Cornelius a Lapide

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One of the unforeseen blessings of the 33 days of preparation which ended last Sunday was discovering the work of Cornelius a Lapide. This happened quite by chance when I was looking for solid commentary on the scripture texts recommended by St Louis-Marie de Montfort (1673-1716). I instantly became a huge admirer and I included excerpts from his commentary for the first time on the 23rd of January.

A Flemish Jesuit and exegete, Cornelius a Lapide (1567-1637) wrote  commentaries on all the books of the Catholic Canon of Scripture, with the exception only of Job and the Psalms. His industry and scholarship were prodigious.

The commentaries explain not only the literal, but also the allegorical, tropological (designating or relating to an interpretation of Scripture which goes beyond the literal sense to find a figurative meaning, specifically one relating to conduct or morals. Hence: relating to morals; moral), and anagogical (of words and their sense: mystical, spiritual, having a secondary spiritual sense) sense of the sacred text, and furnish a large number of quotations from the Fathers and the later interpreters of Holy Writ during the Middle Ages.

"For nearly thirty years I suffer with and for you with gladness the continual martyrdom of religious life, the martyrdom of illness, the martyrdom of study and writing; obtain for me also, I beseech you, to crown all, the fourth martyrdom, of blood. For you I have spent my vital and animal spirits; I will spend my blood too."


As if to highlight the inscrutable workings of Providence, today (the 12th of February), I discovered a reference by St Louis-Marie himself to Cornelius a Lapide: 

161...Le R. Père Cornelius a Lapide, aussi recommandable pour sa piété que pour sa science profonde, ayant reçu commission de plusieurs évêques et théologiens d'examiner cette dévotion*, après l'avoir examinée mûrement, lui donna des louanges dignes de sa piété (...) [from his *Traité de la Vraie Dévotion à la Sainte Vierge]

Father Cornelius a Lapide, noted both for holiness and profound learning, was commissioned by several bishops and theologians to examine this devotion. The praise he gave it after mature examination, is a worthy tribute to his own holiness.