Rev. Fr. V. J. Matthews - St. Philip Neri: Apostle of Rome (with Supplemental Reading: A Brief Life of Christ) [Illustrated]

ST. PHILIP NERI

( From an engraving in the second edition of the life of the Saint by Domenico Sonzonio, published at Padua in 1733 )

Cum licentia Visitatoris Apostolici

Nihil Obstat:	Eduardus Mahoney, S.Th.D. Censor deputatus
Imprimatur:		Vicarius generalis Westmonasterii die 19a Julii, 1934

First published in 1934 by Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., London. Rights purchased from the London Oratory in 1984 by TAN Books. Reprinted by TAN Books in 1984.

Copyright 1984 by TAN Books

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 84-50406

ISBN: 978-0-89555-237-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from TAN Books.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

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Charlotte, North Carolina
www.TANBooks.com
2010

REVERENDISSIMO ET CARISSIMO
PATRI
JOSEPH M. TORRENT I LLOVERAS
PRESBYTERO CONGREGATIONIS BARCINONENSIS
ORATORII SANCTI PHILIPPI NERII
PRO PIGNORE CARITATIS ILLIUS QUAE
INTER FILIOS DIVERSOS EIUSDEM BEATI PATRIS
VINCULUM PRAESTAT UNICUM
OPUSCULUM HOC DEDICAT
CONGREGATIONIS LONDINENSIS
PRESBYTER

St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) lived in one of the most eventful centuries in the history of the Church: the time of the Protestant Revolt, the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Although the Church was then suffering from great laxity among both clergy and lay people, the 16th century was also the Century of the Saints, to use St. Robert Bellarmines apt expression. St. Philip was a contemporary of numerous canonized saints, including St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Francis Xavier, and he knew personally St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Charles Borromeo.

Yet when we read the life of St. Philip Neri, we find very little reference to the momentous events taking place in the Church as a whole. Unlike many of the great saints of that era, St. Philip found that his vocation was to a single city. At the beginning of the 16th century, the religious situation in Rome was corrupt and lukewarm, and the people lived in a state of spiritual malaise. St. Philips mission was to convert and sanctify innumerable souls in Rome by preaching in the marketplaces, hearing Confessions, directing souls, caring for the sick in the primitive hospitals of the day, ministering to needy pilgrims, and performing miracles, as well as by searching out wayward souls who did not recognize their own spiritual misery. This work was carried out through much personal contact and also through the congregation known as the Oratory.

The exact nature of his vocation had not always been clear to St. Philip. When he was around 42 years old, after having been a priest for about six years, he and several companions began reading the letters of St. Francis Xavier and other missionaries in India. They became fired with enthusiasm to go to the Far East to save souls and win the crown of martyrdom. But to make sure of Gods Will, Philip consulted a holy Cistercian who was favored with visions of St. John the Evangelist. The Cistercian reported that St. John had appeared and had delivered this message for Philip: Rome is to be your Indies.

To the souls in Rome, then, Philip devoted his life. The distinctive mark of his apostolate was cheerfulness, and everyone was captivated by his supernatural charm. Philip soon became the most popular person in the city, and was generally known and loved as the Apostle of Rome. The improvement in the religious spirit of Rome between the opening and closing years of the 16th century is largely attributable to this one man. By all he did to sanctify Rome, St. Philip Neri exerted an incalculable influence for good upon the Universal Church, which owes himeven to our own timea debt of unimaginable magnitude.

The Publishers

April 5, 1984

S INCE the middle of the last century a number of lives of St. Philip have appeared in English. The first was a translation of that written by Giacomo Bacci, a father of the Roman Oratory, in 1622, with additions by the Dominican Ricci and others, which has formed the basis of most lives of the Saint written since that date. The translation was by Fr. Faber, begun even before he was a Catholic, and appeared in two volumes, the first of the Oratorian or black Lives of the Saints, which were issued between 1847 and 1856, first raising a storm, and afterwards enjoying a considerable success. There have been various subsequent editions of this life, but the last is now out of print. In 1882 there was published in two volumes a translation, by Fr. Thomas Alder Pope, of the Birmingham Oratory, of the admirable Life of St. Philip by Alfonso Capecelatro, a father of the Naples Oratory, later a Cardinal and Archbishop of Capua. A new edition of this translation, slightly abbreviated, appeared in 1926 in one volume (London, Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd., 15s.), while Pippo Buono , by Fr. Ralph Kerr, of the London Oratory, described by its author as a simple life of St. Philip, and dedicated by him to the children of the Oratory schools, reached a second edition in 1927 (London, Sands & Co., 3s. 6d.). Much earlier than either of these booksprobably about 1868a Mrs. Hope wrote a short Life of St. Philip which was quite excellent in its way, but after having passed through various editions it, too, is out of print. In 1927 a work by two French priests, Louis Ponelle and Louis Bordet, was published with the title, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of his Times (English translation by Fr. Ralph Kerr, London, Sheed & Ward, 1933, 16s.). In this book the authors, instead of merely repeating what other biographers had said, went back to all the original documentsthe process of canonization, contemporary letters, etc.and produced an enormous amount of interesting matter about St. Philip and the times in which he lived. But both this book and the Life by Capecelatro are large volumeseach six hundred pagesand proportionately expensive, while Fr. Kerrs Pippo Buono is directed expressly to children.

It remains, therefore, that since the last edition of Mrs. Hopes little book was exhausted, there has been no short life of St. Philip on the same lines available for those unable to afford the money to buy or the time required for reading the larger books. A life of this kind is what I am venturing to offer here. Having neither the talent for original research nor the taste for any novel interpretation of St. Philip, I have tried only to give some account of his life and work in the traditional order, following Bacci and Capecelatro, but very briefly and in ordinary language. At the same time I have embodied as much as possible, within the space, of the new information provided by the researches of the Abbs Ponnelle and Bordet, using it where necessary to correct the facts and dates given by earlier writers. To their most valuable work, therefore, as well as to the earlier Lives, I wish to make my very fullest acknowledgements. Lastly, I must express my gratitude to Fr. Denis Sheil, of the Birmingham Oratory, for very kindly helping me with suggestions and criticisms.