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Robert Bellarmine, the great champion of the prerogatives of the See of Rome, an Italian Jesuit, and one of the most celebrated controversial writers of his time, was born at Monte Pulciano, in Tuscany, in 1542. His mother, Cynthia Cervin, was sister to Pope Marcellus II. At eighteen years of age he entered into the Society of Jesus, and discovered such precocity of genius that he was employed in preaching before he was ordained Priest, which did not take place till 1569, when he was ordained Priest by Cornelius Jansenius, Bishop of Ghent, and was placed in the theological chair of the University of Louvain. His success in teaching and preaching was so great that he is said to have for his auditors persons of the Protestant persuasion, both from Holland and England. After a residence of seven years at Louvain he returned to Italy, when Gregory XIII chose him to give controversial lectures in the College which he had just founded, which he did with so much applause that Sixtus V sent him into France, as a person who might be of great service in case any dispute in religion should arise, as theologian to the Legate, Cardinal Gaetano. He returned to Rome in about ten months, where he had several offices conferred on him by his own Society, as well as by the Pope. Clement VIII, nine years afterwards, raised him to the Cardinalate with this eulogium, “We choose him, because the Church of God does not possess his equal in learning.” In 1601, he was advanced to the Archbishopric of Capua, and displayed in his diocese a zeal equal to his learning. He devoted the third part of his revenue to the relief of the poor, visited the sick in the hospitals, and the prisoners in the dungeons, and, concealing the donor, secretly conveyed them money. After exercising his archiepiscopal functions, with singular attention for about four years, he was recalled to Rome by Paul V, who was anxious to have him about his person, on which occasion he resigned his Archbishopric, without receiving any pension from it. He continued to attend to ecclesiastical affairs till the year 1621, when, finding himself declining in health, he left the Vatican, and retired to a house of his Order, where he died, on the 17th of September, in the same year, at the age of 79. At his death, he bequeathed one half of his soul to the Virgin Mary, and the other half to Jesus Christ; and, after his decease, he was regarded as a saint. The Swiss guard belonging to the Pope were placed round his coffin, in order to keep off the crowd, which pressed to touch and kiss the body, and everything he had made use of was, carried away as a venerable and valuable relic.

Bellarmine, as a theological writer, was one of the most distinguished members of his Order, and no man ever defended the cause of the true Church, or of its visible Head, the supreme Vicar of Christ, with more success. The eminent writers of the Protestant sect, who dogmatised in his time, paid him a high compliment, as, during the space of forty or fifty years, there was scarcely one who did not make him a target for the artillery of error. Their attacks were vain; for, although he stated their objections with a force and clearness themselves might be happy to rival, he confuted them in such a manner as to leave no room for a reply. His chief work is his Controversies, 4 vols. Folio. His opinions of the power of the sovereign Pontiff over temporal princes did not give satisfaction to his patron, Sixtus V, as he rejected that power in a direct sense. He was, however, so strenuous an advocate of the indirect power that he seemed to consider the contrary opinion as bordering on heresy. Besides his Commentary on the Psalms, and other works, he has left to the Church a collection of Sermons, a Hebrew Grammar, and two Ascetical Treatises, entitled “The Sighs of the Doves,” and “The Elevation of the Mind to God.” These last productions of his pen breathe a solid and enlightened piety. The reader cannot fail to be struck with the piety, humility, and simplicity of his dedication of the present work to the Holy Father.