Caesar Baronius

Caesar Baronius

Caesar Baronius
Born 30 August 1538
Sora, Duchy of Sora
Died 30 June 1607 (aged 68)
Rome, Papal States
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
Major shrine Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome, Italy
Feast 12 January
Attributes Cardinal's Hat

Cesare Baronio (also known as Caesar Baronius; 30 August 1538 – 30 June 1607) was an Italian Cardinal and ecclesiastical historian. His best-known works are his Annales Ecclesiastici ("Ecclesiastical Annals"), which appear in twelve folio volumes (1588–1607).

Life

Baronio was born at Sora, Italy, and was educated at Veroli and Naples. At Rome he joined the Congregation of the Oratory in 1557 under Philip Neri, and was ordained priest in 1564.[1] He succeeded Neri as superior in 1593.

Pope Clement VIII, whose confessor he was, made him cardinal in 1596 and librarian of the Vatican. Baronius restored his titular Church of Sts Nereus and Achilleus, and a procession in 1597 celebrated a transfer to it of relics.[2] He also had work done on the Church of St Gregory's on the Caelian.

At subsequent conclaves Baronius was twice papabile. On each occasion he was opposed by Spain on account of his work On the Monarchy of Sicily, in which he supported the Papal claims against those of the Spanish government.

Works

Baronius is best known for his Annales Ecclesiastici, undertaken at the request of Philip Neri as an answer to the anti-Catholic history, the Magdeburg Centuries. He began writing this account of the Church after nearly thirty years of lecturing at Santa Maria in Vallicella. In the Annales he treats history in strict chronological order and keeps theology in the background. Lord Acton called it "the greatest history of the Church ever written".[3] It was in the Annales that Baronius coined the term "Dark Age" in the Latin form saeculum obscurum,[4] to refer to the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first inklings of the Gregorian Reform under Clement II in 1046.

Notwithstanding its errors, especially in Greek history in which he had to depend upon secondhand information, the work of Baronius stands as an honest attempt to write history. Sarpi, in urging Casaubon to write a refutation of the Annales, warned him never to accuse or suspect Baronius of bad faith.

He also undertook a new edition of the Roman martyrology (1586), in which he removed some entries implausible for historical reasons. He is also known for saying, in the context of the controversies about the work of Copernicus and Galileo, "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."[5] This remark, which Baronius probably made in conversation with Galileo, was cited by the latter in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).

At the time of the Venetian Interdict, Baronius published a pamphlet Paraenesis ad rempublicam Venetam (1606). It took a stringent papalist line on the crisis.[6] It was answered by the Antiparaenesis ad Caesarem Baronium of Niccolò Crasso in the same year.[7]

Biographies

A Latin biography of Baronius by the Oratorian Hieronymus Barnabeus (Girolamo Barnabeo or Barnabò) appeared in 1651 as Vita Caesaris Baronii.[8] Another Oratorian, Raymundus Albericus (Raimondo Alberici), edited three volumes of his correspondence from 1759.[9] There are other biographies by Amabel Kerr (1898),[10] and by Generoso Calenzio (La vita e gli scritti del cardinale Cesare Baronio, Rome 1907).[11]

Cause for canonization

Baronius left a reputation for sanctity which led Pope Benedict XIV to proclaim him "Venerable" (12 January 1745). In 2007, on the 400th anniversary of his death, the cause for his canonization, which had been stalled since 1745, was reopened by the Procurator General of the Oratory of St Philip Neri.[12]

References

  1. ↑  "Ven. Cesare Baronius". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
  2. ↑ Cyriac K. Pullapilly, Caesar Baronius: Counter-Reformation Historian (1975), University of Notre Dame Press, p. 77.
  3. ↑ Lord Acton (1906). Lectures on Modern History, "The Counter-Reformation", p. 121.
  4. ↑ Baronius, Caesar. Annales Ecclesiastici, Vol. X. Roma, 1602, p. 647.
  5. ↑ Cerrato, Edoardo Aldo. "How to go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go"
  6. ↑ William J. Bouwsma (29 August 1984). Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation. University of California Press. p. 379. ISBN 978-0-520-05221-5. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  7. ↑ Niccolò Crasso (1606). Antiparaenesis ad Caesarem Baronium Cardinalem pro S. Venetia republica. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  8. ↑ Hieronymus Barnabeus (1651). Vita Caesaris Baronii ex congregatione Oratorii S.R.E. Presbyteri cardinalis et Apostolicae Sedis bibliothecarii. Casoni. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  9. ↑ Gaetano Moroni (1846). Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai nostri giorni ... (in Italian). Tipografia Emiliana. p. 141. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  10. ↑ Lady Amabel Kerr. The Life of Cesare Cardinal Baronius of the Roman Oratory, London, 1898
  11. ↑ (Italian) treccani.it, Calenzio, Generoso.
  12. ↑ Zev, Elizabeth. "A Saintly Chef: Cardinal Baronio's Canonization Cause Revived"

Sources and external links