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A Reply.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
In the course of two interesting articles in the April and May numbers of Blackfriars, Fr. Aelred Whitacre has developed a view of Bd. Robert Bellarmine which would have gladdened the heart of the ‘Advocatus Diaboli.’ Blessed Robert, we are to believe, was a man torn between two loyalties, that to truth and conviction on the one hand, and that to his own Order and its Superiors on the other. In the event, it was the latter which prevailed. Arnica veritas, sed magis arnica Societas is in substance Fr. Whitacre’s verdict. Such a view of one whom the Church has been pleased to honour with beatification is piquant, and, could it be sustained, might well cause grief to those who respect the Church’s decisions. Fortunately, however, for a great man’s reputation, Fr. Whitacre would appear, from the manner in which he has endeavoured to prove his point, not to have had access to the findings of recent research on the life of Bellarmine. His reading, it would seem, has been in the main confined to Serry’s eighteenth-century Historia Congregationum de Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae, a partisan document, long since discredited, and known to all students of the subject as utterly untrustworthy.
1 The Historia was published in Brussels in the year 1700, but bore the name of Louvain on the title-page. It appeared under the pseudonym of ‘ Augustin le Blanc.’ Jacques- Hyacinth Serry, its author, was a French Dominican, working in Padua. He was a very ardent Thomist, which meant, in his case, a very ardent anti-Molinist, and a very ardent critic of the Jesuits on general grounds. The title of one of his other books is Le Hahomdéisme tolérd par les Iésuites dans 1’ile de Chio. Though not a Jansenist himself, as he eventually submitted to the Bull Unigenitus, he was regarded by the leaders of the sect as a useful ally. His book dealing with the Unigenitus question, Theologia supplex, was placed on the Index, together with three others from his pen (Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bucher, SS. 443, 445, 446). It is an established fact, accepted by Dominican writers (e.g., Paulus de Loë, O.P., in Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, Bd. xi, sub. nom.), that the manuscript of his Historia Congregationum de Auxiliis passed, before publication, through the hands of the man who succeeded Amauld as head of the Jansenists, Pasquier Quesnel. Writers by no means friendly to the Jesuits are agreed that Quesnel edited and supervised the publication of the work. Thus Picot, in the Biographie Universelle, t. xlii, p. 102 : ‘ Le P. Quesnel fut l’éditeur. ’ Similarly in the Nouveau Dictionmire Historique, published within twenty-seven years of Serry’s death, we find : ‘ Ce fut le P. Quesnel qui revit le manuscrit, et qui se chargea d’en diriger l’Edition ’ (t. iv, p. 226). Again, in Querard’s La France Litiérake, t. ix, p. 85 : ‘ Serry était thomiste fort zélé dans son Histoire des Congrégations de Auxiliis, il laissa tout l’avantage aux thomistes sur leurs adversakes. I quote these writers because they deal with events from a purely secular standpoint, and may be supposed to have had no prejudice in the matter.
2 Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1097. Serry’s work was refuted in detail by thr Jesuit Livinus de Meyer in his Historia Controversiarum de Auxiliis, Antwerp 1705, Venice 1742. When confronted by this latter writer with the Decree of Pope Innocent, Serry’s only excuse was that the Pope did not mean what he said, that he was using the famous Stylus Curiae—the refuge in all times of those seeking to escape the plain force of Papal documents. Meyer’s quotations from the letters of the declared Jansenist, du Vauccl, relative to the publication of Serry’s work, and from the letters of Quesnel in which this Janseiiist leader sought to obtain ‘ approbations ’ for it prior to publication, throw an interesting light on the history of the Historia. Cf. Meyer, Venetian ed., t. I , pp. vii–xxx.
3 I regret having to introduce these technical expressions, but a5 the question in debate is a historical and not a theological one, no deep understanding of them is necessary to follow the argument. According to the theory of praedetnminatio physica, efficacious grace, of its own very nature (graece, physis), and antecedently to any activity on the will’s part, determines the will to consent, and to consent freely.
4 I have italicised some words in this passage, with their broad hint that the Jesuits were not above forgery, as one example out of hundreds of Serry’s style. His treatment of the distinguished Jesuit theologian, Gregory of Valencia, would be almost enough by itself put his History out of court as a serious contribution to the understanding of the complicated question with which it deals. Thomas de Lemos, the Dominican advocate whose ‘Acts’ were condemned by Pope Innocent X, is represented as having so utterly confounded Gregory in a disputation, that Pope Clement VIII himself lost his judicial calm and pointed an indignant finger at the Jesuit, at the same time crying ‘ Ho I ’ Gregory thereupon fell down in a swoon and was carried out by the General of the Jesuits to die in disgrace. When the news of his death reached Rome Clement’s nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini, asked him in a jocular tone what he thought of the dead Jesuit’s chances of salvation. The Pope, after a pause, answered smilingly (subridens respondit) : ‘ If he had no other grace but that which he defended he has not gone to Heaven.’ A few days later Aldobrandini met de Lemos, continues Serry: ‘ Pater Lemos, inquit per jocum, Pontifex vult te irregularem declarare, quia P. Gregorium de Valentia occidisti. Reposuit erudite, perinde ac religiose optimus Pater : “Non occidi ego, sed Pontifex, qui ab irregularitate immunis est. ’ Historia, Venetian ed., col. 307. Need it be said that the alleged swoon of Gregory of Valentia never happened as described, and that the high-minded and dignified Pope Ctement was never guilty of the vulgar uncharitableness attributed to him? Cf. Meyer, vol. I, p. 372. Fr. Whitacre has thought well to repeat in the May BLACKFRIARS another remark attributed to the Pope by Serry, about ‘ the stupidities of Suarez.’ Readers who know their Suarez will know what to think about this. The Dictionnaire des Livres Jansenistes dismissed Serry’s History with contempt as ‘ un Roman Théologique tant il y a de faussetés, de calomnies, et de mensonges, débité avec une audace incroyable.’ This verdict is not entirely just, as Serry published some useful authentic documents, but a little study of the pages that von Pastor devotes to the controversy on grace in volumes xi and xii of his Geschichte der Päpste, soon to be translated into English, shows that it is not so very wide of the mark. The year after Serry’s work first saw the light, it was prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition as containing ‘ propositions, scandalous, seditious, and injurious to Supreme Pontiffs, to the Holy Inquisition and to several illustrious men. ’ Hurter, Nomenclator Literarius, sub nom. ‘ Serry,’ ed. Ia, 1879, t. iii, p. 990.
5 The reader may care to know in passing that the propositions denounced in the censure were submitted to a Congregation in Rome by Pope Sixtus V and declared to be one and all, sanae doctrinae articuli. Moreover, the censure itself, to which Fr. Whitacre appeals three different times in his articles, was quashed officially, and the Pope’s verdict published at Louvain in 1588 by order of the Nuncio Frangipani. The text of the Nuncio’s Decree is given in Le Bachelet, Bellawnin avant son Cardinalat, Correspondance et Documents, pp. 209-210. At a later date the Jansenist Quesnel wrote a defence of the censure, but this work was immediately placed on the Index. Hilgers, Der Index, S. 437.
6 Latin text in Le Bachelet, Bellarmin avant son Cardinalat, p. 164.
7 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin avant son Cardinalat, pp. 174-175. Gratiam effiacem non esse determinationem aliquam voluntatis a Deo immissam, sed vocationem pout apli prasvidebantur ad sequendum, qui vocabantur.
8 The complete original text of the Autobiography is printed as an appendix to Vol. I of my Life of Bellarmine. The Latin of the passage quoted is on p. 479.
9 Le Bacbelet proves this in his invaluable Auctarium Bellarminianurn (Paris, 1913), p. 18.
10 Meyer, Historia Controversiarum, Venetian ed., pp. 780-784; Le Bachelet, Auctarium, pp. 94-100.
11 Le Bachelet, Auctarium, p. 96.
12 In my book (Vol. II, p. 32) I say, ‘ there can be little doubt that Bellarmine had the opinion defended by Molina in view.’ This I now recognise to be misleading. My space was limited, and I had not room to explain in detail that Bd. Robert was not in the least arguing against Molina’s theory as a theory of grace efficacious ab extrinseco.
13 De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, lib. i, cap. xiii. Controversies, Paris, 1620, Vol. IV, col. 445.
14
| SERRY | (Historia, Venetian ed., 1740). | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR. WHITACRE. | (BLACKFRIARS, April, 1928). | ||||||||
| Col. | Lines. | Page. | Lines. | ||||||
| 84 | .... | .... | 1—2 | .... | .... | 226 | .... | .... | 1—2 |
| 84 | .... | .... | 5—21 | .... | .... | 226 | .... | .... | 2—18 |
| 84 | .... | .... | 25—29 | .... | .... | 226 | .... | .... | 18—24 |
| 214 | .... | .... | 72—74 | .... | .... | 226 | .... | .... | 34—37 |
| 215 | .... | .... | 1—11 | .... | .... | 227 | .... | .... | 1—10 |
| 217 | .... | .... | 8—10 | .... | .... | 227 | .... | .... | 11—13 |
| 217 | .... | .... | 12—28 | .... | .... | 227 | .... | .... | 14—29 |
| 217 | .... | .... | 38—48 | .... | .... | 227 | .... | .... | 30—36 |
15 Needless to say, both theories are perfectly orthodox and taught at present by many eminent professors.
16 De Gratia ct Libero Arbitrio, lib. vi, cap. iii. Controversies, Paris 1620, VoI. IV, col. 681.
17 Fuligatti, Vita del Cardial Roberto Ballarmino, Rome, 1623, 1644, p. 61.
18 The ‘Acts of the Congregation de auxiliis ’ referred to on this page are the ones condemned by Innocent X as unworthy of any credence whatever.
19 Recognitio Librorum omnium Roberti Bellatmini . . . . ub ipso autore edita.
20 De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, lib. iv, cap. xiv. Controversies, Paris, 1620, Vol. IV, col. 577. An amusing illustration of the dangers of trusting a careless authority occurs at this point. Serry quotes from chapter xvi, book iv, of the treatise De Cratia et Libero Arbitrio. So does Fr. Whitacre, but there are only fifteen chapters in that particular book.
21 Le Bachelet, Bellarmin avant son Cardinalat, p. 312. I gave a translation of this letter in my Life of Bellarmine (vol. II, p. 30).
22 That Pope Paul ‘ approved ’ it is merely Serry’s talk.
23 Coronel, pace Fr. Whitacre, was not Secretary of the Congregation de Auxiliis, but only of the ‘board of theologians.’ His ‘Acts’ are merely one long diatribe against Molina and his theories. About the ‘ board,’ its composition, and activities, Astrain has much carefully documented and rather amusing information. Historia de la Componia de Jesús, t. iv, p. 249-263.
24 This was on August 8th, 1607. A photographic facsimile of Pope Paul’s report is given at the end of Schneemann’s Cantroversiarum, etc.
25 For Pope Clement’r perroaal views and inclinations on the subject of efficacious grace, the reader may be referred to Pastor’s careful account (Geschichte, Bd. xi, Kap. x).
26 Serry gives the date of issue of the Decree as December 24th, 1613, So does Fr. Whitacre, but the Decree was issued December 14th, 1613.
27 The complete text will be found in many manuals of theology, e.g., Cardinal Mazzella’s De Gratia, p. 464; also Schntemann, l.c., p. 303.
28 Document cited by Le Bachelet, Auctarium, p. 29. Had I space, it would be easy to prove that it was Molina and ‘ his new-fangled Scientia Media ’ that the General was actually inculcating.