The Belgian Jesuit priest Cornelius a Lapide can be considered the best commentator on Holy Scripture
Newsroom (29/01/2025 10:30, Gaudium Press) Born into a peasant family, Cornelius a Lapide was born in 1567 in a village in the Principality of Liege, eastern Belgium. Gifted with exceptional intelligence, he studied at Jesuit colleges in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and Cologne, Germany, where he earned a doctorate in liberal arts, which consisted of the trivium—grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric—and the quadrivium—arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.
He was small in stature and frail in build, but strong-willed, combative and determined. He joined the Society of Jesus, studied theology at the renowned University of Louvain, Belgium, and was ordained a priest in 1595 at the age of 28.
Shortly thereafter, he became a professor of philosophy, theology, and Hebrew at the same university, which at that time was a hotbed of heresies, including Jansenism.
Seeking to glorify God and combat the heretics who misrepresented the Bible, he began to write commentaries on the Holy Books, with numerous quotations from the Church Fathers, in whom ‘there is a thousand times more genius, depth and charm than in the most beautiful works of the Greek and Roman world.’ This is a direct attack on the Renaissance spirit that deified Greco-Roman pagan authors.
With a look full of anger, he drove away heretics
While he was writing his work, Protestants fiercely persecuted Catholics in Brabant, a province of Belgium whose capital is Louvain.
In 1604, he went to a nearby chapel – where miracles had taken place – to hear confessions and then celebrate Mass. Suddenly, a mob of Dutch Calvinists appeared and carried out a horrific massacre of Catholics and set fire to the building.
Cornelius took the consecrated hosts, wrapped them around his chest, and began to walk, asking for the help of the Blessed Virgin. Some heretics surrounded him, but soon fled because of the angry look that the man of God cast upon them.
Teacher of St. John Berchmans
By order of the Superior General of the Jesuits, in 1166, he moved to Rome to teach Sacred Scripture at the Roman College. Among his students was St. John Berchmans, his compatriot, who stood out for his intellectual ability and excellent virtues.
The son of a tanner and shoemaker, John Berchmans was born in a town near Brussels and always maintained his innocence. At the age of seven, he would get up at dawn and, before going to school, would go to church where he would serve at two or three Masses.
He studied rhetoric in Malines, where he shone for his holiness and intelligence. He became a novice in the Society of Jesus and, in 1619, was sent to the Eternal City to study philosophy at the Roman College. On 13 August 1621, he gave his soul to God. His body is buried in the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola in Rome, and his heart was transferred to St. Michael’s Church in Louvain.
The valiant Cornelius, due to health problems, stopped teaching at the Roman College and devoted himself to continuing his commentaries on the Bible, secluded in his simple cell where, as he wrote, ‘sitting at the feet of Christ, I receive with reverence from his mouth the words of life to soon transmit them to other men.’
Writing by hand, he produced a magnificent work. Among other virtues, his heroic perseverance in carrying out this extremely difficult work is admirable. As he himself stated, in order to persevere in goodness, one must ‘ardently desire to progress in virtue.’
He died in Rome on 12 March 1637, at the age of 70. He left manuscripts in which he commented on almost the entire Holy Scriptures. In addition to explaining the meaning of words or phrases, he quotes excerpts from great theologians, pagan philosophers and poets, facts from the history of the Church and of men, as well as from the lives of the Saints.
Atmosphere of combat in Heaven
Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira admired him intensely, calling him ‘the great and incomparable Cornelius.’ We transcribe some excerpts from lectures he gave in São Paulo.
On Cornelius a Lápide:
“Those who are in hell have a knowledge without delights, without joy, without love, a bitter knowledge that, on the contrary, gives them a situation of profound displeasure at what is happening in Heaven. They see, that is, they know Our Lady placed in the presence of the Most High and flooded with happiness, etc., and their hatred increases. And from the depths of hell they blaspheme against Her.
“In opposition to these blasphemies, Mary Most Holy executes an act of justice upon them, commanding other Blessed Souls to respond to them. And a kind of controversy, a struggle, ensues, not in the manner of the battle that took place in Heaven when Satan was cast out by St. Michael the Archangel, but a controversy in which the Blessed ones acclaim Her even more because of the blasphemies uttered by the demons, and an atmosphere of combat becomes noticeable in Heaven, and Our Lady is the victor who crushes the serpent’s head with her heel. (…)
“All the precessions, all the demons who are in hell howl against Our Lady, at least on certain occasions when She (…) puts Her foot on them and crushes them, and this happens gloriously.”
Counter-revolutionary devotion to Our Lady
“Catholics must keep this in mind, at least sometimes, and they must feel that something is missing when, in their Marian devotion, this never crosses their minds.
“I was never taught this, and I felt that something was missing in my devotion to Our Lady, something I was searching for but did not understand what it was. Until my eyes fell on this text by Cornelius a Lapide.
“There I felt that there was a recess in my soul that was empty of what was necessary for devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and I rejoiced because I felt filled with Our Lady. And I think that counter-revolutionary devotion to Her encompasses this aspect in a relevant way.”
“I sincerely hope that together, in Heaven – perhaps close to Cornelius a Lapide – (…) we will be able to say to him: ‘Thank you very much for giving us, already on Earth, an idea of this’.”
By Paulo Francisco Martos
With Files From Notions of Church History
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
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