Cardinal robert bellarmine galileo

Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621)

Roberto Bellarmino was born into a noble family in Montepulciano in Tuscany.

In 1560, he joined the Jesuit order and began his studies at the Collegio Romano, the Jesuit college in Rome.

Cardinal robert bellarmine galileo

After finishing his course of studies there and studying Thomistic theology at the university of Padua, Bellarmine became the first Jesuit professor at the university of Louvain (in modern Belgium) in 1569 and was ordained as a priest the following year.

Situated in the Low Countries where Protestantism was gaining rapidly during this period, the university of Louvain was becomes a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy. Bellarmine taught theology out of Thomas Acquinas's Summa Theologica and studied the Scriptures and the Church Fathers in preparation for a major work on theology.

During his period at Louvain he wrote a Hebrew grammar and a work on the Church Fathers.

In 1576 Bellarmine was called back to Rome by Pope Gregory