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 humour, 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 folk-lore 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, &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 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 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.
Authorities.—J. Marciano, Memorie istoriche della Congregazione dell’ Oratorio (5 vols., Naples, 1693–1702); Perraud, L’Oratoire de France (2nd ed., Paris, 1866); Jourdain de la Passardière, L’Oratoire de St Ph. de Neri (1880); Ant. Gallonius, Vita Ph. Neri (Rome, 1600); Giacomo Bacci, Life of Saint Philip Neri, trans. Faber (2 vols., London, 1847); Crispino, La Scuola di San Filippo Neri (Naples, 1875); F. W. Faber, Spirit and Genius of St Philip Neri (London, 1850); F. A. Agnelli, Excellencies of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, trans. F. I. Antrobus (London, 1881); articles by F. Theiner and Hilgers in Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexicon, and by Reuchlin and Zöckler in Herzog’s Realencyklopädie. Neri’s own writings include Ricordi, or Advice to Youth, Letters (Padua, 1751), and a few Sonnets printed in the collection of the Rime Oneste. Other lives by Pösl (Regensburg, 1847); P. Guerin (Lyons, 1852); Mrs Hope (London, 1859); Abp. Capecelatro (2 vols., 1879; 2nd ed., 1884; Eng. trans., 1882; 2nd ed. by T. A. Pope, 1894).
NERO (37–68), Roman emperor 54–68, was born at Antium
on the 15th of December 37. He was the son of Gnaeus Domitius
Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the younger, and his name was
originally L. Domitius Ahenobarbus. His father died when Nero
was scarcely three years old. In the previous year (39) his mother
had been banished by order of her brother Caligula (Gaius)
on a charge of treasonable conspiracy, and Nero, thus early
deprived of both parents, found shelter in the house of his aunt
Domitia, where two slaves, a barber and a dancer, began his
training. The emperor Claudius recalled Agrippina, who spent
the next thirteen years in the determined struggle to win for Nero
the throne which had been predicted for him. Her first decisive
success was gained in 48 by the disgrace and execution of
Messallina (q.v.), wife of Claudius. In 49 followed her own
marriage with Claudius, and her recognition as his consort in the
government.[1] The Roman populace already looked with favour
on Nero, as the grandson of Germanicus, but in 50 his claims
obtained formal recognition from Claudius himself, who adopted
him under the title of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus.[2]
Agrippina's next step was to provide a suitable training for her
son. The scholar L. Annaeus Seneca was recalled from exile
and appointed his tutor. On the 15th of December 51 Nero
completed his fourteenth year, and Agrippina, in view of
Claudius’s failing health, determined to delay no longer his
adoption of the toga virilis. The occasion was celebrated in a
manner which seemed to place Nero’s prospects of succession
beyond doubt. He was introduced to the senate by Claudius himself.
The proconsular imperium and the title of princeps juventutis
were conferred upon him.[3] He was specially admitted as an
extraordinary member of the great priestly colleges; his name
was included by the Arval Brethren in their prayers for the
safety of the emperor and his house; at the games in the circus
his appearance in triumphal dress contrasted significantly with
the simple toga praetexta worn by Britannicus. During the next
two years Agrippina followed this up with energy. Britannicus’s
leading partisans were banished or put to death, and the all-important
command of the praetorian guard was transferred
to Afranius Burrus, a Gaul by birth, who had been the trusted
agent first of Livia and then of Tiberius and Claudius. Nero
himself was put prominently forward. The petitions addressed
to the senate by the town of Bononia and by the communities
of Rhodes and Ilium were gracefully supported by him in Latin
and Greek speeches, and during Claudius’s absence in 52 at
the Latin festival it was Nero who, as praefect of the city,
administered justice in the forum. Early in 53 his marriage with
