SEGNERI, PAOLO – Continued, orator and classical writer, b. at Nettuno on 20 March 1624, d. at Rome on 9 Dec. 1694.
Educated at the Collegio Romano, where his teacher was the future Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, who foresaw in him a reformer of sacred eloquence in Italy, he entered the Society of Jesus on 2 Dec. 1637, and, after being ordained priest in 1653, was assigned to preaching, to which he prepared by assiduous study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers and by reading Cicero’s Orations. From 1661 to 1692 he preached, in addition to Lenten sermons, popular missions throughout much of Italy, especially in the Papal States and Tuscany, welcomed and followed not only by the common people, impressed by his fiery words and the self-flagellations he imposed upon himself in public and in penitential processions, but also by the great, above all by Grand Duke Cosimo III and his family, who also consulted him on matters of considerable difficulty and delicacy. In 1692 Innocent XII called him to the office of Apostolic Preacher and theologian of the Penitentiary.
His lasting fame was especially secured by his Quaresimale (Florence 1679, with repeated editions), which led to his being compared to St. Bernardino of Siena for the efficacy of his speech and to Bourdaloue, with whom he shared strength and artistry of delivery, but whom he surpassed in the richness of his imagination and the warmth of his sentiments. For Italy he remains the prince of orators for his rapid, fervent, often polemical and impetuous eloquence, for the rigorous and progressive logic of his argumentation, for the classicism of his language and style (in the preface to the Quaresimale he says that he had “subjected himself with no small rigour to those laws which are the banks and the straight path, so as not to violate them as a jealous Italian”), and for his lively and almost total reaction (though some abuse of antithesis, metaphor, coloured imagery, and over-studied language still remains) against the pretentious, vain, and Marinist taste of 17th-century sacred eloquence. His taste is further evident in his collaboration on the Vocabolario della Crusca. Segneri also fully displays his worth in his choice of subjects (cf. the declarations in the preface to the Quaresimale), which not only adhere to the principles of the faith but always descend to the practice of Christian precepts, even regarding social and economic questions (where bold and original views are not lacking); all this is enlivened by anecdotes, witty scenes, and tales, later collected and published separately in little volumes. The same may be said of his Panegirici sacri (Bologna 1664; more complete ed., Venice 1657), though these are somewhat more mannered, and of the Sermons preached in the Apostolic Palace (Rome 1694).
More restrained, yet without losing any of his merits, Segneri appears in the moral discourses that make up Il Cristiano istruito nella sua legge (3 vols., Florence 1686); and in his other works: Il penitente istruito (Bologna 1669); Il confessore istruito (Brescia 1672); La manna dell’anima (4 vols., Bologna 1673–80), exquisite meditations for every day of the year; Il divoto di Maria Vergine istruito ne’ modi e ne’ mezzi che lo conducono a servirla (ibid. 1677); L’incredulo senza scusa (Venice 1690); Il parroco istruito (Florence 1692); Dichiarazione del Pater Noster, divided into 56 considerations (Bassano 1694).
In the last years of his life he took part in the defence of probabilism against the ideas of Fr. General Tirso Gonzalez and opposed the publication, against the advice of his assistants, of the latter’s Fundamentum theologiae moralis; and when the work appeared despite this, Segneri wrote three letters under another name (1693), circulated privately and printed only long after his death under the pseudonym Massimo degli afflitti, Lettere sulla materia del probabile (Cologne 1732 and Naples 1856). Equally combative was his stance against Quietism with his Concordia tra la Fatica e la Quiete nell’Orazione, espressa ad un Religioso in risposta da P. S. della C. di G. (Florence 1680). The work, on account of the strong opposition it aroused, was denounced to the Roman Inquisition and condemned; as was also the reply Segneri made to a work written against the Concordia by Cardinal Petrucci: Lettera di risposta al Signor Ignazio Bartolini sopra l’eccezioni, che dà un difensore de moderni quietisti a chi ha impugnato le loro leggi in orare (Venice 1681). But after the works of Molinos were condemned in 1687 and those of Petrucci in 1688, Segneri was able to reprint the Concordia with some alterations in 1691, and by decree of 30 July 1692 he was declared free from all censure, so that the Concordia does not appear in any edition of the Index; whereas the Lettera di risposta, despite the decree of the Holy Office declaring it free, remained on the Index until the edition of 1690 (cf. J. Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, Freiburg in Br. 1904, p. 140, against the assertion of Reusch, and pp. 551–563).