Charles Borromeo, Saint

CHARLES BORROMEO, Saint. - Cardinal, archbishop of Milan, b. in the Borromeo castle of Arona on 2 Oct. 1538, second-born son of Count Gilberto Borromeo and of Margherita de' Medici, sister of Pope Pius IV; at the age of 12 he received the clerical habit and tonsure and together with them the abbey of S. Gratiniano in Rome, which was of the family's patronage. Enrolled at a very young age at the University of Pavia, on 6 Dec. 1559 he obtained there his degree in canon and civil law, with Francesco Alciato present at the discussion. At 22 he began his extraordinary activity, being called to Rome by his uncle the pontiff Pius IV, who had discerned the active gifts with which the young man was endowed, and he arrived in this city in Jan. 1560. Created cardinal on 31 Jan., on 8 Feb. he received the archbishopric of Milan, but with the obligation of remaining in Rome and governing the diocese by means of secretaries and representatives resident in Milan. These were Gerolamo Ferragata first and Niccolò Ormaneto afterwards. In the Roman period C. lived in noble occupations of study, in devout dedication to the pontiff uncle who was generous with impulses, honors and employments. As cardinal he immediately had the government of the pontifical legations of Bologna, of Romagna and of the march of Ancona, and the office of protector of religious Orders, such as those of the Franciscans and the Carmelites. To these first dignities were later added the charge of protector of the Crown of Portugal, of the Low Countries, of the Catholic Cantons of Switzerland, of the Hospitaller Order of Malta: charges that were surpassed, in importance, by the appointment to the presidency of the Consulta, instituted by Pius IV and by virtue of which the B. may be said, in order of time, to be the first Secretary of State of the Pontifical Government.

Promoted therefore to such honorable offices, C. from those young years could deal with the highest affairs of the Roman Curia: in which he seemed already perfectly prepared, above all for the ready and precise understanding of the needs of the age in relation to the Church and to Christendom and for his energetic character in carrying out the decisions once matured. In reality the times were difficult. The first seed of rebellion sown by Luther in Germany had by then split the Catholic unity of Europe into two camps religiously and politically hostile. In France and in the Low Countries religious wars were already blazing; bitter too were the controversies in Poland; in England Queen Elizabeth had forced her people into definitive separation from the church of Rome. Less painful seemed the conditions in Italy, in the Spains and in Portugal, although these regions too felt the reflection of the northern agitation. The B. was among the first and most fervent to wish to stem the movement that from the north threatened the Latin countries, therefore alongside his uncle he worked first with indomitable energy for the immediate reopening of the Council of Trent, then from Rome he participated actively in its works, bearing the weight of a close and difficult correspondence, until its closure (3 Dec. 1563). When Pius IV wished that the execution of the Council's deliberations be entrusted to a cardinalitial congregation, C. was elected among those members and was among the promoters of the Catechismus romanus ad Parochos, whose compilation the Council had proposed and decided upon in order to fix a unitary text for the religious formation of the people.

In the meantime he had received the orders of the subdiaconate and of the diaconate in Dec. 1560; but when on 19 Nov. 1562 his brother Federico died, there were those who thought that he, with the due dispensation, should secularize himself in order to perpetuate the family succession; he instead reduced his life to greater austerity and on 17 July 1563 had himself ordained priest: on 2 Dec., as soon as he had reached the appropriate age, he was made bishop. There remained to him now the duty of making the due residence in the archdiocese of Milan, which through the absence of its own pastor, notwithstanding the good government of wise and valiant vicars, gave reason for grave thoughts to the archbishop in Rome, particularly because of the danger of heretical infiltrations. The B. therefore resolved to assume its government personally, and entered Milan on 23 Sept. 1565, after a journey through the central and northern regions of Italy, in the capacity of legate a latere of the pontiff. He had however to return immediately to Rome to assist his uncle the pontiff, who was dying, and in the subsequent Conclave he cooperated in the election of Card. Ghislieri, who assumed the name of Pius V. Returned again to Milan on 15 Apr. 1566, he remained there until his death, except for some further Roman interludes, as for the Conclave from which Gregory XIII emerged and during the jurisdictional dispute with the Marquis of Ayamonte.

In the 24 years in all of the dense Milanese period the pastoral activity of the B. was such as to deserve to be remembered as one of the most laborious and fruitful that any curer of souls has ever exercised. The Milanese diocese was in itself vast, comprising countries subject to Venice, to Genoa, to Novara, as well as entire valleys and Swiss Cantons. Moreover the ecclesiastical province of which he was the head comprised 15 suffragans. To the B. is due the Catholic preservation of a good part of German-speaking Switzerland: he visited the three Helvetic Valleys for this purpose in 1567, and again in 1570 undertook a journey through the German Cantons, passing through Altdorf, Unterwalden, Zug, S. Gallo, Schwyz, Einsiedeln, always with the intention of assuring himself personally of the religious conditions of those countries, with which he then knotted relations and connections that were of benefit to him for the spiritual preservation in that part of Switzerland touched by Protestant influence. It was on that occasion that the Saint went as far as Hohenems in the Voralberg to visit his half-sister Ortensia, wife of Count Annibale Altemps. He went to Switzerland a third time in 1581 as visitor of the Rhaetian regions by commission of Gregory XIII, then in 1583 he was again among the Grisons. To a tenacious and courageous activity, wholly consecrated to the cause of the Church and to the moral elevation of the people, the B. joined an austere existence of harsh penances and bodily mortifications, which was an effective example of reform aimed at reasserting the decayed ecclesiastical discipline, at consolidating the liturgical sense of the celebration of divine things, at preserving Catholic morality for the people. In the carrying out of his high ministry, C. used every just means at his disposal in that age, even those that sometimes seemed crude and offhand (cf. the proceedings against witches), and maintained benevolent contacts with the political and civil authorities, without however ever yielding when it was a question of safeguarding the rights of the Church, as he showed in regard to the controversies over the Inquisition in the clashes with the Spanish representatives Ayamonte and Requesens.

To a man, however, who struck with such rigor the relaxed discipline of morals, including that of the clergy and of the regulars, there was no lack of opposition on the part of the clergy itself and of the convents: of these, the resistance of the canons of the Scala is merely one episode, when on 24 Aug. 1569 the archbishop wished to enter their basilica and they drove him back. While a far graver deed was perpetrated on 26 Oct. of that same year by Fr. Girolamo Donato, called Farina, who attempted to strike him with an arquebus shot while he was praying. The Humiliati were guilty of this; they, because of the wealth accumulated through the wool industry, were in deep decline and were in fact suppressed on 7 Feb. 1571 by papal bull. But C. also had comforts and profound expressions of consent from the whole people; he maintained good relations with the sovereigns of the time and with the Spanish conquerors and rulers of Milan themselves; princes and dukes of Italy, among them Emmanuel Philibert and Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, considered themselves honored by the friendship of the B. He was thus able to radiate his beneficent zeal beyond the boundaries of his own, albeit vast, diocese, exercising a pastoral action in various parts of Italy not subject to him and even in Switzerland, where he established the first nunciature with the Cremonese G. F. Bonhomini in 1579 and, through the good offices of the noble knight Melchior Lussy, obtained the establishment of the Jesuits at Lucerne in 1574 and of the Capuchins at Altdorf in 1581. Particularly admirable were the B.'s efforts for his own diocese. He began to reform his clergy and the regular clergy through the work of the new religious Institutes of the Barnabites, Jesuits, and Theatines, himself founding a Congregation of Oblates, which had first originated in the church of the S. Sepolcro in Milan in 1578, with rules definitively established on 13 Sept. 1581. He reorganized worship by erecting new temples and sanctuaries that became famous, such as those of Rho, of Cannobio, of the Sacro Monte di Varallo, of S. Fedele in Milan. Above all he attended—and this was one of the greatest merits of C. B.—with regard to the Tridentine reform that he constantly championed, to the institution and erection of seminaries for the formation of aspirants to the priesthood, giving the model and laying down the principles for the education and formation of the students.

Thus arose the major seminary in Milan, through the work of the architect Meda, the Elvetic college, also in Milan, and in the countryside the minor seminaries of Inverigo and Celana. He also had schools and colleges opened for lay formation: the college of Brèra entrusted to the Jesuits, the Almo collegio Borromeo of Pavia, that of the Nobles in Milan, and the Pontifical one of Ascona on the upper Verbano have remained famous; he instituted in Milan the hospice of S. Maria Maddalena for women of ill repute as well as other charitable hospices and shelters, which he founded for the support and spiritual formation of different categories of citizens; he promoted the erection of Monti di pietà, and warmly supported the institution of free legal aid for the poor; he reformed the Pio istituto di S. Corona for poor sick persons, founded the consortium of the Disciplini to give comfort to those condemned by public justice, and at his death bequeathed his possessions to the major hospital of Milan. Then famous throughout all Christendom became the institution of the schools of Christian doctrine, with which the elementary or popular schools also had their beginning, placed under the care of the parish priests. The confraternities of the Sacrament and of the Holy Rosary in the Milanese area are also institutions of C. B.

The B. personally visited the then more than a thousand parishes of the diocese, reaching even the most remote churches and chapels on the mountains, such as those of the Tre Valli ambrosiane of Switzerland. In particular, the care he took to preserve for the Milanese church its most ancient liturgical rite, reducing it to its genuine traditions, must not be forgotten: for this purpose he gave life to a special congregation, preparing a printed edition of the Rituale, of the Messale and of the Breviario (1582), though failing, in some places, as in Monza, to establish the Ambrosian rite. In his 24 years of episcopate he gathered as many as 11 diocesan synods, of which the first was presided over by Ormaneto, his vicar; the last was celebrated in his presence in 1584, a few months before his death. He held six provincial councils in the years 1565, 1569, 1573, 1576, 1579 and 1582, and in the meantime also visited the suffragan dioceses. The Saint became extremely popular when in 1576-1577 the scourge of the plague invaded and tormented, with the added burden of a preceding famine, the metropolis and countryside of Lombardy. His charity in that emergency was inexhaustible: he sold his own considerable principality of Oria on behalf of the plague-stricken, opened for them the church of S. Gregorio del Lazzaretto, and dedicated a votive temple to St. Sebastian in Milan after the cessation of the scourge.

If our Saint was distinguished by an admirable life of action and work, he did not for that reason neglect good literature and culture. Indeed it was precisely he who was the restorer of the Studio of Bologna, and through his own education he came to know ancient philosophers such as Seneca, Epictetus and Cicero: his rich library, whose manuscript catalogue the Ambrosiana library possesses, bears witness to this. In the years of the Roman period he associated with Sirleto and Alciato; moreover he was accustomed to gather learned and cultured persons, including laymen, to discuss scientific and literary matters in the Vatican palace; and thus, as an erudite relief from diplomatic cares, he had organized those "Vatican Nights" which were like a domestic Academy and an oratorical exercise for his future. Even later he sought the acquaintance and friendship of learned men and literary figures, and entrusted to Silvio Antoniano the drafting of a treatise on pedagogy and to Card. Valerio a work on rhetoric; he attested his culture in the Instructions fabricae et suppellectilis ecclesiasticae, his pastoral theology in the Sermones, in the numerous conciliar and synodal sermons, in the discourses or reminders to the people, in the Instructions ad confessarios, in the Regulae for Congregations, and his activity of government in the important and very dense correspondence. He cultivated religious art with fervor, having as architects, for churches and sanctuaries, valiant artists, among them the famous Tebaldo Pellegrini. He inscribed on his own coat of arms the motto Humilitas, almost as a symbol of a program of interior life.

C. B. died in Milan on the evening of Saturday 3 Nov. 1584, at only 46 years of age, having returned the day before with a fever, after the pious days at Varallo and the opening of the college of Ascona, from the sanctuary of the Pietà in Cannobio on the Verbano, his gaze fixed on a praying Christ by Campi, today preserved at the Ambrosiana. He was canonized on 1 Nov. 1610, while archbishop of Milan was his cousin, Card. Federico Borromeo, who in 1624 gave beginning to the erection of the famous colossus of St. C. on the Piedmontese shore of the lower Verbano. The ecclesiastical calendar fixes the feast of the Saint on 4 Nov.

The fame of the Saint spread so widely throughout Europe that associations and institutions arose under his name in the course of the following centuries: one need only note the Borromean or Fate-bene-sorelle [Do-good Sisters] of St. Charles Borromeo, established in Nancy as early as 1652 for the care of the sick and the poor, with more recent daughter houses in Trier, Prague, Trebnitz in Lower Silesia, and Maastricht in Holland (W. Hohn, Histoire des Soeurs de S. Charles, 3 vols., Nancy 1898); the vast and culturally active Borromäusverein in Germany (1844), with its seat in Bonn, for the dissemination of good reading and for the education particularly of youth through courses and cultural lectures; the Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo in Vercelli, the modern college of St. Charles Borromeo in Milan, and the Ursuline sisters of St. Charles Borromeo in Lombardy; the Pontifical Seminary of Sts. Ambrose and Charles Borromeo in Rome, opened in the second half of the 19th century; the Congregation, under the protection of Borromeo, of missionaries for Italian emigrants in the Americas, erected in 1887 by G. B. Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza, not to mention the Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, long widely diffused in those same Americas; the archiepiscopal seminary of Kalocsa in Hungary dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo; the Societas seu congregatio Josepho-Carolina, a kind of knightly order likewise instituted in Hungary by Kopik for the propagation and defense of the Catholic religion in Hungarian public life. Villages and hamlets in the Milanese area bear the name of St. Charles Borromeo. The largest theater of Naples likewise takes its name from St. Charles Borromeo. Borromeo is also patron of the diocese of Lugano and of the University of Salzburg, protector of Savoy and of the cities of Milan, Faenza, Guastalla, Arona and Rocca di Papa.

Churches were erected in his honor everywhere; famous among them all in Rome are the 17th-century churches of S. Carlo al Corso and S. Carlo ai Catinari. The encyclical Editæ saepe of Pope Pius X, dated 29 May 1910, was issued for the celebration of the 3rd centenary of the Saint's canonization (AAS, 2 [1910], pp. 357-80).

ICONOGRAPHY

The iconography of St. Charles is numerous and varied in sculpture and in medals, but more particularly in painting; it began immediately after the Saint's death and was quite a competition among renowned artists and lesser artists in reproducing his characteristics and features, although for the most part it represents the Saint gathered in prayer or disposed to meditation or in the act of blessing and, often, also in the act of assisting the plague-stricken. At first the tendency was to portray the Saint's features in an expression of deep mortification and exhausting emaciation, as though he must appear worn out by apostolic labors and by the daily mortifications of the body: a tendency that ceased, however, after his canonization, when the Saint began to be represented in fuller and more human forms, albeit with those angular and marked facial characteristics of his. At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, a whole school arose in Milan, rich in names famous in painting, which interpreted on canvas and also in bronze and in marble the figure of our Saint: these are the names, for painting, of G. B. Crespi, called il Cerano, of Giulio Cesare Procaccini, of Morazzone, of Guido Reni, of Borgianni, of Daniele Crespi, of Maratta, whose works on Carolino subjects, often expressed in grandiose compositions on canvas, are scattered in Milan, Rome, Bologna, Florence, Pavia, Arona, to cite only the most principal names of cities: the cathedral of Milan annually exhibited on the occasion of the Saint's feast on Nov. 4 as many as 40 grandiose compositions by Cerano, Morazzone, Procaccini (who worked in Milan), artists all of whom were working in their mature years and who were therefore able to express themselves in forms that often constitute the best of their art (L. Ferretti, S. C. B. nell'area Roma 1923). But the figurations of St. Charles are the patrimony of the universal Church because, besides in the diocese and province of Milan, they are found in every corner of the world where Catholicism is affirmed. According to Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, cousin of St. Charles and a good judge of art, the best portrait of the Saint would be the painting by Ambrogio Figini preserved in the gallery of the Ambrosiana in Milan. Also noteworthy is the colossal copper statue, called the S. Carlone d'Arona, which stands, 35 meters high, on a hill facing Lake Verbano: design and conception by Cerano, execution commissioned by Federigo Borromeo himself. A rare portrait of the young Saint at the age of 26 and already cardinal archbishop of Milan is in the Borromeo palace of Senago (Milan), a work by Giorgio Solerio for the entry of Charles as archbishop into Milan: a replica is preserved in the Ambrosiana. For observations of a mystical-psychological nature on the Saint's face, cf. W. Schamoni, Das wahre Gesicht der Heiligen (Leipzig 1938, pp. 134-39).

For the work of St. Charles, particular mention should be made, besides the publications on the history and acts of the Council of Trent, of A. Ratti (Pius XI), Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, Milan 1890-92; F. Steffens and H. Reinhardt, Die Nuntiatur von G. F. Bonhamini (1579-81), I, Solothurn 1906 and the following volumes: P. Herre,

Papsttum und Papstwahl im Zeitalter Philipps II., Leipzig 1907; G. Susta, Die Römische Kurie und das Konzil von Trient unter Pius IV., Vienna 1909, passim; L. von Pastor, C. B., Das Muster eines tridentinischen Bischofs, in Katholische Reformatoren, Freiburg im Br. 1924, pp. 105-37; id., Storia dei Papi, VII, VIII, IX, passim; A. G. Roncalli, Gli atti della visita apostolica di s. C. B. a Bergamo (1573), in Fontes Ambrosiani, vols. 13-18 (1936-40).

Among the best-known biographies of the Blessed we note the fundamental one by C. Bascapè (Basilicapetri), De vita et rebus gestis C. B., Ingolstadt 1591 and Brescia 1602; and the other De vita et rebus gestis s. C. B. lib. VII qua ex G. P. Giustiano B. Rubens latine reddidit B. Oltreschi notis aberrimis illustravit, Milan 1751; A. Caillat Vie de s. C. B., archevêque de Milan, trans. and abridged from the Latin of the b. Basilicapetri, Paris 1825; A. Sala, Documenti circa la vita di s. C. B., Milan 1857-61; C. Sylvain, Histoire de s. C. B., 3 vols., Paris 1884; L. Celler, S. C. B., ibid. 1912, Italian trans.; C. Orsenigo, Vita di s. C. B., 2nd ed., 2 vols., Milan 1929 (German ed. by G. Brunner, Freiburg im Br. 1938); A. Rivolta, S. C. B. Note biografiche, Milan 1938; D. Franceschi, S. C. B., Turin 1938; P. Gorla, S. C. B., 2 vols., Milan 1939. A broad biographical summary of St. Charles: F. Weiner, s. v. in DThC II, coll. 2267-73, with bibliographical notes. For further biographical information, cf. Echi di s. C. B., a Milanese publication of contributions for the history of religion and culture, directed by Giovanni Galbiati, fasc. 19-20 (1938), p. 727-829. For particular aspects of the life and work of St. Charles: G. A. Sassi, Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium series historico-iconologica, III, pp. 1117-1160, Milan 1755; K. A. Martuz, Karl B., Kardinal der Römischen Kirche und Erzbischof von Mailand, Augsburg 1796; G. Boero, Risposta a Vincenzo Gioberti sopra le lettere di s. C. B., Milan 1850; F. Bertani, La Bulla Coenae, la giurisdizione ecclesiastica in Lombardia, ecc., ibid. 1888; C. Camenisch, C. B. und die Gegenreformation im Veltlin, Chur 1901 (compare F. Segmüller, S. C. B. vindicatus, Einsiedeln 1924); Atti di s. C. B. riguardanti la Svizzera e i suoi territori, edited by V. D'Alessandri, Locarno 1909; L. Berra, L'Accademia delle Notti Vaticane fondata da s. C. B., Rome 1915; U. Mannucci, S. C. B. e s. Francesco di Sales nella storia della Controriforma, ibid. 1910; G. Cahannes, Die Pilgerreise C. B.'s nach Disentis im August 1584, in Zeitschrift für schweizerische Kirchengeschichte, 18 (1924), pp. 156-64; L. Gramatica, Diploma di laurea in diritto canonico e civile di s. C. B., Milan 1917; id., S. C. B. e la Terra Santa, Monza 1919; A. Castellucci, Un episodio della vita di s. C. B., Rome 1927; P. Paschini, Il primo soggiorno di s. C. B. a Roma (1560-65), Turin 1935; A. Saba, La Biblioteca di s. C. B., in Fontes Ambrosiani, 12 (1936), G. Galbiati, I Duchi di Savoia Emanuele Filiberto e Carlo Emanuele I nel loro carteggio con s. C. B. secondo gli originali della biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan 1941; L. Prandocini, Il diritto ecclesiastico dello Stato di Milano dall'inizio della signoria viscontea al periodo tridentino, ibid. 1941. On ascetic aspects: A. Ratti (Pius XI), S. Charles et les Exercices de s. Ignace, 2nd ed., Paris 1922; K. Morawski, Sw. Karol B. na tle odrodzenia religijnego w XVI wieku, Warsaw 1922; C. Gorla, La più belle pagine delle Omelie di s. C., (Biblioteca dei santi, directed by G. Galbiati, 10), Milan 1928.

The two periodical publications S. C. B. nel III centenario della canonizzazione, Milan 1908-10, and the Echi di s. C. B., Milan 1937-38, provide a wealth of information and notices on the Saint, his work and his age. The periodical La Scuola Cattolica of Milan likewise published a large miscellany in 1910; G. Galbiati, Albero genealogico della principessa famiglia Borromeo, Milan 1930. Extremely useful for information are some of the Nuntiaturberichte of Germany and Switzerland, published in various forms. We also cite K. Fry, Gina. Ant. Volpe, Nuntius in der Schweiz 1565-88, I, Fribourg 1936; II, Stans in Switzerland 1946; Fontes Ambrosiani, vols. 9-10; a work that complements in this regard J. G. Mayer, Das Konsul von Trient und die Gegenreformation in der Schweiz, 2 vols., Stans 1901-1903, and Ed. Wymann, Karl B. und die Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, ibid. 1903. To this day the most recent general biography of the B. is that of G. Seranzo, S. C. B., Milan 1944, with appropriate references to the sources in the introduction. Various contributions on S. C. and the Franciscan saints, from unpublished documents, have been published by P. Sevesi, in Studi Francescani, 22 (1923), pp. 156-86; 24 (1927), pp. 400-402; id., in Archiv. Franc. hist., 3 (1938), pp. 73-126; 387-439; 37 (1944), pp. 104-64; 38 (1945), pp. 231-33.

Sources for knowledge of the Saint and of his work are to be sought in the archive of the archiepiscopal curia of Milan and in the Ambrosian Library, which, besides preserving since 1947 that archive of exceptional importance for the period, also preserves the very extensive Caroline correspondence with drafts by the Saint himself, as well as other manuscript documentation, year by year, concerning the religious and political affairs handled by the Saint, not to mention volumes of sermons and homilies, ascetic sketches and drafts of ecological treatises. At the Congregation of Rites in Rome are the acts of the canonization process: in the Vatican Library, the Vatican Archive, that of the Barnabites of S. C. ai Catinari in Rome, and the Borromeo Archive in Milan there are other documents, as well as in Brussels at the Bollandist Fathers, in preparation for the life of the Saint to be published in the Acta SS. Novembris.

Giovanni Galbiati