The author of this little work, F Agostino Manni, was a friend and companion of Saint Philip. He wrote this account of the origin of the Oratory, and of its earliest practices, at the beginning of the 17th century, shortly before the Constitutions of the Congregation of the Oratory were approved. Unedited at the time of his death, it was recently translated from a later manuscript copy in the library of the London Oratory, and provides a valuable insight into the Oratorian ethos and way of life.