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 BORROMEANS

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BORROMINI

Borromeans. See Sisters of Mercy of St. C'hakles Borromeo.

Borromeo, Andrea, an Italian missionary, b. in tlic first half of the seventeenth century, at or near .Milan; d. in 1GS3. He was the son of Count Giulio Cesare Borromeo, and was received into the religious order of the Theatines in 1637. In 1652 he visited Mingrelia and Georgia (Russian Transcaucasia) as a missionary, and laboured with success for eleven years, to convert the inhabitants. On his return to Rome he was elected procurator for these missions. He declined the offer of a bishopric. He left an account of the above mentioned missions of his or- der entitled: "Relazione della Georgia, Mingrelia, e Missioni de' Padri Teatini in quelle parti" (Rome, 1704).

Mazzuchelli, ScriUorid' Italia (Brescia, 1762). II. iii. 1793. N. A. Weber.

Borromeo, S.\int Ch.\rles. See Charles Borro-

.MKO. St.

Borromeo, Federico, Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, cousin and successor of St. Charles Bor- romeo, b. at Milan 18 August, 1564; d. there, 22 Sep- tember, 1631. He was the son of Giulio Cesare Bononipo and Margherita Trivulzio, members of till- Milaiii'.se aristocracy. He studied successively at H(>U.t;iia and Pavia, in which latter city he was the first pupil of the Borromeo College. Later he went to Rome for higher studies and was there strongly influenced by St. Philip Neri, Cardinal Baronius, and Cardinal Bellarmine. In 1580 he be- gan his ecclesiastical career under the guidance of bt. Charles Borromeo. He was made cardinal at the age of twenty-three, in 1587, by Sixtus V; and, in 1595, Archbishop of Milan by Clement VII, who personally consecrated him to this high office. During thirty-six years he gave the world an example of episcopal virtue, zeal, and dignity. He was tireless in preaching and in instructing both clergy and people, was an apostle of religious education and a persistent reformer of all abuses, both lay and ecclesiastical. An almost constant conflict with the local Spanish authorities, suspicious and haughty by nature, did not diminish his sweetness of temper nor his patience; the traditional immunities and authority of the ecclesiastical order were defended as an inheritance of his see that he dared not abandon. Von Reumont thinks that, though often right, he went at times too far, e. g. in the assertion of minute ceremonial rights; it may be said, however, that in all probability it was the principle and substance of customarj' ecclesiastical rights that the fearless pastor ever intended to preserve and hand down. His affection for the people of Milan was made evi- dent during the great famine and pest of 1627-28, when he fed daily 2,000 poor at the gates of his resi- dence, and was personally an example of such ab- solute heroism that nearly one hundred of his clergy (sixty-two parish priests and thirty-three vicars) gave up their lives in attendance on the perishing multitudes. Alessandro Manzoni has immortalized this cxtraordinaiy devotion in his "I Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed). If Cardinal Borromeo shared the current excessive credulity in witchcraft and magic, he was in every other way tar in advance of his time as a friend of the people and a promoter of intellectual culture and social refinement based on a practical religious life. He is the founder of the famous Ambrosian Library (q. v.) opened by hitn in 1609, as a college of writers, a seminary of .savants, a school of fine arts, and after the Bodleian at Oxfortl the first genuinely public library in Europe. The cares of a thickly populated diocese did not prment him from acquiring great ecclesiastical erudition or from composing some seventy-one printed and forty-six manuscript books written

mostly in Latin that treat of various ecclesiastical sciences. The universal approbation of his omi and later times is echoed in the following words from the above-mentioned work of Manzoni, en- graved on the pedestal of the marble statue that the citizens of Milan erected in 1865 before the gates of the Ambrosiana Library: "He was one of those men rare in every age, who employed extraordinarj' intelligence, the resources of an opulent condition, the advantages of privileged station, and an un- flinching will, in the search and practice of higher and better things."

His life wa-s first written by Francesco Rrv'OLA (Milan. 1056), later by G. Ripamonti. Cantu, La Lombardia nel sccolo XVII (Milan, 18.32), which includes a catalogue of his works; Roberti. Apologia del Card. Federigo Borromeo (Milan, 1S70); Von Reumont in Kirchenler., II. 1125 sqq.; Bodquil- LON in Catholic University Bulletin (Washington, 1895), I, 566-572.

Thomas J. Sh.\h.\n.

Borromeo, The Society of St. Charles (Borro- .m.\usverein), a German Catholic association for the encouragement and diffusion of edifying, instructive, and entertaining literature. It was founded at Bonn, in 1845, by Franz Xavier Dieringer, one of the pro- fessors of the Catholic theological faculty at Bonn, August Reichensperger, and Freihcrr Ma.x von Loe. From the first the society placed itself under the protection of the episcopate. Cardinal Johannes von Geissel, Cardinal Krementz, and Archbishop Siinar did much to further its aims, and it gradually spread over the whole of Germany, so that by the middle of 1907 it had 145,250 members, who were grouped in 258 main societies and 3,247 branches. The ad- ministrative department and chief office are at Bonn. The society has 73 branches outside of Germany: in Belgium, 6; France, 2; Holland, 4; Italy, 1; Luxemburg, 3(3; Austria, 6; Switzerland, 18. In 1906 its total income was §124,743, and its expenses, 8123,174. In accordance with its by-laws the society seeks: (1) to send every year one book or several books as a gift to each of its members, the quantity of reading matter thus bestowed being dependent on the ability of the society and the amount of the annual subscription, as the dues vary from $1.50 to 75 or 38 cents a year; (2) to use the annual surplus in founding libraries (those thus founded numbered over 3,000 in 1907) and in the support of libraries; (3) to aid workingmen's and people's libraries and those of asylums, hospitals, and other charitable or social institutions. Formerly the society was able to supply its members with a large number of books at a re- duced price, which was often not more than two- thirds of the ordinary cost of the volumes. The society's catalogue for 1906 contained over 10,000 titles of works whish could be thus purchased. But since 1907 it has been obliged to abandon this branch of its activity, on account of the position taken by the business union of the German book-sellers. In the larger cities the society has opened free reading- rooms for the use of the public in connexion with its libraries. Since 1902 the society has issued a period- ical; originally this publication was called "Borro- mausblatter"; it now bears the name of "Die Biicherwelt ".

Die Griindung und Thiitigkeit des Vereins vom hi. Karl Borro- maue — Festschrift zum fiinfzigiahriaen Jubclfest des Virdns (Cologne, 1895): Jahresberichte der Zentralstelle.

Joseph Lins.

Borromini. Francesco, architect and sculptor; b. 25 September, 1599, at Bissone; d. (by his own hand) 1 August. 167, at Rome. He studied archi- tecture under Carlo Madema, a relative. On the death of Madema, he was nominated as architect of St. Peter's, under the direction of Bernini. His most extravagant effort was the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (1640-67), a good example of the fully developed baroque style in Rome. In the