Achille Gagliardi and the Northern Mystics

chapter 4 Achille Gagliardi and the Northern Mystics

Rob Faesen, S.J.

This contribution begins by briefly presenting the life and works of Achille Gagliardi (1537–1607). It then focuses on his Breve compendio di perfezione cristiana (Short compendium of Christian perfection), a brief text published anonymously (first in French translation in 1596, and then in Italian in 1611), and the most interesting of all his works owing to its complex history. In 1937, it was attributed to Isabella Berinzaga (d.1624), but it is now considered to be the work of Gagliardi, albeit inspired by his contacts with Berinzaga. Although the text was widely published and translated, even into Arabic, and was thus profoundly influential (e.g., on Pierre de Bérulle [1575–1629]), its orthodoxy was not always beyond dispute. The central themes are clearly connected to the mystics of northern Europe, such as Marguerite Porete (c.1250–1310) and John of Ruusbroec (1293–1381). These themes were transmitted across Europe by the popular Institutiones Taulerianae, which contains much material from the northern authors under the “umbrella” of John Tauler (c.1300–61).

1 Achille Gagliardi’s Life and Works1

Achille Gagliardi was born in Padua in 1537 (or 1538), the eldest son of Ludovico Gagliardi, a nobleman of Padua who died at the age of twenty-eight, and Girolama Camplongo (d.1558).2 He entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on September 29, 1559. Some years earlier, he had befriended Antonio Posse- vino (1533–1611), who likewise entered the order. Two of his younger brothers, Leonetto (d.1564) and Ludovico (d.1608), also became Jesuits. He studied at the Collegio Romano – where he was a fellow student of Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) – and later took up a teaching position at the same institution,

1 The most comprehensive and best-documented biographical overviews are: Giampiero Brunelli, “Gagliardi, Achille,” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 51 (1998): 258–264, and Igna- cio Iparraguirre and André Derville “Gagliardi (Achille),” Dictionnaire de spiritualité 6 (1965): 53–64. This brief overview summarizes both biographies. 2 See Mario Scaduto, L’epoca di Giacomo Laínez: Il governo 1556–1565, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia 3 (Rome: Edizioni La Civiltà Cattolica, 1964), 290.

Achille Gagliardi And The Northern Mystics 83 between 1563 and 1568, where he consecutively taught ethics, logic, physics, metaphysics, and dogmatic theology. In 1568, he obtained his doctorate in theology, and later became rector of the college in Turin. After professing his final vows in 1575, he returned to the Collegio Romano to teach theology. While in Rome, he was involved in a polemical debate concerning the works of his confrère Benet Perera (1536–1610). Perera had written many exegetical commentaries, but his Physicorum sive de principiis rerum naturalium libri xv (Fifteen books about physical realities or the principles of natural beings) proved especially controversial because it proposed replacing metaphysics with two sciences: a science about ens ut ens (being as being) and a twofold science about immaterial beings (God and the intelligences, i.e., theology and a scientia intelligentiarum). Although Perera’s ideas were supported by the Jesuit superior general, Everard Mercurian (1514–80), Gagliardi believed that any at- tempt to implement this proposition would have dire consequences because it would require a radical separation of ontology from theology. With the help of another Jesuit exegete at the Collegio Romano, Francisco de Toledo (1532–96), he was able to arrange a meeting to discuss these concerns directly with Pope Gregory xiii (r.1572–85). However, and though Gagliardi also used the meeting to sketch a rather somber view of the general state of the Society under Mercu- rian’s generalate, Gregory ultimately supported the superior general, and Ga- gliardi felt compelled to give an account to Mercurian of his report to the pope. After the election of Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615) as the new superior general in 1581, Gagliardi was appointed to the commission to revise the order’s program of studies (Ratio studiorum). In this capacity, he advocated greater attention to spirituality in the schools, in the tradition of Ignatius. At the re- quest of Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–84), he moved to Milan in 1580. He remained in Milan for fourteen years, a period in which he collaborated closely with Borromeo and served as the superior of the house of professed Jesuits until 1594. During this period in Milan, he became the spiritual director of Isabella Cristina Berinzaga, who had been admitted into the order as a “daughter of the Society.”3 The Breve compendio di perfezione cristiana developed out of the guidance he gave Berinzaga. A group had formed around him that included the

3 In 1579, with permission from Superior General Mercurian, she was accepted by the Portu- guese Jesuit Sebastiano Morais (1535–88) as a “daughter of the Society,” and professed a vow of obedience to the provincial of Lombardy – a highly unusual and exceptional status. See Mario Gioia, Per via di annichilazione: Un inedito testo mistico del ‘500, Aloisiana 25 (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1994), 34–35. Juan Miguel Marín (“A Beguine’s Spectre: Marguerite Porete [†1310], Achille Gagliardi [†1607], and Their Collaboration across