Filippo Neri was the spiritual director of Palestrina, and appointed him composer to his devout confraternity.

For the use of that society the master wrote a series of _Arie Divote_ on Italian words.

They were meant to be sung by the members, and to supersede the old usages of Laud-music, which had chiefly consisted in adapting popular street-tunes to sacred words.[211] [Footnote 211: See _Renaissance in Italy_, vol.iv.pp.

263, 305.] To the same connection with the Oratory we owe one of the most remarkable series of Palestrina's compositions.

These were written upon the words of an Italian Canzone in thirty octave stanzas, addressed as a prayer to the Virgin.