Background
Robert Bellarmine was born on October 4, 1542, in Montepulciano, Italy. He was the third of the twelve children of Vincenzo Bellarmino and Cynthia Cervini, half-sister of Pope Marcellus II.
The showpiece in the exhibit is the bust of St. Robert Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit cardinal who was one of the Church’s leading scholars during the Counter-Reformation. He was canonized and declared a doctor of the Church in 1930. He is the patron saint of Fairfield University. The bust of Bellarmine was made in 1623-1624 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a renowned artist of the Roman Baroque era.
1752
Dottrina cristiana breve
Pontifical Gregorian University, Piazza del Collegio Romano, Pigna District, Rome, Italy
Robert took a Master’s degree in philosophy at the Spanish-staffed Roman College in 1563.
The showpiece in the exhibit is the bust of St. Robert Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit cardinal who was one of the Church’s leading scholars during the Counter-Reformation. He was canonized and declared a doctor of the Church in 1930. He is the patron saint of Fairfield University. The bust of Bellarmine was made in 1623-1624 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a renowned artist of the Roman Baroque era.
philosopher theologian scholars
Robert Bellarmine was born on October 4, 1542, in Montepulciano, Italy. He was the third of the twelve children of Vincenzo Bellarmino and Cynthia Cervini, half-sister of Pope Marcellus II.
Robert took a Master’s degree in philosophy at the Spanish-staffed Roman College (now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University) in 1563. Natural philosophy formed an important part of his studies there, but it appears to have been wholly and routinely Aristotelian in character. Ordained priest in 1570, he completed his theological studies in Louvain.
After he was ordained a priest in 1570, he was assigned to teach theology at the University of Louvain, then one of the centers of Roman Catholic defensive scholarship against the Reformation. He was brought to Rome in 1576 to lecture at the new Jesuit College. He worked there for 12 years to consolidate the Church's theological positions, and out of this research came his most important publication, the three-volume Disputations on the Controversies about the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time. When Bellarmine was 50, he was made rector of the Jesuit College in Rome.
Two years later, in 1594, he was appointed provincial superior of the Jesuits in Naples. Pope Clement VIII brought him back to Rome in 1597 to be his personal theological adviser and 2 years later made him a cardinal. In 1602 he was sent to Capua as archbishop but in 1605 was recalled to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life as a respected papal counselor. Bellarmine was active in many areas of intellectual life. In 1610 he wrote a book defending the power of the pope. His careful thinking on the natural rights of men had wide influence in political philosophy for the next 200 years.
When Galileo's theories of the earth revolving around the sun created a sensation, Bellarmine advised that they be withheld until they could be more solidly proved. It was the 75-year-old cardinal's sad task to tell Galileo later that the Office of the Inquisition had found his theories opposed to the Bible. During his long career as a theologian and churchman, Bellarmine was consistently highly regarded. In his old age, Bellarmine was bishop of Montepulciano for four years, after which he retired to the Jesuit college of St. Andrew in Rome.
( )
In his religious affiliation, Robert Bellarmine was a Roman Catholic. He joined the newly founded Jesuit order in 1560 and was ordained priest in 1570.
Bellarmine’s relevance to the history of science comes only from his role in the Galileo story. In 1611 he was among the Roman dignitaries whom Galileo invited to see the new-found wonders in the sky. The old man was disturbed at the implications of what he saw, and asked the astronomers of his old college (among them Clavius) to test the accuracy of Galileo’s claims. This they soon did. Galileo sent him a copy of his important and effectively anti-Aristotelian work on hydrostatics (1612), to which Bellarmine replied that “the affection you have thus shown me is fully reciprocated on my part; you will see that this is so, if ever I get an opportunity of doing you a service.” The opportunity was not long in coming.
The Aristotelian cosmology was crumbling in the face of the new astronomical evidence, notably that of the phases of Venus and the sunspots. The Aristotelians of the universities fell back on the authority of Scripture as a last desperate expedient to save their case. Galileo answered them in his brilliant Letter to the Grand Duchess Cristina of Lorraine (1615).
Two rather different, and ultimately incompatible, positions were argued by him. On the one hand, he argued with great cogency that the language in which the scriptural writers described physical phenomena could not possibly have been intended to carry any probative weight in questions of natural science. On the other hand, he also appeared to concede the traditional Augustinian maxim: So great is the weight of authority behind the words of revelation that the literal sense ought to be taken as the correct one in every case, except where such an interpretation could be strictly shown, on commonsense or philosophical grounds, to lead to falsity.
In a letter written at this time to Foscarini, a Carmelite who had defended similar views on the nonrelevance of scriptural phrases to problems of physical science, Bellarmine accepted the Augustinian maxim, but went on to emphasize that since the heliocentric theory of Copernicus could in no way be “strictly demonstrated,” the troublesome scriptural phrases about the motion of the sun could not be regarded as metaphorical. If, of course, a “strict proof” of heliocentrism were to be found (a contingency he regarded as in the highest degree unlikely but, significantly, did not wholly exclude), the scriptural texts would have to be reexamined. To argue that the celestial appearances are “saved” by supposing the earth to go around the sun does not constitute a strict proof that this is what really happens. When a vessel recedes from the shore, the illusion that the shore is moving is corrected by seeing the ship to be in motion. Likewise, the experience of the wise man “tells him plainly that the earth is standing still.”
This is the sort of unshakable trust in the ultimacy of observation that had made Aristotle (who had once seemed so dangerous an intellectual threat to Christian beliefs) a congenial cosmologist for those who regarded the Hebrew turn of phrase about sun or stars as somehow carrying a special authority. In Bellarmine’s view, Solomon’s phrase about the sun “returning to its place” carried far more weight than did the Copernican theory. The latter was no more than a “hypothesis,” whereas Solomon had his wisdom from God.
Quotations:
"Charity is that with which no man is lost, and without which no man is saved."
"On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus."
"Freedom of belief is pernicious, it is nothing but the freedom to be wrong."
"Flee idleness. .. for no one is more exposed to such temptations than he who has nothing to do."
"There is no one who is without faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he is a superior or a subject, an old man or a young one, a scholar or a dunce."
"When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the sacred heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary."
"Peace and union are the most necessary of all things for men who live in common, and nothing serves so well to establish and maintain these as the forbearing charity whereby we put up with one another's defects."
"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin".
"It seems unbelievable that a man should perish in whose favor Christ said to His Mother: "Behold thy son", provided that he has not turned a deaf ear to the words, which Christ addressed to him: 'Behold thy Mother."
"It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or consuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome."
"God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence."
"It is not difficult for one seal to make many impressions exactly alike, but to vary shapes almost infinitely, which is what God has done in creation, this is in truth a divine work."
"God has implanted a natural tendency to the monarchial form of government not only in the hearts of men but in practically all things."
"The centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures."
"Political rule is so natural and necessary to the human race that it cannot be withdrawn without destroying nature itself; for the nature of man is such that he is a social animal."
Robert Bellarmine was the young, talented, and religiously sincere Jesuit. He was a man of strong self-control, putting aside his own feelings in the interest of his duty to the Church. He was kind and particularly concerned about the poor. It was discovered at his death in 1621 that he had quietly given away all his money; there was not even enough left to pay for his funeral.