Neri, Philip, the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory and a canonised saint of the Roman Catholic Church, was born at Florence, July 21, 1515, and was the youngest son of Francesco Neri, an attorney in that city. His singular modesty, his piety, and affectionate heart won for him in his boyhood the name of the 'Good Pippo.' Philip's uncle, a prosperous merchant, wished to make him his heir; but the youth, with the view of abandoning all worldly pursuits, left his family and betook himself in his eighteenth year to Rome. Here for many years he lived as a layman a humble and retired life. A Florentine gentleman gave him a small room as a lodging and a daily allowance of meal. Philip spent most of his time in visiting the sick, in instructing the poor and ignorant, and in solitary prayer in the catacombs. It was not till 1551, when he was thirty-six years of age, that he was persuaded to become a priest. He now took up his quarters in the little church of S. Girolamo, and gathering round him a number of disciples, some of whom were men of good family and high attainments, he started the exercises of devotion which made his name famous. At first these simple services or prayer-meetings were held with a few young men in his own room. In 1558 they were transferred to an oratory which he was permitted to build over the nave of the church. These daily services, which were a great novelty at the time, consisted of three sermons of about half an hour's duration, delivered in a familiar style, and interspersed with vernacular hymns, reading, and prayers. The preachers were for the most part laymen. During the day Philip took many of his penitents round the hospitals. His object was to make religion attractive, especially to the young. At the carnival or in holiday seasons he instituted musical entertainments and the acting of religious dramas, the origin of the modern oratorio. At other times he took numbers of men in procession through the streets on a pilgrimage to the seven churches, alternately singing hymns and praying in silence. This work was more fully developed in Rome, whither in 1564 Neri was summoned by the Florentines settled there, who put under his charge their church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and beside it built for him in 1574 an oratory or mission-hall. Having had some of his companions ordained priests, he established them here as a community. One of these priests was Cesare Baronio, the historian of the church, and afterwards cardinal. Ten years later the community, now much increased in number, moved to S. Maria in Vallicella, on the site of which Philip built a larger church, known as the Chiesa Nuova, or New Church. Here the institute of the Oratory received the formal approbation of the pope, and here Philip died, May 25, 1595.
The saint was not an orator or a learned man, and although he was the favourite of popes and cardinals, as he was of the poor, he never received any ecclesiastical office or dignity. He never meddled with politics or public affairs. But his gentle and joyous nature, his tender charity, and the example of his innocent life were among the most potent of the influences which brought about the revival of ecclesiastical piety and the reformation of morals in Rome during the later half of the 16th century, and which earned for him his title of 'the Apostle of Rome.' Many miracles were attributed to the saint, even the raising of the dead. A notable phenomenon connected with his life is one which is to Philip what the stigmata were to Francis of Assisi—a strange palpitation of the heart and fracture of the ribs attributed to the supernatural effects of divine love—which came upon him suddenly one day at prayer in the catacombs. Philip was canonised with Ignatius Loyola and others in 1622.
Philip's literary remains consist of a few letters (8vo, Padua, 1751) and some sonnets printed in the collection of the Rime Oneste. The best life of the saint was written by one of the fathers of the congregation, Giacomo Bacci, in 1622, just before Philip's canonisation. Compare Vita beati P. Phil. Nerii in annos digesta, by Ant. Gallonio (1600). An English translation, made from a later edition of Bacci, appeared under the editorship of F. W. Faber in 1849. A popular biography has been written by Mrs Hope (Burns and Oates, 1859); and see also the Life by Archbishop Capecelatro (Eng. trans. 1882).