When divine love was described as a bodily force
Philip Neri’s claim that his heart grew so large it pushed his ribs outward turns an inward religious experience into a physical image. In Christian mystical writing, “heart” can mean more than the organ: it also stands for a person’s inner life, especially love and devotion. Neri’s account therefore joins spiritual intensity to an extraordinary bodily change.
A claim preserved as testimony
The story was recorded by admirers, who treated it as evidence of the force of Neri’s devotion. That context matters: their account tells us how his followers understood the experience, but it does not provide the kind of examination or documentation that would establish a medical cause. The lasting detail is the startling image itself—love made visible, in the story, by ribs pushed outward.
