Lawrence of Brindisi, Saint

LAWRENCE OF BRINDISI, Saint. - Capuchin, b. at Brindisi on 22 July 1559, d. at Belém, near Lisbon, on 22 July 1619. He entered the novitiate of Verona of the Venetian province on 18 Feb. 1575, preached throughout his life, was lecturer in sacred sciences (1587-90), provincial minister of Tuscany (1590-1592), of the Veneto (1594-96), of Liguria (1613-

1616), general commissioner in Bohemia and Austria (1599-1602, 1606-10), and in Bavaria-Tyrol (1611-13), several times general definitor, general minister (1602-1605). Pius VI declared him blessed on 23 May 1873; he was canonized by Leo XIII on 8 Dec. 1881. Feast on 23 July.

I. LIFE

He distinguished himself from his youth by mystical fervor and ascetic rigor. Of quick intellect, he was eager for knowledge, especially scriptural; he nevertheless held that he had received from Mary Most Holy a singular knowledge of the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. He constantly engaged his learning in apostolic action, beginning with success the preaching on the day after (1583) his priestly ordination; he gave his last Lenten sermons in Milan in the year before his death (1618). Through the teaching of the word, in Italian, German and Hebrew, directed in various forms to the faithful, religious persons, Protestants and Jews, in Italy, Bohemia, Austria and Germany, he widely spread and illustrated Catholic truth. Because of his expertise in the Hebrew language and culture, from 1584, on the commission of Gregory XIII, he gave the Jews of Rome apologetic-exegetical lessons, which he resumed for three years also under Clement VIII; he also polemicized with them in various other cities of Italy and in Prague.

In 1599 he established and directed in Austria-Bohemia the first band of Capuchins, requested by Archbishop Zbinec Berka of Prague, for the restoration and defense of the faith against the Protestant sects. He founded the friaries of Vienna, Graz and Prague, the center of his activity. In the battle of Stuhlweissenburg (Alba Reale) in Hungary (9-14 Oct. 1601) of the imperial armies against the Turkish army of Mohammed III, he entered spiritedly into the fray, dragging the soldiers to the victory to which he was largely credited. In the religious sector of politics he was a proponent of an energetic defense of the rights of Christian communities against the abuses of the Protestants. He induced the Aulic Council of Rudolf II to punish the factionalism of the Lutherans of Donauwörth (1607); in the same year he challenged the Lutheran preacher P. Leiser before the court; the episode had a sequel in the Lutheranismi Hypotyposis (3 vols.), composed in a little more than a year; later (Sept. 1610) he clashed with another Protestant minister of the Duke of Saxony, regarding the cult of the Madonna. He worked successfully for the constitution of a League of the Catholic States against the Union of the Protestant princes, obtaining, after an embassy to Madrid, the support of Philip III (1609-10). He remained in Munich at the court of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, in the capacity of apostolic nuncio and ambassador of the King of Spain. In the Commentariorum de rebus Austriae et Bohemiae (Rome 1610), St. L. made himself the easy narrator of his own exploits in those regions and in Bavaria. Having returned to Italy (1613) he worked, among other things, on the commission of Paul V, to avert a war already begun between Spain and Savoy over the succession of Mantua. A last and difficult mission took him, even in grave conditions of health, from Naples (Oct. 1618-July 1619) to Belem (Lisbon) to Philip III as defender of the nobility and the populations of the Kingdom of Naples, against the malversations and the corruption of the viceroy P. Giron, Duke of Osuna.

In the offices he held in the Order and above all as minister general in the visitation of the friaries in Switzerland, France, Flanders, Spain and Italy, carried out on foot, he safeguarded with severity the austere Capuchin discipline and urged his friars to study and to preaching.

II. WRITINGS AND DOCTRINE

Among the Opera Omnia (9 vols., Padua 1928-44) the following are worthy of note: 1) Explanatio in Genesim. It comprises the commentary on only the first 11 chapters of Genesis; in it he gives proof of his expertise in rabbinic literature and in patristic and scholastic literature, which allows him to discuss the various opinions as a master; there he sets out various topics of theology and philosophy (for example, original justice, free will, creation, divine omnipresence and immutability). Modern exegesis can profit from this work, which ranks among the best of its time. 2) Oratorio. It is the predominant part of his output (9 tomes out of the 13 of the entire edition) and comprises the Quadragesimale primum, Quadr. secundum, Quadr. tertium, Adventus, Domenicalia, Sanctorale, Mariale; in a body of 658 items, sermons and fragments, there is set out, in Latin of good taste, the material — rather doctrinal than practical — of Lawrence's preaching, which was skillfully rendered into the vernacular according to the different circumstances. 3) Mariale. For its theological content it deserves a place apart among his preachable works. In the first section it contains 60 sermons arranged by the author according to an organic plan; in the second, another 24 sermons on the Marian liturgical feasts have been collected. With biblical and traditional material, St. L. develops the principles, now become fundamental, of Mariology: the primary one of the divine motherhood of Mary Most Holy, and the secondary ones of the uniqueness of the Madonna in Grace, in privileges, in glory, in worship; of her fittingness, eminence, and analogy or likeness to Christ. It is regarded as one of the most complete and original treatises of Mariology. 4) Lutheranismi Hypotyposis, in three volumes, which delineate the true physiognomy, in its essential and characteristic traits, and the historical and doctrinal genesis, of the whole of Lutheranism, considering it in the person of its founder (introductory part), in the Lutheran doctrine and sect (central part), and in that of its adversary P. Leiser (complementary part).

Ilarino da Milano