Preface, by P. N. Waggett (1925)
The devout reader may feel some surprise at receiving from the hand of a Religious of the English Church, a book written by the most famous of Papal controversialists. Let it be said at once that the De Ascensione mentis in Deum is the fruit of one of the great man’s annual retreats, and shows us something of the inner life of a public character, and of his mind when liberated in solitude and prayer.
We have five such works of the Cardinal: De Ascension, 1615; De aeterna felicitate Sanctorum (Of the eternal happiness of the Saints), 1616; De gemitu columbae (The Mourning Dove), 1617; De septem verbis Christi (The Seven Words), 1618; De arte bene moriendi (Holy Dying), dated 1620, the year before his own holy death.
‘These five books stand in a class by themselves among the works of a vigorous controversialist, and may be used with great profit by people who are repelled by Bellarmin’s controversial pleas or, at the best, indifferent to the mingled theology and politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Robert Francis Romulus Cardinal Bellarmino was indeed, for Englishmen, the typical Jesuit upholder of the claims of the Bishop of Rome. He was, sometimes, too little papalist for some Popes, but we knew him as the opponent of our learned King James in the matter of the Oath of Allegiance, as the protagonist, with Baronius, against Venice and Paolo Sarpi, a public man accepted, by our robust nationalism, as the champion of a Catholic community ‘rightly struggling to be free.’ A caricature of the Cardinal decorates the old ‘Grey-beard’ jugs still found when we disturb the pavements of London.’ —
He was, indeed, no less than the Professor of Controversies in the Roman College; he was involved in the awkward affair of Pope Sixtus the Fifth’s Vulgate and its correction; he spent all his immensely laborious and devoted life—with a short interval in the See of Capua—at the very heart of theological politics and theological administration. He is, in fact, a great figure, the great figure of the counter-Reformation, in so far as that movement is a work, not of devotion, but of argument and of political or social action.
There is another aspect of counter-Reformation effort, or perhaps it should be called more simply another movement. It was a movement comprising the reform of the Spanish Carmelites, and the introduction by de Berulle of the reformed Carmelites into France, the work of Philip Neri, and of the Borromeos, of all those energies of the great bishops, of the Oratory, of the Lazarists and St. Sulpice, which have still their vivid results in the clear-eyed and serious piety of France. It is a movement not yet exhausted but everywhere made evident in the Christian dignity and spiritual vitality of the parochial clergy and its parishioners, too long obscured by the eminence of the Religious Orders and by the all-but-contented worldliness of many seculars.
A greater movement still, the recovery of large elements of the Gospel by such as St. ‘Teresa, the reassertion of the Divine Discipline of the Word, long ago trusted by St. Clement of Alexandria, cannot be spoken of here. It is comparable not to the stirrings of learned Kings and Princes of the Church, nor even to the enlarged pastorates of St. Philip, St. Charles, de Condren, St. Vincent, but to that re-presentation of the spirit and manner of Christ which makes the Little Poor Man of Assisi an alighting point in the mind’s effort to pass from the present back to the first days of the Son of Man.
From all these revivals, the lower and the higher alike, how remote—says our critic—is the memory of this stalwart of controversy, this champion of a peculiar, and already past, conception of the Apostolic See?
These and such things easily occur to any one with a little knowledge of Reformation controversy. “They must not forbid us to profit by the spiritual experience and the spiritual teaching of learned divines on either side. All harsher elements must be set down, as was said of the Cardinal by a Pope—and Papal persons were not always satisfied with Bellarmin—to the troubles of the time and not to the character of the debater.
Hesitation of a more important kind may be felt by privileged souls who recoil from our author’s word: ‘We mortal men, as it seemeth, can find no other ladder whereby to ascend unto God, than the works of God.’
There are who find, ‘as it seemeth to them,’ that they ascend to God, not by attention to the visible, but by detachment from it. They would say, “There is a light that shines through creatures, but another light that shines upon them, or rather the same Light in another mode. There is a long and difficult lesson pieced out from the spectacle before us: but this lesson is not really followed with success, unless we receive at least a glimpse of the answer in another way, by a more direct path of communication. God speaks to us in manifold ways by His creation, and He speaks by His prophets. But He has besides a direct light for the soul; and by the help of this light, we partly understand both history and prophets. Indeed it is because he is taught in this more direct way that the prophet speaks and interprets the manifold and often contradictory aspects of the world.’ Good. That is true enough. But note, the devout writer chooses his words very exactly. He does not say there is no other way to ascend to God, but there is no other /adder. ‘Those who need no steps are not concerned with his saying. And every one that needs the steps must look above them before he begins to climb by the successive treads. He must look at once to what the steps lead to, and see them, as Jacob saw the ladder of his vision, coming down from heaven to earth, leading up from stony solitude to God.
‘To deny, or at all to despair of finding significance in the works, is to run clean away from the lesson of the Incarnation, and to be weak, so far, in the Spirit of Christ.
It is well if those who have found something of the immediate gift are zealous in detachment from lower satisfactions, as they are cautious already in accepting the lower guidance; well, if those who welcome the steps are determined not to rest in them, but to climb them, and to find in every occasion of life an opportunity for the grateful love, itself God’s gift, that prepares the soul for a higher rest, and lifts it as on wings to the unchanging sky. At the very lowest, the creatures and the wonderful inspired Scriptures that speak of them to us, are pointers showing the soul how it also may enter into the Heavenly Wisdom.
Certainly those who follow for a few days the instructions of Bellarmin will find that he does not give them crutches they might dispense with, but a secret of escape from all worldliness and all despondency. He does not naturalize our prayer. He spiritualizes our daily walk.
The translation has been most carefully and ably done; and I trust that the work, affectionately and devoutly bestowed upon it, may, by the Divine mercy, find a harvest in the refreshment of souls already intent on prayer, in the invigoration of faith, and the breaking up of the ground of many hearts so that the springs of Divine love may flow, and in the liberation of seekers after God so that, according to His holy Will, they may find Him with the greatest possible directness and simplicity. P. N. W LIFE OF BLESSED ROBERT BELLARMIN
N October the fourth in the year of our Lord,
1542, at Montepulciano in Tuscany a son was born to Vincent Bellarmin and his wife Cynthia, sister of Pope Marcellus II. This child was later to become known to fame as Cardinal Bellarmin, a scholar and controversialist of great ability. He was named Robert after Cardinal Robert Pucci, and his pious father and mother began early to train their child in the practices of piety and devotion. Like many a boy to whom vocation to the priesthood has been given, he used, when quite young, to set up little altars and preach to such an audience as would gather round him in his own home.
While still a lad he wrote a hymn on Saint Mary Magdalene which was preferred before others for insertion in the breviary published in 1568.
In early youth Robert Bellarmin felt drawn to dedicate his life entirely to the service of God, but at first he was uncertain whether the vocation was to the Religious life or to Holy Orders. Needing counsel, he turned for advice to a father of the Society of Jesus, and it was not long before he saw clearly that he must seek admission to that Society.
At the same time his cousin Richard Bellarmin was feeling the call to Religion, and the two youths were eager to make their response forthwith, but they yielded to the pleadings of their respective fathers who urged a year’s delay; this interval was so faithfully spent that the Society allowed it to be counted as the first of the five years’ novitiate. The year of probation and waiting was spent by the cousins at a house in the
Vill Lire or Briessep Robert BELLARMIN country, where they gave themselves up to study and devotion and to teaching the children of the neighbourhood.
At the end of the year they went to Rome, Robert stopping on the way to visit his father at Montepulciano. By this time the father had realized the truth of his son’s vocation and now he was ready to bless him, though in tears he said, ‘Go where God calls you, my son: in your person I sacrifice all the hopes of my family.’
So in September, 1560, the two cousins entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and joy was in their hearts. Robert at first was employed in the kitchen, where he was as happy as when at his quiet studies, for his only desire was to do the will of God, and to follow the self-abasement of our Lord, and he rejoiced when difficult and distasteful tasks were committed to him. |
Presently came a change of work and he was sent to college to pursue his studies in science and natural philosophy. His health now began to fail, and physicians foretold either an early death or a life of weakness and ill health; but infirmities only served to increase Bellarmin’s courage and he continued his life of prayer and mortification with great profit.
After a while he was given a lectureship in Florence, and when he entered on his task he must have appeared more fit for the infirmary than for the lecture room, but his trust in prayer was great, and strength to fulfil his vocation and to complete his work was granted him and his health was soon seen to improve.
His duties next took him to Flanders, and he is said to have preached at Louvain with such great fervour and power, that though not yet in sacred orders he influenced many of his hearers.
The Flemish fathers of the Society desired his ordination, and for this permission was obtained from
Lire oF Biessep Rosertr BELLARMIN 1X Rome and he was ordained priest by Bishop Cornelius Jansen at Liege at Easter, 1570.
For seven years Bellarmin remained in Flanders, preaching and winning in a wonderful way numbers of persons who had hitherto been opposed to the Faith. Then he received the summons of Pope Gregory XIII to lecture in the Jesuit College in Rome, and there he lived a life of untiring labour and of great devotion till he was sent to France to assist Cardinal Cajetan in the political affairs in which he was deeply engaged. On the death of Gregory XIII Cajetan returned to Rome, taking Bellarmin with him.
Not long after he was placed as Superior in the Jesuit house in Rome, and after three years there he became provincial Superior at Naples.
In 1597 he was back in Rome, appointed Penitentiary by Clement VIII, but he obtained leave to abide in the house of the Jesuits which was near the Vatican. In March, 1599, Robert Bellarmin was nominated one of three new cardinals; he begged that he might be passed over, but his petition was not granted, and he humbly accepted the honour bestowed upon him.
In 1602 he was made Bishop of Capua and at once went to live in his diocese, and gave himself to the special work of a bishop of his flock; but when the Pope (then Paul V) required his presence in Rome he felt it necessary to resign his see; and he then, living in Rome, gave himself up to prayer and study, and to the writing of theological books.
His writings show a remarkable spirituality, notably the five short treatises, of which De Ascension Mentis in Deum is one. This he called his ‘Benjamin,’ for it was written when he had reached the age of seventy-two, and in the prefatory dedication to Cardinal Aldobrandini he says that to this little book he often turned to find consolation and help.
Bellarmin foretold his own death some while before-x Lire oF BiesseEp Bospert RELLARMIN hand. On the death of Paul V, when the cardinals gathered together to choose his successor, Bellarmin said to Cardinal Montalte, ‘We are now about to elect a pope in the depth of winter: the next pope will be elected in the height of summer, but neither you nor I will assist at his election ’—and the forecast was fulfilled. | |
As time went on the Cardinal’s infirmities increased, particularly his deafness, and feeling he could no longer fulfil his duties he begged to be relieved of them, and leave was given for his retirement to a house of his own Society. He chose the Novitiate of Saint Andrew, and there took up his abode in August, 1621. His last illness soon came upon him, and during it he showed his usual patience and gracious manner towards those who waited upon him, and all were edified by his devotion. When death approached he asked for the last Sacraments, and received them with great humility and fervour, and on September 27th, while uttering the adorable and sweet Name of Jesus, he expired, thus ending a long pilgrimage of near eighty years.
Robert, Cardinal Bellarmin was beatified by Pope Pious XI in May, 1923.
