SEGNERI, PAOLO. - Jesuit, 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 Fr. Sforza Pallavicino, who foresaw in him a reformer of sacred eloquence in Italy, he entered the Society of Jesus on 2 Dec. 1637, and, ordained a priest in 1653, was assigned to preaching, for which he prepared himself by the assiduous study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers and by reading the Orations of Cicero. From 1661 to 1692 he preached, in addition to Lenten courses, popular missions in a large part of Italy, especially in the Papal States and in Tuscany, welcomed and followed not only by the common people, impressed by his impassioned word and by the flagellations he inflicted on himself in the pulpit and in 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 for him in particular by his Quaresimale (Florence 1679, with repeated editions), which caused him to be compared to St. Bernardine of Siena for the effectiveness of his word and to Bourdaloue, whose force and art of speaking he shares, but whom he surpasses in richness of imagination and warmth of feeling. For Italy he remains the prince of orators for his rapid, warm, often polemical and impetuous eloquence, for the close-knit and progressive logic of his argumentation, for the classicism of his language and style (in the preface to the Quaresimale he says "that he has subjected himself with no small rigor to those laws which are generally revered and right in it, so as not to violate them as an injurious Italian") and for his lively and almost total reaction (some abuse, however, of antithesis, metaphor, colorful images, and overly studied words still remains) against the pretentious, vapid and Marinist taste of seventeenth-century sacred eloquence. His taste, moreover, is also clear from his collaboration on the Vocabolario della Crusca. S. also shows his full worth in the 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 practice of Christian precepts, also with regard to social and economic questions (where bold and original views are not lacking); all enlivened by anecdotes, amusing little scenes, and tales, extracted and later collected in separate little volumes. The same may be said of the Panegirici sacri (Bologna 1664; more complete ed., Venice 1657), somewhat more mannered, however, and of the Prediche dette nel Palazzo Apostolico (Rome 1694).
More restrained, without however losing anything of his merits, S. appears in the moral discourses that form 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, divided into 56 considerations (Bassano 1694).
In the last years of his life he took part in the defense of probabilism against the ideas of the father general Tirso Gonzalez and opposed the publication that the latter wished to make, against the opinion of his assistants, of his book Fundamentum theologiae moralis; and when the work nevertheless came to light, S. wrote under another name three letters (1693), passed from hand to hand, and printed only considerably after his death under the pseudonym: Massimo degli afflitti, Lettere sulla materia del probabile (Cologne 1732 and Naples 1856). S. had shown himself equally combative 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, because of the bitter opposition of its adversaries, was denounced to the Inquisition of Rome and condemned; as was also condemned S.'s reply to a work written against the Concordia by Card. 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 once the works of Molinos were condemned in 1687 and those of Petrucci in 1688, S. was able to reprint the Concordia with some changes, in 1691, and by the decree of 30 July 1692 he was declared free from every condemnation, so that the Concordia did not appear in any edition of the Index; while the Lettera di risposta, despite the decree of the Holy Office declaring it free, remained on the Index until its edition of 1900 (cf. J. Hilgers, Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, Freiburg im Br. 1904, p. 140, against the assertion of Reusch, and pp. 551-563).
Bibliography21 works
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.
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