[4] Robert Bellarmine was born in Montepulciano, the son of noble, albeit impoverished, parents, Vincenzo Bellarmino and his wife Cinzia Cervini, who was the sister of Pope Marcellus II.

Here he remained, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to lecture on polemical theology in the new Roman College, now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University.

[5] Thomas Hobbes saw Bellarmine in Rome at a service on All 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".

Unlike the previously mentioned formal injunction (see earlier footnote), this certificate would have allowed Galileo to continue using and teaching the mathematical content of Copernicus's theory as a purely theoretical device for predicting the apparent motions of the planets.

[16][17] 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 Fathers' scriptural exegesis, to which the Council of Trent, in 1546,[18] defined all Catholics must adhere.

In other passages, Bellarmine argued that he did not support the heliocentric model for the lack of evidence of the time ("I will not believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown to me").

[20] According to Pierre Duhem and Karl Popper "in one respect, at least, Bellarmine had shown himself a better scientist than Galileo by disallowing the possibility of a "strict proof" of the earth's motion, on the grounds that an astronomical theory merely "saves the appearances" without necessarily revealing what "really happens.

[22]Robert Bellarmine retired to Sant'Andrea degli Scozzesi, the Jesuit college of Saint Andrew in Rome.

[24] Bellarmine's books bear the stamp of their period; the effort for literary elegance (so-called "maraviglia") had given place to a desire to pile up as much material as possible, to embrace the whole field of human knowledge, and incorporate it into theology.

[a] At Leuven he made extensive studies in the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians, which gave him the material for his book De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (Rome, 1613).

From his research grew Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei (also called Controversiae), first published at Ingolstadt in 1581–1593.

[26]In 1597-98 he published a Catechism in two versions (short [it] and full [it]) which has been translated to 60 languages and was the official teaching of the Catholic Church for centuries.

[30] It raised the profile of both protagonists, King James as a champion of his own restricted Calvinist Protestantism, and Bellarmine for Tridentine Catholicism.

[31] During his retirement, he wrote several short books intended to help ordinary people in their spiritual life: De ascensione mentis in Deum per scalas rerum creatorum opusculum (The Mind's Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things; 1614) which was translated into English as Jacob's Ladder (1638) without acknowledgement by Henry Isaacson [d],[32] The Art of Dying Well (1619) (in Latin, English translation under this title by Edward Coffin),[33] and The Seven Words on the Cross.

His remains, in a cardinal's red robes, are displayed behind glass under a side altar in the Church of Saint Ignatius, the chapel of the Roman College, next to the body of his student Aloysius Gonzaga, as he himself had wished.