The Benefactors of the Company in the Roman Province
The Society of Jesus, like many religious orders, has had many benefactors since the time of Ignatius of Loyola, some able to endow the Society with real estate or to finance the construction and maintenance of entire colleges, others more modest but no less appreciated.
The Compagnia’s benefactors were truly numerous over five centuries of history, and a proper study of the types of benefactors, their identities and the links between benefactors, works and the Compagnia is lacking.
Today we will focus in particular on those who ensured, with their support, the Compagnia’s provinces on Italian soil. Remaining in the Roman Province alone, there are numerous personalities to mention.
Let us begin with the Borghese family, owners in the mid 19th century of Villa Mondragone, which had already belonged to Clement XIII after whom the Villa was named: Mons Draconis refers to the Cardinal’s coat of arms.
In 1865, Borghese and his wife decided to donate the Villa and the large park surrounding it to the Society of Jesus, which immediately established a Collegio dei Nobili here, which took the building’s name: Collegio dei Nobili di Mondragone. Initially attended by only five pupils, three of whom were children of the benefactors, you can see them in the photo, the College had thousands of pupils during its ninety years of life. Today we are left with photos of the Borghese couple and some letters written to the Jesuits on the occasion of the donation of the building. Other benefactors who linked their name to the Society through the financing of a school were the Pate couple. More than half a century after the Borghese donation, in 1924 the Pate – Conti spouses chose to donate their palace and a large part of their patrimony to the Compagnia precisely for the opening of a school, the future Collegio San Francesco Saverio, where Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whom this column has already dealt with, would also study.
The Compagnia’s financiers were often also internal to it; as in the case of Fr Maximilian Massimo, descendant of the noble Massimo family and heir to one of the family’s villas, Montalto-Peretti, named after its first owner Sixtus V. Fr Maximilian decided to allocate his mother’s inheritance to finance a school that he opened in the historic villa, the first site of the Massimo Institute. When the Italian government approved the urban development plan for Rome and decided to demolish the Villa, Fr Maximilian again drew on his family inheritance to finance the construction of Palazzo Massimo, the school’s second seat until 1960, built in the garden behind the Villa, all that remained of the vast park.
Many residences, still inhabited by the Jesuits, are the result of donations; several works also benefit from private grants.
Maria Macchi
