BORROMEO, CARLO°

BORROMEO, CARLO° (1538–1584), cardinal, archbishop of Milan. In the course of his campaign for reform, which had firmly impressed itself on the spirit of the Council of Trent (1545–63), Borromeo convened a number of provincial councils in Milan of which the first (1565) and the fifth (1579) in particular passed legislation concerning the Jews. Among other provisions, it was stipulated that bishops were to arrange that missionary sermons should be delivered to the Jews by preachers with knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish customs. Jewish attendance at the sermons was obligatory, the children being separated from their parents. Those who then declared themselves willing to be baptized would be placed in homes for catechumens where they would receive the appropriate instruction. The fifth council provided that those who had already been baptized should be given accommodation in homes for neophytes, and imposed a series of special, strictly supervised obligations on the new converts to ensure that they would remain steadfast in the Catholic faith. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 2 (1910), S.V. Charles Borromée; A. Sala, Biografia di S. Carlo Borromeo, 3 vols. (1857–61). (Bernhard Blumenkranz)