Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595)

A Florentine family under the shadow of Savonarola

Philip was born on 21 July 1515 in Florence, then a republic dominated by the Medici. His father, Francesco Neri, was a notary; his mother, Lucrezia da Mosciano, from a family in the service of the state, died while he was still a child, and it was a loving stepmother who raised him.^[9][10] The Florence of his childhood was still marked by the fiery preaching of Girolamo Savonarola, burned in 1498: the Dominicans of San Marco, guardians of his memory, exerted a lasting influence on the young Philip.^[11]

A gentle, cheerful and obedient child, he very early earned the nickname that stayed attached to his name: Pippo buono, "good little Philip".^[12][13][14] Tradition credits him with a single memorable fit of anger, quickly regretted — proof, people said, of a singularly peaceful nature.

Schooled by the Dominicans of San Marco

Philip received his first formation from the Friars Preachers of the convent of San Marco, where he acquired a taste for prayer and doctrine. He himself would later attribute all the good of his youth to the Dominican fathers of that convent.^[15] This Dominican root, heir to Savonarola, imprinted on him an austere piety that would be tempered, in Rome, by a gaiety wholly Franciscan in spirit.

San Germano and the conversion (1533)

At about eighteen years of age, Philip was sent to San Germano (present-day Cassino), at the foot of Monte Cassino, to a childless relative, the wealthy Romolo, who wanted to make him his heir in business.^[16][17] It was there, in the region of the great Benedictine monastery, that the turning point of his life occurred: an inward conversion detached him in one stroke from all earthly ambition.

Philip renounced the inheritance, left San Germano and set out for Rome — with no plan, no support, no career project, moved only by the desire to give himself to God. He had renounced a fortune; he entered the Eternal City poor and unknown. He would remain there sixty years and never leave it again.^[18][19]

Tutor in the house of Galeotto Caccia

In Rome, Philip was taken in by a Florentine customs officer, Galeotto Caccia, who offered him lodging in exchange for educating his two sons.^[20][21] The young man contented himself with an attic room, a little bread, olives and water, spending his days studying and his nights praying. An exemplary tutor, he formed his pupils so well that one of them would become a priest.

The student who sold his books

For about three years, Philip followed courses in philosophy and theology with the masters of the Sapienza and the Augustinians of Sant'Agostino.^[22][23] Gifted, he could have become a scholar. But he understood that his vocation was not the lectern: one day, he sold all his books, gave the proceeds to the poor, and chose to make himself wholly an apostle of the streets rather than a doctor of the schools.^[24] The gesture sums up his lasting conviction, which he would pass on in his maxims:

"The wisdom of Holy Scripture is learned by prayer rather than by study." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[25]

The apostle of the streets: "When shall we begin to do good?"

Then began the most original part of his life: the apostolate of conversation. With no religious habit, a simple layman, Philip walked the streets, shops, banks and squares of Rome, approaching passers-by with disarming good humour.^[26][27] His favourite phrase, which became proverbial, opened a thousand conversions:

"Well, my brothers, when shall we begin to do good?" — Saint Philip Neri^[28]

He sought out young people, merchants, artisans, idlers, and gently led them back to confession and charity. He visited the hospitals, nursed the sick, accompanied the dying. This joyful and persevering presence in the city earned him, already in his lifetime, the title of Apostle of Rome.^[29][30]

The miracle of the heart: Pentecost 1544 in the catacombs

Philip was in the habit of spending his nights in prayer in the catacombs of Saint Sebastian, on the Appian Way, among the tombs of the first martyrs.^[31][32] It was there, on the eve of Pentecost 1544, that the founding mystical event of his life took place. According to the unanimous account of his biographers and the depositions of the canonization process, he felt a globe of fire enter his mouth, then expand in his breast, setting his heart ablaze with so violent a love of God that he had to throw himself to the ground, begging: "Enough, Lord, enough!"^[33][34][35]

From that day on, Philip bore on his left side a permanent swelling, as large as a fist, and at times his heart beat so strongly that his whole body trembled with it. The autopsy performed after his death confirmed the prodigy: two ribs above the heart were broken and raised in an arch, as if pushed outward by the enlarged organ, and had never knitted back together.^[36][37] The cause for beatification retained the fact as miraculous. Later, Pope Benedict XIV, a prudent jurist, suggested a natural explanation by aneurysm; but the saint and his spiritual sons always saw in it the physical mark of divine love imprinted in his flesh. The Church, here, does not oblige anyone to decide between these readings: the anatomical fact itself is attested and exceptional.

The Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity and the pilgrims (1548)

In 1548, under the guidance of his confessor Persiano Rosa, Philip founded the Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of pilgrims and convalescents, established at the church of San Salvatore in Campo.^[38][39] Its purpose: to welcome, feed and lodge the pilgrims flocking to Rome, and to take in convalescents too weak — discharged from hospital but without the strength to work. In jubilee years, the confraternity housed thousands of pilgrims — its hospice of the Trinità dei Pellegrini became one of the great charitable works of modern Rome.^[40][41]

It was in this setting that Philip introduced to Rome the devotion of the Forty Hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.^[42] Charity in the service of the sick was in his eyes a short road to perfection:

"Ardent charity in the service of the sick is a short road to perfect virtue." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[43]

The late ordination (1551)

For nearly twenty years, Philip remained a simple layman. It was his confessor Persiano Rosa who urged him to receive orders, judging that he would do more good as a priest. After further studies, Philip was ordained deacon and then priest on 23 May 1551, at the age of thirty-five.^[44][45] He thought for a moment of leaving to evangelize the Indies, like his contemporary Saint Francis Xavier; but a holy monk made him understand that his Indies were Rome.^[46][47]

San Girolamo della Carità: the room where it all began

The new priest settled in the house of the priests of San Girolamo della Carità, where he long occupied a small room that became the beating heart of spiritual Rome.^[48][49] There he deployed an immense ministry of confession: penitent after penitent, for hours on end, from dawn, he became the sought-after confessor of the humble as well as of cardinals. There too he gradually formed the circle of young men who gathered around him to pray, read and speak of God.

What is the Oratory?

From these informal meetings was born, around 1551–1556, what Philip called the Oratory (Oratorio).^[50][51] Each afternoon, in a hall fitted out above the church, laymen and clerics gathered freely: mental prayer was made, Scripture was read, with the Fathers, the lives of the saints and the martyrology, then one of those present proposed a spiritual subject and each discussed it in familiar fashion. Philip introduced preaching in the vernacular, made of several short, simple discourses rather than one long learned sermon — a novelty for the time.^[52]

The spirit of these meetings was freedom and familiarity: Philip wanted no burdensome rule, no vows, no displayed austerity, but hearts won by gentleness. His pedagogy may be summed up in one maxim:

"In our dealings with our neighbour, we must have manners as agreeable as possible, so as to win him to virtue by our affability." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[53]

Music: Palestrina and the birth of the "oratorio"

Sacred music held an essential place in the Oratory. To sustain prayer, spiritual laudi were sung, and scenes from sacred history were set to music. These dialogue pieces, sung in Philip's oratory, gave birth to a musical genre that bears its name: the oratorio.^[54] The saint counted among his friends and penitents the greatest composer of his time, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who composed for his meetings and whom Philip assisted on his deathbed on 2 February 1594.^[55][56]

The visit of the Seven Churches

To snatch Roman youth away from the disorders of carnival, Philip instituted in 1553 the visit of the Seven Churches: a long devotional walk from one basilica to another — Saint Peter's, Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Saint Sebastian, Saint John Lateran, the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls and Saint Mary Major.^[57] They set out at dawn, prayed, sang, listened to brief sermons, picnicked joyfully along the way. Thousands of Romans took part: Philip's piety was cheerful, popular and open-air.^[58][59]

The approval of Gregory XIII (1575) and the Chiesa Nuova

The work soon outgrew the setting of a single room. On 15 July 1575, Pope Gregory XIII canonically erected the Congregation of the Oratory — a community of secular priests living together without vows, united by charity alone — and entrusted to it the old parish church of Santa Maria in Vallicella.^[60][61] Philip had it pulled down and rebuilt as a vast new edifice that the Romans would nickname the Chiesa Nuova, the "New Church", where his relics rest today.

The originality of the Congregation lies in its flexibility: no solemn vows, no all-powerful superior general, autonomous houses bound by a common spirit. Philip was elected its superior, first for three years, then for life in 1587.^[62] This new form of priestly life would spread throughout Europe.

A school of saints: Baronius, Borromeo, Camillus, Tarugi

Around Philip gravitated an extraordinary generation of saints and scholars. His room at San Girolamo, then the Vallicella, were a true school of holiness for the Rome of the Catholic Reformation. The table below gathers some of the great figures who were his disciples, his penitents or his intimate friends.

Philip was said to "fish" for souls by his gentleness and then entrust them to whoever would lead them further; he himself rejoiced that so many of his young men became Jesuits, without ever feeling the least jealousy.^[63]

Refusing the purple

Philip's reputation for holiness was such that, according to tradition, the cardinalate was offered to him. He refused it with his customary mischief, tossing his skullcap in the air or turning the matter aside with a joke, to escape all honours.^[64] His whole doctrine of humility may be summed up in this flight from dignities:

"Man must humble himself unceasingly, and never exalt himself on account of the graces God grants him." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[65]

The Henry IV affair (1595)

At the very end of his life, the old priest played a part in a great politico-religious affair. Henry IV of France, converted from Calvinism, was asking Pope Clement VIII to lift his excommunication; the pope hesitated. Philip instructed his disciple Baronius, then the pope's confessor, to refuse absolution to Clement VIII until he received the King of France into the Church.^[66] The pope yielded, Henry IV's absolution was pronounced, and France remained Catholic: a discreet gesture from a saint who loved nothing so much as remaining hidden.

"Be good, if you can": joyful holiness

What strikes one first in Philip Neri is joy. For him, sadness and scrupulosity are open doors to the devil, and cheerfulness a ground on which grace works better. He chased melancholy from his house as an enemy:

"Cheerfulness strengthens the heart; it helps us to persevere in a holy life; the servants of God must therefore always be in good humour." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[67]

This joy was not frivolity: it rested on absolute trust in God and total detachment from the world. His motto — « State buoni, se potete », "Be good, if you can" — expressed both demandingness and mercy: aim at holiness, but without tenseness, counting on grace more than on oneself.^[68][69]

Humility and the mortifications of self-love

Philip's great battle was against pride, his own first of all. To humble himself and to cure his disciples of vainglory, he devised burlesque mortifications: walking about half-shaven, wearing great ridiculous garments, ordering a distinguished young man to cross Rome with a fox's tail pinned to his back, or passing himself off as mad.^[70][71] Beneath the clowning, a rigorous spiritual strategy: killing self-love by deliberate ridicule. He taught that distrust of self is the beginning of safety:

"We must never trust in ourselves, for the devil begins by inspiring a deceptive security in us, and then makes us fall." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[72]

The mystical gifts: ecstasies, reading of hearts, healings

Beneath the joviality hid a mystic of very high rank. During Mass, Philip fell into ecstasies so deep that, after the consecration, he had to ask for the candles to be put out and to be left alone for long hours; levitations were also reported.^[73][74] He had the gift of reading hearts: he guessed the hidden sins of his penitents before they opened their mouths, and read the future of some. Many healings were attributed to him, and even the resurrection of a young man, Paolo Massimo, for the time of a last conversation before letting him depart to God.^[75]

A spirituality of prayer and abandonment

All his teaching comes back to prayer and abandonment to the will of God. Without prayer, he said, man is no more than a beast:

"A man without prayer is an animal without the use of reason." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[76]

And he taught that true prayer begins with the recognition of our nothingness and total surrender into the hands of God — a note that from afar heralds the spirituality of abandonment and of the Divine Will:

"The finest prayer we can make is to say to God: Lord, deal with me according to Your good pleasure and Your holy will." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[77]

But Philip remained a realistic master: he distrusted prayer without mortification, which he compared to a bird claiming to fly without wings.

"The true preparation for prayer consists in the exercise of mortification, for he who would give himself to prayer without mortifying himself is like a bird that would fly before it has wings." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[78]

Corpus Christi 1595

On 26 May 1595, the day of Corpus Christi that year, Philip spent his day as usual, cheerful and welcoming, hearing confessions and receiving visitors until evening. He was seventy-nine. In the course of the night, a haemorrhage carried him off. His disciple Baronius recited the prayers for the dying; unable to speak, the old saint blessed his spiritual sons with a sign of the cross and gave up his soul in the early hours of 26 May.^{[79][80][81][82]} All his life he had kept before his eyes the thought of that hour:

"It is an excellent method to preserve us from relapsing into serious faults, to say each evening: tomorrow I may be dead." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[83]

The enlarged heart: the autopsy

The autopsy, performed the next day, confirmed the prodigy of the heart: the two broken, arched ribs were found above an abnormally large heart, the physical aftermath of the 1544 embrace.^[84][85] This fact, duly recorded by the physicians, weighed heavily in the beatification process. The body was exposed to the veneration of the Roman people, then laid in the Chiesa Nuova.

Beatification (1615) and canonization (1622)

The cause advanced swiftly, borne by popular fervour and the splendour of miracles. Philip was beatified on 11 May 1615 by Pope Paul V.^[86][87] Then, on 12 March 1622, Pope Gregory XV canonized him in the course of a ceremony that remained famous, in which five saints were raised together to the altars: Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Isidore the Laborer.^[88][89][90] The Romans, who loved their Apostle, joked that the pope had canonized "four Spaniards and one saint" — one saint who, at least, was one of their own.

Patronages and legacy: the Oratory in the world

The Oratory of Saint Philip Neri spread throughout Europe and beyond. In France, Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle founded in 1611 an Oratory of its own character, cradle of the "French School of spirituality"; in England, in the nineteenth century, Saint John Henry Newman introduced the Oratory and found in Philip Neri his model of a priest.^[91][92] Saint John Paul II, in his letter to the Confederation of the Oratory in 1994, hailed in Philip a master of Christian joy and of holiness offered to all, priests and laypeople alike.^[93]

Celebrated on 26 May, patron of Rome, of laughter and of joy, the "Apostle of Rome" remains the saint who proved that one can be fully united to God without ceasing to be profoundly human — and that the shortest road to Heaven often passes through a joyful heart.^[94][95]

"If God is with you, fear nothing and be afraid of no one." — Saint Philip Neri, Maxims and Sayings^[96]

• Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) — his friend and contemporary, canonized on the same day as him in 1622.
• Saint Charles Borromeo (1538–1584) — the reforming bishop, fellow-worker of Tridentine Rome.
• Saint Camillus de Lellis (1550–1614) — his penitent, founder of the servants of the sick.
• The Catholic Reformation — the great movement of regeneration of the Church of which he was one of the Roman figures.
• The Council of Trent (1545–1563) — the contemporary council that refounded Catholic discipline and doctrine.
• The Christian catacombs of Rome — the underground passages of Saint Sebastian where the miracle of his heart took place.