I’ve been reading a lot of St. Robert Bellarmine lately thanks to the brilliant translating done by Ryan Grant at Mediatrix Press. I’ve been reading his book on Purgatory and think that it tells some pretty interesting things about Church history. I want to comment on one thing that he said and draw some other historical conclusions with other examples.
Protestantism was born in the 16th century. While many Protestants today believe that Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ, it was a different story in the 16th century. To the 16th century Protestant, the Pope was the anti-Christ who imposed a false Gospel of works salvation on those in their communion.
While the early Protestants denied that the Roman Church in the 16th century had been the early Church of the first couple centuries, they still had a problem. In Matthew 16 Christ clearly stated that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. How could that be true if the Christian world had been dominated by a false gospel for the vast majority or at least a significant part of its history? Well, St. Robert Bellarmine shows how they coped with this:
Calvin and Peter Martyr, as well as Ochinus and Luther understand by this fire the judgement of God, which sanctions true doctrine and confutes false, just as fire finishes gold and consumes grass. Moreover, they say this judgement takes place when someone is converted, and especially in the hour of death, for then many are enlightened and so understand that they were deceived, and throw away their doctrine, and are also confounded and blush, and so will be saved by fire. Peter Martyr adds that he does not doubt that St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Dominic and other fathers were saved in this way, since without a doubt, being enlightened by God at the point of death, they understood and condemned their errors on monasticism, on the Mass, etc.
– St. Robert Bellarmine, On Purgatory, pg 46
Of course the idea of these three venerable Catholic saints denouncing monasticism, the Mass, and other doctrines that Peter Martyr doesn’t like is as fictitious as an Andrzej Sapkowski novel, though like Sapkowski novels it makes for an entertaining read. A few pages later Bellarmine shreds this fiction with primary sources teaching the firm opposite of what Peter Martyr says.
For the record, when most Catholics hear the name Peter Martyr they think of St. Peter of Verona, the Dominican friar and Inquisitor who was murdered by the bloodthirsty and demonic Cathars in 1252. Bellarmine is referring to the Italian Protestant Peter Vermigli. In fact, only a few pages later, he shreds Peter’s notion with primary sources then says:
This must surely be the recantation which the Pseudomartyr dreams up!
Perhaps the Pseudomartyr also thought that the real Peter Martyr had denounced monasticism and the Mass on his death bed. Now, Peter is trying to make history consistent with Matthew 16. It’s simply not there though. Let’s look at two more episodes of history that are controversial. The Islamic claim that Jesus wasn’t crucified and the Catholic belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the end of her life.
The Islamic belief of Jesus Christ not being crucified has as many problems as Peter Martyr’s thesis. It essentially is a claim that an event happened that all of history flatly contradicts. Does the Catholic doctrine of the Assumption of Mary have this problem? No. While we don’t have as early of sources that we would like, there is a vacuum in the early Church. The early Church wasn’t sure what happened to the Blessed Virgin. This gap was later filled with the Assumption of Mary. It created harmony while the fantasies of Muhammad and Peter Martyr created chaos with the rock solid historical record.
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