Abstract
Explored in this essay are Robert Bellarmine’s positions on Scripture that give insight into how the decrees of Council of Trent were interpreted. Bellarmine follows the reforming decrees of Trent and provides an exegetical depth that did not formerly exist in apologetics against Luther’s and other Protestant readings of Scripture. This depth can be seen in his work Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei. His training as a Hebraist and work as a censor afforded him the opportunity to encounter Jewish literature with insight that rivaled his Protestant and Christian Hebraist counterparts. While censors at the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books wanted the elimination of all Jewish literature, Bellarmine called for moderation arguing that insight and value could be found rabbinic commentaries. His encounter with the Talmud was not without misunderstanding but it enriched his awareness of interpretations offered by Jewish scholars at a time when the Talmud was forbidden, censored, or burned.
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Notes
- 1.
John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 98.
- 2.
Alessandro Guetto, “Antonio Brucioli and the Jewish Italian Versions of the Bible,” in Jewish Books and their Readers: Aspects of the Intellectual Life of Christians and Jews in Early Modern Europe, ed. Scott Mandelbrote and Joanna Weinberg (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 49.
- 3.
Piet van Boxel, “Hebrew books and Censorship in Sixteenth Century Italy,” in Jewish Books, 92.
- 4.
It was only in 1911 that Jesuit Xavier-Marie Le Bachelet’s Bellarmin et La Bible sixto-clementine appeared as one of the first studies specifically on Bellarmine as a biblical scholar who was instrumental in salvaging and shaping the translation of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate. With the opening of the archives of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition in 1998, one of the first books to more fully examine Bellarmine’s role in the Congregation for the Index of Forbidden Books was Peter Godman’s The Saint as Censor: Robert Bellarmine Between Inquisition and Index (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2000). A more recent study, not included in my present study of Bellarmine as a biblical scholar, has been done by Christian D. Washburn, “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Authoritative Interpretation of Sacred Scripture” in Gregorianum 94, 1 (2013): 55–77.
- 5.
R. Gerald Hobbs, “Reading the Old Testament after Trent: Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and his Italian Predecessors on Psalm Four,” in Reformation and Renaissance Review, 12, 2–3 (2013) notes that one of the earliest exclusive studies on Bellarmine as biblical scholar [in the English language] was done by Jared Wicks, “Catholic Old Testament Interpretation in the Reformation and Early Confessional Eras: Robert Bellarmine” Hebrew Bible/Old Testament v. 2: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008).
- 6.
When discussing the Hebrew version of the Bible, I will refer to it as the Hebrew Masoretic Text.
- 7.
I wrote: “Bellarmine’s education at Louvain, influenced his opinion that the Hebrew text was important in any learned study of the Bible. Though he learned basic Hebrew from his professor of biblical exegesis, Johan Willemsz, he continued to improve and advance his Hebrew knowledge. He wrote a Hebrew grammar which he published [in] 1578 and revised once again for publication in 1580, the Exercitatio grammatica in Psalmum XXXIII. [Piet van Boxel notes that] ‘From the Exercitatio grammatica in Psalmum it becomes clear that Bellarmine considered Hebrew indispensable from the understanding of the biblical text.’” Amy E. Phillips, “Censorship of Hebrew Books in Sixteenth Century Italy. A Review of a Decade of English and French Language Scholarship” in Bibliofilia 2016, anno CXVIII n. 3, 417, quoting van Boxel from his “Robert Bellarmine, Christian Hebraist…,” 257.
- 8.
Hobbs, “Reading the Old Testament,” 207.
- 9.
Ibid., 223–4; see also footnote 58 where the Latin Hobbs claims to be working from is thus: “Atque haec quidem de auctore Psalmorum certa mihi esse viden-tur… Probabilem censeo sententiam S. Athansii, Hilarii et Hieronymi, sed probabil…” “iorem Chrysostomi, Augustini, Theodoren et aliorum qui eos secuti sunt…” “Ratio est quia est communior, et fuit etiam communior ante annos mille …”
- 10.
Ibid., 225; see also footnote 62: “Magna est auctoritas Septuaginta interpretum, quos et doctissimos fuisse et óptimos codices habuisse, dubitari non potest,” and footnote 64: “… Itaque lectio nostra vulgata omnino con-servanda est, quippe quae conformis reperitur lectioni Hebraicae, quam Septuaginta interpretes emendatiorem habuerunt.”
- 11.
Ibid., 227; see also footnote 69: “…Nemo autem melius novit, quid esset in versione Septuaginta quafe habetur in Exaplis, quam Orígenes qui Exapla collegit. Adde quod cum hie titulus legatur in omnibus libris latinis, et a S. Augustino et aliis exponatur, non est ulla ratione tollendus aut contemnendus.”
- 12.
Ibid., 227, see also footnote 70: “…proinde credibile est, excidisse títulos ex codice Hebraeo qui in eo aderant cum Septuaginta interpretes scripturas Hebraicas in graecum idioma transfèrent.”
- 13.
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, translated by Rev. H. J. Schroeder (Charlotte, North Carolina: Tan Books, 2005), 18.
- 14.
Von Boxel, “Robert Bellarmine: Christian Hebraist and Censor,” in History of Scholarship: a selection of papers from the seminary on the history of scholarship help annually at Warburg Institute, ed. Christopher Ligota and Jean-Louis Quantin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
- 15.
Ibid., 259.
- 16.
From Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Editio quarta emendata opera H. Rüger (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967/77, 1990). Translation my own.
- 17.
From Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Editionem quartam emendatam … praeparavit Roger Gryson. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1969, 1994. Translation my own.
- 18.
Graeca, chaldea et hebraea habent pedibus eius id est viri non camelorum et hoc ess verius ratio ipsa ample confirmat. (van Boxel, quoting the manuscript, “Robert Bellarmine Christian Hebraist…,”260).
- 19.
Ibid., 260.
- 20.
Amy E. Phillips, “Censorship of Hebrew Books…,” 418–19 referring to van Boxel’s article “Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi…,” 129.
- 21.
Piet van Boxel, “The role of Josephus in Bellarmine’s Controversial Theology” in International Journal of Classical (IJCT), 23, no. 3 (July 2016): 269.
- 22.
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 18; also cited in van Boxel, “The role of Josephus…,” 269–70.
- 23.
Van Boxel, “The role of Josephus…,” 273, see Note 16.
- 24.
Ibid., 272.
- 25.
In Jewish Books in Christian Hands…, van Boxel explains that it was the result of the forced sermon attendance as outlined in the papal bull Vices ejus nos that prompted the reorganization of the Casa dei Catecumeni into the Casa dei Neofit. “The new institution [i.e., the Casa dei Neofiti], officially called Collegium Ecclesiasticum Adolescentium Neophitorum, offered an extensive and thorough education for young men converted from the Jewish or Islamic faith. Students accepted for theological training enrolled at the Collegio Romano, the university founded by the Pope. Classes in music, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, and advanced course in philosophy, were given at the Casa dei Neofiti.” (35) For more on the origins and development of the Casa dei Catecumeni, see “Grafting New Shoots: Jewish and Muslim Converts and the First Jesuits: The Casa dei Catecumeni and the Arciconfraternita di S. Giuseppe” in Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy, ed. Lance Gabriel Lazar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 99–124.
- 26.
By the scholar Gustavo Sacerdote in his “Deux index expurgatoires de livres hebreux” in Revue des etudes juives 30 (1895): 257–83 (cf. van Boxel, Jewish Books, 11).
- 27.
Van Boxel, Jewish Books, 13.
- 28.
Ibid., 34. Obviously forced attendance to sermons is a horrifying thought. Yet, we must consider that Gregory XIII’s immediate predecessor Pius V enforced heavy taxes on the Jews to pay for running the institution, the Casa dei Catecumeni which, as already noted, was responsible for their evangelization. Moreover, Pius V “expelled the Jews from all towns in the Pontifical State apart from Ancona, Rome and Avignon” (Ibid., 30). He also reinstituted the policies of Paul IV as articulated in the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, issued July 15, 1555, which banned the Talmud, “prohibited Jews from owning real estate, limited their commercial activities…forced them to wear a distinctive badge and forbade in general all social relations with Christians, regulations that culminated in the institution of the Roman ghetto” (Ibid., 30). When Gregory took the papal throne in 1572, he reversed or softened the policies toward Jews that his predecessors had written and enforced. He brought tax relief to the Jews and used his own papal finances to support the Casa dei Catecumeni (Ibid., 32). It was for the Casa dei Catecumeni that Bellarmine and members of the Index designed their source book for giving preachers the insight and sensitivity to bring about the conversion of Jews or the Christian indoctrination of already converted Jews. Thus, this can be viewed as an improved paradigmatic shift from the forced conversion that occurred before this period.
- 29.
Ibid., 39–41.
- 30.
Ibid., 88.
- 31.
Ibid., 108.
- 32.
Ibid., 109.
- 33.
Ibid., 109, note 108.
- 34.
et filiis Merari per cognationessuas de tribubus Ruben et Gad et Zabulon urbes duodecim. From Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Editionem quartam emendatam … praeparavit Roger Gryson, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1969, 1994). English translation, my own.
- 35.
Van Boxel, Jewish Books, 110.
- 36.
Ibid., 111 cf. Appendix V, 15.
- 37.
Ibid., 111 cf. Appendix V, 20.
- 38.
priusquam te formarem inutero novi et antequam exires devulva sanctificavi te prophet amgentibus dedi te. From Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Editionem quartem emendatam… praeparavit, Roger Gryson (Stuttgart: Duetsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1969, 1994).
- 39.
Van Boxel, Jewish Books, 114.
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Phillips, A.E. (2021). Jewish and Christian Traditions of the Interpretation of Scripture According to Robert Bellarmine. In: Mannion, G., Doyle, D.M., Dedon, T.G. (eds) Ecumenical Perspectives Five Hundred Years After Luther’s Reformation. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68360-3_7
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