ALFONSO MARIA DEI

LIGUORI (1696-1787)  , saint and doctor of the Church of Rome, was born at Marianella, near Naples, on the 27th of September 1696, being the son of Giuseppe dei Liguori, a Neapolitan noble . He began life at the bar, where he obtained considerable practice; but the loss of an important suit, in which he was counsel for a Neapolitan noble against the grand duke of Tuscany, and in which he had entirely mistaken the force of a leading document, so mortified him that he withdrew from the legal world . In 1726 he entered the Congregation of Missions as a novice, and became a priest in 1726 . In 1732 he founded the " Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer " at Scala, near Salerno; the headquarters of the Order were afterwards transferred to Nocera dei Pagani . Its members, popularly called Liguorians or Redemptorists, devote themselves to the religious instruction of the poor, more especially in country districts; Liguori specially forbade them to undertake secular educational work . In 175o appeared his LIGUORI 679 celebrated devotional book on the Glories of Mary; three years later came his still more celebrated treatise on moral theology . In 1755 this was much enlarged and translated into Latin under the title of Homo A postolicus . In 1762, at the express desire of the pope, he accepted the bishopric of Sant' Agata dei Goti, a small town in the province of Benevent; though he had previously refused the archbishopric of Palermo . Here he worked diligently at practical reforms, being specially anxious to raise the standard of clerical life and work . In 1775 he resigned his bishopric on the plea of enfeebled health; he retired to his Redemptorists at Nocera, and died there in 1787 . In 1796 Pius VI. declared him " venerable "; he was beatified by Pius VII. in 1816, canonized by Gregory XVI. in 1839, and finally declared one of the nineteen " Doctors of the Church " by Pius IX. in 1871 . Liguori is the chief representative of a school of casuistry and devotional theology still abundantly represented within the Roman Church .

Not that he was in any sense its founder . He was simply a

fair representative of the Italian piety of his day—amiable, ascetic in his personal habits, indefatigable in many forms of activity, and of more than respectable abilities; though the emotional side of his character had the predominance over his intellect . He was learned, as learning was understood among the Italian clergy of the 18th century; but he was destitute of critical faculty, and the inaccuracy of his quotations is proverbial . In his casuistical works he was a diligent compiler, whose avowed design was to take a middle course between the two current extremes of severity and laxity . In practice, he leant constantly towards laxity . Eighteenth-century Italy looked on religion with apathetic indifference, and Liguori convinced himself that only the gentlest and most lenient treatment could win back the alienated laity; hence he was always willing to excuse errors on the side of laxity as due to an excess of zeal in winning over penitents . Severity, on the other hand, seemed to him not only inexpedient, but positively wrong . By making religion hard it made it odious, and thus prepared the way for unbelief . Like all casuists, he took for granted that morality was a recondite science, beyond the reach of all but the learned . When a layman found himself in doubt, his duty was not to consult his conscience, but to take the advice of his confessor; while the confessor himself was bound to follow the rules laid down by the casuistical experts, who delivered them-selves of a kind of " counsel's opinion " on all knotty points of practical morality . But experts proverbially differ: what was to be done when they disagreed ? Suppose, for instance, that some casuists held it wrong to dance on Sunday, while others held it perfectly lawful .

In Liguori's

time there were four ways of answering the question . Strict moralists—called egotists, or " tutiorists "—maintained that the austerer opinion ought always to be followed; dancing on Sundays was certainly wrong, if any good authorities had declared it to be so . Probabiliorists maintained that the more general opinion ought to prevail, irrespectively of whether it was the stricter or the laxer; dancing on Sunday was perfectly lawful, if the majority of casuists approved it . Probabilists argued that any opinion might be followed, if it could show good authority on its side, even if there was still better authority against it; dancing on Sunday must be innocent, if it could show a fair sprinkling of eminent names in its favour . The fourth and last school—the " laxists " —carried this principle a step farther, and held that a practice must be unobjectionable, if it could prove that any one " grave Doctor " had defended it; even if dancing on Sunday had hitherto lain under the ban of the church, a single casuist could legitimate it by one stroke of his pen . Liguori's great achievement lay in steering a middle course between these various extremes . The gist of his system, which is known as " egtliprobabilism," is that the more indulgent opinion may always be followed, whenever the authorities in its favour are as good, or nearly as good, as those on the other side . In this way he claimed that he had secured Eberty in its rights without allowing it to degenerate into licence . However much they might personally disapprove, zealous priests could not forbid their parishioners to dance on Sunday, if the practice had won wide-spread toleration; on the other hand, they could not relax the usual discipline of the church on the strength of a few unguarded opinions of too indulgent casuists . Thus the Liguorian system surpassed all its predecessors in securing uniformity in the confessional on a basis of established usage, two advantages amply sufficient to ensure its speedy general adoption within the Church of Rome . Lives by A . M .

Tannoja, a

pupil of Liguori's (.3 vols., Naples, 1798-'802); new ed., Turin, 1837; French trans., Paris, 1842) ; P . V . A . Giattini (Rome, 1815: Ger trans., Vienna, 1835) ; F . W . Faber (4 vols., London, 1848—1849); M . A . Hugues (Munster, 1857) ; 0 . Gisler (Einsiedeln, 1887); K . Dilgskron (2 vols., Regensburg, 1887), perhaps the best; A . Capecelatro (2 vols., Rome, 1893); A. des Retours (Paris, 1903): A . C .

Berthe (St

Louis, 1906) . Works (a) Collected editions . Italian: (Monza, 1819; 1828; Venice, 1830; Naples, 184o ff.; Turin, 1887, ff.) . French: (Tournai, 1855 if., new ed., 1895 ff.) German: (Regensburg, 1842—1847) . English : (22 vols., New York, 1887—1895) . Editions of the Theologia Moralis and other separate works are very numerous . (b) Letters: (2 vols., Monza, 1831; 3 vols., Rome, 1887 ff.) . See also Meyrick, Moral and Devotional Theology of the Church g Rome, according to the Teaching of S . Alfonso de Liguori (London, 1857), and art . CASUISTRY . (ST .