Borromeo

Borromeo, CARLO, ST, a great churchman and saint of the 16th century, was born 2d October 1538, at his father's castle of Arona, on the Lago Maggiore. He studied law at Pavia, took the degree of doctor in 1559, and next year was appointed in quick succession by his uncle, the new Pope Pius IV. (formerly Cardinal de' Medici), apostolic protonotary, cardinal, and Archbishop of Milan. As a counsellor of the pope the young cardinal showed wisdom beyond his years, did much to bring the Council of Trent to a successful conclusion, and had the principal part in drawing up the famous Catechismus Romanus. The saintly simplicity of his manners, his ardent piety, and his self-forgetful devotion to duty, united to make him the ideal bishop, and have kept his memory green until the present day. But his own severe morality and his determined efforts to maintain ecclesiastical discipline drew upon him the hostility of the monastic orders, and in 1569 a wretch of the order of the Umiliati actually shot at the archbishop as he knelt at prayer in his chapel. Borromeo devoted the greater part of his revenues to the relief of the poor, and during the famine of 1570, and the plague at Milan in 1576, showed such energetic benevolence and fearless devotion as to make his name a proverb throughout Christendom. With a view to provide well-qualified priests for Switzerland, he founded in 1570 the Helvetic College at Milan; and he brought about an alliance of the seven Catholic cantons—the Golden Borromean League—for the united defence of the faith. Exhausted by his labours and his austerities, he died 4th November 1584. He was canonised by Pope Paul V. in 1610. His theological works were published at Milan in 1747, in 5 vols. folio. On the western bank of the Lago Maggiore, in the neighbourhood of his birthplace, is a colossal bronze statue of him. His life has been written by Sailer, Dieringer, Sala, Abbé Sylvain (1884), and Giussano (Eng. trans. with preface by Cardinal Manning, 1884).—His brother's son, Count Frederico Borromeo, born 1562, was also a cardinal, and from 1595 to 1631 Archbishop of Milan, where he founded the Ambrosian Library.