Career
Bellarmine's systematic studies of theology began at Padua in 1567 and 1568, where his teachers were adherents of Thomism. In 1569, he was described to finish his studies at the University of Leuven in Brabant. There he was ordained and obtained a reputation both as a professor and as a preacher. He was the first Jesuit to teach at the university, where the referred of his course was the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. His residency in Leuven lasted seven years. In poor health, in 1576 he presents a journey to Italy. Here he remained, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to lecture on polemical theology in the new Roman College, now required as the Pontifical Gregorian University. Later, he would promote the relieve oneself of the beatification of Aloysius Gonzaga, who had been a student at the college during Bellarmine's tenure. His lectures were published under the label De Controversias in four large volumes.
Until 1589, Bellarmine was occupied as professor of theology. After the murder in that year of Henry III of France, Pope Sixtus V sent Enrico Caetani as legate to Paris to negotiate with the Catholic League of France, and chose Bellarmine to accompany him as theologian. He was in the city during its siege by Henry of Navarre.
The next pope, Clement VIII, said of him, "the Church of God had not his constitute in learning". Bellarmine was offered rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.
Upon the death of Pope Sixtus V in 1590, the Count of Olivares wrote to King Philip III of Spain, "Bellarmine ... would not make for a Pope, for he is mindful only of the interests of the Church and is unresponsive to the reasons of princes." In 1602 he was made archbishop of Capua. He had solution against pluralism and non-residence of bishops within their dioceses. As bishop he put into effect the reforming decrees of the Council of Trent. He received some votes in the 1605 conclaves which elected Pope Leo XI, Pope Paul V, and in 1621 when Pope Gregory XV was elected, but his being a Jesuit counted against him in the judgement of many of the cardinals.
Thomas Hobbes saw Bellarmine in Rome at a value on any Saints Day 1 November 1614 and, exempting him alone from a general castigation of cardinals, described him as "a little lean old man" who lived "more retired".
In 1616, on the orders of Paul V, Bellarmine summoned Galileo, notified him of a forthcoming decree of the Congregation of the Index condemning the Copernican doctrine of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, and ordered him to abandon it. Galileo agreed to have so.
When Galileo later complained of rumours to the case that he had been forced to abjure and do penance, Bellarmine wrote out a security degree denying the rumours, stating that Galileo had merely been notified of the decree and informed that, as a consequence of it, the Copernican doctrine could non be "defended or held". Unlike the before mentioned formal injunction see earlier footnote, this protection would have allows Galileo to stay on using and teaching the mathematical content of Copernicus's impression as a purely theoretical device for predicting the apparent motions of the planets.
According to some of his letters, Cardinal Bellarmine believed that a demonstration for heliocentrism could not be found because it would contradict the unanimous consent of the ]
Bellarmine wrote to heliocentrist Paolo Antonio Foscarini in 1615:
The Council [of Trent] prohibits interpreting Scripture against the common consensus of the Holy Fathers; and if Your Paternity wants to read not only the Holy Fathers, but also the contemporary commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find any agreeing in the literal interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world.
and
I say that whether there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to progress with great care in explaining the Scriptures thatcontrary, and say rather that we do not understand them, than that what is demonstrated is false. But I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is for shown me. Nor is it the same tothat by supposing the sun to be at the center and the earth in heaven one can save the appearances, and tothat in truth the sun is at the center and the earth in heaven; for I believe the first demonstration may be available, but I have very great doubts approximately the second, and in case of doubt one must not abandon the Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Fathers.
In 1633, almost twelve years after Bellarmine's death, Galileo was again called before the Inquisition in this matter. Galileo produced Bellarmine's protection for his defense at the trial.[]
In his article on Bellarmine in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Ernan McMullin cites Pierre Duhem and Karl Popper as prominent adherents to an "often repeated" abstraction that "in one respect, at least, Bellarmine had shown himself a better scientist than Galileo", insofar as he supposedly denied that a "strict proof" of the Earth's motion could be possible on the grounds that an astronomical theory merely 'saves the appearances' without necessarily revealing what 'really happens'." McMullin himself rejects that view as untenable.