Ego sum pastor bonus. Bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.” — John 10:11
I. A bishop for a Church in crisis
When St. Charles Borromeo was born, the Church in much of Europe was in disorder. Germany, Scandinavia and England were being lost to the Protestant revolt. In the lands that remained Catholic, many bishops did not live in their dioceses, many priests could not preach and some could barely read, and many religious houses had forgotten their rule. The Archdiocese of Milan, one of the oldest and greatest sees in the West, the Church of St. Ambrose, had not had a resident archbishop in about eighty years.
The Council of Trent wrote the remedy into law. St. Charles was the man who showed the Church what that law looked like when a bishop actually lived it. He was not a theologian of note, nor a great preacher by nature, nor a founder of a religious order. He was a pastor. For nineteen years he gave everything he had to the people of Milan, and he died worn out at forty-six. The Church has held him up ever since as the model of the reforming bishop, and the bishops of the Catholic world for three centuries afterward learned their office from his example and his decrees.
II. Arona and the house of Borromeo
Charles was born on the second of October, 1538, in the castle of Arona, which stands above the southern shore of Lake Maggiore in Lombardy. He was the second son of Count Gilberto Borromeo and Margherita de’ Medici. The Borromeo were one of the great noble houses of the duchy of Milan, and his mother’s brother, Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici, was a rising churchman in Rome. This was not the Florentine family of the same name, but a Milanese house of lesser rank.
His father was a devout man who heard Mass daily, said the Office, and gave generously to the poor. His mother died when Charles was about nine. As a younger son of a noble family, he was set early on the path of the Church. He received the clerical tonsure at about the age of twelve, and soon afterward his uncle, Giulio Cesare Borromeo, resigned to him the Benedictine abbey of Saints Gratinian and Felinus at Arona, held in commendam. The boy thus became the nominal abbot of a monastery and received its revenues.
Such arrangements were common, and they were one of the abuses that Trent would condemn. The tradition of his life records that the young Charles understood this better than most adults of his class. He is said to have told his father that the revenues of the abbey belonged to the poor and to the Church, and that he would keep only what he needed for his studies. Whether or not the story is exact in its details, his later life shows that he believed it.
He studied civil and canon law at the University of Pavia, and in 1559 he took his doctorate in both laws. He was not thought brilliant. He spoke slowly and with a slight impediment, and some considered him dull. His father had died the year before, and the young man was already managing the family’s affairs.
III. The cardinal-nephew
On Christmas Day, 1559, his uncle was elected Pope and took the name Pius IV. Within weeks Charles was summoned to Rome. On the thirty-first of January, 1560, at the age of twenty-one, he was created a cardinal, and shortly afterward he was named administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan. He was not yet a priest. He became, in effect, the Pope’s secretary of state. Papal correspondence passed through his hands, and he was given the protection of several kingdoms, religious orders, and military orders.
The cardinal-nephew was an old and much-criticised institution, and Charles fulfilled it in the manner expected of him at first. He kept a large household, entertained, and lived as a prince of the Church. He also worked extremely hard. He founded in the Vatican a literary academy, known as the Noctes Vaticanæ, the Vatican Nights, where learned men of the court met to discuss philosophy and letters. Over time, under his influence, its subjects turned more and more to religious questions.
He was not dissolute, and none of the witnesses of his life accuse him of grave sin. But the young cardinal was, by his own later judgment, living a worldly life, absorbed in business and honours, and doing nothing for the Church of Milan, whose revenues he enjoyed and whose people he had never seen.
IV. The death of Federico
In November 1562 his elder brother Federico died suddenly, after a short illness. Federico was the heir of the house of Borromeo, and his death left Charles the head of the family. His relatives, and many at the papal court, expected him to resign his cardinal’s hat, which had not yet bound him by holy orders, and to marry and continue the line. Some urged the Pope to dispense him.
Charles did the opposite. He took his brother’s death as a lesson in the shortness of life and the vanity of worldly hopes. He made a retreat under the direction of the Society of Jesus, and he resolved to give himself entirely to God. He reduced his household, gave up the hunting and the entertainments of his rank, and began a life of severe penance and prayer. In 1563 he was ordained to the priesthood, and on the seventh of December of that year he was consecrated bishop. His motto, written under the arms of his family, was a single word: Humilitas, humility.
The change was not a moment of sentiment. It lasted for the rest of his life. From then on his biographers describe a man who slept little, ate once a day and sparingly, prayed for long hours, and refused every comfort that his rank had once given him.
V. The Council and the Catechism
During these Roman years Charles performed a service to the whole Church. The Council of Trent had been suspended twice. Pius IV resolved to reconvene it, and Charles, as his secretary, worked to bring the bishops back to Trent and keep them there through the difficult last period of 1562 and 1563. He handled the correspondence between the Pope and the papal legates at the Council, and he did much to smooth the conflicts between the parties and the Catholic princes that threatened to break it up again. The Council closed on the fourth of December, 1563.
He also oversaw the work that followed. The Council had decreed that a catechism should be prepared for parish priests, so that they could teach the faith accurately to their people. Charles supervised the commission of theologians who wrote it, and he took care that the Latin was polished by the best humanists of Rome. The Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad parochos, known as the Roman Catechism or the Catechism of the Council of Trent, was published in 1566. For four centuries it served as the standard of Catholic teaching in the pulpits of the world.
He took part too in the beginnings of the reform of the liturgical books, which led under St. Pius V to the Roman Breviary of 1568 and the Roman Missal of 1570. In Milan he would defend with equal energy the ancient Ambrosian rite of his own Church.
VI. The Archbishop comes to Milan
Charles had come to see that a bishop who lived away from his flock could not be the shepherd that the Gospel describes. Trent had commanded bishops to reside in their dioceses and to feed their sheep in person. He asked the Pope’s leave to go to Milan. Pius IV was reluctant to lose his most trusted servant, but at last he consented. Charles made his solemn entry into Milan on the twenty-third of September, 1565, and the following month he held his first provincial council there.
He was soon called back to Rome, for his uncle was dying. Pius IV died in December 1565, and Charles stood at his deathbed. In the conclave that followed he worked for the election of the Dominican Cardinal Michele Ghislieri, a man of strict life, who became St. Pius V. In the spring of 1566 Charles returned to Milan, and from then on, apart from necessary journeys, he never lived anywhere else.
The diocese he took up was enormous. It stretched from the plains of Lombardy into the valleys of the Alps, and as metropolitan he had oversight of fifteen suffragan sees. Its clergy were in many places ignorant and lax. Some priests lived openly with women. Some did not know the form of absolution. Churches were neglected, the sacraments were carelessly administered, and religious houses had grown worldly.
He set about the reform with an almost frightening thoroughness.
Councils and synods. He held six provincial councils and eleven diocesan synods. Their decrees applied the Council of Trent to every detail of the life of the Church, from the training of priests to the furnishing of altars. They were collected as the Acta Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis, the Acts of the Church of Milan, and for centuries bishops all over the Catholic world used them as a handbook.
Seminaries. Trent had commanded every diocese to found a seminary. Charles founded several: a major seminary in Milan, others for the training of rural clergy, and in 1579 the Helvetic College, for priests who would serve the Catholics of Switzerland. He entrusted some of them to the Jesuits and later to the Oblates of St. Ambrose, a congregation of secular priests he founded in 1578, who placed themselves entirely at the disposal of their bishop.
Visitation. He visited every parish of his diocese, many of them more than once, including villages high in the Alps that no archbishop had seen in living memory. He travelled on foot or by mule over mountain paths, in all weathers, examined the clergy, inspected the churches, preached, confirmed, and heard confessions.
Catechesis. He organised the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine throughout the diocese, so that every Sunday children and unlettered adults were taught the catechism in their parish churches. The Sunday school of the Catholic world owes much to him.
Worship. He wrote detailed instructions on the building and furnishing of churches, the Instructiones fabricæ et supellectilis ecclesiasticæ of 1577, so that the house of God would be worthy of the Holy Sacrifice. He introduced the closed confessional, with a grille between priest and penitent, which became the norm of the Latin Church.
Charity. He founded hospitals, refuges for poor women and girls in danger, and houses for the sick. He sold the principality of Oria, which had come to him from his family, and the tradition of his life holds that he gave the whole price to the poor in a single day.
VII. Reform and resistance
A reform of this kind made enemies, and Charles had many.
The Humiliati. The worst of his enemies came from within the Church. The Humiliati were an old religious order of Lombardy that had fallen into great laxity. They were few in number, and wealthy. Charles, with the authority of the Pope, attempted to reform them. Some of the brethren resolved to kill him. On the evening of the twenty-sixth of October, 1569, while the Archbishop was kneeling at prayer with his household in his chapel, one of them, a friar named Girolamo Donato, called Farina, fired an arquebus at him from a few paces. The household were singing a motet at the time, and the tradition of the event records that they had just reached the words Non turbetur cor vestrum, “Let not your heart be troubled.” The ball struck him in the back and fell to the floor, leaving only a bruise. Charles told his household to keep praying and finished his prayers before he would let anyone examine him. The would-be assassin and his accomplices were later caught and executed, though Charles is said to have asked that they be spared. Pius V suppressed the order of the Humiliati in 1571.
The civil power. Milan was then ruled by the King of Spain through a governor, and Charles came into repeated conflict with the Spanish authorities over the rights and jurisdiction of the Church. The disputes were bitter. At various times the Archbishop excommunicated officials of the government, and the governors in turn complained of him to Rome and to Madrid. Charles was not a diplomat by temperament. He believed that the liberty of the Church was part of the charge he had received, and he would not give it up for the sake of peace.
The clergy and the people. His own clergy were not always grateful. Canons of a collegiate church once barred their doors against him and fired on his cross-bearer when he came to visit them. Many nobles of Milan resented his restrictions on Carnival and on public amusements. He was called rigid, and in some things he was. But even his critics could not accuse him of asking more of others than he asked of himself.
The Swiss valleys. In 1583, as apostolic visitor, he made a visitation of the Swiss valleys bordering his diocese, where Catholic faith had grown weak and Protestantism had made inroads. In the Mesolcina valley his visitation was followed by trials for witchcraft, in which a number of men and women were condemned and burned by the civil authorities, and the provost of the valley was degraded from his office. The episode should not be passed over. It belongs to a period in which all of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, believed that witchcraft was a real crime that the state should punish with death, and historians differ on how far the Archbishop himself directed the proceedings. But it is a part of his life, and the Church does not need to hide it. She did not canonise the opinions of his age. She canonised his heroic charity and his faithfulness to his flock.
VIII. The plague of St. Charles
The great trial of his episcopate came in the summer of 1576. Plague broke out in Milan and spread through the city for the better part of two years. The Spanish governor and many of the nobility left. Charles was at Lodi when the news reached him, and he returned at once.
He organised the care of the sick. He visited the plague-houses and the lazaretto outside the walls, where thousands of the sick were crowded together, and he brought the sacraments to the dying with his own hands. He made his clergy stay at their posts, and he recruited religious from other places to serve. When the city’s resources were exhausted, he spent his own. He sold his plate and his furniture, gave away what remained of his family’s goods, and went into debt to feed the poor. The tradition of Milan holds that he had the hangings of his palace cut up to make clothes for those who had nothing. In the months of the quarantine, when the people were shut in their houses, he had altars set up at the crossroads of the city so that they could hear Mass from their windows.
He also called the people to penance, as a bishop of the old Law would have done in a time of wrath. He led processions through the streets barefoot, a rope around his neck, carrying in his hands the relic of the Holy Nail preserved in the cathedral of Milan, and offering himself to God as a victim for his people. The Milanese have called that epidemic ever since la peste di San Carlo, the plague of St. Charles. He stood between the dead and the living, as Aaron did with his censer in the desert (Num. 16:48), until the plague ceased.
During the plague he made a vow that if the city were delivered he would go on pilgrimage to venerate the Holy Shroud, which was then kept at Chambéry. In 1578 the Duke of Savoy had the Shroud brought to Turin, partly to shorten the journey for him, and Charles walked there from Milan on foot to fulfil his vow.
IX. Prayer, penance, and the man
Behind the work of the reformer was a life of prayer that his household found almost alarming. He rose before dawn and prayed for hours. He made frequent retreats. He confessed daily, and he said Mass with great care and recollection. He kept the fasts of the Church strictly and added many of his own. In his last years he lived on bread and water and a few vegetables, and on many nights he slept on boards, or did not sleep at all. When his friends protested that he was destroying his health, he answered, in substance, that a bishop who cared too much for his own health could never be a good shepherd.
He had a special love for the Passion of Christ, and he went often to the Sacro Monte of Varallo, in the foothills of the Alps, where a series of chapels presented the mysteries of the life and Passion of Our Lord. He made his last retreat there in October 1584.
He was not a cold man, though he was a stern one. He loved his friends and kept them. He was close to St. Philip Neri in Rome, who admired him and whom he admired in return, though the two men were very different in temperament. He was patient with the poor and gentle with penitents. His household, which he had reformed along with everything else, served him for years and loved him.
He also held himself to the standard he preached. He told his priests at one of his synods, in substance, that the first sermon of a pastor is his own life. A priest who has the care of souls, he said, must not neglect his own soul. He must pray before he preaches, and prepare himself before he offers the sacraments. If a spark of the love of God has been lit in him, he must not let it be blown out.
X. Death and cultus
After his retreat at Varallo, Charles travelled to Ascona on Lake Maggiore to arrange the foundation of a college there. He fell ill with a fever on the journey. He was carried back to Milan, where he arrived on the second of November, the day of All Souls. He knew that he was dying. He received the last sacraments, asked to be laid on sackcloth and ashes, and fixed his eyes on a picture of Christ in the garden and another of Christ laid in the tomb. He died on the night of the third of November, 1584. The tradition of his death records his last words as Ecce venio, “Behold, I come.”
Milan mourned him as a father. The people at once began to venerate him as a saint, and the process of his canonisation moved with unusual speed. Paul V canonised him on the first of November, 1610, twenty-six years after his death, and his feast was fixed on the fourth of November. His nephew, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who succeeded him as Archbishop of Milan, carried on his work.
His body lies in the crypt beneath the high altar of the cathedral of Milan, in a chapel known as the Scurolo. At Arona, above the castle where he was born, the people of Lombardy raised in the seventeenth century a colossal statue of him in copper and bronze, the Sancarlone, which still looks out over the lake.
In the 1962 calendar his feast is a feast of the third class. The Mass is the Common of a Confessor Bishop, Statuit, with its own Collect, which asks that as his pastoral care made him glorious, so his intercession may make us always fervent in the love of God. He is the patron of bishops, catechists, and seminarians, and of the many seminaries and colleges that bear his name.
XI. What his life teaches
That conversion can begin late and go far. Charles was a worldly young cardinal who held the revenues of a diocese he had never seen. A death in his family turned him. The Church does not demand that a saint begin as a saint. She asks only that he answer when he is called, and keep answering. Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2).
That the shepherd belongs with his sheep. Trent’s law of residence was not a technicality. It was the Gospel of the Good Shepherd turned into a canon. Charles lived it, and in the plague he lived it to the point of risking his life. The hireling… seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and flieth… I am the good shepherd (John 10:12, 14).
That reform begins with oneself. No one in Milan worked harder to reform others, and no one was harder on himself. His reform had authority because it began in his own life. I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway (1 Cor. 9:27).
That the worship of God comes first. Charles reformed seminaries, hospitals and schools, but he started at the altar. He believed that a Church that worships God carelessly will not long teach or serve Him well.
That gifts are given to be spent. He received every advantage of birth, wealth and office, and he gave all of them away in the service of his flock. The Gospel of his feast is the parable of the talents. He brought his Lord five talents more.
Practice
Examine. Is there a responsibility God has given me, at home, at work, in my parish, that I hold in name but neglect in fact, as Charles once held Milan? Do I ask more of others than I ask of myself? When I am corrected or opposed in doing what is right, do I give way for the sake of comfort, or persevere with patience? Has my care for others made me neglect my own prayer?
Do. Take up one duty you have let others carry for you, and fulfil it in person this week. Learn, or teach a child, one section of the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Make a good confession, and prepare for it with care. Pray for your own bishop by name today, and for the priests and seminarians of your diocese.
Pray. The Collect of the feast:
Ecclesiam tuam, Domine, sancti Caroli Confessoris tui atque Pontificis continua protectione custodi: ut, sicut illum pastoralis sollicitudo gloriosum reddidit; ita nos eius intercessio in tuo semper faciat amore ferventes. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum.
“Keep Thy Church, O Lord, under the continual protection of Saint Charles, Thy Confessor and Bishop: that as his pastoral solicitude made him glorious, so his intercession may make us ever fervent in Thy love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.”
Aspiration. Humilitas. Or, with the saint at his death: Ecce venio. “Behold, I come.”
Devote. In this month of the holy souls, offer a Mass or a Rosary for the bishops and priests among the faithful departed, who will give the strictest account of their charge. Ask St. Charles to obtain for the Church shepherds who will stay with their flocks, and for yourself the grace to spend your life usefully and to die ready.
If you wish to go deeper: the Lives of the Saints path sets Charles beside the other great bishops of the Catholic Reformation, St. Francis de Sales, St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, and St. Robert Bellarmine, and beside his friend St. Philip Neri and his predecessor in the see of Milan, St. Ambrose. The Church History path treats the Council of Trent, the law of episcopal residence, the founding of seminaries, and the long conflict between the Church and the civil power in Spanish Italy. The Sacred Liturgy path takes up the Ambrosian rite, the Tridentine reform of the Breviary and Missal, and the Common of Confessor Bishops. The Theology and Doctrine path examines the fulness of the priesthood in the episcopate and St. Thomas on the state of perfection of bishops (II-II, q. 184–185).
Sancte Carole, ora pro nobis.
Sources consulted: the Holy Scriptures in the Douay-Rheims version with the Vulgate; the Roman Breviary, lessons of the second nocturn for 4 November; the Roman Martyrology; the Council of Trent, Session XXIII, Decretum de reformatione*, canons 1 and 18;* Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad parochos (Rome, 1566); Acta Ecclesiæ Mediolanensis*; St. Charles Borromeo,* Instructiones fabricæ et supellectilis ecclesiasticæ (1577); the early lives by Carlo Bascapè and Giovanni Pietro Giussano; Butler’s Lives of the Saints*; the Catholic Encyclopedia. His own words are given in paraphrase. The episodes of the abbey revenues, the motet at the attempted assassination, the hangings of the palace, the sale of Oria, and his last words are given as the tradition of his life.*