Interview: Eleonora Rai
The Counter-Reformation Jesuit Theologian Leonard Lessius, on Free Will and Predestination
This week the newsletter features an interview with Dr. Eleonora Rai, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Turin (Italy). We talked about Dr. Rai’s research on sixteenth and seventeenth-century Jesuit theologian Leonard Lessius, a pivotal figure from that period who is nevertheless not well known. We talked about Lessius’s views on free will and predestination and his role in two major theological controversies of the time. We also discussed Dr. Rai’s more recent research on Lessius’s economic views, as well as Lessius’s cause for canonization. The interview is engaging from beginning to end, so give it a listen or read.
You can listen to the interview by clicking on the audio file below. The interview is about the length of a typical podcast, and you should be able to listen on your computer or phone. A full transcript of the interview is also published below for your reading convenience, along with some links and notes not available in the audio. (The transcript may be cut off in your email, but you should be able to click where it says “View entire message” to see the rest of the transcript.)
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MATTHEW SHADLE: Hello, this is Matthew Shadle, and I'm with Eleonora Rai, and it's my pleasure to talk to her about her research on the sixteenth and seventeenth-century theologian Leonard Lessius. So, Eleonora is an assistant professor at the University of Turin, and also a research fellow at KU Leuven. And also, you told me in an email that you've done some traveling as a fellow. So, you've been to some different countries. So, where all have you been?
ELEONORA RAI: Yes, hi, Matthew, and thank you very much for having me here. Yes, I did some traveling, research traveling. I even went to Australia, which is an amazing continent, by the way. So, I worked in the Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions in Melbourne and Perth. And then, after my experience Down Under, I went back to Europe, and I started to work in Belgium at the KU Leuven. And now I went back again to Italy, in Turin.
SHADLE: Okay. And then also during your doctoral studies, it looks like you studied for a little bit in Paris?
RAI: Yes, yes, indeed, I got a sort of double Ph.D. . . .
SHADLE: Oh, wow.
RAI: With a cotutelle1 program between the University of Milan in Italy and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, where, actually, I first met with some theological issues which I continued to study. Yes. So, France during my Ph.D., and then Down Under, and back to Europe.
SHADLE: Yeah, I was especially curious about Australia.
RAI: In what respect?
SHADLE: Just that . . . Like you said, it must have been a pretty amazing experience, but also took you pretty far from home.
RAI: Yes, it was an amazing experience for me, not only from the academic research point of view. They have a very lively . . . well, academia, let’s say, I know, of course, the humanities area, they are very, very active, and that the environment is lively. And they do have this amazing field of the history of emotions, which is not very known, I would say, on the Old Continent, even if there are places, faculties, in which the history of emotions is being developed, and has been developed in the last years. So . . . But it was at least pretty new to me, and it opened my mind, really. And it was amazing, also, from a personal perspective. I feel like I grew a lot in Australia. I lived in Melbourne for many years . . . well, some years. Well, it’s a sort of melting pot city, so, you know, you face different cultures and traditions, and you meet tons of people from everywhere, really, in the world. So, you . . . I personally learned to appreciate every kind of culture and perspective. I got to know different kinds of culture and got many, many friends, really, from all over the world. And this meant a lot to me from a personal point of view.
SHADLE: Okay, is there anything else that you think listeners or readers should know about yourself?
RAI: About myself? Well, that I am very passionate about what I do, and that I always try to, you know, to shed light on the connections between today's society and the historical events I study, and also to historicize what I study. So, that is to say, you know, to retrace the origins and the development of historical phenomena for a better understanding of the world where we live. So, I do believe that it's important to know about me the reason for which I do what I do. I am a historian, an early modern historian, specialized in various aspects of the history of the Catholic Church and Christianity in the early modern age. But that's the reason for which I do what I do, to better understand what is our society today, and how certain phenomena originated and developed in the course of that history.
SHADLE: Okay, very good. So, I should also mention that Eleonora has a book that will be coming out sometime soon, either this year or next year, titled Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door: The Power of Free Will and the Price of Sanctity: Leonard Lessius. Okay, so let's go ahead and talk about Lessius. And so, who was he, and how did you become interested in him?
RAI: Well, I would say that Lessius is an old friend of mine.
*Laughter*
RAI: Sometimes, you know, Matthew, I feel like I married the guy, and I'm not sure it is always a happy marriage, because I spent too much time with him, I feel now. But anyway, there is no unique way to describe Lessius because he was a very complex, and very articulated, fellow, let's say. He was an early modern Jesuit, a theologian, a moralist, a jurist, an expert in moral economy and soteriology, that is to say, the discourse about the salvation of the soul, but also a Counter-Reformation author. And he was really, really complex. He was versatile.
He spent his life in the Spanish Low Countries. He was born in Brecht in 1554, and he died in Leuven, not far from where I worked for three years, in 1623. And he taught philosophy in Douai, and then theology in Leuven at the Jesuit College,2 and this is very important. In the Jesuit College, he taught a theology of salvation, which was very, very open to the role of free will and human agency face to face with the idea of the divine predestination of humankind. And for such a bold teaching, he was very severely criticized, and even charged with heresy by the theologians of the University of Leuven, who were strict Augustinian theologians. And you know, Leuven, the University of Leuven, at that time was one of the major pillars of Catholic theological production in the early modern age. So, it was kind of a big deal to be attacked as a heretic by those theologians.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: But Lessius was, on the other hand, venerated by the early modern Jesuits in the Spanish Low Countries, and especially in Leuven, as a holy man, and even an attempt to open a cause for canonization was made due to the account of many, many miracles—healings—attributed to him. They said that miracles were happening on a regular basis on his tomb.
How did I meet him? Well, I began my adventure with Lessius during my Ph.D., when I committed to study one of Lessius’s treatises. He wrote many treatises, he really wrote a lot of things. And that treatise, in particular, was the Antichristo, which is an anti-Protestant pamphlet.
SHADLE: Oh, wow.
RAI: Yeah, it was written . . . The title is catchy, right? The Antichristo, it was written by Lessius in defense of the pope, who at that time was accused of being the Antichrist by the Protestants. But, after only, I would say, a few weeks of archival research in Rome, I did realize that Lessius was more than a specific treatise, he was really involved in so many key aspects of early modern Catholic doctrine, and ethics, also, that I decided that the man deserved to be fully understood as a key actor of the early modern theological panorama, not only as a Counter-Reformation author. And I did write my Ph.D. thesis on Lessius, not on the Antichristo, but on Lessius, with a . . . I tried at least, with a comprehensive approach.
And yeah, and then we had a break, as it often happens with love stories. So, I decided to hang out with other historical figures.
*Laughter*
RAI: And then we got back together when I moved to Leuven, with a project on the early modern theological disputes in 2019. And that's how we met.
SHADLE: Okay, very good. Also, let me add something. So, I always think the historical context is really important. So, you mentioned that he's from the Spanish Low Countries, which today would be Belgium and the Netherlands, but at the time were controlled by Spain. And actually, what's happening during his lifetime is that there's a war. There’s, you know, in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, there's a war where the northern part, which today is the Netherlands, is breaking away because it's more Protestant dominated. And so that's always in the background of his work, is that his home country is experiencing this.
But also, it's important that at that time, Spain has really become not just the political center of things, but also the center for, you know, top-notch theology. So, the best theologians are in Spain, and also in Rome. And so Lessius is kind of out in the peripheries. And so, as we'll see as we carry on the conversation, he kind of has to consult with people in Rome to deal with the issues that he's writing about, because he's out there in the peripheries.
So, you already started talking about this a little bit, and so in your writing, you really emphasize that in his theological career, there's these two major controversies, and so we'll take them one at a time. And so the first one is the one you mentioned, the dispute with the professors at Leuven, or we would say in English, Louvain. So, it involved this figure named Michael Baius, or sometimes written as Michel Bay, but also the entire faculty. So, first of all, who was Michael Baius?
RAI: Yes, just before going to Baius, I want to thank you for, you know, the historical context. I just want to add that the faculty of theology in Leuven was a very important center of theological production, like the Sorbonne in France. So, it was a periphery, it's true, but the Spanish Low Countries did produce important theological work . . .
SHADLE: Okay, fair!
RAI: . . . and some of this work had been also condemned by the Church. Think of Jansenius, for example, or Michael Baius.
SHADLE: Right, right, right. That's true that it does end up being important, but maybe not for the best reasons.
RAI: Yeah, of course, of course. It's just, I think, a matter of perspective. And indeed, one of the things that I've tried to stress is that a man—and I recently used that expression—a man that seems to come from the periphery, was actually a major contributor of the theological panorama in early modern Europe.
SHADLE: Sure.
RAI: But thank you, thank you very much, because it's important to understand also these connections between center and peripheries. You were right, you said that they had to deal with Rome, and that was one of the problems for both Baius and Lessius.
Well, who was Baius and how he was involved with Lessius. I think it's a tricky question, in the sense that we do not know for sure about the role of Michael Baius in the so-called Leuven disputes in which Lessius was involved. Well, Baius was a theologian, a professor of theology at the University of Leuven, and he even became a chancellor at the university. He was a name in the theological panorama. Some historians, some maintain that he was the real man behind the scenes, the director of the play, when Lessius was charged with heresy. Others actually think that he did not take part in the controversy at all. The dispute, it exploded in 1587, and it's true, at the time, Baius was an old man. He would die only two years later, in 1589. And he was born in 1513.
What was the problem? Well, the problem was that in Leuven, at the university, Baius had propounded a very pessimistic, anthropologically speaking, doctrine on human nature, according to which, after the Fall, after the original sin of Adam and Eve, human nature had been corrupted and remained unable to use free will in a positive way, to do the good.3 So, seventy-nine propositions taken from Baius’s teachings were condemned by the pope, by Pius V, with the bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus in 1567, so twenty years before the Leuven dispute, although Baius was not mentioned in the bull, only his teachings. So, the Leuven controversies revolved around the very question: What does save a human being’s soul? So how can, to quote Bob Dylan, as I do in the title of my book you mentioned earlier, how can human beings knock on Heaven's door and get St. Peter to open the gate? So, what does save a human being’s soul, taking into account all the theological elements that create what I usually call the cocktail of salvation, that is to say, God's predestination, God’s grace, God’s foreknowledge of human good deeds and human merit, and human free will, which is a gift from God?
So, Lessius, in the Jesuit College, taught a doctrine which seemed to deprive God of His power, of His sovereign authority. Even the fact that our Jesuit claimed that God predestined those to be certainly saved based on His foreknowledge of how human beings would react to his offering of grace, that is to say, on how human beings would use their free will and consequently, accumulate merit, or not. On the other hand, the theologians of the university propounded the doctrine based on the so-called “second Augustine”,4 that is to say, the doctrine taught by St. Augustine after the dispute on grace and free will with the monk Pelagius. And the professors of the faculty charged Lessius basically with being a Pelagian, that is to say, to attribute to free will a huge power in the economy of salvation, face to face to God’s predestination and grace. So, in other words, they accused him to put too much power in humans’ hands. And, by the way, Lessius accused them of being crypto-Calvinists, of course.
So, Lessius immediately denounced that the real author of the censorship that he received from the university was indeed Michael Baius, although we do not have, actually, any proof of that. But we do know that Lessius’s accusations towards Baius triggered concern within the high echelons of the Society of Jesus, especially in Robert Bellarmine, who was a major figure in the Counter-Reformation panorama. And I remember a letter signed by Robert Bellarmine, who, facing the hypothesis that Baius’s doctrine was still taught at the University of Leuven, wrote “Utinam non sit!”, that is to say, “Heaven forbid that!”, because that was aproblem, the teaching by Baius had been condemned by the Church. But, according to the Jesuits of the College, the same doctrine was still being taught at the University of Leuven. And, that is to say, that the accusation by the Jesuits was that the theologians of the faculty of theology at the University of Leuven, a pillar of Catholic theology in the Counter-Reformation period, were still following Michael Baius. Baius had friends, enemies, and, you know, people who opposed him or who supported him over the years, of course. So, it's not all black or white.
SHADLE: Yeah, I thought that was one of the most interesting points you raised in your articles, that there's this . . . there's often this misperception that . . . The faculty members at Leuven were just Augustinians and Thomists who have a pretty strong view of predestination, but they were often portrayed as followers of Baius.5 But you're also saying that Lessius, whether knowingly or not, you know, thought that they were all being led by Baius, or were followers of Baius, and that he used that as part of his appeal to Bellarmine, that he was being attacked by these followers of Baius. So, sorry to interrupt you there.
RAI: No, no, no, but I was actually going to finish there.
SHADLE: Okay!
RAI: You raise an interesting point. I think that reality is always more nuanced than represented. It’s easier to think through categories, you know. Okay, “the Jesuit theologians are all Thomists, they all propound not Augustinian theology,” on the one hand, and “the theologians of the faculty of theology at the University of Leuven are all strict Augustinians, that means following Baius.” It's not true. It's not true that all Jesuits were probabilists, or propounded a doctrine such as the one promoted by Lessius, or Molina, who are . . . Luis de Molina, the Spanish theologian. Lessius and Molina are always thought as propounding the same theology. I don't think so.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: And in the same way, we cannot say that all the theologians in Leuven followed the same exact doctrine, and I'm sure that . . . although maybe protecting Baius, who was their colleague, and during the controversy he was old, and whatever. But I'm sure that not all of them followed him. And, by the way, by the way, his teaching had been condemned.
SHADLE: Right, right.
RAI: So . . . even for a matter of strategy, I’m sure that they weren’t defending Baius’s doctrine. And you can also see differences between the theology propounded by them and the theology of Baius.
SHADLE: So, and also just to summarize . . . So, what they were criticizing about Lessius, is that rather than following Augustine, and saying that God has foreordained a group who are the Elect, you know, completely through God's sovereignty, with no, you know, no input from their free decisions, Lessius argues that God offers His grace to everyone, and that some people accept it, and some people will reject it, and that God foresees who will accept it. And so those are the Elect, but it's based on who God foresees will use their free will to accept grace. And so, from that Augustinian and Thomist view, they see that as Pelagian. Now, I would disagree with that, but that’s how they see it from their perspective. And that’s why they accuse him of heresy.
RAI: The problems were, I think, two. The first one is the so-called ex meritis praevisis6 doctrine by Lessius. That means that God predestines somebody to, technically speaking, to glory, so to be saved, after and because of what He foresees. And yes, God, according to Lessius, provides his grace to everybody. And this is the second problem. Lessius says that He provides His grace to everybody in equal measure.
SHADLE: Right.
RAI: So, there is no difference between the grace provided by God to those who are certainly to be saved, and to the others. And this is a huge problem, because what does make a difference then? And Lessius answers: free will. The only element that makes a difference is free will, is the way in which human beings reply to God's offering of grace. He even dares to say that God’s grace remains passive until the very moment in which using well one’s free will, a man or a woman answers “Yes” to God. And from that moment, God's grace becomes efficacious, or efficient.
SHADLE: Right, right.
RAI: So, in this way, this kind of doctrine is not Pelagian, I think, because Pelagius actually said that the process of salvation could start without God's grace, by means only of the free will. But it's tricky, because if you think about it, yes, Lessius says that human beings need God's grace, but he also says that it's passive, and it needs to be activated by human free will. So, from a formal point of view, he saves himself. I believe that formally, he cannot be accused of being a Pelagian. But the substance? Hmm, I’m not really sure about that.
SHADLE: Or another way to put it . . . and I was going to bring this up later. But another way to put it is: Can you say that the human being, the human choice, is . . . does it cause something? Does it change God's will? That's really going to be the concern for Bellarmine and for Francisco Suarez, is . . . By saying that free will, like you said, it's the free will that activates it. That seems to say that, somehow, we can cause something in God, can cause God to save us. And so, they're going to . . . That's, I think . . . that's ultimately what they're going to find is the problem with Lessius’s view. So, yeah. But that's just a different way of saying what you were saying.
RAI: Yeah, it can be. I do believe that another problem was that in Lessius’s system, there is no clear difference between predestination and foreknowledge.
SHADLE: Right.
RAI: And indeed, some Jesuits—because Lessius was highly criticized also within the Society of Jesus—some Jesuits, for example, Robert Bellarmine, explicitly wrote him, “This is not predestination. This is foreknowledge, and it's something different.” Predestination is the way through which God proves His power over humankind. When Lessius says that God basically bends over what he foresees, he deprives Him of some power.
SHADLE: Mm hmm.
RAI: So, I think that was the problem. And yes, it's to say what you said in another way. It's like putting in human hands a power that, not only strict Augustinian theologians, but also mainstream theologians, wouldn’t put. Absolutely.
SHADLE: Yeah, okay. So, we've already started talking about it. So, the second controversy in Lessius’s life is the de auxiliis7 controversy, and he's not one of the main figures. So, you have . . . you already mentioned Luis de Molina on the Jesuit side, and then, on the Dominican side, you have Domingo Bañez. And so Lessius is maybe not as important as them, but he becomes part of that controversy, too. So, tell us about that.
RAI: Well, it's another tricky question, actually.
*Laughter*
RAI: If you ask me what kind of role Lessius had in the controversy de auxiliis, then I would answer, none.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: Lessius did not contribute, in a practical way, to the controversy. You already remembered it, but anyway, during this dispute, two theological systems clashed against each other: the Jesuits, with de Molina, and the Dominicans . . . who was a Jesuit, a Spanish Jesuit . . . and the Dominican, Domingo Bañez. And the pope himself gathered a congregation to solve the dispute, the so-called Congregation De Auxiliis Divinae Gratiae, that is to say, on the help, on the aids provided by God through His grace. But at the end, no condemnation was issued, and both theological schools were actually allowed to exist within the borders of Catholic orthodoxy. I always have the feeling that at that time, the Church was actually scared to have new divisions within Christianity after the Protestant schism.
SHADLE: Oh, yeah.
RAI: So, they tried to avoid condemnation.
SHADLE: Yeah, yeah. That’s absolutely right. Yeah.
RAI: So, they tried to be tolerant somehow, until, of course, up to certain limits. But what is of the utmost interest, nonetheless, is, I think, the connection between the dispute de auxiliis and the Leuven controversy, so, the controversy between Lessius and the theologians of the University of Leuven, a connection that has been even highlighted by the inquisitors who put together a dossier on the dispute between Molina and Bañez in the early seventeenth century, which I had a chance to read in the archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in Vatican City. So, the inquisitors say . . . open the dossier by saying, “This is a dossier on the Congregation De Auxiliis, on the dispute between Molina and Bañez, and it is a direct consequence, or anyway, there is a direct connection with, the controversy in Leuven.”
Why? Well, because Molina's doctrine reminded of Lessius’s doctrine, and Bañez’s doctrine reminded of the theology thought by the professors of the University of Leuven. Molina stressed the value of free will and God’s foreknowledge, Bañez that of predestination and grace. And Lessius himself identified his very criticized teaching with that of Molina, as it was described in Molina’s masterpiece, the Concordia. Although I do believe that Lessius simply attempted to defend himself, identifying his own doctrine with that of Molina. It's like he tried to say, “Hey, you know, the pope did not condemn Molina during the controversy de auxiliis, so why should my doctrine be considered heterodox?”
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: I really read this tone in Lessius’s letters. He has an important exchange, especially, with Robert Bellarmine. And he really says that many times: “Why are you not happy with my theology, but you defended that of Molina?” That's an interesting point, I think.
SHADLE: Yeah, because there were some similarities . . . that they both used, they both talked about predestination in terms of foreknowledge, right? And you mentioned in an article that, even in later historiography, Lessius has been associated as a Molinist, but you’re saying that’s not really accurate.
RAI: Which I don't . . . Which I don't agree to. They do have common points, of course. But I think that, once again, the reality is more nuanced, and that Lessius was more radical than Molina in saying that, as we were saying before, that the only element that makes a difference in the process of salvation of the soul is human free will, so that every human being receives the exact same grace by God. And those who are predestined to be certainly saved do not receive any additional grace. And even that God's grace, as I was saying, it remains passive until human beings, using their free will, answer “Yes” to God’s offering of grace. But Molina's doctrine is much more complicated. So, Molina developed a very detailed and elaborated doctrine, which takes into account what he calls “God’s counterfactual knowledge,” that is to say, God’s understanding of all possible contingent futures, and of any consequences of these different futures. So, God knows about these possible scenarios when they have not been actualized yet, through his so-called, famous “middle knowledge.”
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: And then, only then, only after God sees all possible future scenarios, He decides to actualize one of these futures. So, God then knows and foresees all the counterfactual possibilities, especially the circumstances in which human beings can accept divine grace. And he then decides which future contingent to actualize and offers His grace, in a congruist way,8 so that, in those circumstances, that grace is irresistible. So, that is to say, human beings cannot deny His grace, cannot say “No.” And I think this is how Molina saved himself. You know, Jesuit General Acquaviva, Claudio Acquaviva, complained that Lessius was more undefendable than Molina. And this is precisely because, for Lessius, grace can be resisted, and even does not work at all without free consent. So, you can see the difference in these two theological systems.
SHADLE: So yeah, I thought that was a really . . . to me, that was a fascinating point, that while Molina and Lessius basically agree about the relationship between grace and free will, and God’s foreknowledge, like you said, Molina has this system of middle knowledge, where God foresees all the possible worlds and chooses one possibility, and therefore, in another sense, has kind of predetermined who will be saved, and who will not, by choosing that specific world versus another possible world.
RAI: Exactly.
SHADLE: What was interesting to me was how you pointed out that, for Bellarmine, that was enough for him to . . . Okay, so Molina has emphasized God's sovereignty sufficiently through this theory of middle knowledge, whereas Lessius, because he simply says God offers grace to everyone, and through our free will, we make it efficacious, that . . . that is, like you said, it's more radical, even though on the surface it seems the same. It's more radical because it doesn't emphasize God's sovereign role in choosing the Elect.
RAI: Yes.
SHADLE: Like we were saying a few minutes ago, that Lessius leaves it up to free will, and so Bellarmine, and later Suarez, have a problem with that, whereas they're okay with Molina.
RAI: Robert Bellarmine was a politician. He was a strategic man. He was a theologian, of course, but he was also a politician. So, follow my reasoning. During the Leuven dispute in the 1580s, soon after being charged with Pelagianism, Lessius wrote to Bellarmine because the two were friends, and Bellarmine had been, also, his master at the Collegio Romano, the Roman College, where Lessius went . . . pardon me, where Lessius went to study for one year in his youth. So, he immediately contacted Bellarmine, saying, “Oh, look, they are charging me with heresy.” And he sincerely asks Bellamine what he thinks. And Bellarmine defends Lessius. In the 1580s, he defended Lessius against the accusations of the University of Leuven. Why? Esprit de corps, as the French would say?
*Laughter*
RAI: He needed to defend the Society of Jesus. You have to think back. At that time in Leuven, the Jesuit educational system was clashing with that of the University of Leuven. They started to teach Thomas Aquinas instead of Peter Lombard, and so on. So, there were two different, not only theological systems per se, but two different theological teachings, and I mean teaching for the students. So, they were raising . . . the Jesuits were starting to raise students with other theological mentalities.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: Then the years pass. Okay. Time passes. And here it comes, the Congregation De Auxiliis. Robert Bellarmine defends the teaching by Molina during the de auxiliis. Once again, it was very important to defend the order, because actually the Dominicans were attacking the Society of Jesus. And vice versa, I'm sure. But anyway, Bellarmine became the defensor of the Society of Jesus. He didn't agree with Molina's theological perspective. But I think he chose the lesser sin. And he did it, also, for these strategic reasons.
And then something changes. The years pass again, and Lessius commits a mistake. Notwithstanding the prohibition of publishing theological works on grace issued by the pope at the end of the controversy de auxiliis, Lessius publishes—and he was a very bold man—he publishes his treatise De Gratia Efficaci in 1610. And did that without asking permission through the General, which was what he should have done. So, the treatise, in which, by the way, Lessius also talks about prescientia conditionata,9 which is something close to middle knowledge, to Molina’s middle knowledge.
SHADLE: Okay.
RAI: The treatise has been published, and Lessius justified himself, by saying, “Well, Molina has not been condemned. Why shouldn't I publish this treatise where I basically repeat what Molina taught, and the teachings were defended by Bellarmine during the de auxiliis.” But Bellarmine, at that time . . . so, we are about twenty-five years after the Leuven disputes, in which Bellarmine had defended Lessius . . .
At that moment, Bellarmine changed his mind, he turned his back to his old friend. Why? Because in those years, when Lessius published, in 1609, the treatise De Gratia Efficaci, there were no strategic reasons to defend Lessius again. It was almost the opposite. So, the Jesuits went out from the Congregation De Auxiliis without being condemned in any way. The publication by Lessius could actually raise new problems to the Society of Jesus.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: So, after twenty-five years, and again, even if from another perspective, another point of view, for strategic reasons, Bellarmine decided to attack Lessius’s theology. And Lessius was honestly, I think . . . I read the correspondence . . . was honestly shocked, because he couldn't understand why Bellarmine changed his mind in such a radical way. But I do understand it, very well. When Lessius published his work, there were no enemies to fight, no enemies from which some Jesuit author needed to be defended. You understand the point?
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: There was only Lessius. And Lessius was teaching a doctrine that could not be tolerated, as it was explained by Lessius. Because otherwise, the Society of Jesus could have more and more problems to solve. So, that's the point. Strategy.
SHADLE: Yeah. And also, I think . . . I think that's very good, and I think also, in the background, from their beginnings, Jesuit theology had been eclectic. So, Ignatius of Loyola had set some rules for the study of theology and said they should study Aquinas. But they had all kinds of influences. So, John Dun Scotus, and even the Nominalists. So, the Jesuits were very eclectic. But, as you mentioned before, there's this desire to avoid any kind of theological controversy, because they've just gone through the Protestant Reformation. And so, General Acquaviva, who you mentioned before, he wants to deal with this eclecticism, and so he really enforces the study of Thomas Aquinas on the Jesuits, and I think that's part of what's going on here, too, is Lessius is just too eclectic in what he's trying to do. And so they want to follow more the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and . . . along the lines that Bellarmine was trying to do, that you've been saying. So, I think that's part of it, too.
I want to go back to something that I wanted to mention, that we didn't talk about before, but something that was interesting that you wrote about, was that, going back to the controversy at Leuven, the dispute there. One of the arguments that the faculty made against Lessius is that his . . . What made it interesting was that it wasn't just a theological argument. It was almost more like a practical argument, that his theology is not going to help us bring back Protestants, whereas our theology that emphasizes God's sovereignty and predestination is going to be more attractive to Protestants. So, I thought that was kind of an interesting point they made.
RAI: Yeah, it is.
SHADLE: Whether it’s right or wrong, I don’t know.
RAI: No, but it is, actually. The, well, I would say funny thing is that both the theologians of the University of Leuven and the Jesuits maintained that they did propound their own theology as Counter-Reformation tools.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: So, in the faculty of theology at the university, they made the point that the Protestants were more receptive of Augustine. And so, using Augustine, and not Aquinas, or the Fathers, which Lessius did very often, or contemporary authors. It was the only way to re-approach the Protestants and have some success. On the other hand, the Jesuits at the College of Leuven, and especially Lessius, were sure that, actually, that kind of theology could hide a sort of crypto-Calvinism, and that the best way to do Counter-Reformation was actually to show the Protestants other sources . . .
SHADLE: Yeah, yeah.
RAI: . . . without incurring the risk of becoming crypto-Calvinists.
SHADLE: Oh wow, okay.
RAI: So, it's interesting because they . . . I recognize that they both wanted to do Counter-Reformation. Lessius wanted to do some Counter-Reformation within Catholicism, because he was convinced that there were, well, Reformers in disguise within the Catholic borders. And, on the other hand, the theologians of Leuven were sure that the ghost of Pelagius was actually back from the earlier times. And it was really a threat, also, because the Protestants could read such a theology as the proof that they were actually right, and that there was something wrong within Catholicism, in Catholic theology.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: Thank you so much for raising the point.
SHADLE: Yeah. And then we see the same dynamic a generation later with Jansen.10 So, Jansen argues that . . . makes that same argument that he's, like, reclaiming Augustine for the Catholics against the Protestants. But then he gets accused of being a crypto-Calvinist, like you were saying, so . . . But we don't . . . We don't need to talk about Jansen, because that's later. So . . .
RAI: I even dream about Jansenius sometimes. So that’s really a bad point for me.
SHADLE: So, you recently presented at a conference on Lessius’s economic views. And what's fascinating is that you argued that his theology, that we've been talking about, influenced his views on the economy. So, I've written on modern, like twentieth-century, Catholic views on the economy, so I'm really interested in what he had to say. And I haven't read what you've written on this, so I don't really know. And I know you gave a long presentation, but maybe, in just a few minutes, what was the thesis that you were making about his economic views?
RAI: Well, yeah, it was at the REFORC conference in Leuven. But I . . . My paper had the aim to show—to sum up—the inextricable connections between theology of salvation and moral economy, and more specifically, to show how lenient, optimistic, and moral economies, such as Lessius’s, have their roots in doctrines of salvation in which free will and human agency are key, are pillars, face to face with God’s sovereign authority on humankind. So, we must start from the idea that morality, which includes the economic sphere, notably, was a key arena for playing out the game of salvation. Morality is, you know, is the area where human beings, who are granted with free will and freedom of action by God, can play their cards, with the view to salvation and the accumulation of merit.
So, Lessius applied his very positive, optimistic anthropology to morality. He had what I consider an intuition that human beings must not be tormented by senseless rules that hinder their ability to do good. So, in practical terms, this meant reducing the legal, ecclesiastical restrictions on human activity in the economic field so as to preserve people's freedom to act. The church had regulated with quite a heavy hand the economic sphere for centuries by prohibiting a long series of economic practices, such as, for example, a series of contracts, or lending at interest, based on the Aristotelian-Thomistic idea of the sterility of money. Money cannot bear fruit.
However, after the discovery of the New World, merchants and businessmen felt new needs. And all these provisions and restrictions represented quite a problem. And Lessius was also a confessor. So, he received in sacramental confession these merchants who struggled because they wanted to be good Catholics, but also successful merchants.
SHADLE: Oh, that’s fascinating.
RAI: They, you know, they wanted not to go to hell, but also not to die of starvation, because they weren't allowed to use a series of economic tools which they needed to use. So, thus Lessius, also inspired by the reality outside him—he did the first examples of market analysis, actually—taught doctrines which actually oppose the principle of sterility of money, which, so to speak, was kind of a big deal at the time.
SHADLE: Yeah.
RAI: So, money, for Lessius, can bear fruit. He doesn't say that literally, but, in practice, that's the reality. So, how? Well, he says that through human work, profit, which is actually hidden in money itself, can germinate. So, it's because of the abilities of the human agency, driven by free will of human people, that even money can produce other money. For example, the ability of a merchant to invest his capital, even using traditionally prohibited tools, such as lending at interest. So, this led Lessius to identify juridical reasons justifying economical practices usually forbidden. And also, in a very innovative way, he even took into account the role of emotions in financial practices, which was quite, quite new.
But the main element of interest . . . and I'll conclude here . . . in Lessius’s theological system, considered as a whole, is really the absolute centrality of human agency in allowing, you see, grace to work and profit to germinate, without considering the economic field as a sort of well of sins. So, he basically said, in a very complicated, juridical way, made of rules and exceptions, and so on, that merchants could save their souls and also be good merchants.
SHADLE: Yeah. And that's fascinating, because I'm just thinking, big picture, of Max Weber's theory of how Calvinists were at the root of the Protestant, or of the capitalist ethic. And yet, here we see the . . . not that that's totally wrong. But here we see, also, the opposite, that someone who's very anti-Calvinist, anti-predestination, is also laying the groundwork for modern capitalism. So, the origins, they are very complex, and probably you don't want to, unlike Weber, you don't want to lay it at one specific cause here, right?
RAI: No, I just want to say, in a very provocative way, that we should reflect if a theologian like Lessius was a sort of promoter of capitalism ante litteram, which is very provocative, of course. I don't think he was. He also cared a lot about social justice and social utility. So, his teaching was not about capital per se, or economical success per se. It was about social justice, but he included in social justice, also, the fact that these businessmen, who were having a huge part in the early modern development of Europe after the discovery of the New World, that they could actually do their job.
SHADLE: Okay, that's a good qualification there. So not necessarily endorsing capitalism, but at least arguing for a role for freedom in the economy.
RAI: Yes.
SHADLE: Okay. So, we're getting close to the end here, but you have also written about, there have been efforts to canonize Leonard Lessius, to make him a saint.
RAI: Yes.
SHADLE: But they haven't succeeded, and so, I'll take it for granted that he probably was a holy man. I mean, I don't think people would have pushed for this if not. So, clearly he had . . . he lived a holy life. So, what’s been the story here? What are the obstacles to Lessius becoming a saint?
RAI: Well, first of all, a cause for canonization has been opened, so you have to know that Lessius is currently a “Servant of God.” So, this means that the faithful are allowed to venerate him privately, not in public.
SHADLE: Okay, good to know.
RAI: So, formally the cause is still open. I don't think it has any chance of being successful. But anyway. So, I would say that the cause met with two major issues. The first one is canonization law. Canonization is, firstly, a legal matter. It’s a response to precise legal requirements. So, Lessius was particularly unlucky, because the cause was promoted during a time of important reorganization of the canonization procedures by Pope Urban VIII, between the 1620s and the 1630s. And specifically, two rules imposed by the pope were broken by Lessius’s devotees and by the postulators of the cause. So, first, a hagiography was published presenting Lessius as a saint before the judgment and the decision of the Church, which was forbidden. And second, a most public cult was promoted in Leuven after Lessius’s death. Just think that the doorman at the Jesuit College distributed the holy water in which Lessius’s relics had been immersed as a way to obtain miracles.
SHADLE: Hmm.
RAI: And the second issue, I would say, the Jesuit strategies—again, strategy—of canonization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when a new attempt of canonization was made. These strategies were not favorable to Lessius. And here we meet again the Leuven disputes. Still, in the twentieth century, in fact, there was a fear that canonizing Lessius would have meant, somehow, canonizing also his doctrine, and that Lessius’s doctrine would have been identified with the teaching of the Society of Jesus as a whole, which was absolutely wrong, of course. Lessius gathered high criticism even within the Society of Jesus, as we saw. But I understand that, from records stored in the Vatican, that such fear was really in the air at that time.
And finally, in 1905, Jesuit General Luis Martín decided strategically, and explicitly, to favor the cause for canonization of . . . Robert Bellarmine, who was the friend or enemy of Lessius, over that of Lessius. And due to the, you know, the importance of Bellarmine within the Church during the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic revival. So, I would say that, finally, Bellarmine won in the rush towards the honor of the altars.
SHADLE: Yeah. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And then it . . . and I really appreciate how you get into the details and the legalities of the canonization process. It's not just about, “This was a good person.” Right? There's a lot that goes into it. So . . .
RAI: You know, canonization is always, often at least, associated with devotion, and of course there are no saints without devotion. But firstly, there are, really, legal requirements to be fulfilled.
SHADLE: Yeah. Okay, so let's close this. So, how is Lessius relevant today?
RAI: I think this is my favorite question today.
ShADLE: Oh no, and we left it until the end!
RAI: No, no, no, it’s okay. You know, it is almost like asking why we study what we do study. What, in this case, what value can doctrines of salvation or moral teachings have today? You know, Matthew, I can't help but listening to music when I do research, or I read, or I write. And a few years ago, I started to notice how contemporary singers still talk about elements that were at the core of Lessius’s theology, questions such as, “What's after death? Is there a heaven? What does happen to human souls after death?” And so on. Just think to songs by Bob Dylan. You quoted “Knockin’ on Heaven's Door.” Or Celine Dion, or Rag’n’Bone Man, or Lady Gaga. They do talk about that. And if you turn to cinema or literature, it's the same. And you find artists who fantasize about life after death, about the immortality of the soul, or even about the immortality of the body, or artificial intelligence that cannot die at all, to face the problem of the inevitability of death. I sometimes think to the saga of Star Wars, where some Jedis have even the power to simply flow into the Force and continue to exist, for example, to think about science fiction.
So, I started to realize that I was dealing simply with a very particular declination of an old anthropological issue that has accompanied humankind since the very beginning of it's history, from the moment when bodies started to be buried facing to the east in fetal position to signify your birth, 60,000 years ago in the Middle East, to literally today, when I'm sure that there is somewhere a singer or a novelist or a screenwriter reflecting on the significance of life and the destiny of human beings and the soul that animates the flesh after death.
So, Lessius tried to answer these deep questions, and he did it, of course, within the frame of early modern Catholic theology, but he did it because he considered the questions about the salvation of the soul and life after death as key of human existence. We could not explain, I think, otherwise why many, many theologians spent their life, arguing about the technicalities of salvation, fighting over the technicalities of salvation, why they put the discourse about eternal life at the center of their life, because they really did. And Christianity split because of these questions, and the controversies I mentioned today threatened to divide the Catholic world even more.
So, what happens after death? Do personal moral choices count? Does the human soul survive when the body dies, and where does it flow, if it survives? So, these are questions still in the air today. And I think, I guess, will be also in the future, because they are part of the human need to understand and to go behind, beyond death somehow. And also, because—I always like to say this—because there is no trial round. So, death is death, and nobody can have provable answers. So, this is why I think people will simply continue wondering. And this is why it is key to understand how people wondered about these same very questions in the past. And this is why I study what I study.
SHADLE: Yeah, and just . . . You know, you were talking about the musicians, and I’ve got to say the title you chose, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” . . . and this is probably intentional . . . but it reminds me of Jesus’ saying, “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” And I know that's a specific passage that other theologians who have made similar arguments about the role of human agency and salvation quote to, you know, prove their point, that we do something and then God responds. And so, I figured Lessius probably quoted that passage, too, about knocking on the door and it being opened. So, I wanted to point that out.
But I had briefly mentioned in an email to you, along the same lines, some of the things that I thought contemporaries would find, not just interesting, but resonant, in Lessius’s work, and so one of those was that he does not sacrifice on the generosity of God, right? That for Lessius, God is infinitely generous. Or the theologians at the time use the word “liberal”, like the “liberality of God”, that God does not hold back on His grace. I think Lessius would very much agree with that.
RAI: Yes.
SHADLE: And I think, you know, contemporaries would connect with that. But then the other thing is that he doesn't see human freedom and God's sovereignty, or God's providence, as in opposition. He’s trying to show that they go together, right, that they don't contradict. And actually, you made that point. I'm going to quote you here. “As a Christian humanist, Lessius seems to propound the traditional idea of homo faber suae fortunae” . . . like, the human as the maker of their own fortune . . . “even in the context of soteriology, with the help of God's providence.” Right? That he did . . . He sees those two things as integrated rather than opposed, that we have freedom over our own lives, but it's all within God's providence, in God's grace. And I think that's a very modern idea that people today would resonate with.
RAI: I think it is, yeah.
SHADLE: And I know you were getting at that, it’s our ongoing concern with both freedom, but also with our, you know, destiny after life. So, you want to say something?
RAI: I do agree. I think it's one of the reasons why Lessius can be attractive to today's readers. So, I wrote that, I wrote about the principle of the homo faber, again, somehow, in a provocative way, because, of course, it's a humanist principle which is usually read as in opposition to God, to God’s sovereign authority. The point in Lessius is that . . . The point that Lessius makes is that life, which is a gift from God, and is characterized by freedom of action, which is another gift from God, would have no sense if everything is decided for us. So, in this sense, he really integrates the idea of being free within the plan of God.
SHADLE: Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right. So, thank you very much, Eleonora. This has been fantastic. And thank you for your research and your writing. I hope you continue and . . . continue to tell us about Lessius, but also move on to other people. New relationships!
RAI: New relationships! Exactly. Thank you so much, Matthew, it's been wonderful. And I'm very glad I had this opportunity to share about a bit of Lessius with you and the public, of course.
SHADLE: And me, too. Thank you for joining us.
RAI: Thank you, Matthew.
A dual enrollment program.
The Jesuit College was the residence and educational institution of the Society of Jesus in the Low Countries. As Dr. Rai and I discuss later, it was a source of conflict with the University of Leuven because it was an alternative source of education in philosophy and theology.
Baius’s theological views were somewhat idiosyncratic. He argued that in the state of innocence, before the Fall, humankind was created with a natural desire for God, and that therefore the supernatural aids needed to achieve this end were due to humankind from God, as a matter of justice. Hence, original sin not only corrupted human nature, but truly effaced that nature and its faculties, leading to the conclusion that human beings in the fallen state cannot freely will the good.
This is a reference to the theory that Augustine’s views on grace and free will shifted during the controversy with the Pelagians, where he puts greater emphasis on the power of grace, in contrast to his views when he wrote the earlier On the Free Choice of the Will, which puts more emphasis on free will. Other scholars dispute that Augustine’s views changed in this way.
I flubbed this during the interview because I changed course mid-sentence. The point I was trying to make was that the faculty at Leuven have often been portrayed as followers of Baius, but Dr. Rai’s research shows this was not the case, they were fairly traditional Augustinians and Thomists.
Ex meritis praevisis: Literally “by means of foreseen merit.” As Dr. Rai explains, this is the view that the predestined are those God foresees will perform meritorious acts, meaning they have chosen to accept God’s grace.
De auxiliis: Literally “on the helps,” but as Dr. Rai explains, it is short for de auxiliis divinae gratiae, or “on the helps of God’s grace.”
Congruism: This is the idea that God’s grace is efficacious because God provides it in a way that is suited to the person and the circumstances. The idea itself goes back at least to Augustine.
Prescientia conditionata: “Conditioned foreknowledge.”
Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), or Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres and author of the posthumously published Augustinus (1640), which inspired the Jansenist movement.
This was a very useful read for me while I worked on editing Fr. Lessius's little essay "Utrum quivis in sua fide ac religione salvari possit" (reprinted via Amazon as "Does any Faith Suffice?"). Thank you for uploading it!