Bust from the Villa of Clove (Lamporecchio) Pistoia hills.

Blacks San Filippo (Florence, 1515 - Rome, May 26, 1595), nicknamed "the saint of joy." The son of a Florentine notary from a good family. He received a good education and then made a practice of his father; but he had been influenced by the Dominicans of St. Mark, where monk Savonarola was not long before, and the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, and at the age of eighteen, he left the business and went to Rome. There, he lived as a lay for seventeen years and initially earned a living as a teacher, wrote poetry and studied philosophy and theology. At that time the city was in a state of great corruption, and in 1538 Philip Blacks began to work among the youth of the city and founded a fraternity of lay people met to worship God and to give help to pilgrims and convalescents, and gradually they gave birth to the great hospice of the Trinity. Philip spent much time in prayer, especially at night and in the catacombs of St. Sebastian, where in 1544 he experienced an ecstasy of divine love that is believed to have left a permanent physical effect on his heart. In 1551 Philip Blacks was ordained a priest and went to live in the ecclesiastical boarding school of St. Jerome, where he soon made a name as a confessor; he was given the gift of being able to read people's hearts. But his main occupation was at work among young people. San Filippo was attended by other young clerics, and in 1575 he organized them in the Congregation of the Oratory; for his company (whose members do not take vows that bind the religious orders and congregations), built a new church, the Chiesa Nuova, Santa Maria "in Vallicella". He became famous throughout the city and its influence on the time of the Romans, whatever class they belonged, was incalculable.