Roberto Bellarmino was born at Montepulciano in Tuscany, a nephew of Pope Marcellus II, and entered the Jesuits in 1560. He taught at Louvain, where he studied the Reformers in their own writings, and in 1576 was appointed to the new chair of controversial theology at the Roman College.

His lectures became the Disputations on the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time (1586–1593), a vast and orderly reply to Protestant teaching on Scripture, the church, the papacy, the sacraments, grace, and justification. For centuries it was the arsenal of Catholic controversialists, and Protestant divines from William Whitaker to John Owen answered it point by point. Sam Storms notes that it served “as the chief source for anti-Protestant polemics for centuries to come.”¹ On the sacraments he taught:

No one can be certain, with the certainty of faith, that he has received a true sacrament, since no sacrament is performed without the intention of the ministers, and no one can see the intention of another.² Robert Bellarminequoted by Loraine Boettner

Bellarmine was made a cardinal in 1599. He took part in the trial of Giordano Bruno and in 1616 delivered the church’s warning to Galileo. He died on September 17, 1621, and was canonized in 1930. His sentence on the sacraments shows the Reformation’s point: a sinner who must rest his assurance on a priest’s unseen intention can never be sure he has been forgiven.

Catholic Opponents