Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/361

N E R N E B 347 journey to and from San Girolamo, and to provide a more convenient place of assembly, and the headquarters were transferred thither. 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 Filippo 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 till 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 congrega tion. 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 endeavour ing to retain control over any new colonies they might themselves send out, a regulation afterwards formally confirmed by a brief of 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 the pope, Clement VIII. , to withdraw the excommunication and anathema of Henry 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 Henry 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 Henry, who did not learn the facts till several years afterwards, testified lively gratitude for the timely and politic inter vention. Neri continued in the government of the Oratory until his death, which took place on May 26, 1595, in the eightieth year of his age. There are many anecdotes told of him which attest his possession of a playful humour, united with shrewd mother-wit, often urging him to acts with a ludicrous aspect, but which were well calculated to serve his purpose of divesting religion of the hyper- professional garb it wore in his day, and bringing it within the area of ordinary lay experience. This, rather than the atmosphere of supernaturalism with which he is surrounded in the various biographies of him which have appeared, and that to a much greater degree than is common in similar writings, is the true key to his popu larity, and to the fact that his name figures often in the folk-lore of the Roman poor, whom he loved so well and served so long. He was beatified by Paul V. in 1600, and canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622. "Practical commonplaceness," to cite the words of Frederick William Faber in his panegyric of Philip 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, sport ive 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 uumonastic and unmedia-val ; he was the active promoter of vernacular services, frequent and popular preaching, unconventional prayer, and unsystematized, albeit fervent, private subjective devotion. Philip Neri was not a reformer, save in the sense that in the active discharge of pastoral work he laboured 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 institute he founded is of the least conventional nature, rather resembling a residential clerical club than a monastery of the older type, and its rules would have appeared incredibly lax, nay, its religious character almost doubtful, to a Bruno, a Stephen Harding, a Francis, or a Dominic. It admits only priests aged at least thirty-six, or ecclesiastics who have completed their studies, and are ready for ordination. The mem bers 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 honour, 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 till he has been three years in the society ; the deliberative voice is not obtained before the eleventh year. 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, &c., 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, but a branch established in Paris by Cardinal de Berulle in 1611 had a great success and a distinguished history. It fell in the crash of the Revolution, but was revived by Pere Petetot, cure of St Eoch, in 1852 ; while an English house, founded in 1847, is celebrated as the place at which Cardinal Newman fixed his abode after his submission to the Roman Catholic Church. The society has never thriven in Germany, though a few houses have been founded there, in Munich and Vienna. Authorities. Marciano, Mc-morie istoriche tJella Congregazione delT Oratorio, 5 vols. folio, Naples, 1693-1702; Bacci, Life of Saint Philip Xeri, translated by Faber, 2 vols. Svo, London, 1847 ; Crispino, La Scuo. a di San Filippo Xeri, 8vo, Naples, 1(175 ; Faber, Spirit and Genius of St Philip Xeri, Svo, London, 1850 ; Agnelii, Excellencies of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, translated by F. A. Antrobus, London, 1881 ; articles by F. Theiner in Wetzer und Welte s Kirchen- lexicon, and by Reuchlin in Herzog s Real-Encyklopadie. (R- F- L.) NERO (37-68 A.D.), Roman emperor, the only child of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and the younger Agrippina, was born at Antium on December 15, 37 A.D., nine months after the death of the emperor Tiberius. Though on both his father s and his mother s side he came of the blood of Augustus, and the astrologers are said to have predicted that he would one day be emperor, the circumstances of his early life gave little presage of his future eminence. His father Domitius, at best a violent, pleasure-seeking noble, died when Nero was scarcely three years old. In the previous year (39 A.D.) his mother had been banished by order of her brother the emperor Caligula on a charge of treasonable conspiracy, and Nero, thus early deprived