BORROMEO, FEDERICO. - Cardinal, b. in Milan on 18 Aug. 1564 to Giulio Cesare, brother of Gilberto the father of St. Charles, and to Margherita Trivulzio; d. there on 22 Sept. 1631.
Orphaned quite early, he found a second father in his great cousin, who encouraged him in humanistic and philosophical studies and enrolled him at the University of Bologna at the age of fourteen; but a few months later he conferred on him the ecclesiastical habit at Rovato (1580) and transferred him to the study of Pavia, assigning him as his residence the newly founded Borromeo college. Here the young man, who already in Bologna had enrolled in the "Congregation of Perseverance" promoted in 1573 by the Jesuit fathers, founded an "Academia accuratorum," that is, of the diligent, and a "Secret Congregation" for the more pious. On 5 May 1585 he obtained his degree in theology. The following year he went to Rome, where he chose as his director St. Philip Neri, whom he would recall several times in his writings, just as he would preserve the spirit of the Oratory in certain practices of the associations he instituted in Milan, such as "The Youths of the Madonna," the "Oratory of the Married," and the "Oratory of the Merchants." On 22 Dec. 1587 he was created cardinal by Sixtus V.
On the death of St. Charles's successor (1595) he was preconized archbishop of Milan, and, after much reluctance, consecrated bishop by the hand of Clement VIII on 11 June. On 27 Aug. he made his entry into the Duomo with such a concourse of people that he was nearly suffocated; however, he took up permanent residence there only in 1601.
On the death of Gregory XV (1623) he was among the papabili, but it seems that a veto was proposed by the king of Spain, on account of the archbishop's twenty-year jurisdictional controversy with the governor of Milan.
In governing the diocese he continued the reforming work of his cousin, according to the directives of the Council of Trent, both by firmly purifying the clergy and reforming monasteries and convents, and by attending to the religious formation of the people through catechism schools; but above all he repeated his cousin's heroisms of charity in the sorrowful renewed calamities of the famine (1625-29) and the plague, lavishing all his possessions and incurring debts, if only to distribute food to the needy and bring them religious consolations.
He himself left it written that he "lived two lives, the daytime one for business and the evening and nighttime one for study, and that this was possible for him in good health thanks to his love of solitude." Lively in person and in the movements of his soul, indeed choleric, as Mongilardi, his second biographer and attending physician, wrote, of "a very delicate sensibility and easily offended," as one reads in a secret report, prone to melancholy, which he strove to turn Christianly into serenity, and to apprehension, he found rest for the spirit, besides in study, in contemplation and in a continuous life of union with God.
His innate propensity for the interior life made him attentive to mystical phenomena and explains his correspondence with Sister Caterina Vannini, a converted Sienese, as well as that with Sister Caterina Paluzzi, a Dominican of Morlupo, and with Ippolita Confalonieri, a nun in S. Marta in Milan; and this rules out the romanticizing thesis put forward by Misciattelli.
He also showed himself attentive to the scientific novelties that were beginning to appear in his time and was also in correspondence with Galileo, but without daring to follow him in the Copernican system.
Especially the foundation and growth of the magnificent and original Ambrosian library (v.) conceived as "a living organ and an ever-active center of high science and culture" offered him frequent occasions for intellectual contacts.
His literary production began with his 45th year of age, but was thereafter so abundant that in his last publication, Meditamenta litteraria, he gave information on the genesis and purpose of fully ninety-five works, differing in bulk and content, from subjects of moral and mystical theology to political considerations, such as the De gratia principum, from commentaries on Holy Scripture to experiences of conclaves, from accounts of pastoral visits and discourses to notices of mathematics and cosmography. We recall separately the Philagio, in which he collected brief biographies of devout persons, among which some are valuable for psychological investigation; Batti has highlighted a sketch for a life of Sister Virginia de Leyva (the nun of Monza), which B. intended to insert therein.
F. B. also excels as a patron of artists. Of his "exquisite aesthetic intuition," to use Galbiati's words, the Musaeum is a graceful example, and a living testimony of it is especially the picture gallery willed as a complement to the library, in whose construction he had a great part as adviser and critic. He annexed to it an Academy of painting, sculpture and architecture, where young men were admitted to copy classical models, just as alongside the college of doctors he instituted the college of pupils and the trilingual college, for the formation and perfecting of future doctors, and as he wished for an Hermetic Academy of sciences and eloquence at the major seminary. Already in Rome he had taken under his protection the Academy of Drawing founded in 1593.
In the diocese he attended to the restoration and embellishment of minor churches, besides the Duomo, and finally commissioned from Crespi the model of the colossal statue of St. Charles in Arona, raised as a palladium in the region dear to the youth of his venerated cousin and threatened by the danger of heretical infiltrations.
Bibliography2 works
On the occasion of the third centenary of his death, there have also appeared the interesting study of A. Bavera, L'opera scientifica-letteraria di F. B. (reprint of articles published in Vita e Pensiero in 1918-19), Milano 1931; the sprightly biography, rich in anecdotes, of P. Bellezza, F. B. nella vita, nell'opera, negli scritti, ivi 1931, in which mention is made of some old print not remembered in the preceding lists, and the important volume - whose polemical tone has been noted - of A. Saba, F. B. e i mistici del suo tempo, con la vita e la corrispondenza inedita di Caterina Vannini da Siena, Firenze 1933, in reply to P. Misciattelli, Caterina Vannini, Milano 1933; M. Petrucchi, Omaggio a F. B. L'uomo e la storia, Bologna 1940, p. 23 ff.
Fausta Casolini