BERZI, ANGELO. - Bergamasque theologian, b. at Chiuduno on 8 May 1815 and d. there on 10 Jan. 1884. He completed his studies at the seminary of Bergamo and, having been ordained a priest, taught philosophy there. Of sincere piety and fervent intellect, he exercised a powerful fascination over the clerics, whom he initiated into a new philosophical-theological-mystical system that, through interior impulses (as he said), he was gradually maturing. The novelty of the doctrine and of the methods provoked violent reactions, which forced B. to go from Bergamo to Rome, to Cremona, to Brescia. Condemned by the Holy Office (7 March 1855) and suspended "a divinis" for five months, he withdrew to his father's house at Chiuduno, where he spent 28 years of solitude, prayer and unremitting study, leaving about 80 works, all unpublished except for two.
Berzism is a mystically tinged theology, tending at bottom toward Gnosticism and substantially monistic in method. Starting from the problem of knowledge, it concludes to the inability of reason to bridge the abyss that lies between the finite and the infinite, as this manifests itself in the order of cognitions (the immense distance between the particular sensation and the universal idea) and in the real order (the created and the uncreated), without recourse to the one bridge that joins the two extremes in itself, Jesus Christ (whence the necessity of revelation and the vanity of rationalism). The Incarnate Word is the link between the finite and the infinite, the measure of the universe, the beginning and the end of all things, because in him there is, besides the temporal aspect, an eviternal (supratemporal) one. Christ's humanity in fact participates in eternity according to the concept of the aevum and in immensity according to the concept of heaven; yet in this participation it becomes neither eternal nor immense (attributes exclusive to God), but obtains a celestial expansion to all times and all places (by a certain analogy with the sacramental presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist), by virtue of which it is not made externally contemporaneous with all times nor diffused in all places, but in an internal manner (mystical, celestial, inaccessible) is interior, posterior and present to all places and all times, so that from its mystical hiding place it can at any moment burst forth into external reality and manifest itself. Thus the God-Man, as it were grafted between eternity and time, he is the firstborn of all creatures and the immanent force that unites them all. The Virgin participates in this prerogative; the Eucharist must be considered as the coeternal communion between the Son and the Mother. Christ then pours forth the Holy Spirit into the whole of creation; therefore all beings enjoy a real, though different, participation in the Spirit, which in man forms the third constitutive principle (trichotomy) and the ultimate ground of the supernatural. If the Spirit-Love, immanent in beings, circulates back within them, leading them back to God, then beings are good; if it does not circulate back, they are evil. Thus human history is explained by the opposing circulation of the Holy Spirit (city of God) and of the evil spirit (city of Satan). The Christian must develop within himself the circulation of the Holy Spirit, through the Sacraments; thus he will reach perfection.
This system, in contrast with the patristic-scholastic tradition but strongly organic, seduced many pious and unwary souls. The B. had numerous disciples, gathered in small circles in the cities where he dwelt, especially in the diocese of Brescia. Despite the suspicion with which they were surrounded and the abjurations to which they were subjected, they remained most faithful to their « angelic father ».
Bibliography
Antonio Piolanti