Apostle Of Rome PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. Philip's Earliest Years In Eome. When Philip Neri, in his twentieth year, fixed on Fiome as his abode, he had an education of mind and heart befitting a man who is destined to become great. The influence on him of the city in which he was born, the example and teaching of his parents and masters, his intimacy with the friars of S. Dominic, whom he regarded with such reverence and love, the places he had seen, all combined to ensure this. But there was an influence more powerful still . Philip's clear and thoughtful mind, together with his recollected and meditative habits, would lead him to reflect much on the events of public life in his early years. Those events were of unwonted importance, and we may be sure that Philip was not a listless and unintelligent spectator of a scene so various and so stirring. How often and with what sorrow of heart he would think of the losses inflicted on the Church and on Italy! How continually would he raise to heaven those eyes beaming with charity, pleading for his mother the holy Church, which he loved more than his own life, and which lay before him torn by heresy, sunk in corruption, its life tainted and threatened by a revived and aggressive paganism! Philip was five years old when Leo X. died suddenly, in the prime of life, and not without suspicion of poison. His pontificate had been, in some respects, great and splendid; but, unhappily, the baleful seed of Protestantism then sprang up and bore fruit. He was succeeded by Adrian VI., a Fleming by birth, a man of simple habits, frugal even to parsimony in his mode of life, and an enemy to the literature and art of the day, because both had become profane and licentious. Adrian projected many and weighty reforms, and would probably...