ROBERTO (Cardinal Bellarmin), the most eminent of Romish doctrinal controversialists, was born October 4, 1542, at Montepulciano, in Tuscany. At the age of eighteen he enrolled himself among the Jesuits, and was appointed by that society to teach theology at Louvain. The fame of his preaching in that town is said to have attracted even Protestants from England and Holland to hear him. After a residence of seven years in the Low Countries, he returned to Italy, and was appointed by Gregory XIII. to deliver controversial lectures in the college founded by that pontiff. Bellarmin, in the capacity of divine, accompanied the legation sent into France in 1590 by Sixtus V. Eight years afterwards, Clement VIII. made him a cardinal, which dignity he is said to have accepted with extreme reluctance. In 1601 he was appointed to the archbishopric of Capua; but he resigned that office on being made librarian of the Vatican by Paul V., and devoted himself, till the time of his death, to the affairs of the court of Rome. It has been said that the circumstance of his being a Jesuit was the sole cause of his exclusion from the papacy on the demise of Leo XI. and of Paul V. Bellarmin died at Rome, September 17, 1621. It is certain that no Jesuit ever did greater honour to his order, and that no author ever defended the cause of the Romish church in general, and that of the pope in particular, with greater ingenuity and skill. The Protestants have owned this sufficiently; for during the space of fifty years there was scarcely any divine of note among them who did not fix upon Bellarmin as the subject of his books of controversy. But notwithstanding the zeal with which Bellarmin maintained the power of the pope over the temporality of kings, he displeased Sixtus V. in his work De Romano Pontifice, by not insisting that the power which Jesus Christ gave to his vicegerent was direct, instead of indirect; and he had the mortification to see it put into the Index of the Inquisition, though it was afterwards removed. At his death he left to the Virgin Mary one half of his soul, and to Jesus Christ the other. Bellarmin is said to have been a man of great chastity and temperance, and remarkable for his patience. His stature was low, and his mien ungainly; but his countenance was expressive of genius. His style, though not pure, is perspicuous; and the words which he first made use of to express his thoughts were generally so suitable, that few erasures appeared in his writings. Cardinal Bellarmin was the author of numerous works, the principal of which are the following: Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei, &c.; Institutiones Hebraicae linguae; Explicationis in Psalmos; De Scripturis Ecclesiasticis; De Editione Latina Vulgatae; De Officiis Episcoporum; Doctrina Christiana; De Ascensione Mentis in Deum per scalas Rerum Creaturarum; De Arte Bone Moriendi; De genitu Columbarum.