Cesare Baronio

1538–1607 · Italian cardinal, Oratorian, and ecclesiastical historian

Cesare Baronio (1538–1607) joined Philip Neri’s Oratory in Rome as a young man, was made a cardinal in 1596 and headed the Vatican Library from 1597 until his death. His Annales Ecclesiastici, a history of the Church, appeared in twelve folio volumes between 1588 and 1607. He is remembered outside church history almost entirely for a sentence he seems never to have written down — one Galileo heard him say, and quoted years later against the men who were reading astronomy out of Scripture.

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1 quote we’ve traced

“The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes”

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