SEGNERI, PAOLO. — Jesuit, classical orator and writer, b. at Nettuno on 20 March 1624, d. at Rome on 9 December 1694.
Educated at the Roman College, where his teacher was the future Cardinal p. Sforza Pallavicino, who foresaw in him a reformer of sacred eloquence in Italy, he entered the Society of Jesus on 2 December 1637 and, having been ordained a priest in 1653, was assigned to preaching, for which he prepared himself through assiduous study of Sacred Scripture and the Fathers and by reading the Orations of Cicero. From 1661 to 1692, in addition to Lenten sermons, he preached missions to the people throughout much of Italy, especially in the Papal States and Tuscany. He was appreciated and followed not only by the people, impressed by his fiery speech and by the flagellations he imposed upon himself in the pulpit and during penitential processions, but also by the great, above all by Grand Duke Cosimo III and his family, who also made use of him in very difficult and delicate matters. In 1692 he was summoned by Innocent XII to the office of apostolic preacher and theologian of the Penitentiary.
His lasting fame was won particularly by his Quaresimale (Florence 1679, with repeated editions), which led him to be compared with s. Bernardino da Siena for the effectiveness of his speech and with Bourdaloue, whose force and art of expression he shares, but whom he surpasses in richness of imagination and warmth of feeling. For Italy he remains the foremost of orators for his rapid, warm, often polemical and impetuous eloquence; for the close, progressive logic of his argumentation; for the classicism of his language and style (in the preface to the Quaresimale he says “that he subjected himself with no small rigor to those laws which in it are generally revered and correct, so as not to violate them as an injurious Italian”); and for his vigorous and almost complete reaction (some abuse, nevertheless, of antithesis, metaphor, colorful imagery, and overly studied diction still remains) against the pretentious, empty and Marinist taste of seventeenth-century sacred eloquence. His taste is also evident, moreover, from his collaboration on the Vocabolario della Crusca. S. likewise displays his full worth
in his choice of subjects (cf. the statements in the preface to the Quaresimale), which adhere not only to the principles of the faith but always descend to the practical observance of Christian precepts, including matters of a social and economic nature (where bold and original views are not lacking); the whole is enlivened by anecdotes, delightful little scenes and tales, later extracted and collected in separate booklets. The same may be said of the Panegirici sacri (Bologna 1664; more complete ed., Venice 1657), though somewhat more mannered, and of the Prediche dette nel Palazzo Apostolico (Rome 1694).
S. appears more sober, without thereby losing any of his merits, in the moral discourses that make up Il Cristiano istruito nella sua legge (3 vols., Florence 1686); and in the 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, divisa in 56 considerazioni (Bassano 1694).
During the final years of his life he took part in the defense of probabilism against the ideas of the superior general Tirso Gonzalez and opposed the publication—which the latter wished to undertake, against the opinion of his assistants—of his book Fundamentum theologiae moralis. When the work nevertheless appeared, S. wrote under another name three letters (1693), circulated from hand to hand and printed only long after his death under the pseudonym: Massimo degli afflitti, Lettere sulla materia del probabile (Cologne 1732 and Naples 1856). S. had likewise shown himself combative against quietism in 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). Because of the bitter opposition of its adversaries, the work was denounced to the Roman Inquisition and condemned; the same fate befell S.’s response 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 impugnate le loro leggi in orare (Venice 1681). But after the works of Molinos were condemned in 1687 and those of Petrucci in 1688, S. was able to reprint the Concordia, with some alterations, in 1691; and by the decree of 30 July 1692 he was declared free of every condemnation, so that the Concordia appeared in no edition of the Index. The Lettera di risposta, however, despite the decree of the Holy Office declaring it free, remained in the Index until the edition of 1900 (cf. J. Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, Freiburg im Br. 1904, p. 140, against Reusch’s assertion, and pp. 551–563).
ital., 86 (1925, II), pp. 412–49; A. Belloni, Il Seicento (Storia letter. d'Italia), Milan 1929, pp. 512–15; G. Barbieri, La funzione dei beni economici secondo il p. P. S., in Convictum, 7 (1935), pp. 851–59; G. Marzot, Un classico della contrariforma, P. S., Palermo 1950. Celestino Testore
