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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
For many reasons a whole-hearted welcome will be given to Father Brodrick’s Life of Blessed Robert Bellarmine. The profound sanctity of the great controversialist was a legacy to the Church which has long called for recognition and acclamation; and all Catholic students have felt deep gratitude to the Holy See for raising this great member of the Society of Jesus to the altars of the Church. The new Beatus will rightly become a fitting patron in these days of missionary need. The period of his life was, roughly speaking, the hour when the great schism in modern Europe was becoming stabilised. Looking back now over the intervening centuries, we see him as one of the last great warriors in defence of the old Church of Christendom, before the night of the Reformation had settled down upon us. After his day the Church withdrew in large measure from the guidance of Northern Europe, and a situation arose in which Catholicism stood enclosed and in a state of siege. Even into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the siege had to some extent been raised, the Church seemed to have been passed by, and half Europe stood determined to forget it. During this long period intermittent warfare has continued, and in the ephemeral and local controversies Catholic writers have mainly drawn on the armoury fashioned by Robert Bellarmine.
1 The Life and Work of Blessed Robert Bellarmine. By James Brodrick, S.J., with an Introduction by His Eminence Card. Ehrle, S.J. Two vols. (Burns, Oates and Washbourne, Ltd., 1928. Price 30/-).
2 ‘ Sentiebam ego aliter, sed judicium vestrum optimum est ’ (Vita. lib 2, cap. 5).
3 When Gregory de Valencia and Christopher Cobos, the two Jesuit advocates for the time being, made appeal to the two texts in Bellarmine’s works in defence of the 15th proposition of Molina which was condemned by the Board of Censors, Didacus Alvarez and Thomas de Lemos replied, without protest from any quarter. ‘ As regards the two texts quoted from the works of the illustrious Bellarmine, we reply that, after further consideration, he expunged the aforesaid censure, cited from Book IV, from the Venice edition ; but by inadvertence, did not expunge the censure from Book I, cap. 12, as the most Illustrious communicated to another illustrious Cardinal,’ namely to Asculano who openly attested the fact.
4 Words resembling those of Cardinal du Perron to Ferdinand de Bastido : ‘Quare non potest Deus dare gratiam per se et absolute victricem? ’ This, much to the consternation of Bastido, the Jesuit advocate, who was witness of how the Cardinal fought for the cause of Molina during the disputations. Rather like Bellarmine himself, du Perron during the controversy seems to have been a Molinist publicly only ; partly out of loyalty to the cause of the Society, and partly as ambassador of Henry IV of France who had espoused the cause of Molina.