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Cardinal and Doctor of the Church, Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) became a leading Catholic theologian and controversialist who is best known for his defense of Catholic doctrine and for his theory of indirect papal authority in temporal affairs. Born in Montepulciano, Italy, Bellarmine made his first vow as a Jesuit in 1560. After studying Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology, Bellarmine was sent by the Jesuit Father General to Louvain, where his focus on the defense of Catholic doctrines took shape as he taught theology in a university city on the front line of the Catholic response to Reformers.

In 1576, Bellarmine returned to Rome to teach English and German Catholic missionaries. He continued in this position until 1588, and it was during this period that he published Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei adversus hujus temporis haereticos (1586–1593).This examination of Protestant theology was an unusually balanced assessment for the time designed to better equip Catholic missionaries in disputes rather than score rhetorical points in polemical exchanges. The work also was wide ranging and, in conjunction with his De translatione Imperii Romani (1584), provided the first clear statement of his ideas about the nature of papal authority.

In the 1590s, Bellarmine was appointed to important positions first within the Society of Jesus and then within the papal court, culminating in his being named cardinal in 1599 by ClementVIII (1592–1605). Under Pope PaulV (1605–1621), Bellarmine became a leading advocate for the church in a series of controversies concerning papal authority, especially a dispute caused by James I of England’s requirement of an oath of allegiance from all his subjects in 1607.The issues at stake in these disputes ultimately resulted in Bellarmine fully articulating his theory of papal authority, perhaps best expressed in his Tractus de potestate Summi Pontificis in rebus temporalibus adversus Gulielmum Barclaeum (1610), written in response to Scottish royalist and Catholic William Barclay’s assertions in support of absolute royal authority. In Tractus, Bellarmine advocated a sophisticated theory of papal authority that granted the pontiff indirect power in temporal affairs. Bellarmine defined papal authority within narrow limits. He granted the pope sovereign jurisdiction over all Christians and over all temporal matters when they affected spiritual matters, but he carefully distinguished between ordinary and direct jurisdiction and the extraordinary jurisdiction that the pope possessed over secular rulers. According to Bellarmine, the pope possessed temporal authority over secular rulers only to protect the souls of the faithful and only after he had exhausted all other remedies. Even then the pope’s power remained indirect: he could admonish, excommunicate, and, if all else failed, remove subjects from their obligations to their secular ruler, but under no circumstances could a pope work to remove a ruler from power. In an age of uncompromising polemical exchanges between promoters of papal and secular authority, Bellarmine’s was a carefully balanced theory that ultimately pleased neither group. Bellarmine died in 1621 but was canonized as a defender of the church only in 1930.

Bibliography:

Bellarmine, Robert. Opera Omnia, 12 vols, edited by Justinus Fèvre. Paris: Vivès, 1870–1874.
Brodrick, James. Robert Bellarmine, Saint and Scholar. London: Blackwell, 1961.