The following passage contains much that is contradicted by the facts, yet infused enough with the truth to make us wonder. The second church, San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini, is directly connected to Neri in a story recorded shortly after his lifetime. His sponsor and owner of the Casino was Medici prince Don Antonio, whose daughter Maddalena later served as a nun at the associated convent.
San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, (formerly called San Giovanni Decollato) is located a few steps from the Casino di San Marco, where Neri made glass at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
With the first, our priest has an indirect association. The Knights of Malta headed two churches in Florence and Neri can be connected to both. The knights were ancient aristocratic military order that originated during the crusades and in Neri's time ran the papal navy. Today we investigate a less conventional possibility: the Knights of Malta. Recently, we looked at two promising possibilities the Canons Regular, and the Dominicans. This scenario raises the intriguing question of which religious order would have taken on the sponsorship of educating a future priest as an alchemist a mystery that remains unanswered to this day. In fact, it is likely that the responsibility was granted to him mere months or weeks before the ambitious manuscript was begun, which he dedicates to the exposition of "all of alchemy." Given the Church's rules and the typical length of training for ordination, twenty-two is about the youngest age possible for a priest. It is the earliest manuscript known to exist by the respected glassmaker and alchemist, started when he was just twenty-two years old. "Of me, Priest Antonio Neri, Florentine 1598." So starts the inscription on the first of 61 ink and watercolor illustrations in a manuscript titled " Tesoro del Mondo".