Publication & Authorship: “The Life of St. Philip Neri” by Fr. Pietro Giacomo Bacci was published in 1622, 27 years after St. Philip’s death.

Source of Information: Fr. Bacci, a member of the Roman Oratory founded by St. Philip, based his book on the canonization Processes which began two months after Philip’s death, featuring testimony from hundreds of witnesses.

Canonization Milestones: St. Philip Neri was beatified in 1615 and canonized in 1622.

Summary: During an important event at the Minerva convent, Dominican fathers held a Forty Hours devotion. Philip and others attended. While praying, he suddenly fell into an ecstasy, with his eyes fixed on the Blessed Sacrament, smiling and motionless. Found cold as ice, he was moved to a cell. After a while, he woke up and exclaimed, “Victory! Our prayer is heard.” He explained he saw Jesus blessing everyone present. At that moment, the Pope ruled in favor of the Dominicans.

Summary: Saint Philip was often seen levitating during prayer, once nearly touching the ceiling, witnessed by Cardinal Paolo Sfondrato. Giovanni Battista Modio was gravely ill, near death, and had lost his speech and senses. Philip visited him, then went to pray alone. Attendants found him levitating and surrounded by a radiant light. After half an hour, Philip returned to the sick man, laid his hand on his head, and said he would not die. Immediately, the man regained his speech and soon fully recovered.

Philip’s Virtues and Divine Ecstasies: A Life of Humble Spiritual Majesty

Summary: Philip’s great virtues, detailed in the previous book, were further adorned by divine gifts and graces. Beyond his remarkable charity and profound spirit of prayer, he frequently experienced extraordinary ecstasies and raptures, granting him insight into the ineffable secrets of divine greatness. Despite his humility and efforts to avoid these experiences, even going so far as to do violence to himself, they continued to occur throughout his life.

Caught in Contemplation: Saint Philip’s Deep Ecstasy Disrupts Morning Confessions

Fabrizio de’ Massimi, going one morning to confession to him, found the door of his room closed; and opening it very softly, he saw the Saint in the act of praying, raised upon his feet, his eyes looking to heaven, and his hands uplifted, and making many gestures. He stood for a while watching him, and then going close to him, he saluted him. The Saint, although he had his face towards him, so that he could easily see him, and could not naturally have avoided seeing him, did in fact neither see him nor return him any answer. Fabrizio, struck with this, looked at him again, feeling himself no little devotion from simply beholding Philip in this state of abstraction, which lasted about eight minutes longer. When Philip came to himself and perceived that Fabrizio was present, he asked him how he had got in; he replied, that he had not found the door bolted; whereupon, without another word, the Saint heard his confession. Francesco della Molara also going one morning to confession to him, found the door open, and the Saint sitting praying. Francesco knelt down before him to confess, when he perceived that the servant of God was in an ecstasy, and it was a quarter of an hour before he came to himself.

Divine Interruptions: Saint Philip Neri’s Unwanted Observers During a Chapel Ecstasy

Another time he was in the chapel of the Visitation, one of his favourite haunts, because he was particularly fond of Barocci’s picture which is there; and sitting down, according to his custom, upon a little seat, he passed unawares into a most sweet ecstasy. Some women, his penitents, who were at no great distance, saw this, and went up to him, and after having looked at him for a while, they called him, and shook him so vehemently that he came to himself. But Philip, disliking of all things to be observed when enjoying these divine favours, got up, and began to cry out, and call Father Antonio to send those women away, because they were annoying him, and would not let him alone; and he pretended to be in a violent passion; and all this was merely an artifice to destroy the good opinion they might have formed of him from finding him in an ecstasy.

Ecstatic Absolution: Saint Philip Neri’s Divine State During a Confession at San Girolamo

Paolo Ricuperati, a prelate of both the Segnature, and one of the holy father’s familiar friends, went one evening to confession to him at San Girolamo, and found him at supper with Messer Giovanni Animuccia. Philip rose from table and heard his confession, and in putting his hands on his head to give him absolution, went into an ecstasy and remained motionless. He remained in this state for a considerable time, to the astonishment of the prelate and Animuccia, who was also an eye-witness of it; and when at last he came to himself, he gave him absolution: and the like happened to many other of his penitents, as the time of the hearing of confessions was frequently to him the time of these heavenly favours.

Near Death or Divine Ecstasy? The Mysterious Case of Saint Philip Neri’s Apparent Illness

About the year 1585, Father Antonio Gallonio found Philip in bed one morning apparently almost dead. The medical men were immediately summoned; they applied a hot iron to his head, blisters to his arms, and other remedies to the shoulders. Nothing, however, seemed to rouse him, or do him any good; and F. Giovan Francesco Bordino gave him Extreme Unction; but one of the fathers saying “Credo, Credo,” the Saint came to himself, and said in an audible voice, “What Credo, Credo is this?” and then opened his eyes, looked round on all of them weeping; and when some of them said, “Father, you have been very ill,” he answered, “Nay, I have had no other illness than the one you have provided me with.” They found afterwards that it was no fit, but an ecstasy; and it was perhaps because of these frequent ecstasies that he used repeatedly to say in bidding them good night after he was in bed, “Go away, and if you find me dead to-morrow morning, bury me.” At mass his ecstasies were frequent, as we learn from those who served, and especially Cardinal Ottavio Paravicino, who, when young, served the Saint’s mass for twenty years, though not continuously. He also found it so difficult to prevent himself going into an ecstasy, when he was in the presence of the Pope, because of the interior movements which it caused in his heart, that whenever he was going to see his Holiness he used to say to the fathers, “Now pray for me, that I may not commit some foolery or other.”

Saint Philip’s Unwilling Ascensions: Public Ecstasies in Sacred Spaces

Father Gregorio Ozes, the Dominican, declared that before he entered religion he also had seen Philip raised in the air, and with a resplendent light around him. But the Saint was not only seen raised in this manner in private places, or by one or few persons at once; even in churches and public places he was, against his own will and endeavors, carried off into these ecstasies. On one occasion he was praying in S. Peter’s, at the tombs of the apostles, and his whole body was seen to rise all at once into the air, and with his clothes gathered up, as they had been when he was kneeling, and then to descend with equal suddenness; while he, fearing lest he should have been observed, fled away with the utmost rapidity. The same thing happened in many other churches, so that when he entered a church in company with others, he used to stay a very little time, but merely say a Pater and an Ave, and then rise from his knees, to prevent the possibility of his going into an ecstasy.

Heavenly Ascents: Saint Philip Neri’s Mystical Elevations During Mass

When he was saying mass he was repeatedly raised into the air, and several persons took particular notice of it. At Torre di Specehi some of the nuns saw him three or four palms above the ground during mass; and a little girl, who was at his mass at San Girolamo, saw him about two palms from the ground, and turning to her mother said with childish simplicity, “Mother, I think that father there is possessed with a bad spirit; look at him, how he stays in the air!” but the mother replied, “Hold your tongue, it is a Saint in an ecstasy.” Sulpizia Sirleti, one of his penitents, seeing him raised into the air on one occasion, said within herself, “Surely this father is possessed, else he would never stay in the air in this way.” Going afterwards to confession to him, she was ashamed to mention this suspicion to the Saint, and began, “Father, I have said,” and then stopped, not having courage to finish her sentence. But Philip said to her, “Go on, you silly creature; you have been finding fault with me, eh? that is it, is it not?” She said it was, and he asked her further what it was; Sulpizia answered, “The other morning, when your Reverence was saying mass, and was raised above the ground” – Philip hearing this much put his finger on his mouth and said, “Hush, hush;” but she added, “Then I said in my heart, O dear! this father is possessed.” At these words Philip burst out laughing, and repeated several times, interruptedly, in his usual way, “True, I am possessed.”

Visions of Glory During the Holy Mass

Sometimes when he was saying mass he was seen with rays of glory round his head. In the first year of the pontificate of Sixtus V., Aurelio Bacci, a Sienese, saw Philip saying mass at the high altar of our church, and as soon as he began the Memento of the Living, he saw him with a splendour round his head, of the colour of gold, but more gleaming, about four fingers wide all round, and in the shape of a diadem. Aurelio, thinking it might perhaps be some defect in his own vision, turned himself several times in order to change the point of view, and then looked again, but still he saw the same thing distinctly. He rubbed his eyes with his hands and his pocket handkerchief, and looking at the heads of other people he saw nothing of the kind, but turning again to Philip, he saw the glory as plain as before, and it lasted until the holy father had communicated.

Saint Philip Neri’s Heavenly Ascent: A Vision of Light During Mass at San Girolamo

Another time when he was saying mass at San Girolamo, a little girl about twelve years old, saw him raised in the air, and surrounded by a most white and resplendent cloud, which covered him all over; and although his vestments were red, or of some other colour, not white, yet he appeared all white and shining, and remained in this for half a quarter of an hour; and this same thing happened more than once. Muzio Achillei, a priest of San Severino, and Philip’s penitent, also saw the Saint saying mass with his face shining like bright gold.