Born: 21-Jul-1515
Birthplace: Florence, Italy
Died: 26-May-1595
Location of death: Rome, Italy
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Chiesa Nuova, Rome, Italy

Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Religion

Nationality: Italy
Executive summary: Congregation of the Oratory

Italian churchman, born at Florence on the 21st of July 1515. He was the youngest child of Francesco Neri, a lawyer of that city, and his wife Lucrezia Soldi, a woman of noble birth, whose family had long served the state. He was carefully brought up, and received his early teaching from the friars at San Marco, the famous Dominican monastery in Florence. He was accustomed in later life to ascribe most of his progress to the teaching of two amongst them, Zenobio de' Medici and Servanzio Mini. When he was about sixteen years old, a fire destroyed nearly all his father's property. Philip was sent to his father's childless brother Romolo, a merchant at San Germano, a Neapolitan town near the base of Monte Cassino, to assist him in his business, and with the hope that he might inherit his possessions. So far as gaining Romolo's confidence and affection, the plan was entirely successful, but it was thwarted by Philip's own resolve to take holy orders. In 1533 he left San Germano, and went to Rome, where he became tutor in the house of a Florentine gentleman named Galeotto Caccia. Here he was able to pursue his own studies under the guidance of the Augustinians, and to begin those labors amongst the sick and poor which gained him in later life the title of "Apostle of Rome", besides paying nightly visits for prayer and meditations to the churches of the city and to the catacombs. In 1538 he entered on that course of home mission work which was the distinguishing characteristic of his life; somewhat in the manner of Socrates he traversed the city, seizing opportunities of entering into conversation with persons of all ranks, and of leading them on with playful irony, with searching questions, with words of wise and kindly counsel, to consider the topics he desired to set before them.

In 1548 he founded the celebrated confraternity of the Santissima Trinità de' Pellegrini e de' Convalescente, whose primary object is to minister to the needs of the thousands of poor pilgrims who flock to Rome, especially in years of jubilee, and also to relieve the patients discharged from hospitals, but still too weak for labor. In 1551 he passed through all the minor orders, and was ordained deacon, and finally priest on the 23rd of May. He had some thought of going to India as a missionary, but was dissuaded by his friends who saw that there was abundant work to be done in Rome, and that he was the man to do it. Accordingly he settled down, with some companions, at the hospital of San Girolamo della Carità, and while there tentatively began, in 1556, the institute with which his name is more especially connected, that of the Oratory. The scheme at first was no more than a series of evening meetings in a hall (the Oratory), at which there were prayers, hymns, readings from Scripture, from the fathers, and from the Martyrology, followed by a lecture, or by discussion of some religious question proposed for consideration. The musical selections (settings of scenes from sacred history) were called oratorios. The scheme was developed, and the members of the society undertook various kinds of mission work throughout Rome, notably the preaching of sermons in different churches every evening, a wholly novel agency at that time. In 1564 the Florentines requested him to leave San Girolamo, and to take the oversight of their church in Rome, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, then newly built. He was at first reluctant, but by consent of Pope Pius IV he accepted, while retaining the charge of San Girolamo, where the exercises of the Oratory were kept up. At this time the new society included amongst its members Caesar Baronius, the ecclesiastical historian, Francesco Maria Tarugi, afterwards archbishop of Avignon, and Paravicini, all three subsequently cardinals, and also Gallonius, author of a well-known work on the Sufferings of the Martyrs, Ancina, Bordoni, and other men of ability and distinction.

The Florentines, however, built in 1574 a large oratory or mission-room for the society contiguous to San Giovanni, in order to save them the fatigue of the daily journey to and from San Girolamo, and to provide a more convenient place of assembly, and the headquarters were transferred there. As the community grew, and its mission work extended, the need of having a church entirely its own, and not subject to other claims, as were San Girolamo and San Giovanni, made itself felt, and the offer of the small parish church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, conveniently situated in the middle of Rome, was made and accepted. The building, however, as not large enough for their purpose, was pulled down, and a splendid church erected on the site. It was immediately after taking possession of their new quarters that Neri formally organized, under permission of a bull dated July 15, 1575, a community of secular priests, entitled the Congregation of the Oratory. The new church was consecrated early in 1577, and the clergy of the new society at once resigned the charge of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini; but Neri himself did not migrate from San Girolamo until 1583, and then only in virtue of an injunction of the pope that he, as the superior, should reside at the chief house of his congregation. He was at first elected for a term of three years (as is usual in modern societies), but in 1587 was nominated superior for life. He was, however, entirely free from personal ambition, and had no desire to be general over a number of dependent houses, so that he desired that all congregations formed on his model outside Rome should be autonomous, governing themselves, and without endeavoring to retain control over any new colonies they might themselves send out -- a regulation afterwards formally confirmed by a brief of Pope Gregory XV in 1622. Much as he mingled with society, and with persons of importance in church and state, his single interference in political matters was in 1593, when his persuasions induced Pope Clement VIII to withdraw the excommunication and anathema of Henri IV of France, and the refusal to receive his ambassador, even though the king had formally abjured Calvinism. Neri saw that the pope's attitude was more than likely to drive Henri to a relapse, and probably to rekindle the civil war in France, and directed Baronius, then the pope's confessor, to refuse him absolution, and to resign his office of confessor, unless he would withdraw the anathema. Clement yielded at once, though the whole college of cardinals had supported his policy; and Henri, who did not learn the facts until several years afterwards, testified lively gratitude for the timely and politic intervention. Neri continued in the government of the Oratory until his death, which took place on the 26th of May 1595 at Rome. He was succeeded by Baronius. There are many anecdotes told of him which attest his possession of a playful humor, united with shrewd mother-wit. He considered a cheerful temper to be more Christian than a melancholy one, and carried this spirit into his whole life. This is the true secret of his popularity and of his place in the folklore of the Roman poor. Many miracles were attributed to him alive and dead, and it is said that when his body was dissected it was found that two of his ribs had been broken, an event attributed to the expansion of his heart while fervently praying in the catacombs about the year 1545. This phenomenon is in the same category as the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. Neri was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1600, and canonized by Gregory XV in 1622.

"Practical commonplaceness", says Frederick William Faber in his panegyric of Neri, was the special mark which distinguishes his form of ascetic piety from the types accredited before his day. "He looked like other men.. he was emphatically a modern gentleman, of scrupulous courtesy, sportive gaiety, acquainted with what was going on in the world, taking a real interest in it, giving and getting information, very neatly dressed, with a shrewd common sense always alive about him, in a modern room with modern furniture, plain, it is true, but with no marks of poverty about it -- in a word, with all the ease, the gracefulness, the polish of a modern gentleman of good birth, considerable accomplishments, and a very various information." Accordingly, he was ready to meet the needs of his day to an extent and in a manner which even the versatile Jesuits, who much desired to enlist him in their company, did not rival; and, though an Italian priest and head of a new religious order, his genius was entirely unmonastic and unmedieval; he was the active promoter of vernacular services, frequent and popular preaching, unconventional prayer, and unsystematized, albeit fervent, private devotion.

Neri was not a reformer, save in the sense that in the active discharge of pastoral work he labored to reform individuals. He had no difficulties in respect of the teaching and practice of his church, being in truth an ardent Ultramontane in doctrine, as was all but inevitable in his time and circumstances, and his great merit was the instinctive tact which showed him that the system of monasticism could never be the leaven of secular life, but that something more homely, simple, and everyday in character was needed for the new time.

Accordingly, the congregation he founded is of the least conventional nature, rather resembling a residential clerical club than a monastery of the older type, and its rules (never written by Neri, but approved by Pope Paul V in 1612) would have appeared incredibly lax, nay, its religious character almost doubtful, to Bruno, Stephen Harding, Francis or Dominic. It admits only priests aged at least thirty-six, or ecclesiastics who have completed their studies and are ready for ordination. The members live in community, and each pays his own expenses, having the usufruct of his private means a startling innovation on the monastic vow of poverty. They have indeed a common table, but it is kept up precisely as a regimental mess, by monthly payments from each member. Nothing is provided by the society except the bare lodging, and the fees of a visiting physician. Everything else -- clothing, books, furniture, medicines -- must be defrayed at the private charges of each member. There are no vows, and every member of the society is at liberty to withdraw when he pleases, and to take his property with him. The government, strikingly unlike the Jesuit autocracy, is of a republican form; and the superior, though first in honor, has to take his turn in discharging all the duties which come to each priest of the society in the order of his seniority, including that of waiting at table, which is not entrusted in the Oratory to lay brothers, according to the practice in most other communities. Four deputies assist the superior in the government, and all public acts are decided by a majority of votes of the whole congregation, in which the superior has no casting voice. To be chosen superior, fifteen years of membership are requisite as a qualification, and the office is tenable, as all the others, for but three years at a time. No one can vote until he has been three years in the society; the deliberative voice is not obtained before the eleventh year. There are thus three classes of members -- novices, triennials and decennials. Each house can call its superior to account, can depose, and can restore him, without appeal to any external authority, although the bishop of the diocese in which any house of the Oratory is established is its ordinary and immediate superior, though without power to interfere with the rule. Their churches are non-parochial, and they can perform such rites as baptisms, marriages, etc., only by permission of the parish priest, who is entitled to receive all fees due in respect of these ministrations. The Oratory chiefly spread in Italy and in France, where in 1760 there were 58 houses all under the government of a superior-general. Malebranche, Thomassin, Mascaron and Massillon were members of the famous branch established in Paris in 1611 by Bérulle (after cardinal), which had a great success and a distinguished history. It fell in the crash of the Revolution, but was revived by Père Pététot, curé of St. Roch, in 1852 as the "Oratory of Jesus and the Immaculate Mary"; the Church of the Oratory near the Louvre belongs to the Reformed Church. An English house, founded in 1847 at Birmingham, is celebrated as the place at which Cardinal John Henry Newman fixed his abode after his submission to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1849 a second congregation was founded in King William Street, Strand, London, with F. W. Faber as superior; in 1854 it was transferred to Brompton. The society has never thriven in Germany, though a few houses have been founded there, in Munich and Vienna.

Father: Francesco Neri (lawyer)
Mother: Lucrezia Soldi

    Canonization 1622

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