They went to live near the Augustinian nunnery of Santa Marta, where the oratory of Eternal Wisdom was located This was a place of devotional practices frequented by leading figures of Milanese civic life.
He was a figure of remarkable spiritual charisma, author in 1525 of the Via de aperta verità, a writing that pointed devotees to the path of austere moral discipline to recover authentic Christian faith through the rejection of the vanities of the world and the vain rituals of outward religiosity.
The Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul did not live a cloistered life: they could be seen on the streets of Milan dressed modestly with a veil over their faces, going to assist in hospitals and hospices.
Close ties were maintained between the two orders of Angelicals and Barnabites, united by common devotional, ascetical and charitable practice, under the spiritual guidance and teaching of Zaccaria and the material support of Torelli.
[3] Constantly shuttling back and forth between the mother house in Milan and those that gradually sprang up in Lombardy and the Veneto, in an activism interrupted only by the frequent illnesses to which she was subject, Negri continued her work in Verona in 1542.
In 1544 she was in Treviglio, Padua, and Venice, where the two congregations took over the direction of the hospital of Saints John and Paul, then in Ferrara in 1547 and again in Cremona in 1548, gaining increasing attention and adherence everywhere, testifying to the heartfelt demand for a religious message that was truly innovative.
[4] In the early months of 1552 the Holy Office conducted an inquiry at the end of which, with an apostolic brief on 29 July, the cardinal inquisitor Juan Álvarez de Toledo was appointed protector of the two congregations; the doctrines of Battista da Crema condemned as heretical, and Negri accused of scandalous behavior and abuses.