BELL A R M I N E (Ital. BELLARMINO), R O B E R T O FRANCESCO ROMOLO (1542-1621), Italian cardinal and theologian, was born in Monte Pulciano, Tuscany, on Oct. 4, 1S42. He entered the Society of Jesus in 156o. After three years at Rome he was sent to the Jesuit settlement at Mondovi in Pied mont; in 1567 and 1568 he was at Padua, studying theology under a master who belonged to the school of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 1569 he was sent to Louvain, and in 15 7o, after being ordained priest, began to lecture on theology there. His seven years' resi dence in the Low Countries brought him into relations with modes of thought differing from his own ; and, though neither by temper ament nor training inclined to the prevailing Augustinian doctrines of grace and free will, the current controversy compelled him to define his theological principles more clearly. On his return to Rome in 1576 he was chosen by Gregory XIII. to lecture on con troversial theology in the new Roman college. The result ap peared in the far-famed Disputationes de Controversiis Chris tianae Fidei adversus huius temporis Haereticos (3 vols., 1581, 1582, , which called forth a multitude of answers on the Protestant side; the book exhausts the controversy as it was car ried on in those days, and contains a lucid and uncompromising statement of Catholic doctrine. Bellarmine took part in the prep aration of the Clementine edition (1592) of the Vulgate. He has been accused in this matter of some disingenuousness in regard to the concealment of numerous errors in the earlier edition, that of Sixtus ; it appears, however, that, though he wished to spare that pope from censure, he did not conceal the inaccuracies of the edi tion or suggest that they were merely misprints. He was made cardinal in 1599 by Clement VIII., and two years later arch bishop of Capua. He resigned his archbishopric in 1605. When health failed he retired to Monte Pulciano, where from 1607 to I61I he acted as bishop. In 1610 he published his De Potestate summi Pontificis in rebus temporalibus against the posthumous work of William Barclay of Aberdeen, which denied the temporal power of the pope. Bellarmine trod here on difficult ground, for, although maintaining that the pope had the indirect right to de pose unworthy rulers, he gave offence to Paul V. in not asserting more strongly the direct papal claim, whilst many French theolo gians, and especially Bossuet, condemned him for his defence of ultramontanism.
As a consultor of the Holy Office, Bellarmine took a prominent part in the first examination of Galileo's writings. He had followed with interest Galileo's scientific discoveries, and a respectful ad miration grew up between them. Bellarmine did not proscribe the Copernican system, as has been maintained by Reusch (Der Pro cess Galileo's and die Jesuiten, Bonn, 1879, p. 125) ; all he claimed was that it should be presented merely as an hypothesis, until it should receive scientific demonstration. When Galileo visited Rome in Dec. 1615 he was warmly received by Bellarmine, and the high regard in which he was held is clearly testified in Bellar mine's letters and in Galileo's dedication to the cardinal of his discourse on "flying bodies." He died in Rome on Sept. 17, 1621.
Bellarmine, whose life was a model of Christian virtue, is one of the greatest of Catholic controversialists; he has suffered the common fate of controversialists in that his methods of contro versy and his achievements in it have been, and still are, the sub ject of acute controversy. His devotional treatises were very popular among English Catholics in the penal days. Bellarmine was beatified by Pius XI. on May 13, 1923, and his feast is kept on May 13 in Jesuit churches.