robert bellarmine

 

departs from belgium.

Before the expiration of the year wherein he took the fourth vow, the Belgian horizon darkened suddenly. Some cities of the province cast off their allegiance to Philip II of Spain; and a rumor flew that the Prince of Orange was on his march with overwhelming forces to attack Louvain. The city was quite unprepared to stand against him, and men were all trembling, and Monks trembled even more than they.

The religious recollected the horrid slaughtering committed by the Duke of Alva, and, conscious that they had themselves instigated executions, dragonnades, and inquisitions, they expected vengeance every moment. Then came the alarm that Orange was in sight, even at the gates. The population turned out under arms. The Monks decamped, swift, like a flight of scared pigeons. The Rector of the Jesuit College, unwilling to abandon a scene where, haply, he might have some part to play, directed all the inmates to change their clothes, shave their hair, and seek shelter in safe places. They quickly swept away the tonsured hair, took some cash in their pockets, vacated the house, and resolving the community into pairs, each pair of fugitives chose the house wherein to lurk, or the road by which to flee. Bellarmine and his companion preferred flight, chose to seek Douai as the place of shelter, and set out on foot, girded with swords, and quivering with fear. For his part, however, he had little strength for such a pilgrimage; and, after hurrying onward for some time, his limbs failed, and, panting, pale, and but half alive, he sank down on the road-side. There his companion, too, lay by him in sad fraternity of trouble; sounds of horse-hoofs, and shouts of Calvinists, seeming to beat upon their ears. Soon they descried a party approaching from the direction of Louvain  and while plunged in fresh terror by the thought that they might be pursuers of such persons as themselves, they perceived a permanent gallows erected at some short distance, for hanging criminals, according to the custom of those times. “Take heart, my brother”, sighed Bellarmine; “for, if I mistake not, we shall soon hang there. There only wants a Calvinist hangman”. Flight was hopeless; for how could fainting footmen like them escape from the swift-wheeled chariot that neared them rapidly each instant? All things appeared ready; and if those enemies should fall upon them, there were the instruments of martyrdom prepared.

Amidst these premonitions of death, they saw the chariot bound over the ground, as if the horses had been winged—the driver plied his lash—they came near, the passengers were themselves half dead with terror; but seeing two persons in an attitude of supplication by the way-side, took them to be fellow-sufferers, drew up, and kindly called them to come in. It was a company of “Catholics”, also fleeing from the enemy, and finding that of the two men one was no less than a disrobed Priest, they took him in, and resumed their speed towards Douai. “Then”, said Cardinal Crescenzio, when the incident had become historical, “by a miracle of Providence he was preserved from death, yet not defrauded of the glory of martyrdom, an occasion which he doubted not that he should embrace with alacrity of mind”. This notion of alacrity was an afterthought; but the sight of a gallows had suggested the dread of martyrdom, and thus the shadow of a martyrdom comes in opportunely enough, and next in order after the narrative of a miracle. This event bespeaks canonization.

After a short absence he returned to Louvain. Seven years’ toil in Belgium had impaired his health, which was yet further weakened by the shock of war, and he became obviously unable to pursue his labors with such vigor as formerly. This the physicians certified by letter to Rome, and the Fathers there called him back to Italy.

To reach the monumental city from Douai, it befell the traveler to cross a region infected with Lutheran and Calvinian pestilence. In those places the habit of a religious man, and the name of a Priest, were hateful things. “Therefore the Fathers persuaded him to use the common dress of a man of the world, and to set out on his journey with such equipments as travelers of the laity use. He rode with belt and sword, and carried fire-arms on the pommel of his saddle”. Clad in a habit “so unlike his virtue”, he had scarcely left the city, when two travelers, heretics, whose names have not been accepted for the ornament of history, asked him to join company for Italy. His name, however, is made known, for he passed as Romulo; and the strangers were intensely pleased with the good fellowship and talent of their Italian companion. His knowledge of the language, and even his acquaintance with some part of the way, made him useful; so much so, that they were glad of his services to give directions for the accommodation of the party at the inns. Most carefully he threw aside all that might betray his priestly character, joked as merrily as any, and often rode onward, as if in sport, or as if to reach an inn and order provision, but, in reality, to pull out his prayer-book, and perform his devotion. At length they crossed the Alps. As they drew near to Genoa, the Italian air brought him a flush of rekindling health, and he entered that city, in company with the heretics, under the same guise of a profane layman. Relaxing none of his attentions, he conducted them to a lodging-house, told them he was going to the house of a friend, and, thus saying, disappeared. A day or two afterwards, having strolled into a church, as curious Protestants are wont to do, the travelers beheld their assiduous friend, robed at the altar, saying mass; and recalling his features, which were very marked,—two keen eyes, a serene and broad forehead, an aquiline nose, and most expressive mouth,—they looked wisely at each other, and exclaimed, “There is our friend Romulo, changed into a Jesuit!”

At Genoa he found two orders from the General. By the first he was forbidden to go to Milan, where the Archbishop, Cardinal Borromeo, was anxious to have him as a helper against the cause of truth, that had long been largely diffused throughout Subalpine Italy, but which was now to be suppressed, if possible, by French dragoons. But the Pope’s Vicar, Cardinal Savelli, wanted him in Rome. By the second order, he was instructed to go onward by way of Montepulciano, see his aged father, and endeavor to recruit his health.

professes controversy at rome.

Gregory XIII, one of the Pontiffs that labored most successfully to promote a counter-Reformation, and suppress evangelical religion by consecutive operations and well-constructed schemes, patronized Jesuitism, his chief instrument, with greater munificence than any of his predecessors. The subjects of the Papal States remember him as one of the most relentless Popes that ever wore them down with burdens of taxation. The Jesuits extol him with all that pomp of language that is so peculiarly at their command. No fewer than twenty-two colleges were erected for them at his bidding; and he disbursed, on the single account of maintaining scholastics, no less, it is said, than two millions of ducats during his reign. The system of Propaganda education then took the character which it retains to this day; for, after inclosing streets and allotting revenues, he saw the Seminary of all Nations opened, and heard orations in twenty-five languages, all translated into Latin, on the day of opening. Each student was taught to consider himself as a young soldier, whose only duty would be to march to the conquest of Protestantism, under the banner of the Company. He was to be formed for victory.

Bellarmine, by common consent, was chosen to be the leader of this band; and the General informed him that it must be his duty to do at Home, but on a grander scale, what he had been doing at Louvain. There, as Professor of Scholastic Theology, he had taught languages, and entertained the wondering students out of a sort of cyclopedia of erudition, while his writings against Baius, and the necessity laid on him to strive against the influences of the Reformation, had induced a strongly controversial habit, and made him famous as a disputant. He was extremely mild, politic, and winning, and therefore was just the fit man to train a generation of emissaries, to throw themselves into the heat of the battle throughout Europe. One Bellarmine was thought equal to conduct the enterprise, “just as one Hebrew woman, whom God armed with beauty, wrought confusion in the camp of Holofernes, and in the house of the King of Assyria”. This conception was proud; but it indicated an apprehension that artifice would be needed in war with the Reformation, no less than force.

About the end of October, 1576, he entered on his new chair of controversial Theology in Rome. The “General Controversies”, as they are called, or Controversial Lectures, occupy four folio volumes of the edition before me, and are considered to be second to nothing that has ever been written in defense of the Church of Rome. But those who love the charm of great names, and could weep to see one such name despoiled of the charm, as a child would weep over the shattering of a lily, will not thank me for giving them the analysis of the first part of an address delivered by Bellarmine in the Gymnasium in Rome, in the year 1577. It is prefatory to the “controversy” concerning the Supreme Pontiff.

Before entering on the disputation, he has to premise some observations on its utility and magnitude, on the antagonists in argument, and on the order to be followed. The matter now treated of, but which is called in question, is great indeed. “For of what are we speaking, when we speak of the primacy of the Pontiff? We speak of nothing less than the sum and substance of Christianity itself. For the question is simply whether the Church ought to last any longer, or to be dissolved, and fall to ruin. For what else can be meant, when you ask whether the foundation should be taken away from the building, the shepherd from the flock, the general from the army, the sun from the stars, or the head from the body; that the building may fall, the flock be scattered, the army beaten, the stars darkened, the body die?”

The adversaries, he affirms, although disagreeing among themselves on every other point, agree in attacking the Papal See; and there were never any enemies of Christ and the Church, who did not also hate the Pope. “Isaiah seems to me to have long ago foreseen and predicted the magnitude and utility of this matter, when he said, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation’. But he also predicts the contention and violence of heretics, when he calls this stone itself ‘a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence’. Which last words, although not put by Isaiah in the same place, the Apostles Paul and Peter so join all these words of the Prophet, that no one can doubt that they refer to the same end, and are to the same purport. And although we are not ignorant that these words principally apply to Christ, we consider that they may not inaptly be made to suit the Vicar of Christ”.

The foundations of Zion he understands to be the twelve Apostles, according to St, John; but the one singular and chief stone mentioned by Isaiah, he considers to be Peter; and for this he argues in the usual manner. “Jews, Heathens, Greeks, and Turks have in vain spent their fury on this foundation-stone. Emperors have enacted tragedies in the Church. The devil has moved the Roman people (often) to rebel against the Pope. Internal schisms have threatened the existence of the Papacy; but, even while anti-Popes were struggling in the chair of Peter, they could not break it. The gates of hell could not prevail against it; and, although there had been Popes of little worth in that chair, it had not sunk under them. It outlasted Stephen VI, Leo V, Christopher I, Sergius III, John XII, and others not a few, showing proof that its continuance does not depend upon purity and morality in its occupants”. Notwithstanding all this wickedness, which our lecturer confesses without reserve, he maintains that it is divinely founded, and kept erect by guardian angels, and by the singular providence of God. That the Papacy is fitly called a corner-stone, and precious, he expounds in some pretty common­places; and then, as to its being a foundation-stone, argues thus:

“In fundamento fundatum. Founded in a foundation. For what is founded in a foundation, except it be a foundation after a foundation, a secondary foundation, not a primary? Of course, we are not ignorant that the first and principal foundation of the Church is Christ, of whom the Apostle says, ‘Other foundation can no man lay, except that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus’. But after Christ, the foundation is Peter; and no one can come to Christ, except by Peter”. At this rate he travels to the end of his oration, and at the same rate he dashes through the controversy. A false translation, a bold substitution of one idea for another, an insolent contradiction of the plain text of Scripture, serves as a starting-point; and, this point once taken, there is no conclusion to which he cannot arrive by the most severe logic. Let him take his premiss, and you must grant him his conclusion. Great copiousness of patristic lore stands in the stead of sound elementary learning; and, like many others of his age, he passed for wise, because dressed in a grotesque robe of erudition, and seemed formidable to many who allowed themselves, enslaved by a fashion prevalent, to fall into the same illusion. Of this the Romanists gloried, and claimed the victory; but whenever these famous controversies are submitted to the test of such criticism as is now familiar to every well-educated Protestant theologian, the Bellarminian web is found to be thinner than gossamer.

Simultaneously with his labors as Professor, he was occupied, under the command of the Pope and the General, in preparing a collection of his works for publication, the first folio volume of which bears date in 1581. In the preparation of those volumes he was assisted by some of the most learned and subtle censors that could be found, but chiefly by Muzio Vitelleschi, the General, Benedetto Giustiniani, and Andreas Eudaemon Johannes, a Greek. These all testified that no one could be more willing to resign his own opinion, and pay deference to the judgment of his advisers, whose revision of his labors extended even to the last syllable. And in this we discover one great reason of his acceptance at Rome.

Not yet being made a Cardinal, he could not sit in the Consistory; but constant use was made there of his information. The Cardinal of Santa Severina, Patriarch of all the East, and Chief of the Holy Inquisition, borrowed the counsels of Bellarmine in regard to all the eastern churches, then subjected to the fearful discipline of that Tribunal.

I have elsewhere spoken of the atrocities perpetrated by the Inquisition in India. Let it suffice here to say, that Bellarmine took a most active part in the ruin of the Syrian Church, he saw Mar Simeon, Bishop of Malabar, and Mar Joseph, Bishop of Cochin, perish in Rome, he advised, with sanctimonious placidity, the nefarious felony of Alexo de Meneses in Diamper. But we shall have occasion again to note some other proceedings of Bellarmine, invested with full powers as Inquisitor.

Filippo Neri, also known as Apostle of Rome; July 22, 1515 – May 25, 1595, founder of the "Congregation of the Oratory".

It was at this time, associated with S. Filippo Neri, father of the Oratorians, and another less famous person, that he took part in the examination of a woman from Naples, who called herself a Prophetess, and reported her unfit to exercise the gift. The Pope, therefore, sent her home again with an injunction to mind her own matters, and abstain from the use of prophecy for the time to come; as if the Pope could countermand a Divine mission, if such a mission ever had been given to the Prophetess of Naples. His fame as an author was exalted to the highest pitch; and he was proclaimed scourge of heretics, flower of divines, the Athanasius and Augustine of his age, slayer of mon­sters, bulwark of the Church, pillar of Christian faith, avenger of Catholic truth, prince of writers. “The breast of Bellarmine is the library of Christ!” With less exaggerated praises, and going so far as his talent was to be described, a Protestant might concur. But when eulogy grows extravagant, a suspicion rises that the extravagance is thrown over the subject as a veil to hide it from closer search.

is sent to france.

Amidst controversial and literary labors, and frequent correspondence with Cardinals and Inquisitors, who came, after the usual manner of the Roman Court, to employ him as their con-suitor, this leader of controversies received an order from the Pope to accompany his Legate, Cardinal Caetano, on a mission to Paris. His instructions required him to advice the Legate on all points relating to religion, or, in other words, to represent the ecclesiastical claims of the Pope, and watch for such an issue of the civil war, then raging, as might assure a conquest of the Reformation in France. Henry III had been assassinated. Henry IV, successor to the throne, had been at the head of the Huguenots, although rather attached to them by family connection and antipathy to the Guise faction, than by any purely religious motive. The Princes of the anti-Protestant league had risen in arms, to prevent the occupation of the throne by a heretic. The country was in a state of civil war. The first object of the Legation was, of course, to sustain the rebels, and to get rid of the Protestant King.

On his first appearance in this new character, the Parisians were disappointed. They expected to see a man who could figure with majesty in church, and, by a bold presence, command respect at court. But they saw a small person, more of a student than a courtier; and could scarcely believe that their eyes beheld the great Robert Bellarmine. A man of so high repute ought, as they deemed, to be of lofty stature. But he had no lack of courage, and displayed considerable zeal in carrying out the intentions of his masters. Strictly abiding by the letter of instructions from both the General and the Pope, he kept aloof from all affairs that were merely political, so far, at least, as ostensible participation went, and kept within his proper department as theological consultor of the Legate. The chief service he rendered was in aiding to repress a movement of nationality among the French Clergy, who were on the point of assembling in Council at Tours; not without a disposition to elect a Patriarch of their own, and to withdraw their obedience from the See of Rome. The Legate, fearing that such a procedure would be but the beginning of a succession of national schisms, ending in the disintegration of the Popedom, sent, from the pen of Bellarmine, a letter to all the French Bishops, telling them that even if the Church were diseased, she had no authority to heal herself,—that it did not become the patient to prescribe the medicine. No one, he said, had power to convoke a Synod in France, so long as a Legate was in the kingdom: it was the office of the Holy See to decide everything relating to faith and discipline. And he threatened to excommunicate all who presumed to go to Tours for such a purpose, to lay an interdict on the churches, and to hurl the Priests from their dignity into the depths of canonical censure.

Threats of Roman thunder, and the sound of Navarrese artillery, deterred them from the execution of their purpose.

Sixtus V (13 December, 1520 – 27 August, 1590), born Felice Peretti di Montalto, was Pope from 1585 to 1590

Meanwhile the situation of the Legate and his train became very critical. Henry IV, not yet acknowledged by the Parisians, sat down before the city, and made the walls tremble and all hearts quake. Bellarmine had seen some fighting in Italy, when a boy, and had fled at the sound of an enemy in Belgium; but here were to be encountered the horrors of a siege. People were feeding on dogs, and other unclean animals. The Spanish Ambassador and suite subsisted on horse-flesh; and the Fathers of the Jesuit College were indebted to him for occasional presents of this strange venison. Weeds, roots, or any vegetable substances, shoe-leather and harness, were employed to cheat the pangs of hunger. Prayers and litanies resounded for the deliverance of the city; and Bellarmine made himself admirable by the self-infliction of many penances. At length the siege was raised, and the Legate received instructions to withdraw from the seat of war, that Sixtus V might not be so implicated as to incur the wrath of the stronger party.

The Legate, of course, had no disposition to remain. He had encouraged the Sorbonne to issue a declaration, that the people of the kingdom were absolved from their oath of allegiance and fidelity to King Henry; and that, without scruple of conscience, they might assemble, arm, and collect money for the support of the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion against his execrable proceedings. Bellarmine attended at the secret meetings of the Legate, and his confidential adherents; rose from his seat, and withdrew to a corner of the room, when strong measures were proposed; gave ear to nothing that would shock his meekness; merely said, when the question: Who should be King of France, was agitated: “I have nothing to do with politics; but I want to see a King in France that will establish the decrees of the Council of Trent”. This meant that he would have Philip II of Spain; not Henry, the actual Sovereign. And the doctrine he strenuously taught, tended to dethrone every Protestant Sovereign in the world. Yet he declared himself innocent of politics. However, Henry had possession. For argument, Henry used the sword. Even the Romanists in France were divided on the question; but the victor decided it by the “last reason of Kings”.

But that the Pope should hesitate, in a case where the King resisted was a heretic, seemed grievous to these Ambassadors. The Legate resolved to go back to Rome; and Bellarmine, with a suspicious faculty of prescience, foretold that the Pope would not live long; nay, that he would die within that very year. Four months before that event, Sixtus had been suffering symptoms that became aggravated gradually, until the extinction of life; and “persons of good sense”—I now quote from Gregorio Leti—“thought it extremely probable that he had been poisoned”. This impression was confirmed by the physicians, on a post mortem examination. The Spaniards were suspected, at Rome, of this crime; and it is notorious, that his failure from promises made to the League in France to support them against Henry IV, exposed him to the violent resentment, both of the Spaniards and the Jesuits. It was remarkable, therefore, that Bellarmine should have exercised a prophetic gift just at that time, and in that manner. The Legate, having left the Pope in good health, as robust and headstrong as ever, thought his death unlikely; but the Jesuit constantly insisted that he would surely die. Had he calculated the time necessary for the poisonous solution generally used in Italy for that purpose, to take effect, he could not have been more exact. Accordingly, on the morning of September 19th, 1590, “finding a bundle of letters on the table, just brought from Rome, while every one present was guessing at their contents. Father Robert took up one, and, after trying the weight of it in his hand, somewhat jocosely said. Qui dentro vi sta un Papa morto, There is a dead Pope inside here”. The Secretary of the Legation opened this letter, announced to the company that Sixtus was really dead; and Caetano, anxious to take his place in the Conclave, instantly gave orders to quit Paris, and with his train, including the prophet, hurried back to Rome.

The pleasantry of Father Robert, weighing the letter laden with a dead Pope, is by no means unaccountable. Sixtus had branded him with heresy in the sight of the whole world, by placing his great work on the Controversies in the Index of prohibited books, because he only attributed to the Popes an indirect power over temporals out of Rome. As soon as the Pope died, the controversialist was released from that literary durance. It was natural that he should anticipate the decease of so hard a master with pleasure, and even be off his guard in letting his pleasure be apparent. And it was equally natural that he should afterwards express himself in such words as these:—“To speak plainly, so far as I think, so far as I know, and so far as I understand, he is gone down to hell”. If Sixtus had consented to take a Jesuit Confessor, had flattered the Society, had supported Spain and the League more vigorously against Henry of Navarre, and had been satisfied with the doctrine of Bellarmine as to his power over the temporalities of Princes, it is not likely that we should have heard of this prophecy or of its fulfillment.

returns, and revises the vulgate.