Philip Benizi de Damiani
General Superior of the Order of the Servites
Philip Benizi, OSM (sometimes Saint Philip Benitius, and in Italian Filippo Benizzi; August 15, 1233 – August 22, 1285) was a general superior of the Servites, and is credited with reviving the order.
Biography
Philip Benizi was born on August 15 in the Florentine district of Oltrarno, of the noble family of Benizi. Of his childhood but little is known. He entered the order of the Servites as a lay brother and was sent to a convent three leagues from Florence, where he displayed the utmost diligence. He would retire into a cavern near the church to meditate. Two Dominicans who chanced to visit him were so struck by his piety that they insisted he become a priest.
When he was elected the general superior on June 5, 1267, the order, which had long been the object of attack from enemies, entered into the crisis of its existence. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 put into execution the ordinance of the Fourth Lateran Council, forbidding the foundation of new religious orders, and absolutely suppressing all mendicant institutions not yet approved by the Holy See. In 1276 Pope Innocent V, in a letter addressed to Philip, declared the order suppressed. Philip then proceeded to Rome, but before his arrival there, Innocent V had died.
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This entry incorporates text from “Philip Benizi de Damiani” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.