning in pursuit of learning. But that pursuit must have been retarded by the observance of a round of ceremonial festivities, fastings, hours, litanies, rosaries, and processions. As nephew of a Pope, godson of a Cardinal, related to some of the highest families in Tuscany, possessing a vigorous mind, and having every advantage of education at command, nothing less than a veto of Divine Providence could have driven him back into obscurity. But it pleased God to permit the contrary. We shall attend this child in his advance to almost the highest station that the Church of Rome could give, and find him foremost in battle with the Reformation.

Partaking of that admiration of classic models which yet survived the days of Medicean glory in Florence, he found much delight in their study. From Virgil, especially, in due time, he drew a poetic inspiration, while Horace and the Satirists lent him their charms of number. He could early write Italian odes with equal facility and success, and after a few years some of his Latin verses obtained celebrity. The hymn in the Roman Breviary, in honor of Mary Magdalene, beginning with “Pater superni luminis”, inserted there by command of Clement VIII, was from his pen. That the spur of ambition urged him, even in the gay morning of childhood, is undoubted. He used to tell a little anecdote of himself, which says as much. At church one day, with his mother, during sermon, and rather amused than edified, he diverted her attention by repeating, again and again, and loud enough to be heard by many, “Signora, do you not see that I am going to be made a Bishop and a Cardinal?”. “Hush”, said Cynthia, “hush, hush!”. “Nay, lady”, he shouted, pointing at the pictures of illustrious Doctors that adorned the building, “I shall be like one of them, some day”. Jesuits have imagined that the boy prophesied.

at study.

In order to give him an education correspondent to the station of his family, his father determined to send him to Padua, whither also a cousin, Ricciardo Bellarmino, was about to proceed; and as no Tuscan subject might go out of the state for education, without license of the Duke, such a license was obtained from Cosimo I. How to find a suitable companion and protector, who might first accompany him into the Venetian territory, and then take some oversight of him when at college, was a question that cost some anxiety; and, at length, it was resolved to confide that service to a member of the Society of Jesus.

The favorable disposition towards the Society that led to this choice was not accompanied with sufficient foresight in the father. The mother was fascinated with admiration of the new fraternity. The son, too, over whom Cynthia swayed the influence of a fond parent, imperceptibly drank in the spirit of asceticism and of romance that the Jesuits were diffusing throughout Italy; and even while the family were looking around them for a Jesuit companion, and the house was full of preparation for his departure to Padua, and the Ducal passport was to invest the journey with an air of official privilege, little Robert, shut up in his chamber, meditated on futurity, and his imagination already pictured an ideal of perfection.

Cynthia had instructed him in the very religion of Jesuitism, and her own example gave a vast emphasis to her instructions. Often had the household heard the sound of a whip; and Camilla, an elder sister, had told him how she had been in their mother’s chamber, unperceived, and seen her lay her shoulders bare, and lash them fearfully, until reverence for the mother alone restrained the child from rushing out of her hiding-place, and ending the penance by snatching away the knotted scourge. Already he had written acrostics on Virginity, and composed stanzas in dispraise of the world. And now he fancied that, in Padua, he might find some outlet from the world. The words of a Prophet, which he had often heard in chant, resounded again within him in the silence of his chamber : “0 that I had wings like a dove! then would I fly away, and be at rest”. On this his mind lingered. In this his heart became entangled —“and be at rest”. Then, holding colloquy with himself, it seemed as if voices answered again from the depth of his bosom. Nay, it seemed as if an angel spoke, advising renunciation of the world, provoking courage to abandon its endearments, and impelling him to fling away its honors.

In this frame of mind he left Montepulciano, and came to Padua; not roused from the dream by the conversation of his travelling-companion and master, the Jesuit Sgariglia. One object henceforth absorbed his thoughts, he sought some religious order, within whose inclosure he might delight himself in the fragrance of discipline, contemplate models of perfection, plunge into the depths of science, lay hold on what is most excellent, and learn to reject all that is mean and vile. And he was led to believe that such a home for his weary soul would be found in the Society of Jesus. Sgariglia directed his literary pursuits, and guided his aspirations towards the summit of repose. His cousin Ricciardo caught the flame, which now enwrapped them both; and, consumed with desire after this heaven upon earth, they communicated intelligence of the passion—to their fathers? No. That would have been consulting with flesh and blood. Being now too spiritual to condescend so low, they sent up their prayer for acceptance to Diego Laynez, General of the Jesuits at Rome, beseeching him to admit them into the army of Jesus Christ.

An answer to their letter came without delay. Laynez offered them welcome; but, that Robert might gain his object by the gentlest way, directed them to ask leave of their fathers.

DIEGO LAYNEZ (1512-1565)

 

By this time Robert was about seventeen years of age; and when the report of his attachment to Jesuitism reached his father, the good man was astounded at intelligence which he might reasonably have expected, and began to bemoan the frustration of those hopes that he had set on the most promising of his children, having counted on him, chiefly, for a repair of the fortunes of the family, now considerably reduced. Both the young cousins were in secret correspondence with the General of the Jesuits, their fathers being kept in utter ignorance. Vincenzo first, observing that his son Robert was frequently in private conversation with his cousin Richard, suspected what was going on; but when the request came to permit him to take the Jesuit habit, it was bitter indeed. Robert talked high about a vocation of the Holy Spirit. The father, for fear of the Inquisition, durst not demur to the idea that the Holy Spirit of God called people into the bosom of Jesuitism; but he wished to see some proof of constancy in the lad, some evidence of the Divine will. Robert persisted in pleading a heavenly summons to the Company, but his father sternly forbade him to enter a Jesuit church, or to speak with a Jesuit, for twelve months, and required him only to attend mass in a church of the Dominicans. The General had allowed them to remain at home for that period; and the two mothers danced with joy when they found that, by a half-measure of the husbands, they and the boys had gained all their hearts’ desire. Cynthia, however, found that her husband was firmer than he had seemed to be, and therefore gave him no rest, day nor night. He resisted. She fretted, and fell sick; and then he relented for a little. The residence of Alessandro Cervini, at a place called Vivo, served as a temporary school. Alessandro himself acted as master; and, adapt-out from all ecclesiastical preferment and civil dignities, the good man could have no idea that this lad would rise to be a Cardinal, but thought that he was thenceforth buried in sworn poverty.

welcomed at rome.

Bellarmine first saw Rome on the 20th of September, 1560. His cousin entered the city with him, but died four years afterwards in the College of Loreto. Going directly to the House of Jesus, Robert found a cordial welcome, such as might well be given to the representative of a Papal family. Enraptured with the attainment of the object so long coveted, he almost fancied himself numbered with the inhabitants of heaven. To his mind Ignacio, the founder, was perfect above all that ever had been mortal; and his ambition, while treading on the same ground, and living within the walls that had resounded with his voice, was to be more like Ignacio than like himself. On the very day of entrance he implored permission to take the vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, “a threefold cord, not easily to be broken, whereby he might bind himself most closely to Christ and to His cross”.

Ten days were spent in “the retreat”, meditating, according to custom, on themes prescribed, exercising himself in that submission of the thoughts to the guidance of superiors, and that abnegation of the will in abandoning the thoughts to the direction of another mind, which is at once the weakness and the strength of Jesuitism. There they taught him his soul was to be nourished, a hidden life revived, and his heart cleansed from all the stains it had contracted since the day of baptism. Then he took the habit of the order, and entered on the duties of the house. Those duties were to exercise him in humility; and, accordingly, the scion of the Bellarmini and Cervini went into the kitchen, officiated in the scullery, scoured the kettles, washed the dishes, cleansed the tables, and chopped wood. In the refectory, too, he served up the dinner. In the dormitory he made the beds. All over the house he swept the floors. Services beneath enumeration he performed, and all with exquisite self-satisfaction. “For, as a prudent novice, he considered this to be an opportunity of the highest value, that the tower of perfection might be erected on the foundation of humility!”.

in the roman college.

Scarcely had a fortnight passed from his first admission, when he was transferred to the Roman College, there to study, and recognized as a member of Society. So rapid a promotion sounds very strangely now; but it was possible in those early days. The year that intervened between his leaving Padua and appearing in Rome, during which time he had been under the observation, and perhaps under the guidance, of Jesuits, was counted as a period of probation. His vows, it must also be observed, were every year taken anew, until his juniority was fairly past. Perhaps the rapidity of his admission, with dispensation of a regular novitiate, was the effect of discernment rather than precipitancy; but Laynez, setting aside the usual guard of probation, professed to do so in honor of the new comer’s uncle, Marcellus II; but the precedent was dangerous, and the fifth General Congregation recorded a law, that no future General should be at liberty to dispense thus.

Of his obedience, too, there was no question, and in that virtue, or quality, whichever it may be in the case of a Jesuit, he seemed cordially to delight. “I only wish”, he said, some time after this, to the Secretary, Polanco, “to perform those things to which a holier and better will appoints me; even if that will should command me perpetually to teach rhetoric, or to instruct children of the lowest class in Latin. For on this I calculated from the very day when I entered into this holy Society; and on this I have resolved, whenever I may leave Rome, and on this very day I wish it to be taken as a point settled. And that I may never ask anything for myself inconsistent with obedience, to change my abode, for example, or anything else, I this day beseech the General to grant me nothing under the idea of showing me a kindness, but only if, without regard to any request of mine, the most exact rule of obedience would require the very thing that I ask. For I would rather be preserved from error at the cost of pain, than to commit an error, and have what I desire. For assuredly I cannot err, so long as I obey”. If all this had been addressed to God, instead of being written to Polanco, it would have been a good exposition of the Christian’s daily prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

Under the direction of Pedro Parra, a Spaniard, he completed a course of philosophy, extending through three years, and won great applause. But although his application to study was not severe, the ascetic discipline of the place broke his health, and for some time the physicians apprehended symptoms of consumption. This induced the superiors, considering also that their College at Rome was overcrowded, to send him to Florence, where he might breathe in the more salubrious atmosphere of his native province.

begins to teach.

Too scantily supplied with money, Robert set out for Florence, and would have had great difficulty in finishing the journey, if a Spanish gentleman, with whom he met, had not assisted him. Weary and pale, he made his appearance at the College, more like an applicant for admission into a hospital, than a master come thither to teach. A physician exhausted the resources of his art upon the patient with little effect; but after some time he rallied, and application to his new duties rather hastened than retarded the restoration of health. For the first time he discharged the duties of a teacher.

And now the juvenile attempts at preaching were succeeded by more public and more effective efforts. Two sermons in the great church, delivered with much fluency, full of imagination, elegant, and not unlearned, drew the attention of the Florentine academicians. Then he appeared on feast-days, in the same place, reciting verses of his own, said to be remarkable for richness, melody, and figure, and charmed the ear of numerous assemblages. When opportunity occurred, he made himself and the Society conspicuous by disputing with the learned concerning the nature of the universe; and although a report of those disquisitions would now minister more amusement than instruction, we may be sure that they contributed much, at that time, to strengthen his influence over the pupils at the College, and to win admiration from the public. In short, he became a sort of oracle, and, after having been resorted to for the solution of numberless mysteries in sciences yet unlearned, he felt himself competent to explain, to a company of academicians, “the doctrine of the sphere of the world; questions concerning the situation and the magnitude of the heavenly bodies; concerning their going and coming; concerning the power of the stars; and particularly concerning their distribution under the figures of men and beasts”. Perhaps it was about the very time of the appearance of Bellarmine in Florence in quality of astrologer, that Galileo drew his first breath in the same city; and he grew up to appear before the lecturer under an accusation of heresy in regard to the going and coming of those corpora suprema. But more of this hereafter.

After shining in Florence for one year, our youthful Doctor was sent to Mondovi, a town in the present kingdom of Sardinia, not far northward of the junction of the Apennines and Maritime Alps. There he announced an explication of certain books, and, especially, “Demosthenes, a Greek author”, to revive the knowledge of Greek. “Robert was altogether ignorant of the Greek language; but what was wanting in learning, mind and industry supplied”. He converted the occasion into an opportunity for learning Greek, first mastering the rudiments of the grammar, which he set forth with magisterial confidence, telling his audience that “that foreign language was equally useful and difficult, but they must begin with the elements, in order to proceed more certainly”. Advancing from alphabet to nouns—thence to verbs—thence to construing—and on to Isocrates, Demosthenes, or any other author, he at length acquired a pretty considerable smattering, and passed for master without much difficulty. The readers of Bellarmine may be recommended to bear in mind this origin of his acquirements in Greek while they weigh his criticisms. Although he revived Greek among the boys at Mondovi, they will not mistake him for a Chrysoloras.

At home he exemplified obedience and industry. One might have thought that all the burdens of the house rested upon him alone. He was last in bed, and first out. Early in the mornings he roused the fellows by putting lamps upon their tables, performing the function of waker-up. At table he officiated as reader. It was he who ran for a Priest when any one fell sick. At the door he answered as porter. For any menial office he was ready. At home he gave exhortations without end: abroad, he delivered sermons and grew popular. Everywhere quite at home, he would step into a neighboring convent of Dominicans, take a cheerful glass of wine, and away to his appointment. In the pulpit, a place where old men trembled, he knew no trepidation, and must have admired the simplicity of devout women, who, mistrusting the powers of so juvenile an orator, dropped on their knees, as he rose in “the superior place”, and prayed for him to be helped through the sermon. Every one wondered at his versatility; grave Clerks clustered around him at the foot of the pulpit-stairs, and kissed his hands; and the Rector of the College of Mondovi, writing of his wonderful eloquence to the General at Rome, thought that it could only be expressed by the appropriation of a sentence that should have checked the flattery,—“Never man spoke like this man”. When travelling, he stopped at each village, and gave a sermon to the rustics. He bent at the shrine of every saint that lay in his way and strove to vanquish the unfriendliness of the older monkhoods by paying special reverence to their favorite saints, and by encouraging the common people to frequent their altars.

From Mondovi he went to Padua, the scene of early studies, and there acquired fresh fame. Francesco Adorno, the Provincial, sent him thither, deeming his talent necessary for the public service; and there, amidst brisk dispute concerning election and reprobation, he seems to have essayed his controversial powers with considerable effect. This took place in the year 1567. Sometimes he sat at the feet of Doctors, and heard them heavily emitting disquisitions on law and metaphysics; and thence rushed into the pulpit, and gave his mind free reaction in delivering popular addresses. At Venice, on one of the days before the carnival, when all Priests are expected to be very zealous in preaching down immorality, with the general understanding that there will be much of it abroad, he declaimed grandly against the licentiousness of those days to a vast congregation; and, at the close of that oration, several Senators did him the honor of kissing his hands.

Next we find him at Genoa, taking part in a meeting of the Jesuits of the province, receiving strong patronage from the superiors, and figuring high in those exhibitions of dialectic subtlety, whereby they were wont to impress the multitude with admiration of the learning and intellectual resources of the order. In rhetoric, logic, physics, and metaphysics, young Bellarmine had no superior within hearing; and at length the Provincial commanded the President of a great assembly to permit him to speak without restriction. He did so; and, after amazing the learned, he suddenly turned to the people, “passing from the chair of wisdom to the gate of virtue”, and with impassioned gravity exhorted both Clergy and laity to take heed to themselves.

The more deeply read perceived that he had recited great part of a homily of St. Basil.

at louvain.

The Fathers at Rome saw that his talent was too powerful to be limited to ordinary service, and resolved that the skill in disputation displayed at Genoa in academic skirmishing, should be spent in real warfare with the chiefs of the Reformation. In that view the Spaniard, Francisco de Borja, General of the Company, wrote to the Rector of the College of Padua, commanding him to send Robert Bellarmine to Louvain, there to prosecute the study of theology, and to preach in Latin. When the mandate came, the young Preacher had just surrounded himself with fresh applause, and the Rector, building large hopes on the profit to be derived from his zeal and popularity, was unwilling to lose such a workman, yet unable to disobey the General. He therefore acknowledged the receipt of the letter; but represented that the constitution of the young brother was very delicate; that physicians gave their judgment against his undertaking a journey at that season of the year, for it was winter, and it would endanger his life then to cross the Alps; and he also intimated that the loss to the Society at Padua by his removal would be irreparable, and an occasion of grief to every member of the Academy. But remonstrance was vain. Pius V was laying the foundation of the Palace of the Inquisition in Rome, and the Inquisitors were sweeping Italy of heretics without resistance. Controversialists had little to do in those parts where imprisonment, burning, and drowning silenced argument. Not so in France and Belgium, where armies had but half conquered the Reformation, and where the doctrine of the Gospel was known well enough to engage the assent of multitudes of the people, and even to bring over some of the Clergy to the side of truth. The General received other letters of remonstrance, written with extreme earnestness; but he knew that this Preacher would be more effectively employed in Belgium; and merely allowing him to remain at Padua over the winter, then required him to proceed to Louvain without more delay. The Church in that country was infected, he said, with the poison of heresy, and a skilful surgeon was wanted there to search her wounds.

Bellarmine professed himself willing to scale the Alps, although their heights were horrid with ice, and touched the skies, rather than lose an hour in hastening to the spot whither the supreme pleasure sent him. Great was the joy in Rome on seeing so noble a person as the nephew of Pope Marcellus present himself as a living victim on the altar of obedience; and as soon as the Alpine passes were open, the willing messenger, accompanied with one Father Jacques, a Belgian, set out from Milan. One Irishman, and three Englishmen, among whom was William Allen, the incendiary of English Romanists, afterwards Cardinal, made up a congenial party. In good health and spirits, after a perilous journey, they reached Louvain, and he delivered his first sermon in that city on the 25th of July, 1569.

The Belgians wondered at the sight of so young a man in the pulpit; for although nearly twenty-seven years of age, he looked much younger. But this was nothing in comparison with the novelty of a layman preaching, in the eyes of people who had never seen the pulpit occupied by any except a Priest in sacerdotal vestments. If we might believe on the testimony of Andrew Wise, a Knight of Malta, and Grand Prior of England, the want of robes was more than made up by an envelopment of light that surrounded him when in the pulpit, while his face shone as the face of an angel. The Fathers of Louvain, therefore, besought their General to obtain a license for the stranger to receive sacred orders, although regulations then in force made the ordination of any but a Jesuit professed depend on a special license from the Pope. The license was readily granted; and at Liege he received the first tonsure, the four lesser orders, and the diaconate. At Ghent the Bishop Cornelius Jansenius made him Deacon, and then conferred on him the priesthood. Robed in sacerdotal honor, Bellarmine returned to Louvain, and felt himself another man.

Saint Charles Borromeo (Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan 1560-1584)

Invested, also, with pontifical authority, and with no less boldness than subtlety,—for he never knew diffidence,—he poured forth floods of eloquence that captivated those whom it did not convince, and they boast that “heretics” in great number came from Holland, and even from England, to hear him; and that not a few, overwhelmed by his talent, renounced Protestantism, and were reconciled to Rome. Whether there were any so simple, and, if so, how many, is a question of slight importance. Every one agreed that he was the most clever Preacher in all Popedom at that time. The Clergy of Paris earnestly desired to have him in their midst. The Cardinal-Archbishop Borromeo craved him for Milan. The Belgian Fathers kept a close hold on him for Louvain; but, in truth, it best pleased the Pope to keep him to that chosen field, where he might hold up the Roman standard, cultivate his peculiar talent, and serve Romanism better than any other man of his age.

He was now to teach theology in the University. Although he had preached from childhood, and even while a layman had risen to peerless eminence as a Preacher, he was not considered a divine. He had only spent one year in the study of scholastic theology at Louvain; but, in truth, “he knew quite enough for the purpose, and, all fomalities being dispensed with, he received the title of Doctor, and took the professorial chair in the beginning of October, 1570,—first of the Society who, with most prosperous beginnings, taught supreme wisdom in that city”.

To combat with the scholars of reformed Christendom was no light undertaking, at the best; but having begun to teach polemics in the sight of Europe, he discovered, to a degree that he had not anticipated, his imperfect preparation for the work. The interpretation of holy Scripture by means of Hebrew learning, not, however, matured by liberal and profound study as it now is, gave character and immense advantage to the Reformation, as it brought men nearer to the fountains of revealed truth. But of Hebrew Bellarmine was as ignorant when he began to teach theology, as he was untaught in Greek when he began, at Mondovi, to lecture on “Demosthenes, a Greek author”. However, he mastered the elements of the grammar in a week, which was no very remarkable achievement; and then a vocabulary, not what we should acknowledge to be a lexicon, without any of the learning really needed by an expositor, set him up. Furnished with this apparatus, he drilled his pupils in Greek and Hebrew, making those exercitations serve himself as a study, and so he learned by teaching.

Gifted with a most rapid perception, and capable of iron perseverance, he turned over the Fathers, aided, of course, by Latin versions of the Greeks, and searched the Councils. Folio after folio passed under keen review. Others had gone before him in the same path; humbler brethren would aid in the mechanical processes of reference; and the exigencies already discovered and overcome by such men as Laynez, theologian at Trent, no doubt led to the accumulation of helps to be placed at his command. One man had the glory, although the resources of a fraternity were at his disposal; yet, even so, none but a man of great industry could have done so much as he did. And it appears, by his own statements, that the composition of his voluminous works was neither more nor less than the prosecution of a study. He entered at once on controversy, working his way through by means of material presented at the time, rather than producing, as those do who, in the latter years of life, bring things new and old out of long-gathered treasuries.

On the octave of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the year 1572, the rising Doctor earned a new reward of diligence by elevation to the order of the Professed of four vows,—a distinction only conferred on those who are deemed worthy of entire confidence, and fit to be admitted into the secret of higher counsels. In obedience to the summons of his superiors, he took the fourth vow of obedience to the Supreme Pontiff, and his successors, “as to the Vicar of Christ the Lord, to go forth, without excuse, and without asking for any provision for the journey, to any nation whatever, at the command of His Holiness, either among believers or infidels, on such service as might tend to the worship of God and the good of the Christian religion”. And it would appear, that he strove to sustain the new honor by those observances of sanctimony which were considered proper for one admitted into the first ranks of “the Religious”. And as the history of such an one demands the adorning of gifts correspondent to the favors of earthly superiors, the biography of Bellarmine is at this time embellished with a miracle. That no secondary representation may attenuate its grandeur, Fuligatto himself shall exhibit this first-fruit of his profession. Hear him, thus:

“There was in the College of Louvain, while Robert was residing there, one of the Society (no very independent witness in the cause) who had had, for many years, a running ulcer in his leg”. (Ulcers, as the readers of my biography of St. Francis Xavier may remember, furnish some interesting details for the history of the Society.) “Physicians and surgeons had tried all the succors of their art, but had not cured the wound. The patient, therefore, anxious in mind, and seeing that human care was mastered by the pertinacity of the disease, began to consider within himself whether there was any man made after God’s heart, by whose prayer a way to recovery might be opened to him; and while he was thus meditating within himself, Bellarmine appeared to be an effectual and grateful offerer of prayer to God; and a hope sprang up within him that he might at once recover, if, after sacred confession, he could also be refreshed by him in the communion. His faith was not vain. The Rector consented. He deposited the secret of his conscience in the ears of Robert, from his hand received the most holy eucharist, and, behold, his leg was restored to soundness. The surgeon was astonished, when in two or three days he saw the wound covered with living and native skin, and the slightest trace of so long disease did not remain upon the part”.

Most opportune was this miracle of healing on the sore leg. It was performed just at the exact moment when all expected it. The skin was native, even though the lesion of the skin had been artificial. The object of faith was Robert. The subject of faith was an obscure Jesuit brother. The effect of faith was the cicatrisation of a sore. The instrument of faith was mass after confession,—an instrument most proper to be exalted for the confusion of heresy in Belgium and Holland. And the triumph of faith—unless popular unbelief should hinder—would consist in the glory of transubstantiation, of Robert, and of the Jesuits. Admirable calculation!

His intellectual power was displayed, far less equivocally than his power of working miracles, by the composition of a work in confutation of opinions put forth by Michael Baius, a scholar of Louvain. Yet, by avoiding the name of his antagonist, whose doctrine the Pope, Pius V, had condemned already, he covered himself from the inconvenience of an open combat, and no less merited the favorable consideration of his order and “the Sacred College”. Probably this achievement had hastened his assumption into the ranks of the professed.

departs from belgium.