Memorable Sayings and Advices of St Philip Neri
St Philip Neri founded the Oratory in Rome in the 16th century. The Oratory was brought later to England in the 19th century by the well-known Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.
However, Newman may not have been the first English Oratorian. Three hundred years before Newman, Abraham Woodhead (1609–78) founded a Catholic religious community that lived in “pious obscurity”, engaged in prayer and writing. One of Woodhead’s works was a translation of the constitutions and rules of the Oratory into English, which included this translation of the maxims of St Philip. Because of his interest in the rules of the Oratory, it is thought that the life of the Woodhead community may have been modelled on that of the Roman Oratory, and that they could therefore have been the earliest Oratory in England.
This book contains the 104 maxims found in the original Italian document that Woodhead owned. The translation is his own, as is the 17th century spelling.
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